Welcome to Mary Margaret's Blog

Winter in Maine is arguably bleak. White snow, bare trees, it is a stark reality. It can also be a stark reality in terms of local food. With most vegetable farm stands and farmers markets shutting down in the fall, many return grudgingly to the grocery store for their veggies. Recently we were asked, What time of year do you open up and start selling veggies again? Wait, you have veggies in the winter?? Do you grow them all in greenhouses? These are questions we get ALL the time, when we try to explain just what we do here on our farm. We have veggies grown on our farm organically available for sale 12 months of the year here in Piscataquis county, central Maine! And I want to share with you one of the brightest things that we have available in bleak mid-winter! Here's to having fun with new veggies… Read More

If you’re a gardener, you know how wonderful it is to harvest the fruits (or veggies!) of your hard work, right?! Sure you can grab your seeds and throw them out there, walk away, and then come back hoping for food. And you won’t be wrong, I’m sure there will be some food there! But, one of the key successes to growing a garden and making it produce maximally is careful planning using succession plantings. I always say that good planning is what makes us successful farmers, not the actual farming part. Haha! You can make up for so, so, so much with good planning, even poorer than ideal soil, shady conditions, and unfavorable weather events, among other deterrents. Check out my ideas below to help you plan your best garden yet!     How to plan your vegetable garden for producing the most In May it is sooooo common… Read More

It's December and us veggie farmers must be settling in for a long winter's nap, right? Nope!  :)  After taking one week off to celebrate the end of the growing season and give Thanksgiving as a family, we are back at the controls of our thriving small farm business excited about the coming next season! If you are a gardener and/or veggie lover, you might have noticed that seeds were being snapped up like they were going out of style last year.  We're accelerating our seed purchasing this year in order to be fully stocked for our 13th growing season in 2021!     We're also busy harvesting and preparing our farm's fresh greens, carrots, other roots, squash and more for our Winter CSA members and preorder customers. And most excitingly, we're getting ready to open the registration for our 2021 Summer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in January and making plans to… Read More

A smoothie that’s green? What? I’m sure it sounds different, but hear me out! These things are hugely popular right now.  Here's why: They're really easy to make! They taste amazing!  And they help you get more greens into your diet than you otherwise could with just eating salads. Now, don’t think I’m the expert on these… haha, oh no! Luckily that’s what I have our 20's-something employees Robert and Hannah to help me with. With their coaching, I came up with this basic tutorial on how to make your own green smoothie!  Also special thanks goes out to friend and former CSA member, Samantha Coffin, for her images below! Here’s how it goes!     How to make your own green smoothie The first rule that Robert points out is there is no way to do it wrong! You don’t need an actual recipe! Forget measuring anything! Do it… Read More

Garlic is so good for you, right? We're all told about it's health promoting properties, helping your immune system be strong. And it makes everything taste so much better, right? Mmmm garlic + bread, garlic + stir-fry veggies, garlic + soup, etc.  The list is endless! Yes, yes, we all know all these things. But the thing is that I have to admit about garlic is that using it is a pain. Do you ever feel that way? Like just peeling the fresh garlic is a little barrier to using as much of it as you’d really like to? That’s totally me! I don’t like to complain, really! (haha) And, I love to cook and am so blessed to have a veggie farm that supplies me with unlimited garlic, BUT to be honest, I don’t like dealing with it in the kitchen. It’s hard to peel and gets under my… Read More

Have you ever said, “I just can’t find a way to love beets”? Over the past over a decade, I have heard so many people say this. For some reason an innocent dark, staining root vegetable strikes fear in otherwise adventuresome veggie lovers. But, why? Maybe because you haven’t found an easy go-to delicious way to prepare them... Or all you've had before is canned beets...   Reality is, I didn’t grow up eating beets myself. Not really because I didn’t like them. But, being the picky me I used to be, I would have said I didn’t like them anyway. (Anyone else guilty of this??) As an adult I’ve come to understand that it was probably because they just weren’t on the table almost ever. Never got a chance to get to know beets until… ...I joined my first CSA in 2004! And alas, I wasn’t in love with… Read More

I recently made a roasted carrot hummus dip and shared it with friends. This was their reaction: “Whoa, that is really good! I want to make that!”  It was an unexpected hit!   So I thought I’d share the technique with you here, too! Because, you can make different kinds of hummus that are loaded with veggies themselves! It's a game changer.  No more store bought hummus. You can dip garden fresh veggies into a homemade veggie-based dip to help you and your family (think kids!) eat more veggies! Plus, just make extra and freeze the rest for later. Yay!   A cucumber slice dipped into homemade Beet Hummus!  Gorgeous!   How to make hummus out of fresh veggies The basic formula is an easy one where roasted veggies typically take the place of the traditional chickpeas, though not in all cases. Veggies (with or without chickpeas) + Tahini + Olive Oil +… Read More

Something you may not know about me is that I teach classes. (Nope, not school classes.  Don't worry, haha!) I teach classes on food in the community.  Eating more veggies.  Fermentation.  Kombucha and Kefir.  Things like that.   I've been doing it for over 10 years.  And I love it. Really love it!  It's so much fun to meet new people and especially people with creative minds and openness to learning new things!   So I'm really bummed this year.  Due to covid, in person hands-on classes focused on making food together are not in the cards.   In lieu of our annual "Slice it, Salt it, Stomp it" sauerkraut/kimchi class that we hold on the farm every fall, I wrote this blog post for you. I invite you to try making your own sauerkraut or kimchi at home!        How To Make Your Own Sauerkraut or Kimchi Welcome to my free online… Read More

“Radishes are too spicy for me!” I hear this all the time from friends, family, and CSA members. Is that you, too? Well, I have got a secret to tell you. You can still love radishes because of this trick I’m about to share with you. And while I don’t mind their “bite”, once I tried them this way, I eat way more radishes and enjoy them more! Give it a try…     How to take the bite out of radishes and love them And drum roll… The secret is… COOK THEM! Yes, you can cook radishes, I promise. I know in America, we think of radishes in a limited way, raw in salads. Am I right? I don’t think many would disagree with me. But, in other cultures around the world, radishes are enjoyed cooked for their complex sweet taste. Wait, did you say, sweet taste?? Yep! I… Read More

You’ve heard of garlic. You’ve used it. You love it! But when you add the word “scape” at the end of garlic, you’re confused. What the heck is a garlic scape? I totally understand. Garlic scapes are not something I’d ever heard of until I got into farming. They look like this:     And they are the flowering tops of hard neck garlic plants before they’re ready to harvest. They grow out of the top of the garlic plant and curl over in their own unique cute way, full of the same beautiful blue-green characteristic to all plants in the allium (onion) family. We snap them off so that the plant can give more energy to producing a nice big bulb of garlic to harvest in early August.  If you're a home gardener growing hard neck garlic, you can do the same thing, too!  Just look for when they… Read More