Welcome to Mary Margaret's Blog

Have you ever noticed that winter in Maine is a very dark time of year?  Our vegetable crops have noticed, too!  While I'm sure you've also noticed the cold temperatures of Maine winters, the reduction of daylight hours is really what "kills" the growing season.  At ten hours or less of daylight, or after the beginning of November every year, the days are too short for the vegetable plants to make any growth at all.  Wow, does this sound like seasonal affective disorder to you? But we have a Winter CSA and sell produce all winter through March!  How do we do it?  Well, let me tell you the story of the storage season at Ripley Farm... At Ripley Farm we spend the spring, summer and fall growing vegetables for our CSA farm share program.  Everybody is familiar with the term "growing season".  Because in November the crops stop growing,… Read More

Does Ripley Farm have vegetables available for purchase this fall and winter? We've been getting this question a number of times lately so we want to answer it and provide the JUICY details. Yes! The fall is the time of great abundance and we are in the middle of collecting and squirreling away lots of organic produce much of which is available for you to buy now through the fall and into the winter. Here's some details about the great fall options that Ripley Farm has available starting RIGHT NOW and until supplies run out... What produce do we have available in the fall/winter? Beets: Loose, topped and sold by the pound these sweet, dark red roots will last all winter in your refrigerator or root cellar.   Cabbage: Cabbages, both green and red, are great storage vegetables and are available for purchases by the pound. Great made into sauerkraut… Read More

As farmers we simultaneously prepare all year for the coming of the fall harvest season and dread it at the same time!  That's right, fall is a time of great abundance, but is very fleeting and we must find things to do with all of the extra produce!  So, we've gotten creative over the years that we've been farming and here are our four favorite ways to use up or preserve the abundance of the harvest season! #1  Ferment it! Before the advent of canning in the 1800's, people around the world preserved their vegetables using the time-honored process of fermentation.  In fact, American families enjoyed homemade lacto-fermented sour pickles and sauerkraut as late as the 1940's.  Many recipes for fermented vegetables are actually traditional recipes that people all around the world have used to preserve their abundance healthfully.  Examples include sauerkraut from Europe, kimchi from Korea, and cortido from… Read More

Ripley Farm is 'Sharing the Farm' with a new GIVEAWAY of a Friday CSA farm share!  One lucky person will see what it's like to be a Ripley Farm CSA member for a week.  As a member-for-the-week, the winner will come to the farm to pick-up your box of super fresh, organic veggies harvested just for you.  Read our weekly newsletter with farm happenings, tips on how to use and store your veggies, and recipes!  Also, included in your one-week membership, you'll get a chance to pick yourself a gorgeous bouquet of flowers and get some fresh herbs to go with your week's veggies!  Get the giveaway details and learn how to enter the drawing below.   One lucky winner of our Sharing the Farm Giveaway gets: 1 Ripley Farm CSA share box full of fresh seasonal veggies For pick-up on Friday, September 6 between 3-6PM at the farm and… Read More

Ripley Farm's 2013 CSA members can look forward to increased diversity in their weekly bouquets!  In order to have a good selection of flowers available for the whole 16 weeks of the CSA we grow both annual and perennial flowers.  In between the showers of the past week, we have been busy putting in over 20 additional varieties of perennial flowers in our CSA gardens near the pick-up area!  Luckily, the rain has ushered them in with a good start. PYO organic flowers are exclusively for our CSA members!  From July-October, as a free bonus for participating in Ripley Farm's subscription program we reward our members with several gardens stuffed full with seasonal flowers.  Grab some clippers and get creative and you'll drive home with a bouquet like this one: In addition to vegetables, Ripley Farm also grows and sells MOFGA certified organic perennial plants.  This year we are bolstering… Read More

First #1:  Welcome to Ripley Farm's first blog post ever!  Now you can check back to find out what's going on at the farm at the moment.  First #2:  We saw moose tracks in our field today!  We've had our share of deer tracks but this is our first moose track sighting on the farm ever.  It's as big as Gene's hand. First #3:  We seeded our first cover crop of 2013 today.  We put in early peas to build the soil so that our fall carrots that we plant in July will get more nutrients.    Read More