Tag: Farms

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

The Intimacy of Eating

Here’s to letting our taste buds lead the way. Our pastures this week have me drooling a little at the capacity of our animals for converting this lush June fertility into delicious, nourishing food.

There are many reasons to support human-powered, small, ecologically friendly farms. We produce real food that is nutrient-dense and full of flavor. We care for our place by improving the soil and local ecosystem. We keep dollars circulating through our own communities. We strive to raise and train the next generations of stewards. Farms can add a common sense to our communities’ dialogue that comes from working closely with nature, recognizing our part in it, not apart from it. We provide a measure of comfort and security in case of supply chain breakdowns.

I could go on, but you get the point. I believe strongly that we need more farms and farmers on land to stem the tide of the last 80 years of adulteration from corporate chemicals that has occurred in our soil and to our food.

The number of dairy farms in Maine has dropped from 5,100 in 1945 to 145 in 2023. Ponder that.

In 1945, the entire dairy herd was pastured during the growing season and fed dry hay in the winter. In 2023, the majority of dairy cows in Maine eat a “total managed ration” and live most of their lives on a concrete slab.

As a rule, our culture has called this progress. The cows are more efficient. The tractors are more efficient than animal power. Economies of scale are more efficient than a decentralized, localized system. This same logic would result in a “total managed ration” for humans as well. It would be more efficient.

Oh, but the taste buds. The intimacy of eating. The culture and variety. The seasonality. The memories.

It gives me a great degree of pleasure to watch all the critters here at Quill’s End eat. Especially during the growing season when their ‘plates,’ like ours, have a wider diversity of foods.

Imagine the choices we abandon if we step only into the grocery store for our sustenance, where 85% of the products on the shelves did not exist before 1945: what farmer to patronize, what sustainable practices to encourage and support, what particular variety to request from one of your farmers. We leave behind a farm visit with a pasture or garden walk for aisles of bright packaging and fluorescent lights.

As blessed as we are here in western Hancock County, we shouldn’t rest until our places are filling up our plates daily, and more of our pastures are full of life and laughter, furthering a community-based model of food production that continues to spread to more rural places. Led by our taste buds and the intimacy of the act of eating from our place.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

Know it Well

Joel and Theresa Salatin hold a special place in our hearts.  It was his books that started us on this grass-based farming path nearly 30 years ago.  He has continued writing as their farm, Polyface, has grown and transformed their area in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.  As their son Daniel has taken over the daily operations of Polyface, many others who served as interns now operate adjacent farms to supply food to their customers.

Joel and Theresa’s journey is catalogued in Joel’s “how-to” books, along with their philosophy on life, love, and legacy.  Of the best sentiments he expressed, in my view,  is one agreeing with Wendell Berry, “To steward a place well, you need to love it, and to love it well, you need to know it.” 

Such knowledge comes from experience bearing it out.  Stewardship and learning to love through knowing are concepts that grow deeper with each passing year and each passing generation.

Every day here at Quill’s End Farm, we get to study a little more,  learn a little more, know a little more, and love a little more deeply.  I hope that, like the Salatins’ Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley, our places and communities will thrive for what we learn, how we love it, and for our stewardship.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

Winter Dairy Farming

Winter dairy farming makes for a horrible workout routine.  Short bursts of activity are often followed by longer bursts of “rest.”

Winter chore time includes twice-a-day cleaning of the main area of the barn that houses the cows.  We push the bedding and manure into a pile by the door and then shovel it into a pile outside the door where it can be accessed by a tractor.  All well and good–gets a body moving and warmed right up.

Then, we water and feed the cows.  While they are all bellied up to the feeders, we brush them clean.   You can imagine this takes a bit of doing in the winter.  Then we wash their udders and begin milking. 

All that activity before milking is enough to work up a sweat in the coldest weather.  The (lack of) activity during milking is enough of a slowdown to cool you off.

Hauling hay is an even worse workout.  Our hay suppliers are around half an hour away.  We drive the half hour, load a truck for half an hour, then sit and drive home for half an hour, and then unload for half an hour–a physical therapist’s nightmare.

This is all to say, by April, we are watching that sweet grass pretty closely.  The sooner we have 5 or 6 inches in the fields, the sooner we can liberate the cows, stop pushing manure, and stop hauling hay.  We can start just walking the cows about to do their jobs. 

We love cows of grass!  We love cows pooping on grass, where our labor is not needed for clean up.  We love cows eating grass where our hauling labor is not needed.  Here is to the coming of spring and retiring, well, seasonally retiring anyways, the winter shovel.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

The Floodgates Are Open

Last winter, I was fighting chronic Lyme disease. Chronic Lyme disease presents differently for each individual affected by it. I thought that the symptom of brain fog had mostly skipped me, but early this morning, there was some evidence to the contrary.

Bonnie Three birthed a beautiful healthy heifer calf. Bonnie has a Three in her name because this farm always has a Bonnie. It is a tribute to our very first cow whose name was Bonnie. So…that out of the way, Bonnie Three calved this morning. She was not, according to my notes and memory, supposed to do that until the middle of May. Because her calving date was marked as May, she has only had a very abbreviated “vacation” from milking.

