Welcome to Mary Margaret's Blog

"We'll be there on Friday at 8am to start setting up," they said.  And they weren't kidding!  Just as our employees got here to start work that morning, several more cars rolled into the farm drive.  Soon after I could hear sounds of persistant banging on metal.  Sounds like they're working on the railroad, I thought to myself.  Clink, clink, clink... and I looked out of the window to see a white party tent being …

I love doing this.  As you know I'm the one who takes most of the photos around the farm.  Its my self-appointed job to take a photo of every farm share that we put together during the Summer CSA.  Every week I whisk around repeating, "I've got to take the share photo," which I usually do admist a rush to get everything ready for the pickups.  I've been doing this since my obsession with photography …

I am ready for spring.  Although it is still a while away, we are immersed in our annual planning process for the spring and summer.  It is during the winter that we make most of the decisions that govern our growing season.  Using lots of spreadsheets, we literally plan out ahead of time where and when each of our vegetables will be planted.  With close to 100 different varieties to go into five acres of …

On Wednesday when we were getting ready for the Winter CSA pickup later that afternoon, I said to Gene offhandedly, "What a nice farm share this week!  Its just how we eat!" 

But, that really IS the essence of it all!  I just love having our CSA because we get to share with our members how we farmers eat.  We rely on the wonderful seasonal abundance of Maine's growing season to nourish us, which means …

The first thing that we farmers do after the growing season ends is... AHHHH!  We take a much-needed breath of relief and rack out to reclaim our bodies and minds from the busy, busy summer behind us. 

The second is review our progress towards our goals.  And we had a very big goal this year: To reclaim one acre of 20-year-old trees that had grown up between our barns and our exisiting fields.  Do all …

Ripley Farm is 'Sharing the Farm's Abundance' with a new GIVEAWAY of a Wednesday CSA farm share!

Everyone's offering Labor Day specials, so we decided we would, too!  Ripley Farm style!  This week we're giving away a one-week's membership to our popular Community Supported Agriculture summer farm share program for one lucky person who is drawn out of the straw hat!

The winner will learn what the Ripley Farm excitement is all about! 

As a …

The thing I remember most about the first time we walked on what is now our dream farm at 62 Merrills Mills Road in Dover-Foxcroft is Gene's smile after he pranced through the tall timothy and red clover in the field tucked up out of sight from the road.  Hey, this beautiful eight acre field has a ton of space, he said.  There's no way we'd be able to sell more veggies than that, we …

Snow?!?  Ugh, who wants to hear about that stuff ever again after this winter?  I certainly don't, but don't worry this story isn't about snow.  It's about snowLOSS and has a beautiful ending...

On April 1st, Ripley Farm was covered in an ominously deep layer of snow.  Planting was looking very far off.  Morale was way down.  Very low.  To be exact, thirty two inches of snow, complete with a thick layer of ice in …

Are you a visual person?  I sure am!  The cliche, "a picture says a thousand words," is really true in my book.  That's why in 2013 I made a goal of taking a picture of every single week of our summer CSA farm share boxes that we had!  I had a lot of fun doing this and made this blog to show you the beautiful colors and diversity that can be had from our local …