The history of the United States is a history lined with apple trees. Early European settlers in America brought with them apple seeds, which they planted to begin the first orchards. Apples were a fruit of survival at the time, storing well and serving as both food and, in the form of cider, drink.

After the Revolutionary War, apples proliferated across the frontier. The legend of Johnny Appleseed is the story of a real man, John Chapman, who planted apple seedlings across what is now Appalachia and north into Ontario, Canada. Most homesteads up and down and across the expanding United States had several apple trees, if not full orchards. They were planted for food, to produce new trees to sell and for the production of hard cider, which was one of the most common drinks consumed in colonial America. 

By the 1900s, apples had fallen out of favor. The introduction of prohibition eliminated the market for hard cider, and as railroads transformed transportation across the country, the market changed. Now, a few large apple orchards, growing only one or two varieties of apples, control the apple market. Today, 22 percent of apples sold in US grocery stores are the variety Gala, and most supermarkets offer only a few varieties. The backyard apple tree was left to grow wild—until a recent surge in interest in heritage varieties and hard cider production.

As scraggly and unkempt as an old apple tree may appear, it can still be a stellar start to an orchard or a fruitful addition to a family homestead. 

“Planting new trees is going to take some years before they’re mature and fruit bearing,” says Jennifer Ries, who coordinates the tree nursery department at Fedco, a tree and seed cooperative out of Clinton, Maine. “With these old trees, we have gifts from anonymous strangers of the past who planted these trees for particular reasons.”

Old tree discovery and restoration was once the purview of dedicated pomologists such as John Bunker, author of Not Far From the Tree, and Dan Bussey, author of The Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada. Bunker would travel the backroads of Maine and knock on the doors of old farmhouses with peeling paint and sagging roofs. He would scout the property for aging apple trees and, if he found them, collect fruit and cuttings. He has worked to identify more than 500 cultivars in his ongoing career.

A restored orchard of heritage apple trees. (Photo credit: Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project)

But today, it is more than just a few of the apple-obsessed who are discovering and rehabilitating old trees. The surging popularity of hard cider has inspired farmers to revitalize old orchards and plant new ones, and even single backyard trees are benefiting from the renewal.

“We get a lot of emails from cider makers,” says Amy Dunbar-Wallis, a graduate student at the University of Boulder in Colorado and community outreach coordinator for the Boulder Apple Tree Project. “And we hear from homeowners who have apple trees on their land and want to be cider makers.”

Organizations such as the Boulder Apple Tree and nearby Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, as well as the Maine Heritage Orchard in Maine, the Lost Apple Project in Washington and the Temperate Orchard Conservancy in Oregon, have grown in the past decade to support curious homeowners and passionate arborists alike.

If you have a homestead with an ancient apple tree in the backyard or perhaps a small orchard full of leaning, bending and twisting trees, it is possible to reclaim the productivity of those trees. According to Ries, apple trees can produce bountiful crops for 200 years, so some of those homestead trees may just be getting started.

Identify the tree

You can restore an aging apple tree and appreciate its fruits without ever discovering what variety it is, but testing a tree to discover its lineage will help you understand its unique qualities and may help apple historians in their quest for “new old” varieties. Identification can help connect you through time with the farmers who originally planted the tree by understanding if they used the fruit for cider or cold storage or ate it fresh.

“There are thousands and thousands of cultivars in the US,” says Dunbar-Wallis. Some cultivars can be identified by comparing fruit to old records and old paintings, but there are more high-tech options available now. “We are able to take just a few leaves when they first emerge, fresh in the spring. We send them off to Washington State, where they are able to do some DNA analysis of those leaves and compare them to datasets in Europe. That allows us to figure out not only what the tree is but who its parents and grandparents are and figure out where all of these different cultivars fit into the overall pedigree of apples.”

You may discover you have any number of common homestead apple varieties or you may have something truly rare on your land. Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer of the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project have discovered varieties of apples where only one single tree of that cultivar remains. Among them was the Colorado Orange, a fruit that was part of state lore for its unique color, flavor and late ripening. 

First pruning

Most trees discovered on old homesteads require an initial pruning to remove dead growth and allow the tree unencumbered sunlight. The first steps in rehabilitating a tree include removing any brush or brambles that are overcrowding it and cutting out any larger limbs that have died or show signs of disease.

“The best thing you can do for old trees is some dead wood pruning,” says Laura Seeker, who works on old apple tree restoration for Fedco and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. “Get out anything that’s dead, decaying, diseased and damaged. Do any clearing out you can in the canopy so that the tree just has live growth.”

Annual pruning

After initial canopy clearing and deadwood removal, the key to a happy apple tree is annual pruning. This encourages the tree to focus its energy on fruit production by removing some of its new growth, and it also allows it to get the maximum energy possible from the sun by keeping it from shading itself out.

“Once we’ve got the canopy cleared up, that opens up the tree’s photosynthesizing,” says Mike Biltonen of Know Your Roots LLC, which specializes in the holistic restoration of old orchards. “At that point, we want to keep it on a maintenance schedule, pruning every year or every other year and addressing any serious issues. We don’t want to do anything to shock it in those first few years, and we don’t want it to lose its wild or feral nature or its uniqueness of being an abandoned or lost tree.”

Pruning a fruit tree during the dormant season benefits the overall health of tree and can increase fruit yields. (Photo credit: Kirsten Lie-Nielsen)

Annual pruning to keep the tree in top shape usually takes place in late February or early March, when the first signs of early buds begin to appear. 

“Apples really like to be pruned,” says Dunbar-Wallis, “So, during the dormant months, you are going to want to snip the new growth. The new growth is going to grow at a 90-degree angle to the original branch, and you want to snip new growth.”

Tree cloning

When you are pruning your tree, you can begin to start a new orchard from the old variety by taking clones from the tree. Apple tree clones are created by taking a pruned “sucker” or new year’s stem of growth from the original tree and grafting it to rootstock. Rootstock is apple grown from seed, and it is available from most tree nurseries.

“It’s very endearing,” says Seeker, “because, sometimes, there’s a young, young tree of the same variety planted next to an old tree. That old tree is not going to live forever. But having a little replacement there that’s grafted from the same tree is a really nice gesture to leave for whoever inhabits this land. We have these varieties because generation after generation was here grafting, selecting for what works for this climate and what works for our palates. And so, we get to continue doing that, selecting which varieties are still working for us and planting those out and leaving them as something for future generations.”

Trees from seeds

Apple trees do grow from seed, but as a heterozygous species, their seeds do not produce the same variety of apple as the tree from which they came. When you first start rehabilitating a tree, you can look for a graft line to understand if it was selected and planted by arborists of the past or if it might have been grown from seed. Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman famously only grew apples from seed in spite of their unpredictability, but most seedling trees are the remnants of a meal consumed by a coyote or a deer.

“Even on very old trees,” says Ries, “sometimes, you can still see signs [of a graft line] by the way the bark is there—there might be a bulge or there might be a change in the bark direction.”

But if your tree is a seedling, that does not mean its fruit cannot produce something delicious. Some believe that Appleseed planted from seed because he was growing for hard cider production, and the flavors of “wild” apples can be particularly unique for cider pressing. 

“Feral or wild varieties have quite a bit of bioregional resilience,” says Biltonen. “They may have more resilience to their current location and to the climate issues we are dealing with.”

***

Learn more:

Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project. Located in Colorado, MORP is dedicated to the restoration of old apple trees. Its website includes an extensive online handbook on heritage orchard management

MyFruitTree.org. Offers DNA testing for apple trees and other identification helpers.

Fedco Trees. Fedco supplies heritage and rare trees to farmers around the country as saplings and offers rootstock for grafting your own clones. 

If you’re unsure about beginning the pruning process, contact a local arborist. You can often find ones that specialize in apple trees and will be happy to help you. Companies such as Mike Biltonen’s Know Your Roots LLC specialize in holistic restorations of orchards and apple trees. 

Read more:

Not Far From the Tree by John Bunker. Carefully illustrated and painstakingly researched, this book chronicles the history of apple trees in the Waldo County region of Maine.

The Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada by Dan Bussey. Seven volumes comprehensively document the apple tree’s history in North America. 

The post Making Old Orchards New Again appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Kiawah River is an “agrihood”—a planned community with a working farm at its center. Residents may work or volunteer at the farm, or they may participate in a residents CSA program or visit their own farmer’s market. Kiawah River worked with established farms to begin its agrihood, building a community around preexisting farmland. Its farm partners include fourth-generation Freeman Farms and second-generation Rosebank Farms, along with several others.

Other agrihoods establish farms as central hubs when planning the community. Chickahominy Falls is located outside of Richmond, VA, in what is known as the French hay district, an area that has traditionally been farmland. The agrihood there is for residents 55 and over, and 10-acre Woodside Farms provides a gathering space, volunteer and working opportunities and a CSA.

Tiny Timbers is a small agrihood in St. Croix Falls, WI, a small city on the border near Minneapolis, MN. Its agrihood model uses tiny homes as the residences, with 11 families currently sharing the responsibilities of gardening and caring for the chickens, honey bees and orchards. The community was started by a husband-and-wife team, inspired by a passion for tiny homes and good food. They broke ground on their first houses in the spring of 2023, and they will complete their agrihood with 16 homes.

