Tag: Farms

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit, with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! This month’s column is written by Phil.

There are times on the coast of Maine when a land farmer has to dress for fishing.  If one could call June “times,” it fit the bill.  

I have had to practice gratitude this last month, as day upon day of rainforest weather has grown fantastic grass and also tread upon my spirit.  So I’m remembering the Junes when all the first cutting of hay is in because of the lack of rain, which means that hay might be needed in August rather than December, and the second cut won’t amount to much.  I’m remembering dry pants after moving the cow fence in the morning when by rights, my thighs ought to be wet from wading through tall, dewy pasture grasses.  I’m remembering jonesing for rain during “perfect” weather.  A rainforest month like June sure does grow grass, and grass sure does make milk, and extra milk sure does make beautiful pork and veal.

As this weather pattern stretches into July, a different consideration arises.  Rain gear does a great job of keeping the weather out, but it is also quite good, at warmer temperatures, of wetting you from the inside.  Now the decision to don the full gear is harder.  Rain does the job comfortably in warm weather; gear does not.  Rain requires a change of clothes and gear wets less but offends the olfactory senses. 

I have choices this summer unavailable to me in dry years, and try as I have, pleading, and later, obscenities, do not produce rain.  Logically then, too much moisture is better than drought.  Plenty of grass and wardrobe choices.  So, why do I still feel like I’m trying to convince myself?

To celebrate (despite?) this wet, wet weather and make room in our full, full freezers, we are offering a sale on smoked hams, loin roasts, veal chops, and veal short ribs.  A great meal in good company need not wait for clear skies.  Fog, mist and rain all call for comfort food.   Embrace the damp with fantastic food.  Leftover ham bone makes a great pea soup to go with the fog.  Short ribs stewing in a crock pot or Dutch oven smell divine on gray days.  Veal chops make any weeknight special.  A loin roast is an occasion to invite your neighbors in from the downpour.

When your tongue is dancing, you may forget you cannot see the end of your nose outdoors.  

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit, with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! This month’s column is written by Phil.

With all the animals out on pasture now, our “inter-chore time” is spent shoveling out barns and shelters and planting as much as we can as we can. This week the goat house and the heifer shed have been on the list along with getting all the potatoes in the ground at long last. As we clean up the last of winter in the barns, I can’t help but start to think of winter in the woodshed. It’s time to get firewood cut and split.

I’ve always maintained that a successful northerner has a short-term memory, but the reality is that the successful northerner knows winter is coming, no matter the season. Thankfully, this thought doesn’t extend to the rest of nature. It lives in the moment not knowing the moment won’t last.

Our bluebird land baron now occupies himself with feeding his brood and mostly forgets to maintain his supremacy in his domain only occasionally fighting his reflection in our truck mirrors. The cows now step out of the barn to head to a new paddock as a matter of course, rather than romping up into the next field or the wrong barn door just for kicks. The clover, vetch, and grasses soak in the sunshine and rain and store it all down, just as they were meant to.

For now, I feel pretty sure of what is to come. The peas, the greens, the new potatoes, the tomatoes, the apples…all of the work that bears fruit will please us (may we be so blessed) in its season. But the wood pile, the preserving and freezing, they call to us on cold rainy days and remind us of our roots. Life here takes a short memory, and a long trajectory.

For the growing season, we must live for the day and also plan for the year(s) ahead. Farmers live on a fulcrum thinking simultaneously of the decades ahead and how we can make the time of plenty last all year, while improving everyday functions and work for the moment. The bluebirds and the cows, the vetch, clover and grasses are following their internal rhythms. We’ll keep taking our cues from their textbook

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit, with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! This month’s column is written by Phil.

This month will mark 18 years since we moved from Brooksville to Quill’s End Farm.  It seems to have all started with resolve.

And continue forward in the same way.

We bought this farm from the late Paul Birdsall.  He was instrumental in starting Blue Hill Heritage Trust and Maine Farmland Trust.  Paul was a visionary in land transfer to the following generations.  He paid particular attention to the ridge that extends from Orland to Blue Hill because of the soils and traditional use.

