Kendall, Rebecca and organic farmer Becka Gagne discuss the importance of regenerative agriculture and sustainable farming practices for the long-term health of the land and the environment. They share their experiences and perspectives on transitioning from traditional farming approaches to regenerative agriculture, emphasizing the need to challenge common misconceptions about its profitability and feasibility. They also discuss hands-on learning opportunities in agriculture, highlighting the value of apprenticeships and online resources.
Show notes:
Penn State article on Women farmer effects on the community - https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/women-farmers-quantitatively-linked-better-community-well-being/#:~:text=Penn%20State%20and%20University%20of,Credit%3A%20Lance%20Cheung%2FUSDA.
Schoodic Hollow Farm Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/hogbayfranklin/
MOFGA – Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association - https://www.mofga.org/
MOFGA Apprenticeship program - https://www.mofga.org/apprenticeship
UNH Extension Ag web page - https://extension.unh.edu/agriculture-gardens
UNH Extension Info Line - 1-877-EXT-GROW (398-4769) or https://extension.unh.edu/agriculture-gardens/yard-garden
Women in Ag Newsletter signup - https://unhoutreach.tfaforms.net/217751?CID=701G0000001AiKCIA0
Kendall Kunelius – kendall.kunelius@unh.edu
Rebecca Dube – rebecca.dube@unh.edu
Welcome to this episode of Shared Soil, a podcast dedicated to creating community, honoring challenges and encouraging personal and professional growth for all people in agriculture. My name is Kendall Kunelius. I'm a county based field specialist in the area of agricultural business management,
Rebecca Dube 0:26
I'm Rebecca Dube, and I provide technology and support to UNH Cooperative Extension.
Kendall Kunelius 0:31
And today we have really quite an interesting episode, Rebecca. So we've interviewed quite a few people, and that's a common theme throughout many of our episodes, because we really want to build community. We want to share some of the people that are out in the world doing this work. And so I want to introduce this episode through a little bit of a context. Actually, through a Penn State article that I was reading about. Because even though we're only going to be talking to one person in this episode, really the impact of what she's doing is so much bigger. It's so much broader. So I'm gonna start by reading a little snippet from this article. This was a research project done by folks at Penn State, and they were talking and looking specifically about how women in the agricultural field have a quantitative link to bettering their communities, or having positive impact on their communities. Wow. So they say, they introduced this article by saying,"having more women in agriculture is associated with greater community well being, according to researchers at Penn State and the University of Wisconsin Madison. Their work is the first to quantitatively assess this link, and their findings suggest that women farmers approach their operations in ways that positively impact their communities." And when I read that statement, I thought, "huh, interesting", because they're maybe talking about just the human side of the community, right? But we think about communities as agricultural communities, -ecological communities- the interactions between the soil and the microorganisms and the plants and the animals. And I think that's a great way to set up the introduction for who we're talking to today. So Rebecca, on to you.
Rebecca Dube 2:11
Yes, well, we've always known that women farmers were awesome, so to hear this article where they've actually proven it with quantitative proof, that's terrific. So today we're going to be talking with Becka Gagne, and she is an organic farmer working in Franklin Maine, and has been doing so for quite some time. We're going to be talking to her today about regenerative agriculture. So Becka, can you tell us a little bit about your farm? How long you've been farming at this property, what types of crops you produce, and perhaps tell us a little bit about what was your original vision for this farm when you started, and how has that changed over the years to what you're doing now?