“Unlike many agrihoods that have a farmer on the edge of the development, ours is all resident operated,” says Melissa Jones, founder of Tiny Timbers. “So, they are personally getting their hands dirty.”

The Tiny Timbers agrihood model uses “tiny homes” as the residences. (Photo courtesy of Tiny Timbers)

Agrihoods are not a new phenomenon, but their presence has grown in the United States in recent years. According to a report by the Urban Land Institute, in 2018, there were more than 200 agrihoods in 28 states. The concept may seem similar to a commune, but agrihoods are not based around shared politics or religion but focus on fresh food and strong communities. Participation requirements on the farms vary. Many agrihoods offer volunteer opportunities on the farm for residents, but they do not require any participation in farming.

The Urban Land Institute considers agrihoods a valuable trend, helping to solve several issues within the US housing market. With 73 percent of Americans considering access to fresh and healthy food a priority, agrihood living puts residents in the middle of healthy food production. An agrihood’s investment in farmland can help save a family farm and keep more farmland in production. Revenue from the sales of agrihood properties can directly support farms when an agrihood is established, and even working farms near agrihoods that are not involved in the communities can see the value of their farmland rise when an agrihood is built nearby. Building a community around a farm will also save farmers shipping costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as produce no longer needs to be transported over long distances.

The agrihood model may harken back to communes or even colonial villages, but if you find yourself wondering “why now?”—the answer may be as simple as reliable access to great food.

“The people here are so kind and fun,” says Danna Berg, a resident of Kiawah River who moved to the agrihood from St. Petersburg, FL in 2021. “I had heard of an agrihood before, but I wasn’t really familiar with the concept. When I stepped foot on the property, I knew it was for me.”

Berg volunteers in the gardens and on the farm at Kiawah River. Every resident we spoke to indicated that the fresh produce was a huge part of the appeal of Kiawah River, from the honey and eggs to the fresh produce and goat’s milk. 

Kiawah River worked with established farms to begin its agrihood outside Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo courtesy of Kiawah River)

In some ways, agrihood living is an idealized version of farm life. At many agrihoods, you won’t have to shovel waste or dig in the dirt if you don’t want to, but you can still enjoy the benefits of local, organic produce grown right outside your door. Even when the residents are involved in the running of the farm, an agrihood can still present a more appealing option than beginning a farm on your own.

Those interested in growing their own food to any scale need to invest in farmland, and access to suitable and affordable farmland is the greatest barrier to young farmers getting started. In an agrihood, access to the land is guaranteed and does not come with the risks of beginning a new family farm.

“A lot of people want to live a healthier lifestyle and be involved with where their food comes from,” says Jones. “But farming can be a lonely, overwhelming task. So, having a community where people can learn from each other, tackle the areas of the agrihood they are skilled in, it helps everyone have a healthier, more fulfilling existence—and make friendships along the way.”

“The eggs are simply amazing,” says Lindsay Cobb. She and her husband Charlie moved to Kiawah River in 2021. When they moved, they had not heard of an agrihood, but they loved the idea of living near a farm and being part of the community events that Kiawah River hosts. 

“Access to the fresh vegetables is so unique,” Cobb adds. For farmers, access to fresh vegetables may be a given. But for many Americans, the opportunity to enjoy fresh produce is indeed unique. According to the Urban Land Institute report, 16 percent of Americans say that fresh food is not available in their communities.

The majority of agrihoods in the US today are marketed towards a more affluent demographic, with the average home price in an agrihood around $400,000. However, the model can be applied to lower-income housing and more urban developments. Agrihoods opening in Santa Clara, CA and Denver, CO are committed to offering affordable housing as part of their planned community. At Tiny Timbers, the tiny house model allows most residents to own their homes debt free.

Eleven families currently share the responsibilities of gardening and caring for chickens and honeybees at Tiny Timbers in St. Croix Falls, WI. (Photo courtesy of Tiny Timbers)

The farms around which agrihoods center face the same challenges as any other agricultural establishment. They can be adversely affected by weather, pests and predators, impacting their ability to supply the community. Some agrihood farms choose to focus on vegetable production to avoid the smells and noises of livestock, which can limit diversity of agrihood-produced goods. 

As they address housing needs in a local area, provide healthy food to residents and foster a connection between people and food production, agrihoods seem to offer solutions to numerous challenges. And while a healthy diet often brings residents to an agrihood, residents say that community is what makes them love agrihood living.

“The community here is top notch,” explains Barbara Viverito, who has lived at Kiawah River agrihood since August of 2020. “I have never seen a group of people so friendly.”

