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They say if you want to change the world, start in your own backyard. For three University of Maine undergrads, that’s advice they have taken to heart.
Bangor native Hayley Williams knew she wanted to work on a farm from her first year of college. That year she took Principals of Sustainable Agriculture, which studies how to grow food in a way that least impacts the environment. She liked the class so much that she took the next three years off and traveled the country to work on farms before coming back to finish her degree. However, starting up school again didn’t mean Williams planned to stop farming. When she returned in the fall, she gathered the resources to restart the Black Bears Food Guild, a community-supported farm that has been run off-and-on for the past 13 years.
“I worked for a farmer last summer, and he had gone here for sustainable agriculture, and he was one of the people who started [the food guild],” Williams said. He encouraged her to start up the guild again, after no one took it on last year. “There was no one that wanted to do it,” she said. “So, I’m restarting it. I’ve had lots of farm experience, but this is my first time really doing it [myself].”
Since last October, Williams and first-year students Elonnai Hickok and Britta Jinson have been planning the three-acre plot allotted to them at Rogers Farm, located a few miles from campus on outer Bennoch Road in Old Town. The trio will farm almost entirely by hand, using sustainable agriculture techniques and a lot of time and devotion. Both Hickok and Jinson are majoring in sustainable agriculture, but neither have worked on a farm before.
“They’re very passionate about social consciousness and knowing your food and knowing who you sell it to,” Williams said.
The Black Bears Food Guild is a community-supported farm, which means that the majority of its funding comes from membership fees. Members pay an up-front fee for a share of the produce and in return they take home fresh vegetables they harvested all summer long, from salad greens and radishes in mid-May to onions and squash in October. A full share – enough vegetables for four people – costs $375, and a half-share -enough for two – costs $200. The membership fee is half the price a consumer would pay for organic vegetables from the grocery store, according to Williams.
“I definitely think [a full share] is enough for four people – if you really love vegetables,” she said.
In addition to selling their produce through membership shares, the guild will run a farm stand three afternoons each week on the road by Rogers Farm. They will also sell cheese and natural-fed beef, locally made and raised at Witter Farm, as well as fair-trade coffee from Panama.
Though the Black Bears Food Guild may be just getting started again, it’s backed by a long and illustrious history at the university. The sustainable agriculture program at UMaine, established in 1988, was the first undergraduate program of its kind in the country. Today there are about a dozen schools offering similar programs.
“There are places in California that have really great programs and they’re very interactive,” Williams said. “But here, there’s not much of a connection between actually doing [sustainable agriculture] and the program itself. One of my goals is to make the college better and to get in more kids, because Maine is an awesome place to come if you want to do organic agriculture.”
“[The farm] is the best learning experience, I think,” said Hickok, who came from Pennsylvania to study sustainable agriculture at UMaine. “You can teach how to put a seed in the ground in a classroom, but you’re not going to know how to do it until you actually go out and do it.”
Besides the experience the three hope to gain from running a farm, they’re doing it because they want to give back to the community.
“If you look at the Orono farmer’s market, everybody shops there and really supports local industries,” Williams said. “I’m just trying to make it happen in the college community too.”
