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Dear Greenhorns,
July already.
Summer is heating up.
Salty cheeks and wagging tails.
Hurry up to RSVP for a Greenhorns workshop weekend at Smithereen Farm!
~BOOK NOW~
NEW WORKSHOPS HAVE BEEN ADDED:
PlantWalk with Rachel Alexandrou
Fish camp with Sterling College & Downeast Salmon Federation
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MINING IN MAINE? NO WAY!
A TEACH-IN
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Please join us on July 25th in Blue Hill for an informative and inspiring Teach-In with testimony from two former legislators, art critic and activist Lucy Lippard, and grassroots organizers. Sponsored by the Pembroke Clean Water Committee.
Ralph Chapman and Denise Harlow will offer an introduction to the mine question, retracing the legislative history of mining in Maine from the disastrous Callahan Mine in Brooksville to the 2017 Mining Bill and its problematic loopholes.
Lucy Lippard will speak from her decades of experience thinking and writing about extractive industries, environmental destruction, and the conflicts of modern living and ecological thriving.
Activist Andy Burt will speak about the ongoing fight for the Pine Tree Amendment, which would guarantee Mainers a Right to a Healthy Environment.
And Malcolm Drenttel and Severine Fleming from Smithereen Farm will speak about our efforts to organize a water testing program in Pembroke to ensure drinking water remains safe and healthy.
From 1-3PM we will be painting lawn signs to protest mining in Maine with help from Artists Rapid Response Team (AART!). The Teach-In will begin at 3PM. We will be serving Equal Exchange tea with ‘still pure’ well water from Pembroke Maine in custom cups designed by the brilliant Dan Hawkins. Also, free cookies!
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Other events for your calendars:
- Puckerbrush Primitive Skills Gathering (July 16-18)
- Greenhorns/Smithereen Farm Booth at the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Show (Aug. 13-15)
- Greenhorns/Smithereen Farm Booth w/ Oxen at the Washington County Fair here in Pembroke Maine! (Aug. 28-29)
Summer is for brainstorming
Remember that this autumn we again accept proposals for essays in the 6th NEW FARMERS ALMANAC!
This Fall, you tell us your topic, you get us a rough draft in mid-winter, then a final draft by February of 2022, and then your words, ideas, and dreams are in the Almanac!
This way the winter season is used for literary pursuits and we can head out with light heart into the sunshine come spring.
This year’s edition is called: Accommodation
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Our library is open! Please plan to come by chance or appointment (office@greenhorns.org or 860-248-5463)
Reversing Hall is living up to its potential as office, headquarters, hub for researchers, artists and greenhorns collaborators and guests.
This past week the Odd Fellows ceremonial room upstairs has been converted into a sail loft with 6 sewing machines in residence!
You can follow along @reversinghall
A multi-part art/craft/seamstressing collaboration between
Colin (@anchor_pak) and Allegra (@severedlegs) has led to the designing and assembling of waxed canvas covers for Raivo’s gorgeous timberframed
A-Frames (@haystackjoinery).
These will soon go out to blueberry land as amazing glamping destination!
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REGISTER FOR SUMMER WORKSHOPS!
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Foraged Feast creator Rachel Alexandrou will lead a walk along the fields and shores of Pembroke, Maine. Rachel will share her knowledge of wild edibles and medicinals and how to safely harvest and prepare them. Bring a notebook, pen and harvesting knife, bag or basket! We will harvest and process our wild edibles together and prepare a feast from what we have found in the wild.
She will also be selling her two cookbooklets for those who are inspired to continue their foraging.
Rachel Alexandrou is an interdisciplinary artist who uses her education in plant science, and collaborative practice, to create experiential work about food, flora, and innovating human relationships to the natural landscape.
Time: 11- 6pm (July 19th)
Cost: $50
Register here!
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We are glad to partner with The Wild Blueberry Commission this year to participate in Maine's first ever Wild Blueberry Weekend on August 7-8, 2021. Join us for an open farm weekend to delight in the regional wonder of the lowbush blueberry barrens; warm, blue, and dribbly for the whole family!
