Wasted food, when someone goes hungry while another throws away what never gets eaten.

Something wrong with that situation. So for starters, how to avoid wasting food which can make greenhouse gases, methane that does not help the Earth’s environment. It does start at home and food waste reduction. And when you raise what you eat, it can stay in the garden and be drawn on like a food bank. Or stored in your root cellar with sometimes little preparation or a process in canning that is a family tradition.

There is nothing like a trip around supper time during a nippy winter night in Maine and getting an armful of potatoes, bread and butter pickles, stewed beets or whatever the food pantry holds to dine on with a little imagination and a hunger that always improves the taste.

The journey down the cellar steps into the root cellar that yields much for lovingly made produce. For more close to home, farm to table all natural items to feed the Maine family. What you eat, how much is available and knowing you or your community members had a role in the growing and final preparation is a beautiful thing. No worries about what this foodstuff was sprayed with, how it was handled all disappears when the farming is done in your backyard, out in the rear fields.

But think about that staggering amount of food raised but never eaten by anyone. A third of the World’s food goes to waste, unsampled. The nutrition never channeled into someone’s diet and the fuel never put to use. Maine is a place with close to home grown quality food. To think of all that food in other places of the World that ends up on a trash pile or plowed up, in a composting container is truly sad. Starvation is not just having food or going hungry too. Food insecurity is another topic of discussion that

everyone in the World can appreciate.

Maine has started a healthy trend to being the top in the country for lower age farmers and is bucking the national average age of hovering around 59 for farmers in the USA.

It used to be about 48 years old for the guy and gal in the overalls, back after World War Two’s cease fire. More on the trend for aging farmers in the USA. In Maine, agriculture’s resurgence is tied to the tourism too. Sometimes the farming is a agricultural festival that creates the buzz and traffic to small Maine communities.

The resurgence of local farming in Maine could help give a shot in the arm for the food pantries too. Maine farms starting up at a rate four times the national average. Close to home surpluses of excess local foodstuffs don’t end up on the rubbish pile. Get channeled where they do the most good at places like the Good Shepherd food pantry and don’t become methane generators or end up hurting the size of the Earth’s carbon food print.

Instead of picking up a package of food and not being so sure where it came from, the tendency to gravitate to the farmer’s markets is a healthy habit. To have a rich experience jawing and rubbing shoulders with the local grower who delivers the Maine farm food. Who shares the growing experience and learns what the shoppers prefers for future planning on what seed to buy. Knowing just which field on the Maine farm he will be growing what next year because the customer has spoken.

Eyeball to eyeball and face to face in the exchange between shopper and Maine farmer.

Organic farming in Maine is a growing part of the agriculture landscape too. Fighting for it’s bigger share of the market with conventional farming operations in Maine. There is a reason many Amish settlements have popped up around Maine. Cheap Maine land, fertile soil, not overly regulated with permits and licensing and low crime, no traffic. Lots of love and it makes for an idea backdrop to a farmstead in Maine if that is the lifestyle you want to carve out for yourself, your family.

More on agritourism.

Food, Maine, you and some land around where you live. Because you and no one else either should go hungry. Ever thought of scratching the dirt, planting the seeds and seedlings and tending the crops to get them to the bountiful harvest? Maine is one big state and farming is such an important part of the heritage of every single ones of the communities surrounding the four corners of Vacationland. Ever thought of owning a farmstead you build from the ground up and renting out rooms at your country inn, or scheduling tours for the tourist who decides to wander into your region of Maine? Hold that thought, can help you put together the dream in ownership of your own farming property in Maine.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |  

MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA