Sowing farm's future (farmland preservation, Maine)

[jpak]

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/070514farm.html

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This is the first spring season for Broadturn Farm, formerly the Keith Meserve Farm. It's a sprawling patchwork of fields, barns and forest on Broadturn Road in Scarborough near the Buxton line.

Brenner and Bliss -- along with an apprentice, relatives and some volunteers -- are reviving the property as an organic produce and livestock farm.

In southern Maine, Broadturn Farm is one of the top examples of a new model for small-scale farming: a collaboration between various private and public agencies, town residents, and the farmers willing to do the work.

The Scarborough Land Conservation Trust, with donations and grants from many sources, purchased the 435-acre property in 2004. It had been farmed by the Meserve family for most of the past 150 years. Leaders of the land trust saw an opportunity, and they advertised for farmers to lease the house and the land. Bliss and Brenner were chosen. They had been resident farmers for five seasons, first at Sunrise Acres in Cumberland, then at Turkey Hill Farm in Cape Elizabeth.

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