Becka Gagne 2:53
Ooh, okay. Well, I've been farming for 30 years. [I] graduated from Evergreen State College with a Sustainable Ag degree, and worked for other farmers in New Hampshire for a number of years. And then, when I moved up to Maine with my then-husband 22 years ago, we were looking for land that had been basically used and abused that we could find for cheap and regenerate through permaculture. So we had searched for over a year and a half, and when we found this property where I am now, it just felt right. There were actually lilacs blooming from the old homestead that had been here, you know, 100 years ago. And we heard coyotes calling in the night. We camped out here. And I just knew it was the place. What we learned subsequently was that a lot of the topsoil had been stripped off by the previous owner and sold to the Rockefellers down on MDI (Mount Desert Island) for their gardens and for their carriage roads and whatever. So it was very sad to see that there were runnels and gullies, basically where the soil had run off after they had taken the topsoil. So one of the first projects I did after we got here was to cut swales across the deepest gullies and create water catchment for all the runoff. And to see this beautiful place 20-plus years later, it's absolutely amazing. It's like an oasis in the woods where it had been bare clay and huge slash piles. It's hard to imagine and it's hard to remember. Over those 20 plus years, I've planted numerous fruit trees and renovated older apple trees that were here, and I can't even express how amazing it is to see what it's like in just that short amount of time. It seems like a long time, but it's also a short amount of time. So at this point, I don't sell tree fruit crops, necessarily. Those are more for farm consumption, but have worked into sort of a combination of different products that, you know people want: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, the basic things. And then I also have some interesting small fruits thrown in on the side, black currants and a few of the the things that I'm able to grow that way. But I do sell a lot of flowers also, and I guess it's been a mix. I don't want to just try to make money. I want to produce things that people want, but also protect the Earth in whatever ways that I can. So we do a lot of mulching and just trying to restore the soil. I've been able to get over the years loads and loads of leaf manure or leaf compost and wood chips from the local chipping companies and just untold quantities of compost, and really restored the topsoil in a way that is remarkable. Like some beds, we put maybe 15 to 20 inches of leaf mold down, and within two years, that created like a four-inch topsoil. Oh, my god, wow. So, yeah, yeah, it's incredible what I've been able to grow on, what was basically dead clay.
Rebecca Dube 6:10
And you've really been utilizing the community to do that. You were talking about getting this mulch from these other people in your community. So pulling that in as you develop the land.
Becka Gagne 6:21
Right, right.
Kendall Kunelius 6:22
Wow. I want to just quickly revisit something you had mentioned at the very beginning of your introduction that caught my attention. You said you have a degree in Sustainable Agriculture, which I love. I was lucky enough to spend some time with some of our Sustainable Ag students at UNH College of Life Science and Agriculture. And listening to them talk, it really helped me understand that a Sustainable Ag Degree is yes about the growing, it's yes about interacting with our natural world, but I really think one of the key components that they don't realize now as a college student is that it makes you an informed citizen, because it really, it forces you to be honest with yourself about our food systems, and how some agriculture today can inherently be a little bit too production heavy. And I think the interest that they have is balancing that back out. So how do we use agriculture? Just what you're saying, to restore the land, restore these soils, and that's that sustainability part, right? It's that longevity. It's having that vision. So I love that you tied that all in, and you talked about that full circle. But also it's great to know that we still have those programs running for college students. And I highly encourage anyone who's interested in looking into those to pursue those as a very serious means of education for yourself, but also insurance for your future too.
Becka Gagne 7:42
Absolutely, for everyone's future.
Kendall Kunelius 7:44
Exactly, exactly.
Rebecca Dube 7:46
I also love that you're doing a couple of little niche crops. We were talking in a former episode about the benefits of working with a small niche crop, especially when there's lots of people who may be doing the larger crops, getting in on something special. It was getting to people's need in that unique item with your currants and other things like that. And flowers have been really a great thing that a lot of farmers have moved into. How'd you come about moving into flowers, and what's your best use of producing them? Do you sell bouquets? Do you sell seeds, individual flowers? How does that work?
Becka Gagne 8:20
Well? So I was working at a farm in New Hampshire before I moved up here, called Mill Valley Farm. It's no longer in existence, but a lovely farmer there allowed my friend and I to use about a half acre of land for our own production. We did herbs and sunflowers, and then we would bouquet flowers for him as a trade. So every week we would bouquet up his flowers for market. So I got into and started enjoying flowers. And what was funny, actually, this reminded me of the farm I worked at before that -was another farm in Stratham, New Hampshire - and the woman was letting me grow some in her backyard. And she said, "Well, we don't want to sell this, it's going to compete with that person; we don't want to sell that. But if you did flowers, that would be a good thing that wouldn't compete." And I was at first, "Oh well, flowers." And I just thought it was sort of, you know, too fluffy. But then working out in a flower field and seeing all the pollinators, all the bees and butterflies and everybody that it makes happy, I was like, oh, okay, this is not just for beauty for humans. This is also really an amazing natural element. So that was sort of the beginning of it. And I do mostly sell bouquets at this point. I'll put them down in my farm stand through the week, and then also bring quite a few to the farmer's market that my farm partner, Garen, and I do in Ellsworth, Maine. It's been a really nice addition to the farm.
Rebecca Dube 9:52
Terrific. And one thing I didn't mention in my intro to you, and I apologize, is, can you tell us the name of the farm?