Our farm had been vacant for nearly 30 years when he purchased it, the last owner having passed away in the mid-1970s.  When her daughter decided to sell, she remembered that Paul was interested in conserving it as farmland and approached him.  After Paul bought the property, he worked with the Blue Hill Heritage Trust to grant them development rights and certain restrictions that will keep this land as farmland in perpetuity.  He then listed the property through the Maine Farmlink program at Maine Farmland Trust.

We had mostly resolved ourselves, landless farmers as we were, to moving from Maine in order to farm.  A fellow farmer from Brooklin told us about Paul’s search for farmers for this farm.  We met Paul at the farm one bright fall day and walked the fields.  After that first meeting, he offered the Old Nevells farm to us.  He noticed fire in our bellies, he said.

In September 2004, we started to gut the old house, long abandoned by human residents, but certainly not vacant.  The horsehair plaster walls gave way to stories and clues to the past lives of the previous farmers and their families.  The ceiling bays gave way to tons of porcupine scat.  In January 2005, Kenny Jordan and his crew picked the house up and moved it 400′ over 3 days and onto a new foundation where it now rests.  In late March, we welcomed Carolyn into the world.  In May, newly remodeled inside and out, we moved in.

I don’t know that the whirlwind has stopped since or if we’ve merely grown more accustomed to it, but our resolve?

That is still there in the eye of the storms.

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit, with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! This month’s column is written by Phil.

A quote attributed to Paul Harvey reads, “Despite all of our accomplishments, we owe our existence to six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”

Here near the 45th parallel, we make haste to work with that topsoil and rain to grow food and fodder in the few months of growing weather we have.

It really is astonishing that such a small amount of time is adequate for abundance.  For months here, the earth sleeps, the trees sleep, some of the critters sleep.  But what we have is enough for abundance.

This week, with the frost out of the ground and temperatures forecasted to be in the sixties, our places will awaken suddenly instead of slowly.  The race for abundance will begin anew.  Nature, content with such a small window of time, will amaze us with possibilities.

I’ve always held that to be a successful northerner, you must concentrate on short-term memory; that is, live in the present.  Soon, winter will fade away, and our existence will change.  We will walk out of houses with scant clothing, we will not warm up our vehicles, we will taste of our soil, and remember abundance.

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit, with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! This month’s column is written by Phil.

One of the finest chores on a farm or homestead is harvesting maple sap.  It is a great reason to spend time in the woods and rewards abound. 

 We simply boil sap on top of the wood stove.  Our house in March is like a sweet sauna.  A forty-degree sunny day finds us in t-shirts with windows open, the sweet smell of maple syrup in the forefront.

 As the sap runneth over, it occurs to me what an exception maple syrup is to the rest of human culture.

We simply partake.

We have not, as far as I know, hybridized trees to make more sap, or bred them to raise the sugar content in their sap.

We simply partake.

In modern agriculture, production has had an 80-year upward swing in “efficiency.” A meat bird’s feed conversion ratio (grain: meat) has been cut in half.  A milking cow gives at least double what she used to. An acre of corn produces 4 times the volume.

 But maple syrup is really beautiful.  We destroy or harm nothing as we are given this marvelous treat that sweetens everyday life.  We do not plow, harrow, breed, or weed.

We simply partake. 

 Every year, the trees share the bounty of late winter with us as a gift we could not have planned, could not have conceived, could not have anticipated.  Yet here it is.

 What a wonderful metaphor for life the trees give us.  When your sap is flowing and you have it to spare, share it with the world.

Make it all a little sweeter.

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways!

During the course of “winter,” I’ve been thinking of trees.  Specifically, our tiny maple bush.  We have about 20 sugar maples that are in a grove that is readily accessible, and we tap them every year for syrup.  We typically make about 6 gallons of syrup.  It is a system of convenience.  We heat with wood; so we boil down sap on the wood stove.  March here smells delicious, as the humidity rises in the house with sweetening sap that is headed to syrupy decadence.

