Our customers join us at the Presque Isle Farmers Market, found in the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot on Saturday mornings. Many have been coming regularly all season long. They bring large, reusable shopping bags for us to fill and smiling, eager faces for us to reinforce with a cheerful greeting. We appreciate their enthusiasm and their loyalty, but we recognize that if we, the venders, fail to provide what they desire, they will drift away.
Whole Earth Farm has mastered the skill of providers of good food, good will, and good customer relations. The farm is a collaborative effort of Jim Brown and Kim Becker, who share a property line, a work ethic, and an enthusiasm for farming. It is obvious that the venture is successful on a number of levels. They are friends and neighbors as well as coworkers; there is an easy, comfortable air between them. Clearly, the enterprise represents a fair, equitable sharing of labor, reinforcing strengths and reducing possible weaknesses; they work well together on the farm and at the Market.
More importantly from the customers’ standpoints, the well-drained and well-managed soil of their joined farmland produces a bounty of vegetables. They all seem to be picked at the peak of ripeness, unblemished and full of flavor, organically grown except for the broccoli (stupid annoying cabbage worms, attractive only as a meal for chickens).
It is the variety of shapes and colors that attracts visitors to their bins, however. Whole Earth beans are green and yellow and purple (!). Their potato selection is equally flamboyant. Either both Jim and Kim are huge squash enthusiasts or they agreed that each partner could select a number of varieties to plant.
There are many vegetables on display at their market table, an abundance of shapes, sizes, and colors…precious jewels, all. The farm seems to generate new and interesting additions each week through the whole growing season. These are crown jewels from the Crown of Maine, good food from good people. Stop by the Presque Isle Farmers Market on Saturday between 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. to check it out.
The Presque Isle Farmers’ Market contact person is Gail Maynard, who operates Orchard Hill Farm in Woodland with her husband, Stan. Their phone number is 498-8541 and their email is orchhill@gmail.com.