Becka Gagne 9:59
Oh, my farm is called Schoodic Hollow Farm. We're sort of in a hollow of a beautiful local mountain called Schoodic Mountain. It is a native term for, I believe, bald-headed mountain. I don't know how early it burned off, or if it burned off a few different times, but it is a striking local mountain, and we are very close to it. So I've always been grateful to be here and grateful to the native people of this unceded territory. Honestly, every day I recognize that, so I try to treat the land as best I can.
Rebecca Dube 10:33
Wonderful.
Kendall Kunelius 10:34
So I think with that, yeah, if we could jump into - We have a couple of staged questions to ask. And one that I'm particularly interested in, what are some of the common misconceptions that you get or you hear about regenerative agriculture?
Becka Gagne 10:50
Hmm, common misconceptions, I think that most people would say, "Well, it's not profitable. How can you just - you're not working with machines at all, and it's so small scale." And really it's small scale for a reason, and that reason is it's human scale. So the way that we operate, we don't want to do 16 acres of corn and pull everything out of the soil. It's a slower and definitely lower impact and probably, you know, lower financial producing. But that is not my full game here. I've been lucky enough to have a little bit of a side hustle, which is my Airbnb, which is a farm-based Airbnb. People come here to see the plants and see the animals, so it all feeds each other. But other misconceptions, I can't really think of any. I think that people don't really think of it as viable, but really it's what we all need, what the planet needs.
Kendall Kunelius 11:51
Yeah, and it's interesting. If you don't mind, I just want to respond to that real quick. I think it's interesting how you talk about that human scale size, right? And we're kind of conditioned. Like when you think about agriculture, I think of a huge tractor in the middle of a huge field planting corn or that kind of stuff. But really, agriculture is so scalable. And the other thing that I also think is scalable as a business person at heart is the value of a dollar. And when you're growing your own food and you're putting the work and effort into that, that dollar means a little bit more to you. So to fit that into this concept, the regenerative piece is inherent in the sense that the land is going to give that value back to you because you've given it to them, right? It's kind of that energy transfer there. And I would wonder if it feels a little bit like less input than most, I want to term it "commercial agriculture", but I guess that's how I'll say it.
Becka Gagne 12:46
Yeah, I would absolutely say it's lower input. And even between myself and my co-farmer, I do have a lot less input as far as buying in materials, and I try to keep it very low scale as far as - I mean, even in organic agriculture, big organic agriculture, there's so much plastic usage, there's so much. It's terrifying, and it gets all thrown away every year, every other year, and that drives me crazy. So I really try to reduce the amount of plastic that I use to as minimal amount as possible. I reuse. And I actually go to our local hardware store and get lumber tarps that you can get for free from them. And you can use that to do like a quick blackout mulch for hardwood or grasses like the quack grass, that's very pernicious. And within a year, you can actually kill out most of that stuff and then take the tarp off. And we use a lot of cardboard and newspaper, but I'm always really careful I get the tape off, and maybe a little bit anal about just trying to make sure I'm not putting plastic into the soil.
Rebecca Dube 13:50
That's great. And I think you've talked a little more about this next question already, which was you've been telling us your journey with regenerative agriculture and why it works well in your farm, because it seems like it's like one of the main focuses of your farm. You're really incorporating it to all the practices that you do, and then that also helps determine what your end product is and your crops and enterprises. So then I would ask you, what challenges do you face with this kind of growing?
Becka Gagne 14:19
Gosh, I mean only self-imposed ones. I guess. It's beautiful to grow so many different kinds of plants, especially in our changing climate. Right now, I have so many varieties that I grow that certain years, some things are not going to do well, no matter what you do, and other things are going to do amazingly. So the more diversity you have within your planting stock, the better off you are. I'm trying to increase, as I get older and don't want to do quite as much annual work, I'm trying to increase my perennial crops within flowers and small fruits, that sort of thing. Yeah, I don't know. I think that the only challenges would be finding enough labor to do the work that needs to be done.
I've been very, very lucky to work with MOFGA for the last 19 years with their apprenticeship program. And I've had amazing apprentices. In 19 years I have met - we have met and hosted and become family with so many amazing young people. I can't even express how amazing it is.
Rebecca Dube 15:24
Can you tell us more about that organization, MOFGA?
