A Conversation with Sue and Holly
At the end of March, Sue, Holly and I sat down around the wood stove with the dogs keeping warm by our feet. With spring now officially here, there are trays of seeds in the windows of the house attributing to the early smell of the room. We got to chatting and I learned more about the history of the land that their farm is now on and the hard work and sacrifice it took to build back the soil and create a thriving community. The following conversation is transcribed from an audio recording of our conversation. A few sections have been edited for clarity.
Molly: Could you start by talking a little bit about the history of the land that the farm is on?
Sue: Our farm is 40 acres but we really only farm, live and work on about 10 acres; the rest we let stay wild. These 10 acres were all stripped of topsoil sometime in the 1960s. A lot of people facing poverty were doing it around that time--they needed to survive. But we didn't realize it until we bought the land and stuck a shovel in it and said “oops, it's all substrate”.
Holly: So they sold the topsoil as desperate poor people trying to pay their bills, and then we came along as poor people trying to start a farm and pay our bills... Sue has said they sold the topsoil for probably 50 bucks a truck load and we're paying about $500 a truck load to get it back!
Sue: So we've been working for years to rebuild the soil and mostly we're doing it with a combination of raised beds, cover cropping and heavy mulching with shredded leaves and compost.
Holly: Also, some biochar and using things like mycelial activity to break down the wood chips into good soil.
Sue: And we've put several tons of rock dust down to remineralize the soil. It's an ongoing process and we're still working at it. However, we're seeing great improvements. We're growing things now that we couldn't before. The vegetables are looking so much better. We've been "brixing " the produce, which measures the amount of micronutrients, and we've gone from barely acceptable results to pretty darn good. Our tomatoes have gone from terrible to starting to taste like a real tomato. It's been a lot of work. We use a lot of animal manures, too, in our composts, which is why we have pigs and cows and chickens.
Holly: Northern New England soils in general tend to be very, very slow to regenerate. We knew that we couldn't disturb the soil further because it was already so fragile, so we made the decision to do animal agriculture because, in order to restore the soil, we needed creatures who were really, really good at restoring fertility. The pressure of their feet can help sequester carbon, too. So the animals have always been our coworkers in this process. They're not inferior beasts--we really do regard all of the animals on the farm as coworkers, because we're doing this work together.
Molly: Is there any history that you guys know of it being a farm or people growing food on the land before Tir na nOg was here?
Holly: We know that before us they had cattle. We have a photograph from around 1900 that shows pretty much this whole area cleared with cattle grazing on it. So the forests on this land have likely grown up since 1900. We can see evidence in the woods of barbed wire fences that trees have grown around, and ruts from old wagon wheels. We believe that the small plateaus and deep ravines of what is now forest were caused by poorly managed grazing in the early years of the 20th century.
Molly: You’ve told me that the way the stream flows through a deep ravine is all because of the cows going up and down from it and eroding the soil.
Holly: If you don't manage the way that livestock access water they will degrade erodible land very quickly. So coming into this place and trying to do restorative farming means that we, from the beginning, had to think really carefully about how to restrict their access to protect the soil and water and not damage it further.
Molly: When did you decide to start the farm and what were the motivators for it?
Sue: Well, I always wanted to have a farm. I always did, all my life. When I got this land, I was hoping to have a farm, but I had to work a lot of jobs to pay the bills, taxes, and the mortgage. When I met Holly, suddenly the two of us both wanted to have a farm, and we made it work.
Holly: I showed up with 24 bare-root fruit trees and said, "can I play in the dirt?" I mean, literally, when I finished grad school, my godfather, who is a plant nurseryman, said "I want to send you a special gift for everything you've accomplished," and he picked out a range of fruit trees and berry bushes from his plant nursery that he thought would probably flourish here. He didn't realize that, at the time, I didn't have land. And so I went to Sue and I said, “hey can I plant these here?” And that's pretty much how we started the shared work of restorative farming on this land.
Sue: However, the property was all second or third or fourth growth forest we had to clear. I have cleared this land by hand so many times but I think we really started in earnest around 2005 or so. We were each working at least two jobs, if not three, and then we'd come home and clear land. That's how we learned the usefulness of pigs. We had temporary fencing and we moved the pigs around. I don't think there's an inch on this property that wasn't covered with pigs and or cows at some point. We don't do that so much any more. For one thing, it's really labor-intensive, and now we've got beds to tend and weeding to do and such.
Holly: Yeah, we’ve had pigs everywhere. Every time we needed a new part of the land to be cleared, weeded, and to have some more fertility added to it in preparation for another use, our first step would always be to put the pigs on the land. Let them work it over, and then we can go in, rake it smooth, and do whatever the next thing is. So the pigs were a solid site-prep crew. They were doing what they loved to do and it was something that also matched up with what we needed.