The question these last few years is…when to tap the trees?  There have been years when we have waited too long, and March nights don’t bring the freezing weather that drops the sap back down.  We want 20-degree nights and 40-degree days.  That weather makes the sap run during the warmth of the day.  

This particular “winter,”  I’ve thought of these maples since January.  Not just, “is the sap running?”, but also we have no snow cover.  What does this mean for the ecosystem that is accustomed to a gradual thaw in March and April, when the accumulated precipitation slowly saturates the trees as they awaken for the year? 

Twenty years ago, we hauled a sled to the trees as we gathered sap.  Today, I lug the buckets to the tarred road, lest I tear up the soft field with my pick-up.

The beautiful thing, the thing we count on, will still happen.  

We used the last of our maple syrup this morning on our pancakes.  Just in time, the weather hearkens the change.  The trees, for all my worry about them, will follow their rhythm, and sap will soon permeate our lives for a short while. We will enjoy the change in the house–the scent of March, and recollect the memories of this annual Spring bounty that sweetens our lives the year round. 

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

By Heather Retberg, Quills End Farm

We live in a world where you can eat summer all year long.  It is not right.  

We are northerners.  As such, our diet depends on summer, but does not resemble summer.  The last of the tomatoes, kale, greens, and peppers have been frozen, canned, or consumed.  So, although we live in a world that offers you summer from around the world, I propose a winter cleanse, a winter diet that reflects where we live: bread, milk, meat, and potatoes.

There are but a few things more that Maine produces that last the whole year through, but these four… they just keep, or… keep coming. 

Listen!  No one in Florida shovels snow from their driveway in shorts, and no one in Texas revels at frozen nose hairs. No one in Arizona puts -20 windshield wiper fluid in their car. 

Let THEM eat kale!   

We need food that will keep us alive and well through the winter months, and that means a balanced diet of protein, vitamins, starches, and carbs; that means milk, bread, meat, and potatoes. Join us in the local food winter cleanse, where we embrace our latitude, our northern heritage, and our necessity to survive six months of nothing growing.  

We can patronize our local farms all year round by buying the produce of summer.  The yield we have left is hay, tubers, and small grains.  Fresh milk, a wonder, keeps flowing all winter long. Let’s eat!!!

Tinder Hearth bakes all year round, and their bread, pastries, and pizza are beyond world-class.

Horsepower Farm’s potatoes, carrots, garlic, and onions will have you welcoming cold days and nights in culinary ecstasy.  Quill’s End Farm makes it all delightful eating, because…Tinder Hearth bread with our cheese,  Horsepower mashed potatoes with our milk, beet borscht with Greek yogurt, carrot cake with plain Farmstead cheese frosting, 44 North coffee with our cream…mm-mm-mmm.

Rainbow Farm captured the summer sun in beautiful birds that await addition to your French Batard-garlic & chive-Farmstead-cheese pleasure. 

Now, some of you, who are undoubtedly thinking of different sorts of diets and cleanses, may see this option as bland, but it is actually full of variety. Alternate between cow milk and our newly available goat milk. Once you’ve had your fill of chicken, take respite with Quill’s End Farm’s whey-fed pork (coming at the end of the month!).   

The cows will give you the D vitamins to get you off the couch AND the B vitamins to get out the door; the meat will give you stamina to keep going through the day; the alliums will ward off ailments of all kinds, keeping you fit as a fiddle; and the bread will give you the chutzpah to brave the cold. 

We’re not encouraging gluttony, mind you, merely attempting to share our new year’s recipe for surviving winter, commodification, and globalism.

We aim to make it easy for you.  We work to make it possible for you to garner your diet from nearby, appropriate to where you live, and available year-round.  

So, belly up, we’ll provide.

Webmaster’s note: This month’s column is provided by Phil and Ben.

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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 given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.