Becka Gagne 15:27
Right. So Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association is, I think, well, it's one of the oldest organic agriculture organizations in the States, and we also put on the biggest organic agricultural fair, I think in the world. There is no other, there's nothing that compares to the Common Ground Fair, which happens the last weekend of September every year here in Maine, in Unity. They run a lot of different programs. They actually run the state's organic certification program, I believe, still, and they run the apprenticeship program. And also a journey person program, which will help people that have maybe been through a couple of years of apprenticing, and then they really want to take that next step to becoming a farmer, but they're not quite ready to buy their own land. They can work with a farmer and lease or rent, and create their own business plan and work up an ability to move closer and closer to their own farm. So MOFGA does an incredible amount of work to support Maine organic farms. I am technically not an organic farm in the sense that I make little enough on the farm that I don't need to do the whole certification, but I would easily be able to qualify. I just don't do all the paperwork. That might be one thing about me that is very unconventional, is that I am not a big business person. I'm not. I don't keep super clean records, I don't write everything down. I'm a little more of like an intuitive flow farmer. And that may be ADD, but that's just me.
Rebecca Dube 17:05
Well, I think we find that with farmers all the time, that the business end of it is the part they're least interested in. Their skills are with the actual farming. So that's part of what our agribusiness department of Extension tries to help them with that aspect of it, because I don't necessarily think it's any farmer's favorite part.
Becka Gagne 17:22
Yeah, definitely not mine. But I know that I definitely make enough to make it worth it. The unseen and the treasure parts may not be quantifiable, but they are really, really important to me.
Kendall Kunelius 17:39
Which I think is a great way to tie that back to the article, right? It's fulfilling for you and the people in your community. It's obviously very healthy and fulfilling for the land. I like how there's this really strong undercurrent of - it feels like very beneficial and sustainable. And I feel like maybe it's one of those things that pictures don't convey, just that feeling, that little magical feeling you get when you go and do your thing and you sell your products and your produce and your flowers. I think there's not a single value you could put on the look on someone's face when they pick a beautiful bouquet or they taste a berry or something like that. That seems very intangible, but so valuable at the same time.
Becka Gagne 18:23
And another thing we do, maybe, gosh, this is probably 17 or 18 years ago. When I first started having excess produce, my stepfather helped me build a farm stand. It was just a little, you know, maybe four by seven, little shack thing that we would drag down to the bottom of the road every spring and bring back up in the fall, because you can't leave it down there, for snowplows and stuff. We're at the end of a dead-end road, but we put the farm stand down by the main road, and we leave it unmanned. We do have a lock on the money box, but we've only had one issue with that over 20 years. Maybe six years ago or so, we built a bigger farm stand that's actually on wheels, so we can drive it up and down, and it's large enough to go in and walk around inside and has shelves all around it. We put in a free book library. We give away free seeds in the spring. And the fun thing that we've done for years now, and Garen is much more of a bookkeeper than I am, so he keeps track of everything that he puts in and brings up. And I don't quite so much, but we have a sign up in the farm stand that says, "if you need something and you don't have the money, take it and just write it down and let us know. And if you have extra, throw it in, and we'll donate at the end of the year to the food pantry." And I think that helps cut down on any sort of stealing, because if people need something, they can just take it. So I don't think that it happens a whole lot, to tell you the truth. But I just love that sense of feeding the community, that no matter what, if there was someone that needed some food, they could come and get it.
Rebecca Dube 20:05
That certainly plays into how women farmers benefit the community. You're an active member in that, and we can see that throughout everything that you do.
Kendall Kunelius 20:14
Yeah, I think the other interesting piece in that article is that it speaks to the fact that women farmers are much more likely, (I can't quite remember the number that they cited, but) they're X percentage more likely to use sustainable methods, or to be organic or certified organic, or to use regenerative agricultural practices. And I'm curious if you have any opinions or thoughts on that trend or that statistic.
Becka Gagne 20:37
Well, you'd think, you know, women are involved in most farms, even if the man runs the farm, but I think as a woman run farm, that is probably very true. And I think it just speaks to our connections, our connection to the earth. It's a little bit deeper in the sense of we bear children, we bleed, we are of Earth, and it's very apparent to us. So for me, it's always felt really connected.
Kendall Kunelius 21:07
And listening to you talk about the MOFGA apprenticeship program, is there a piece of advice that you've either consistently given to your apprentices over the years, or is there something that like now in hindsight 20/20 you wish you could have gone back and said to them.
