The Farmers
John Bliss and Stacy Brenner are your agricultural technicians at Broadturn Farm. Their 12 year old daughter, Emma is in charge of library services and dress code at the farm. Year and a half old Flora is the systems inefficiency specialist.
John got his start in farming only after he had accumulated the debts of higher education at the University of Massachusetts. After college and spending some time living abroad, he returned to the states to work in the arts and community development. Preparing good food has always been a passion, but it was a gradual building of awareness that led him to the pursuit of gardening and self sufficiency. Eventually he and Stacy found their way to the fast track of learning how to farm. They moved to Maine and got to work with the help of the supportive farming community of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Having grown up in the suburbs of Boston, John is committed to the transformation of the suburban lifestyle and preservation of rural landscapes. They lived in Cumberland for 2 seasons and Cape Elizabeth for 3, and now in Scarborough they have found long term security and great farmland at Broadturn Farm. CSA embodies the practical ideals that drew John to farming over six years ago. Community involvement has been essential to all of the success John and Stacy have experienced.
Stacy got her start in farming even deeper in debt than John. Her interest in farming, however, goes back further than his (is that a good thing?!) A suburban Jersey girl, Stacy majored in agriculture at the University of Arizona. When Emma came along in 1996, she became interested in midwifery and nursing, for which she studied at the University of Pennsylvania. John and Stacy met at a turning point for both of them, and throwing their lot in together, they moved to Maine. Stacy had the off-farm job as a midwife (and now as an OB nurse at Maine Medical Center), providing the family farm a good start financially. Currently, she organizes the Farm Camp, and weddings aspect to the farm. She also keeps the books and runs the numbers on the latest business “schemes”.
Emma is in 6 th grade. She enjoys working with the animals on the farm and planting in the spring. She is a voracious reader and a skilled fashion designer. She enjoys traveling, researching history, writing, acting, poetry, singing, creating costumes, and watching and attending plays and musicals.. For much of the summer (and most holidays) she is in Arizona with her birth-father where she hikes in the desert, travels, and goes to various summer camps.
Flora is changing quickly but developing interests in water, stones, materials of great quantity (like fall leaves or a bucket of beans), and pulling Emma's hair.
Apprentices join us every season and their work in creating this farm is profoundly important. In 2007 we were joined by Hannah and Rania. We also employed three councilors, Julia, Clare, and Nick. The only group photo available is a 5:30 AM morning chores shot that can not be reproduced on the web for everyone's sake! For more information about working at Broadturn Farm, click here:
Broadturn Farm Internships
The Farm
The Meserve family farmed this land for generations, through Maine's agricultural heyday of the 1800's. The farm buildings are paterned after the classic "big house, back house, little house, barn" that is typical of Maine farmsteads. The soils are good, the market is close, and the Meserves were hard workers. In its past, the farm has produced many products for the community: dairy, beans and other row crops, eggs and chickens, hay, apples and cider, timber, honey, and now mixed vegetables.
When the Scarborough Land Conservation Trust purchased the property in 2004, the 434 acres of woods, fields, and streams were protected by a conservation easement. The farmland was protected from housing development with an agricutural conservation easement, which mandates that the land remain in agricultural production. This was a significant statement of commitment and has only become a reality thanks to the hard work of SLCT's volunteers and donors.
The future is bright for the newly renamed Broadturn Farm. With sustainable local food becoming more prominant among consumers, farms like Broadturn are approaching the point of true economic sustainablity. Although we are still a long way from the 1830's era of prosperity, more and more young people see farming as a potential career, offering spiritual, physical and ecological well-being.