We are offering camping, u-pick harvesting, rolling cooking workshops led by Odessa Piper [Saturday: ultimate blueberry pie, Sunday: hand-churned ice cream, tarts and other blueberry treats], convivial family dinners of clam chowder and pizza-oven-charred pizza on Saturday and Sunday evenings, and a film screening of “Voices from the Barrens, Native People, Blueberries and Sovereignty”.
Lydia will hold no-cost kid’s programming while the grown-ups learn flaky pie dough tricks. Come camp, pick, eat, watch, and learn.
Register here!
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Join forager and feast-maker Rachel Alexandrou in a weekend workshop on harvesting, processing and cooking with chokecherries (Prunus Virginia). This prolific fruit is currently under utilized in North American cuisine. Together we will prepare a brilliant magenta syrup for pouring over pancakes and other sweets, as well as condiments for pairing with meats and grilled vegetables. We will end the weekend sharing these two meals together and tasting the fruit of our labors. Based on the abundance of the hedgerow, you may be able to take home a jar of syrup or jam. Bring a notebook as foraging walks with Rachel always end up covering the myriad of medicinal and edible wild plants of the moment and their preparations in cooking.
Register here!
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Historic Preservation can be fun!
Washington County has some of the finest 18th and 19th century architecture on the Atlantic seaboard, much of it imperiled by our cold winters, shrinking population and thin economic base. The civic buildings, churches and halls of Downeast Maine were built during the age of sail, lumber, ship building and early industrial development of our rivers. Now the rivers are being restored, but what about the buildings! We’ve got some wonderful farms in Downeast Maine, though we could use some more— but there is also a critical need for skilled craftspersons and tradespersons in Washington County now that the economy has improved.
This is the topic of a strategic session on Historic preservation in Downeast Maine with Jonathan Hall of Maine Preservation, Les Fossel of Restoration Resources ( tireless advocate of Historic Preservation and one of Maine’s foremost preservation contractors), and Mike Reddy, Smithereen Farm Carpenter. Join the three of them for a slideshow, walkabout, big talkative lunches, and skill-building hands-on workshop as we contend with the reality all around us, including the 1896 build Odd Fellows hall, "REVERSING HALL" building that is the home of Greenhorns in Maine. We will visit other great buildings talk about triage and approaches, review the existing learning opportunities, and bust out the hammers ourselves.
Register here!
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Witnessing, harvesting, preparing, anointing, blending, and infusing. Mythical and practical explorations. So many glorious wild herbs grow along the coast of Maine, some native and some naturalized. Rosa Rugosa is such a one; a vigorous, verdant and thorny shrub whose abundant petals inspire sentimentality and rapturous inhalations. We will explore the medicinal plants of this area, from wild raspberry, red clover, yarrow, St. John’s wort, rosa rugosa… and their use in various decoctions.We will make salts, tincture, tea. We will cook. We will scrub. We will sweat.
Join our herbal ladies for a weekend of medicinal and culinary explorations and makings. The power of elemental love that comes from harvesting surrounded by sunshine and breezes is just as much medicine as you get from the harvested petals! We will ramble together around the overgrown meadows and go for a visit to Jasper Beach. Learning, harvesting, preparing, anointing, blending and infusing. Mythical and practical explorations await you. Bring your own basket.
Register here!
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Drying, dyeing and preserving the seasons with chef and cookbook author Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine, “Nourish Me Home”), cookbook author and former Bon Appetit and NYT Magazine food editor Christine Muhlke, and Abbye Churchill, a multidisciplinary artist and author who works with textiles, plants, food and community. Come take classes and cook a dinner as they explore some of the area’s ingredients, from spruce tips and mixed florals to seaweed and vegetable ferments. Smithereen Farm is so lucky to host such power babes in product development for value-added goodies that rhyme with this landscape. It will culminate in a very big meal.
Register here!
