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Open Farm Day Offers Lessons in Living Off the Land

July 28, 2009 - BELGRADE -- Phillip Wentzel chose to visit Winterberry Farm with his wife on Sunday because of a family connection to farmer Mary Perry.

For Perry, Maine's Open Farm Day was an opportunity to open her doors to the public and inspire.

Perry joined more than 100 farmers across the state on Sunday, the 20th annual Open Farm Day, as they opened their farms to the public in the middle of a wet summer season that has delayed some crops and endangered others.

Cool, wet weather has suffocated Perry's basil plants, she said, but not the community support for her organic farm.

"I couldn't be self-sustaining without my community supporting us," Perry said.

That community offers Perry 62 customers who have bought shares of Winterberry Farm's produce this summer, as part of the farm's community-supported agriculture program.

Sunday wasn't only an opportunity for Perry to plug her farm's products to potential customers. It was a chance to show off the farm lifestyle.

"We take the best out of a quiet life," said Perry, who home-schools her three children on the 40 acres she uses to grow 74 vegetable varieties.

There are no iPods and no television, she said, to interfere with the organic farm's main tasks: growing vegetables and raising animals in an effort to be self-sustaining.

The property features a farmstand, an old, sprawling blue farmhouse and a tin-roof barn.

"This is their life, a chance for them to run around and have a quiet life," Perry said of her three children: Kenya, Gilbert and Sage Whitehead.

Kenya, 13, tends to the sheep. Perry knits socks from their wool and sells them. Gilbert, 9, is responsible for the steer. Sage, 3, is learning the trade on Belgrade's last working farm. Three apprentices -- a New Yorker, a Washington, D.C., resident and a Mainer -- are spending their summer on the farm.

As he walked around the vegetable patches and observed recently hatched turkey chicks, Wentzel, of Vassalboro, admired the agricultural operation.

"It's a huge amount of work to do this," he said. "You don't know what they do."

"It's an interesting farmplace," he added.

Visitors trickled into the farm's driveway late Sunday morning as they were granted a brief reprieve from rainy weather. Cindy Paradis and Janis Petzel, both of Hallowell, were among those visitors.

Paradis said she dropped in at Winterberry Farm for its proximity to her home and for her love of farm animals.

"I love farm animals," she said. "I just think the Open Farm Day is great."

"It's amazing what's in our backyard," Petzel said.

BY MATTHEW STONE
Staff Writer, Kennebec Journal
7/27/09


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