Category: Farming

MooMilk, the Maine-based organic milk company, is scaling back operations, according to a report in the Bangor Daily News.

MOOMilk, which stands for Maine’s Own Organic Milk, processed milk Wednesday but will suspend production Sunday on skim and 1 percent milk, as a variety of reasons have combined to force the business toward closure. The company’s cash flow is so low that it can only purchase 2 percent and whole milk cartons.

“We are out of money,” David Bright, MOOMilk’s secretary and one of its founders, said this week.

News Update: Portland Press Herald reports they will be staying open after “a number of individuals and foundations have provided enough money to enable the company to sell its product to two Maine food banks.”

Today’s edition of the Portland Daily Sun reports on Out on a Limb, a rare apple CSA that’s starting its second year this Fall.
The Rare Apple CSA took root at Super Chilly Farm in Palermo, where “John Bunker and Cammy Watts grow apples, pears, plums and cherries on Super Chilly Farm in Palermo,” according to their website. “Founded in 1972, the farm’s specialty is a collection of rare and historic apple varieties, at last count well over 200. Many of the varieties originated in Maine, from York County to The County. John and Cammy think of the farm less as a commercial orchard and more as a repository for rare and endangered varieties.”

Press Herald reporter Ray Routhier spends the day at Snell Family Farm picking squash destined for the Portland Farmers Market in the latest article for his Maine at Work column.

Then, as Snell instructed me, I picked the shriveled blossom off the vegetable and laid the zucchini in a handmade wooden box so it would be “nice and pretty” for customers the next day at farmers markets in Portland and Saco.

John Bunker and crew are offering their rare apple CSA again this year. Rabelais will be the drop off point. $120 gets you 6 deliveries of 1/4 bushel each. See the Out on a Limb website for details on last year’s fruit.

According to a report in the American Journal, Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook is planning to get into the hydroponic tomato business. (via Westbrook Diarist)

The hydroponic vine-cluster tomatoes Smiling Hill would grow would be red and ripe when they left the greenhouse to go to customers in Maine and places like Boston and New York. But they would be “green” in the sense that they would be grown in an environmentally friendly way, according to Warren Knight, president of Smiling Hill.

The Tuesday Portland Daily Sun includes an interview with Lisa Fernandes about her approach to permaculture.

Me: Are you trying to get off the grid completely?
Fernandes: It’s not our goal to be homesteaders in the city. I don’t think that doing things completely independently is an attractive or reasonable goal. But we do want to be able to withstand the energy challenges in this volatile economy. We plan to grow old here and want a place that will take care of us more than we’ll take care of it. We want it sustainable so that when we’re older there’s no digging or tilling.

Fernandes’s garden is a stop on the Backyard Locavore Tour taking place on August 14.

Small Wonder Organics is now selling shares for their Tomato Passion Club CSA. The program will start-up next week on August 11, and Rabelais will be serving as the pick-up point in Portland. CSA members will receive “no less than 36 lbs of organic tomatoes and at least 1 lb basil over six weekly distributions.”

Mainebiz reports that Maine 2010 maple syrup production was down 22% from last year’s high of 395,000 gallons.