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This workshop will cover the basics of regenerative grazing from intensive rotational grazing to land reclamation using livestock. The quality of land reclamation can, in large part, be defined by fencing and a sound grazing plan. This workshop will explore many fencing solutions gleaned from thirty+ years of fence building and livestock management. Portable fencing for temporary solutions as well as permanent fence construction will be discussed. The Gallagher fencing line will be used in demonstration. Participants will learn how to use portable options as well as high-tensile permanent electric fence. Willy Reid is a pasture management expert, farmer, and Gallagher representative.
Register here!
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How do we honor our Earth as she produces nutrient rich food for us? How do we steward open land while guided by wisdom? Join biodynamic practitioner Barbara Shinn as she discusses these topics, explains the lunar planting calendar and reveals the roles of the Nature Spirits that guide our farming and foraging. Both the basic and intricate vision of the biodynamic approach will be discussed along with performing hands-on work during the two day gathering. The moon will be passing through root and flower days making it possible to make the cow horn preparation, applying a finished horn preparation to a field, and then applying the quartz preparation. Building a biodynamic compost pile and the unique method of biodynamic crop rotation will also be presented.
Barbara Shinn has practiced biodynamics for over 20 years and is the co-coordinator of the Maine chapter of the Biodynamic Association.
Register here!
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Join us for a pasture/paddock-based humane slaughter day demonstrating dispatch, scalding, evisceration, and chilling. Day two will involve utilitarian butchery with large roasts and plenty of meat and fat grinding. Rob Cushman started Blue Hill Itinerant Slaughter in 2014 to provide on-farm slaughter for homesteaders and small farmers on the Blue Hill Peninsula. Seasonal bottle necks, stressful travel, and lack of transparency have made Rob’s work crucial for small-holders looking to safely and humanely slaughter their animals. Rob has the gear and skill necessary for a respectful kill. He provides contacts and rents out equipment for further DIY butchery but does not offer that as a part of his service. He is currently looking for innovative ways to make animal processing a more collaborative enterprise in his community. The pandemic has revealed how siloed and fragile out current system is.
Register here!
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The Blue Commons: Coastal Community Food Systems
Sterling College
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We are glad to host Vermont-based Sterling College's upcoming field course, "The Blue Commons: Coastal Community Food Systems" at Smithereen Farm. And to welcome the public to a lecture series in tandem with that course so that the students and fishers can learn from and with each other.
Join us for fishy meals and fishy talks on subjects ranging from habitat restoration to regulatory frameworks, to fish smoking and sauce making. We’ll host potluck dinners and ‘campfire talks’ with the visiting course teachers in this three-part lecture series at the timber frame kitchen.
Sign up details and final dates to come! Fishtalks will be open to the public from 5:30-7:30pm. Check the website for final dates.
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PAINTING WORK-SHARE IN AUGUST
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Want to come visit us? Do you want to escape to Downeast Maine and enjoy bathing in the crisp waters of Cobscook Bay while savoring the delicious, healthful food grown at Smithereen Farm? Well here's your chance! Greenhorns seeks young, hardy folks interested in doing a work-share this August. We have a campus full of buildings here in Pembroke that are badly in need of new paint and we're badly in need of painters. In exchange for a few hours of painting each day we will put a roof over your head and feed you as much delicious farm-fresh food as you can eat. We're flexible!
Email us at office@greenhorns.org if you're interested.
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Don't forget! Campsite and timber framed tent bookings are open! Our season runs until October 2nd. Book through Airbnb or through Hipcamp for camp sites at the farm and on our blueberry land.
Check back on our website for more details, web forms, and sign ups as they take shape.
You can follow our antics on instagram @smithereenfarm @greenhorns @reversinghall @earthlife.tv
www.smithereenfarm.com
www.greenhorns.org
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Love from the whole team:
Severine, Evangeline, Jen, Lydia, Susie, Malcolm, Marcus.
And our animal friends:
Toby and Star the oxen, Kona and Kendra the borzoi, The Turkey Widow and her Babe, and the un-named piglets, ducks, hens, and pasture full of baby lambies.
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P.S.
Thanks to James Jackman for the pictures in this email
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Here are some lovely photos of our area taken by Elizabeth Smith and Noah David Smith, filmmakers of last summer’s Earthlife films
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