Paper Pot Making Party: Join us on Saturday, February 14th from 10am-12pm in the Growing to Give Barn Room for a fun and hands-on workshop where we’ll be making paper pots out of newspapers in preparation for potting up our tender, warm-weather seedlings this spring. Meet new friends and enjoy a cozy morning with tea, coffee, and light snacks. Please bring non-glossy newspapers (if you have any to contribute) and a snack to share (if you feel inspired to do so). Click here to sign up!

Elderberry Pruning Workshop: Join us on Saturday, February 28th from 9am-12pm on the farm for an experiential workshop on elderberry pruning. Learn effective techniques for maintaining healthy, productive elderberry plants, then put your new skills to work as we prune together on the farm. This hands-on session will be led by Abbie Sewall, a certified organic elderberry grower and the founder of The Bailey Farm in Freeport, Maine.
In case of rain/snow the event will be rescheduled to Saturday March 7th from 9am-12pm. Click here to sign up!

Hello Friends,

Having arrived in 2026, it suddenly feels like the growing season is just around the corner. It was delightful to see the many eager gardeners who attended our first workshop of the season to learn about winter seed sowing. For those of you unfamiliar, winter sowing is a method of starting seeds outdoors in recycled containers without added heat or light to aid germination. It’s particularly beneficial for starting native seeds that need prolonged exposure to cold to trigger germination.
After our workshop, I started several containers full of winter-sown seeds for the farm: Pearly Everlasting, Blue Vervain, Blue Lobelia, and Culver’s Root. They’re all native seeds that I bought from the Wild Seed Project, an amazing resource for purchasing and learning about Maine native seeds. All of these seeds will grow into gorgeous cut flowers that I’m planning on adding into the new pollinator strips that we prepped last spring.

If you’re interested in getting to the farm before the season really starts, we have our annual Paper Pot making party coming up in mid-February and our annual elderberry pruning workshop at the end of February (details for both at the top of this letter).
Paper Pot Party 2025!
Elderberry Pruning Workshop 2025!
We should have volunteer dates for the season starting in March posted soon! Based on feedback, we are adjusting our session times to 8am-10am for the first session and 10:30-12:30 for the second to ensure a smooth transition between shifts. Please bear with us as we try this out. We’re hoping that this half-hour gap will allow a moment to say goodbye to our first shift of volunteers and prepare to greet our next shift. Other changes include our decision to close the farm to morning volunteers on Thursdays. This will allow us the opportunity to provide additional focused training to interns and any new seasonal employees and experiment with scheduling new volunteer crew trainings or general workshops. We will, however, be opening the farm on Thursday afternoons to volunteers. We’ve been hoping to have an afternoon volunteer shift available for several years now, and we’re finally making it happen. So if mornings don’t work for you, consider trying out our new 3pm-5pm shift on Thursdays. All volunteer shifts start in March and the work will include cleaning up the sheds, organizing/set-up, field prep as weather allows, and some seed starting. Shifts will be available here starting in March!
While we wait for the weather to warm up, please join us for our annual Growing Literacy Winter Garden Workshop series that we co-host with the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust and the Curtis Memorial Library. We have some amazing speakers this year and are looking forward to learning together. For more information about each workshop, please click the registration link for a full description of the speaker and topic and to register.
Growing Literacy Winter Garden Workshop Series at the Curtis Memorial Library:

Sunday, February 8th, 2-3:30PM: The American Chestnut in our Food Forests with The American Chestnut Foundation – Eva Butler from The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) will speak about a new restoration initiative for this historic tree species and increasing the edible nature of our forests. Register Here

Sunday, February 22nd, 2-3:30PM: Growing and Producing Herbal Tea with the Bowdoin Organic Garden – Lisa Beneman of the Organic Garden at Bowdoin College will share a step-by-step guide to establishing no-till organic garden beds and discuss herbal tea production. Participants will leave with new ideas and some tea. Register Here

Sunday, March 1st, 2-3:30PM: Soil Health with the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust – Jaime Rowntree of the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust will talk about improving soil health at KELT’s LOCAL Garden and how she has used invasive species to improve soil health and about the ongoing battle with another invasive species, jumping worms, and the role they play in soil health. Register Here

We hope you enjoy all of these community offerings we’ve been putting together this winter and look forward to seeing more of you at the farm in the months to come.

With care,
Lindsay