|Penny Hilton|
According to surveys done by the Comprehensive Plan Committee a few years ago, most people in New Gloucester cite our town’s “rural character” as one of the top reasons they like to live here, and I agree. It eases my soul to drive down local roads edged by fields of hay, corn and pumpkins, some old barns and some new, and the familiar grid of stone walls going in and out of woods, that mark where our town began as an agricultural community. And to see the farm stands, grazing goats, horses in paddocks, maple syrup signs and apple orchards that reassure us that this part of our character survives still.
Farms and forests created our town, and their presence feels like a connection with an American past we can all imagine and recognize even if not part of our own family history. Farms and farmland tell us the place we live has not yet been “taken over,” not yet modernized to the point where the land around us is chopped up into housing and commercial developments. But for how long? As an industry, what are New Gloucester farmers dealing with? How many farms and the like exist here now – and how many might we have in 20 years?
Looking for answers, I started with our Code Enforcement Officer, Rick Haas.
I wrote a piece on Rick and Cheryl Haas and their Lazy Dog Farm a couple of years ago around Thanksgiving, when they were offering cooked turkey by the pound for those who didn’t/couldn’t cook, or eat a whole turkey. Their farm, on the corner of Estes Rd and Rt 231, was abustle with hens, ducks, pigs, turkeys, and many, many goats. They sold meat, eggs, goat cheese, and the unexpectedly delicious goat cheese chocolate ice cream.
But when I called him at the town office to set up a date to talk, first thing Rick said was “I don’t know if I’m the one you want to talk to. Cheryl and I are getting out of farming.”
All the more reason to speak with him, I said.
Our meeting began with me asking how many farms we have in New Gloucester, and finding out that’s not a thing that gets tracked in code enforcement. Rick did say that there are building standards in place now for barns, and that anyone restoring one or putting one up would have to meet the standards. From his casual roadside observation, Rick says there are barns in New Gloucester that should come down. In this day and age, it takes working with a barn-specific structural engineer to put one up or take one down, but there aren’t many such engineers around and they’re not cheap, says Rick
As for getting out of farming, essentially it came to too much work and not enough reward, and in Rick’s opinion, too many goats. “Goats are cute when they are young, “said Haas, “but now I warn people: goats are ornery and obstinate. And they are a real time suck… and they can live twenty years.”
They never even meant to have a herd of goats. They meant to get two fixed males to eat the poison ivy that was growing “like they were on steroids” on their property. They never did get those two goats (long story), but Cheryl warmed to the idea of milking goats, and in 2014 they got three goats, two females Ivy and Clover, and Oliver, a male. Like one of those Maine stories, “come to find out…”one was pregnant…”
At the beginning of this year, Lazy Dog Farm boasted a herd of 42 goats, 130 laying hens, 50 turkeys, 100 broilers, and 6 pigs; a 12’ X 16’ barn, a pen for the turkeys; in a new addition to the house, a licensed creamery in the basement; and an automated watering system that saved them two hours a day. They still spent 21 hours a week just milking the goats. He calculated they made $2.50 an hour for all their work, about $12,000 a year. Obviously, it wasn’t close to what they needed to live on, and Rick says he worked two extra construction jobs to pay for hay.
And that was before the gas increases of this year. Now hay has gone from $2.50 a bale in 2015, to $8 a bale, or close to $6,000 a year. Grain has gone from $11 a bag, to $18. A turkey chick that used to cost $6 costs $12. And this year, when he asked people to pre-order their turkeys, they got one order for two turkeys – period.
“I understand it,” says Rick, and Cheryl concurs. “A farm-raised turkey is a treat and a luxury, and with the prices of heating oil and gas, people aren’t going to feel they can spend the extra money.” And most will be forgoing the wonderful goat cheese and milk Cheryl produces, and even the eggs, even though Lazy Dog eggs sell cheaper than the grocery store. They will be spending their food money at the grocery store. And so, after the meat in the freezer runs out, will the Haas family.
For Rick and Cheryl, the demands of farming did not come as a rude awakening. Both of them grew up farming. But they didn’t anticipate that they would have no constant market for their hard-won products. As another farmer told me last year, farmers hoped that the appreciation people had for buying their food locally during Covid would last. But it didn’t.
So Rick and Cheryl will be keeping their place, two pigs on which they already have a deposit for late-fall delivery, 35 laying hens, and their three dogs. And though Cheryl was heart-broken to see their goats sold to a livestock dealer this fall, Rick’s last word on the subject is “Small farms can’t make it. Stick to raising for your family.” They have both gone back to work off-farm, and Rick hopes to finish house renovations started years ago.
Across the hall in the Town Planner’s office, Natalie Thomson couldn’t say how many farms are in town, either. She told me that the town has a total of 5,500 (roughly) acres in Farm and Forest zoning, but it isn’t broken down to which is where. It requires five or more acres to build a residence in this zone, with the largest tract for building set at ten acres with two residences. Allowed as well are facilities “essential for animal husbandry”, so an abattoir may be allowed – but no one has asked. Stores and light industry are not allowed. She suggested I talk to Mike O’Donnell, the town’s contracted assessor.
But before I spoke to O’Donnell, I chanced to overhear a conversation in which Carl Wilcox indicated that he and wife Jan were “getting ready to sell the place”. I went to talk with them.
From the roadside, you’ve probably seen the Wilcox farm on Rt. 231, the very old brick house with clapboard additions to the big barn in back. Over the decades, Intervale Farm’s fields have been dotted with cows, then grown to hay, then filled with pick-your-own pumpkins, then peopled by a Somali group from Lewiston who leased part of the property, and most recently, grown back to hay again. It started as a hog farm when his folks bought the place in 1959, but that operation stopped when Maine laws changed and pigs could no longer be fed “garbage”. Then for almost 30 years it was leased out for dairy cow grazing. Since 1991 when they bought it, Carl and Jan have kept a portion of the acreage in some kind of farm production – pumpkins to hay – to continue to qualify for a tax break under the 1971 Maine Farm and Open Space Tax Law.
But it’s 118 acres, much of which can be broken up into five acre lots, and the Wilcoxes confirm, with no date yet set, that they are getting ready to sell.
This is just the beginning of our investigation into the future of New Gloucester’s “rural character. ‘ I have talked with our assessor, learning more about that 1971 law, and some state agencies, and I will be talking with more local owners of hay fields and farms, orchards and riding stables, and other similar country-like places to see how it’s going for them. I may have your name on my list of folks to call, but I might not. If you feel you have something to add to this conversation, or suggestions of what else I might want to consider, or who else I might talk to, please contact me at goodwords145@gmail.com. I am not working to a foregone conclusion, but want to realistically assess what we can expect. I hope we can learn together and start a useful conversation. Anything you say that you don’t want said with your name attached I will use to form an aggregate report or impression.
