By Ward Peck

Editor

    One may not be able to get further away from rural
open space in Southern Maine than Craig Lapine’s office. Tucked in a
warren of social service agencies in a Portland neighborhood whose main
industry is social services and separated from the new Whole Foods
store by a scrap metal yard, Lapine’s organization, Cultivating
Community, strategizes ways to get people closer to their food.

    For most of the last six years, the organization has
tackled its mission to feed the hungry, empower youth and healing the
planet by turning soil in urban gardens in and around Portland. Now in
its seventh growing season, Cultivating Communities has access to a
bona fide farm of it’s own: Cape Elizabeth’s Turkey Hill Farm on the
southern end of Old Ocean House Road.

    Last year, Turkey Hill Farm’s tenant farmers, John
Bliss and Stacy Brenner were chosen to run Scarborough’s much larger
Meserve (now Broadturn) Farm after establishing a Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) program and playing host to Holly Sheehan’s popular
“Farm Camp” for elementary school children at Turkey Hill. The move
threatened to return the once long-dormant farmland fallow once again.

    Lapine said the timing of the farmers’ decision worked well for his organization.

    According to Lapine, Cultivating Communities secured
funding in 2006 to hire its own fulltime farmer, which would allow it
to run it’s own in-house CSA program. However, the first parcel of
farmland it secured turned out to be underwater for much of the growing
season. That sent the organization scrambling for a temporary site,
which it found at the Meserve Farm.

    “When Stacy [Brenner] and John [Bliss] moved to Meserve, we sort of flip-flopped,” Lapine said.

    As a result, both Community Supported Agriculture
and Farm Camp will be back in operation at Turkey Hill this summer.

    Lapine described Community Supported Agriculture as
a subscription based system of growing and distributing produce and
other agricultural goods. A subscriber pays a set fee at the beginning
of a growing season for a share of a farms output. Each week, whatever
is harvested is distributed to the subscribers.

    “Say you have 50 members,” Lapine said. “Each pays
$400 for a season’s worth of produce. Every week they get one-fiftieth
of the week’s take.”

    Lapine said the benefits of a CSA program are manifold.

    “Farmer’s get paid up front, which is the same time
as many of their costs,” Lapine said. “It gets people closer to their
food, in terms of geography but also by getting them to eat with the
seasons and consumers share in the risks and rewards of farming- they
get more or less depending on how the crops grow.”

    Cultivating Communities subsidizes its CSA with the
help of grants, which allows low-income people to take part. Lapine
said about half of their 40 subscribers pay full price and half pay
somewhere between full price and nothing.

    The subsidies directly relate to one of Cultivating Communities core missions: feed the hungry.

    “There have been studies that show that something
like one in five households in Portland suffer from food insecurity,”
Lapine said. “Meaning they are either hungry now or they are unsure
about their next paycheck. Locally grown and sustainably grown produce
is the best choice for individuals and globally, but it’s perceived as
an elite thing. Everyone should have access.”

    Cultivating Communities attempts to meet this
mission of democratizing access to fresh and nutritious produce in part
by meeting another mission: empowering youth (Lapine said all three
missions are heavily interrelated).

    Lapine, whose background is as a teacher, said his
philosophy is there are not enough opportunities for youth to make a
difference in their communities and youth have in great supply three
attributes– creativity, passion and energy– essential to solving the
problems in their own communities.

    “It’s not like we have the answers and are waiting
for them to figure them out,” Lapine said. “The big problems are
unsolved and we need their help to figure them out.”

    Cultivating Communities will use Turkey Hill Farm
for an agricultural and leadership program for high school aged kids.
During two four-week sessions, youth will be at the farm four days a
week for eight hours working in the fields and learning leadership,
teamwork and problem solving skills in return for a small stipend.
Lapine said the program serves two purposes: farm work gets done and
the children learn about community action and involvement.

    Instilling in these children a closer connection to
their food, the seasons and the earth helps Cultivating Communities
achieve it’s third mission: healing the planet.

    “Food is an incredibly important way people can
alter their own environmental impact,” Lapine said. “Diet has
tremendous implications on your carbon footprint and it’s one of the
easiest to change– you’re already buying food and you can do it in the
short term instead of waiting until your next car or buying a new hot
water heater.”

    Lapine said the average meal consumed in Maine
travels 1,500 miles, and every hour it sits on a truck it loses
nutritional value and accumulates pollution. Because it travels so far,
much of the cost of food is tied to it’s transportation, rather than
going to the person who raised it.

    Lapine also points to the huge environmental impacts
of industrial scale farming, which rely on massive quantities of
fertilizer, pesticides and oil.

    “If each family in Maine spent just $10 per week on
local foods it would translate into tremendous economic and ecological
benefits for the state,” Lapine said.

    One such benefit would be to make the small family farm more financially feasible.

    “Cape Elizabeth was once the iceberg lettuce capital
of the world,” Lapine said. Fifty years ago there were 50 family farms–
now there are three. People can only eat locally if there is a local
agricultural infrastructure.”

    Lapine said for most farmers in the area, the single
biggest asset is the land itself and that leads to a big temptation to
sell that land to be developed. In order to help preserve farmland and
open space, “someone needs to take a hit,” Lapine said. “Family farmers
are the least able to take that hit when the only asset they have is
that land. Placing the burden on them by taking that away is unfair.”

    Lapine suggests people contribute to organizations
like the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust in order to compensate farmers for
placing agricultural easements on their land.

    Cultivating Communities will hold something of an
“open farm” even on Sat. June 2. From 9 a.m. to noon there will be a
work party giving people an opportunity to volunteer some time and
learn more about the organization. From noon to 2 p.m. the public is
invited to join in on a potluck meal. Parents will also have a chance
to learn about “Farm Camp” day camp for young children.

    “You can come to both or one or the other,’ Lapine
said of the work party and potluck. There will be a similar event on
Sunday, June 10 for those who cannot make it on Saturdays.

    Turkey Hill Farm is located on Old Ocean House Road
near the southern intersection with Ocean House Road (Rt. 77).