Becka Gagne 21:24
That's a good one. I think what I've appreciated most about apprentices is hearing their input also. Because through the years, you can have a way that you do things, and it just gets to be your way of doing things, and then someone says, Oh, what if we did it this way? I love the interchange that I get, that I have with apprentices. And as far as anything I would change? Well, what I've learned about having apprentices is the most important thing that I haven't always done really well through the years, is to give really detailed, thorough explanations. Before setting someone out on a track, I might give some basic instructions, some basic ideas, and then if I need to run around and do something else, they might come back and say, "Well, wait, how was this supposed to work again?" So as much as possible, getting to work with them for the initial hour or two of any sort of project, and make sure that you get to work together. So I try to work together with my apprentices at least half of the time, and then they might be on jobs themselves. But I try to give them written materials, also access to books and magazines that I have on permaculture, on different growing techniques, and then they're also doing the work. For me, that is the best way that I learned. I got to do a WWOOFing program. I don't know if you know about WWOOFing, it's the Willing Workers on Organic Farms program that back in the day, when I did it, didn't all have phones. Weren't running around with the whole world in our pocket, and we wrote to different farmers, and would go and stay with them, and it was an amazing way to learn. And at most of those farms that I stayed at, they also had a lot of books, so I would go out and work during the day and then just read voraciously at night. So it was a wonderful way to learn. I just think that hands-on learning in the apprenticeship style is invaluable. And I can't say that any of my apprentices that I know of have gone on. One has gone on to be a full-time farmer, but a lot of them, I think, just added into their repertoire of life skills, and have gardens, but this being such a small scale, sort of human-scaled type farm, I think they're looking for more of that type of community connection. So I don't know if that answers your question.
Kendall Kunelius 23:55
In such a wonderfully eloquent way!
Rebecca Dube 23:57
That's really good advice. Yeah, so along those lines, then, do you have any favorite resource or knowledge access points that you would recommend for people learning more about regenerative agriculture?
Becka Gagne 24:10
Ah, well, alright, so I would say for sure that MOFGA is a great resource. They've got a lot of online connections and also that option to work within the apprenticeship program. So I would say that's maybe one of the best ones. I'm also working with USDA Sustainable Ag Systems program is doing a project on agroforestry sites throughout New England. So this summer, they're going to be coming and visiting the farm and doing an assessment looking at all of the plantings that I've done, looking at all the trees and the shrubs and various fruiting bodies that are happening around here, and they're doing this on a lot of different farms around New England. So I'll be really interested to hear how that goes. USDA is starting to do a lot more looking at sustainable agriculture and I hope that they continue to. That would be another good resource, I would think. And just your local farmers, you know, going out and meeting your local farmers, and if you want to offer them a few hours a week, most people will do a work trade and give you a little knowledge and at the same time!
Rebecca Dube 24:24
That's fantastic. Thank you, Becka. Kendall, is there anything you'd like to add to that?
Kendall Kunelius 25:22
Well, the couple resources that I would certainly offer would be actually our very own UNH Extension. We have a agriculture and gardens and a fruit and veggie page on our website. So many resources on there in terms of anything to do with with what you want to know about growing, either organically or regenerative type, ag or agroforestry related. And then also, we do have our Infoline. That's going to be our public line, where you can call and they will give you answers or resources. So that's manned by our Master Gardeners. And that number we can make sure we put that in the link to our Extension page in the show notes for all those other resources that we mentioned.
Rebecca Dube 26:00
Okay, well, thank you very much, Becka for joining us today. We really appreciate your input and your perspective on what you're doing on the farm. So many amazing things, both for the land and for the community that surrounds it and all the communities within it.
Kendall Kunelius 26:17
Also, speaking of communities, let's not forget that we're always open for thoughts, questions, comments. Our email and contact information is always in the show notes, so you can get a hold of us. And then we do have another newsletter, our Women in Ag newsletter coming out shortly. We have some event updates. We've got some other really interesting research in there. I'll I guess I'll kind of spill the surprise. We talked to farmers about their Kiwi berries. Wee spoke about specialty crops earlier in this episode; there's a really great example of a specialty crop! So make sure you check out our other contact points in our community building efforts as well.
Becka Gagne 26:53
Awesome.
Rebecca Dube 26:54
Thank you, Becka, thank you Kendall, and we look forward to sharing with you again on the next episode of Shared Soil.
Kendall Kunelius 27:08
Shared Soil is a production of University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, an equal opportunity educator and employer. Views expressed on this podcast are not necessarily those of the university, its trustees or its volunteers. Inclusion or exclusion of commercial products in this podcast does not imply endorsement. The University of New Hampshire, US Department of Agriculture and New Hampshire counties cooperate to provide extension programming in the Granite State. Learn more at extension.unh.edu.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