The cows usually are “dried off” for two months. This allows them a rest period and to put on some weight and grow a healthy calf. While Bonnie’s calving went well and she has a healthy heifer calf, she has only had a couple of weeks off. Apparently the herd is still having symptoms of my time with Lyme disease.

Case in point? We have ten milking cows. Given a two month vacation for each cow before calving, in order to keep a steady supply of milk, we should be milking 8-ish at any given time and have a calf every month-plus. Since February third, when Pippin freshened, we have had five calves. Five cows freshening in the span of a little more than one month is not an ideal dispersal of milk flow over time for a steady supply. A correction of this glut-scarcity cycle problem will require milking some of the cows longer and keeping them open (unbred) for a longer period. The repercussions of my Lyme brain fog will stretch out in the barn for another couple of years to get this all straightened out again.

As we are now milking all ten cows at once, the floodgates are open. Milk, cream, yogurt, and cheese are all available in abundance. Our pigs won’t consider a dry meal and even the hens are partaking in skim milk to wash down theirs.

Thankfully, the symptoms of Lyme have vacated my body. Hopefully, with time and proper bull control, they will leave my farm.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously permitted us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

A Sweet Valentine

From the depths of winter, it may seem like the quiet time on the farm right now, because it mostly is, relatively. However, this little farm is never truly quiet. We have our minds on the upcoming growing season that still offers perfection…in February. And, we hope, more opportunity.

Amidst the daily tending chores: hauling water, hay, grain, firewood, and moving snow around, we are bouncing ideas and numbers off each other at every turn, troubleshooting and gaming scenarios. We’re discussing how best to add new markets to reach more of you with the limited labor we’ve got. We’re taking the beginning steps–looking at you, Blue Hill (!)– of resuming a delivery day in your neighborhood to increase ease of accessibility to Quill’s End food and help us feed more milk to people rather than pigs in 2025.

Presently at Quill’s End, we have been milking the fewest number of cows as winter sees reduced foot traffic at the farm store and less food ordered for delivery. Four of our cows have been “on vacation” and will freshen (calve) this month. The first calf of this group was born last Monday on the 3rd to Pippin. Our last bull was a Guernsey/Jersey cross, and this new little valentine of a heifer got white splashes and long legs from her sire. Her dam gave her smarts and she is already zooming her way into our hearts. We hope that she will also get some mellowness from Edmund the Bull. Mellow took years to come to mama Pippin. The other three cows, Ariel, Andy, and Penelope, all look to be on track to calve soon. We’ve got some busy weeks ahead.

This is all to say that we will soon have more milk than you know what to do with! We’d appreciate if you could work your Quill’s End love magic and spread the word far and wide so that there are more yous for the upcoming milk flow.

Getting ready for the summer also means restocking our freezers. Our offerings have been slim as we try to open up space for the next round of pork and beef which will be available in late February–just a few more weeks until we have treasure caches of bacon and sausage and all manner of steaks and beef cuts once again! We will also have veal cuts of all kinds in March to enliven our dinner menus as we head into mud season.

The frequent snow storms are brightening the landscape and storing much-needed moisture for the spring to come. The cold has made thick ice on all the ponds and lakes. It is nice to see the ice-fishing shacks back on the water en masse after years of inadequate ice. Heather and I even saw pick-up trucks plowing the snow off a lake this week. It is refreshing to see people out enjoying winter’s offerings. Frequent plowing here is helping us familiarize ourselves with the new Ford 545d tractor. A cab with intact windows and doors that keep out the weather is downright luxurious–on par with the Popemobile to this farmer.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously permitted us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

Farm Kids

For Christmas, I was gifted a book of short stories about growing up on a farm in Maine. Short stories work well for me. My reading time is before bed. A conclusion every few pages is just right. The book was not outstanding, but relatable to life on a farm.

I was exposed to this type of living as a child, but only immersed in it for brief periods. I was a tourist to the real thing. There was no necessity to my being there, no responsibility to aid my growth or the farm and family.

With less than 2% of Americans involved in agriculture, this century will undoubtedly produce a lot fewer of these farm children. I hope that this changes. The stories in this book outline the constant work of a farm, and the necessity to be useful from an early age. Consequently, the children were needed, appreciated, and constantly learning as they worked alongside the adults. I’ve not met farm kids that are not capable trouble shooters, or fear new challenges or trades.

The book’s stories also touch on the times between the work. This particular farm boasted woods, fields, pond, creek, gravel pit, and junk piles of old equipment. Unstructured time, combined with these acres of assets, seems a pretty good recipe for childhood. The remnants of our children’s forts and kingdoms remain a great reminder of their imaginations. I’ve not yet met a bored farm kid.

So, make sure children are visiting farms: we need them to become enchanted, and to be the next generation of farmers. Farmers to feed us and to entertain us as they write about growing up on farms in Maine

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously permitted us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.