Farmers’ Market: Terroir
The French word, terroir, refers to “character of place.” It includes geographical particulars like soil type, climate, elevation, exposure on a slope, etc. These inputs influence the things that grow there. Most commonly the term is applied to wine.
To a vintner, champagne is not just a bubbly light-weight used to celebrate the New Year or the launching of a ship. The color, clarity, effervescence, blend of flavors, acid characteristics, and the “nose” all combine to make a distinctive one-of-a-kind wine. Champagne is only champagne if it comes from the appropriate district in their own country … anything else is just bubbles in a white wine.
While not all farmers are quite so pedantic, we become familiar with the microclimate and soils that make up our own land. Terroir … we recognize patterns and plan accordingly. We are familiar with frost pockets and resist the temptation to utilize those acres for anything rated with a hardiness zone above 2 or a days-to-maturity over 60. We anticipate the location of snowdrifts in winter, the timing of rains through the growing season, and the likely fertility of particular fields with particular soil types that maximize the production and quality of particular crops. We know where the wet places lurk like Jaws, just waiting to pull a tractor under for consumption.
So far, 2015 has been the year that laughs at our expectations. If you expected the bone-chilling temperatures to remain behind in January or at least early February as they usually do, 2015 just laughed. If you believed April showers would bring May flowers, 2015 sniggered and sent still more snow and cold. If you hoped to be able to shed your long sleeves with the arrival of summer (other than for protection from black flies), 2015 is the year that made you out to be a clueless rube. Rain clouds seem to be a perennial planting in the skies overhead this year, great for growing grass but tough to mow and hopeless to bale. Peas resist the impulse to climb. Tomatoes and peppers have not forgiven us for the white frost that coated the ground in June.
In spite of our familiarity with our land, our climate, and our favored crops, this year has been “off” so far.
Despite the slow season, the fields at Goughan’s Berry Farm have retained their “character of place.” The strawberries soaked up both rain and sun, mixed them with minerals in the sloping sandy soils, and generated the biggest, brightest, juiciest fruit you have ever seen or tasted … sweetened, condensed sunshine in a quart-sized box!
The lovely ladies from Goughan’s arrive by van to the Aroostook Centre Mall parking on Saturday mornings. They vend endless boxes of freshly picked berries to delighted Presque Isle Farmers’ Market customers. Our patrons return to their cars with big smiles and armloads of freshly picked, perfectly formed, brilliantly ripe strawberries. Cue the “Jaws” music.
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.
