Farmers’ Market:
Eliot Coleman speaks
If you did not take the opportunity offered by the Distinguished Lecturer Series at the University of Maine at Presque Isle recently, you missed an excellent presentation. At the urging of Jason Johnston, grower of brewing hops with a day job as Chair of the College of Arts and Sciences,
UMPI brought Eliot Coleman to Presque Isle to speak. The evening was in equal parts interesting, informative, and entertaining. Encouragingly, the crowd was large enough to make it necessary to “blow out a wall,” using the adaptive capacity of the Campus Center to make the room grow. Coleman’s talk, well spiced with anecdotes and slides, was well received. There is something perversely attractive about a photograph of a young person waist-deep in snow and shoveling diligently while tender greens thrive only a few feet away under the protective umbrellas of plastic film that make up Coleman’s year-round grow houses. A ratio of five hundred miles south per layer of plastic, Coleman says, makes it possible for the crops on his southern Maine farm to imagine they are in Georgia. The enthusiasm of his neighbors to support local farmers like him, even if they do not themselves join in, has made it possible for the Coleman family and the young people who come to intern on the farm to successfully pursue this lifestyle.
If you missed the talk and would like to see what the excitement was all about, or if you enjoyed the talk but discover that your notes became sketchier than planned while you were distracted by photographs of luscious, deep, dark composted soil, you are not completely out of luck. Like all the DSL lectures, it was skillfully recorded and made available through UMPI’s vimeo site (https://vimeo.com/107620950). The camera was anchored on a tripod over the heads of the audience to create a clear view of the speaker and his slides. You will enjoy it and you will learn a lot.
However, in watching the film, you will miss the best part. An equally compelling view was seen from the front of the room looking back toward the audience. While the census tells us that the number of farms dwindle and the age of farmers creaks steadily toward senescence, the rows of chairs were filled with enthusiastic young people. Their eager eyes and quick minds seized upon Coleman’s underlying message that a good life was possible, living with dirt under their fingernails and eschewing a corporate check while carving out a successful farming enterprise here in Aroostook County.
Current farmers in the audience, including a number of venders from the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market, basked in the energy found in the room. They looked carefully at the floor to hide their quiet smiles when an earnest young man questioned the speaker, “Do you ever get discouraged?” Only a hundred times a day … farming is often a case of “drop back five” — it is never easy. At many farms, it is necessary for someone to work in town. We often experience a glass ceiling, necessarily limiting growth to fit hours stolen from our day jobs on evenings and weekends, but needing to grow in order to risk giving up a regular paycheck, health insurance, and other apparently necessary parts of personal finance.
Many Presque Isle Farmers’ Market venders also wrestle with this choice, but in doing so, do their best to bring you their very best on Saturday mornings. Stop by to offer your support!
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.
