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As I walked through the farmers market in Waterville on a cloudy
October afternoon, I marvelled at the variety on display, a combination
of summer and fall: tomatoes and basil; winter squashes, beets and
carrots; lettuces, herbs and Asian greens; potatoes, carrots and
onions; beans and corn; apples, pears and pumpkins; chickens, pork,
bison and venison; stone ground whole wheat bread baked in a wood-fired
oven, cookies and scones, raw milk, cheeses. A bounty, locally grown
and locally sold by people I know and live among. Some I work with,
most come and do business with us at Fedco. The market is an affirmation
of the sign that greets travelers as they cross into Maine over
the Piscataqua River bridge: “Maine, the way life should be.”
The market is also a reminder of
the way life used to be. Farming and food production has a long
rich history in Maine. Potatoes, blueberries, lobster and fish,
of course, but also vegetables, especially corn. Portland natives
Nathan and Isaac Winslow patented a method for canning corn in the
1850s and for about a hundred years canning sweet corn and other
vegetables was an important piece of the local economy. John Gould,
the Maine humorist and memoirist, writes in It Is Not Now about
the buyers from A&P and S.S. Pierce coming to sample the corn
and being offered corn from especially good days. The buyers were
sold and placed their orders for those runs. But “it’s
all corn” so the warehouse was emptied front to back. Clinton,
the home of our warehouses, had a canning factory into the 1950s
and early ’60s. Like so many of Maine’s industries,
canning eventually fell victim to consolidation and the so-called
“economies of scale.”
The upsurge in locally grown and
locally produced food has been one of the most heartening developments
of the last few years. One of the few areas where we have made progress
toward a more secure future. While on a national level we are still
mired in the politics of fear and overreaction, locally we are able
to come together united by agriculture.
One of the many pleasures of working
at Fedco is knowing that we’ve been a small, but I think important,
part of this movement.
David Shipman, OGS coordinator
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Organic
Growers Supply