Hiya Garden Fans,
Well, folks this is the last day of The Garden of Eatin and my time there. Tomorrow it opens as Front Street Deli, with Jen Bleau as owner. I am very proud to have her take over as she will continue the very concept I started and expand on it with her wide knowledge of foods.
I have given a lot of thought to how to write my "last" email to you as The Garden of Eatin'. It could have the drone of The Doors "This is the End" playing in the back ground for a little ambience or it could be up beat. I prefer upbeat!
One of the nicest compliments I heard, yesterday, was that this person was going to miss ME and MY subtle humor more than anything. I really appreciated that comment and I will truely miss the fun of creating humorous emails.
One of the most important things, for me to do, is to THANK YOU for making the store what it was. The very concept of the local food movement is what we started with. I wrote to thirty farms with in twenty five miles, or so, and gave them the opportunity to sell their produce to us. Last fall, farmers were inundated with produce and the "picking" was easy. This year, however the poor growing season severly impeded our ability to keep our shelves full of local product. We had to expand our reach to further away, which, in some cases went against the very concept of providing local food. However, thanks to our country's excellent distribution system we didn't have a mass starvation, in Richmond, and we were able to feed our customers. The year I spent in this retail venue and the insight I gained on the shortcomings of local food supply and distribution has been extremely valuable.
In the year to come I will be embarking on a new venture at my farm in Dresden, changing my "conventional" greenhouse growing operation to organic vegetable production. When I first built the original 36,288 square feet of glass greenhouse in 2000, it was the first of its kind in Maine. Many old timers came in and told me that it was going to fall under the weight of the snow (I wouldn't have invested as much as I did if it was going to collapse!) . Today, Maine's largest greenhouse of the same style is in Madison and houses Backyard Farms hydroponic tomato growing facility and covers over 25 acres with glass. And remember hydroponic growing is not organic.
I have also changed my mind on just how important biodynamics is to the health of our environment and to us, as the human element. Our overall health, in America is failing and now the new science to growing good food is old school. Rather than using chemical warfare to grow our foods, if we use good old common sense our food system will be better. (there are a lot of books on this subject, so I won't go into much other detail) The Native Americans helped the early settlers of the new world to grow better corn by putting dead fish and seaweed under their seed in the field. The degradation of those "organic" materials and the nutrients released in the process fed the corn and it grew better. The methods farmers have used in the 20th century have completly distrupted the cycle and we now have soils that are essentially dead while the synthetic nutrients applied are the plants' life support system.
Oh, I have wandered again... sorry. What I hope to accomplish in the years to come is to be a part of the solution in providing locally grown produce at affordable prices and supplying our supermarkets with food that hasn't traveled far. And not only that, but developing a system of growing farmers to take over in the future.We have an exciting phenomenon taking place in Maine and that is the onslaught of young people interested in organic food production. But there are lot of hurdles for these young folks and I want to see them and their desendants turn the stereotype of the poor, over worked farmer into something that more people will strive to do and want a career in.
If you want to keep in touch with me, you may email me at greenhouseguy08@yahoo.com (I know, I could have come up with something more crafty, but maybe in the future).
At any rate, I will be working the store for the last time, this evening and would love to have you stop in.
And once again....THANKS!
Jim Peterson
The Garden of Eatin'
The Garden of Eatin'