Molly: Was there ever a specific conversation around how you wanted the farm to be laid out or has it evolved through the years?
Sue: We have conversations all the time. We have plan after plan about what we want, but sometimes opportunities just open up.
Holly: Every time there was an opportunity for us to be in a larger conversation about land management, we would jump at the chance--I mean, working it around our three or four jobs! We went to Maine Cooperative Extension Service workshops and farming conferences put on by WAgN, the Women in Agriculture Network. At the time we were starting the farm, there was a woman employed by the state of Maine who ran that network and put on a lot of programming. And we've brought all that learning home. Also all the MOFGA events. We just went to every single learning opportunity we had available to us. We went and learned from people who had already had the deep experience of that kind of practical application.
Sue: MOFGA has been a huge influence on us. We've been grateful for all of their help. I mean, you don't do this alone. That's partly why we got involved with WWOOF: because we gained enough knowledge and practice, ourselves, that we wanna pass it on to the next generation.
Molly: Things you have both mentioned leads perfectly to my next two questions: What is the greatest challenge you've faced farming and what have you learned that you want to pass on to the next generations of farmers?
Sue: The challenge is always money--how to do things with little or no budget. I mean, we've needed a barn forever, but it's just been out of the question, price-wise.
Holly: A lot of famous farmers that people look up to in this area, like the Nearings and Eliot Coleman, started with plenty of capital, even family endowments. But to farm as two women who are under-capitalized, and to start with less than nothing-- farming with substrate instead of good topsoil--that's a real challenge. We have literally and figuratively built this from the ground up. I think money and isolation are the two biggest challenges for farmers. The suicide rate nationally for farmers is, much, much higher than in a lot of other ways of making a living. We pay attention to that, and we pay attention to the risk of burnout and the debt loads. There's a lot that makes this kind of life really, really hard. I think we've been intentional from the very beginning, doing our best to not get ourselves any deeper into debt than we possibly could avoid, and then working hard to build community around ourselves, both to support us and so that we can share what we're learning along the way.
Sue: I mean, we've had over 200 WWOOFers here. The program, by and large, has been really successful for us.
Holly: The really great thing about WWOOFing is that, not only does it give us a wider array of people with physical strength to do the jobs as our bodies start to slow down or wear out, but--because farming can be so profoundly isolating, both socially and intellectually--it has given us a real community. For us to have this constant influx of people from around the world who bring their cultural perspectives and their life experiences has been such a gift. We have the opportunity for a fresh influx of ideas and creativity that we can then experiment with together, and that can enliven everything that we do.
Sue: Plus those young folks are good with technology!
Molly: Well, it sounds like the challenges you have faced are the lessons that you hope to pass on. You are passing on the knowledge that yes, if you farm you will struggle financially at one point or another but that your struggle doesn't have to be in isolation. You are passing on the importance of community.
Sue: Yes, and farming is under attack right now. Small farmers are the only way forward, I think, and we have to get people to grow their own food or buy from their neighbors. I feel really positive about the future when I see all the young people getting involved with growing their own food. I think small farming is the answer.
Holly: There are a lot of hard things in the world and that's why there's never been a better time to be a farmer, because we can be part of making a positive change. We can be part of feeding our neighbors healthy food, and we don't wake up in the morning, feeling like we're part of the problem. We wake up in the morning and say, we're doing good things that feel good.
Molly: Finally, what is your favorite memory of the farm? If you can pick just one.
Sue: It's all of us sitting around the bonfire site, which we do a lot during the summer. We often eat outside and start a fire, and we've had song circles and storytelling and just a lot of fun. It crosses generations. I'll play the banjo. Holly will sing a song. Somebody will tell a joke and we'll all have a cold beverage of choice. We'll go to bed at about 10 o'clock and we'll smell like campfire smoke falling asleep. Those are my favorite memories of this community.
Holly: One of my favorite things is to have other people come onto this land and walk around and see it with fresh eyes. When you live here as a land steward you live so closely with the land and it is so easy to get lost in all of the small frustrations. You look around and see all these unfinished projects. But people come into this place and see everything that the shared creativity of this effort has made possible, and they say, “Oh, I see all the exciting things that are going on here”, and then it renews and refreshes our vision. And suddenly, I'm reminded that this collective work has been so nourishing to us and to everyone who is a part of this, and, yeah, it just reminds me why we do this.
Molly: Especially with things seeming to grow so quickly these days, it's nice to know that true growth is not instant. True growth is cultivated with dirt-covered hands over years and years.
Holly: That is very true. When I can walk around the land and see it starting to flourish, when I can reach down to pick some berries and offer them to other people and say, look at the goodness of this land because we have collectively cared for it--that is the best feeling in the world.