While they come in all shapes and sizes, the future of agrihoods may be with individuals like Melissa and Shane Jones at Tiny Timbers. Five years after purchasing a plot of land in 2017, they decided to do something more than just homestead for themselves.

“We have a tiny cabin that we love,” says Melissa Jones, “and my husband has a passion for homesteading—so why not combine those things and create a place where people can live lightly, often debt free, and have the ability to grow healthy, organic food? They can live a healthier lifestyle and be around people that have similar interests.”

The post Moving into the Agrihood appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Today, many people think of hedgerows as a European phenomenon. Picturing the pastoral fields of England, you may imagine hedges separating grazing sheep from fields of waving wheat. When it comes to North American farming, by contrast, people might picture wooden fences, wire fencing or terracing between one type of crop and another. 

Shortly after the Revolutionary War, though, hedgerows were poised to be as much a part of US agriculture as they had been integral to UK farming. 

“Around the 1790s, you had an explosion of hedgerow planting in the US,” says Jim Jones, who manages the Hedgelaying in the Ontario Landscape Project for the Waterloo Institute of Innovation and Resilience. “It was a sign of status as a gentleman or nobleman to have control over the landscape. Planting hedgerows was a way of saying ‘I am in control of this wilderness.’ So, gentleman farmers looked back to the European traditions of hedgerows and hedgelaying.”

A hawthorn hedge. (Photo courtesy Jim Jones)

The invention of barbed wire made hedgerows a less popular choice for boundaries on the Western frontier, but they were briefly revived as an integral part of the recovery of the Midwest during the Dust Bowl. 

“The first time the importance of hedgerows was really understood [in the US] was in the Dust Bowl era,” says Jones. “Hedgerows were planted as an ecosystem service to provide protection from wind erosion.”

Some midwestern fields are still bordered by hedgerows, but most US farmers don’t plant hedgerows and are skeptical of their benefits, worrying that they might introduce pests or predators to their farmland.

“I think there are still some misconceptions about hedgerows,” says Rachael Long, former farm advisor to the University of California Cooperative Extension. “People are still concerned that hedgerows increase pest populations, rodent populations and weeds.”

North American farmers are also loath to reduce the size of their crop-producing land by adding a living border or to deal with potential difficulties when the hedgerows require maintenance.

“Mechanization is the primary reason why hedgerows have disappeared in North America,” says Jones. “Trees can grow too large or they fall into a field.”

Even in the United Kingdom, hedgerows experienced a downturn in popularity as farmers moved towards more heavy equipment for working their fields and maintaining their boundaries. Paul Lamb is a traditional hedgelayer in the West Country area of Great Britain, where he specializes in hedgerow management and restoration. When he started out as a woodsman and hedgelayer in the early 1990s, hedgelaying jobs were hard to find.

“I was lucky to get perhaps a couple of jobs a year,” he says. “Hedgelaying had become redundant, really. It was a dying trade, a dying art form.”

But it is gradually becoming clear, on both sides of the Atlantic, that the benefits of hedgerows for the farm and the surrounding environment far outweigh potential pitfalls. North American farmers are starting to realize what their European counterparts have embraced for generations.

“In recent years, hedgelaying has become popular again,” Lamb says of his work in the UK, “because of the benefits to wildlife that people now realize hedgerows have. From a conservation point of view, they are higher up on the agenda.”

A hedgelaying workshop hosted by the Ontario Skills Network. (Photo courtesy Jim Jones)

While US farmers have been slower to embrace hedgerows for their ecological benefits, the science of hedgerows as natural havens has become inarguable.

“The biggest benefit of hedgerows is providing wildlife and biodiversity on farmlands,” explains Long. “You will get increased numbers of insects and birds. They help with weed suppression because you are shading out weeds, [and they] help with insect pest control and other things like erosion control.”

One of Long’s studies with UCCE found that hedgerows helped sequester 36 percent more carbon than farmland. Her work has documented that, rather than introducing pests, hedgerows provide a habitat for beneficial insects that will reduce pests on crops. Another study found more than 2,000 species in a hedgerow in Devon, UK, over the course of a year.

“Our research shows that if you have flowering plants around fields, they attract pollinators and predators like ladybugs that are then exported into adjacent crops, resulting in increased yields and lower insecticide use.”

Jones, who is a member of Hedgelink, a UK-based advisory group, says that the benefits of a hedgerow are innumerable. “There are a whole host of what we call ecosystem services,” he says. “We identified that hedgerows improve water quality, so, if you have water running through a field and there is a hedgerow buffer before it goes into the water course, it will slow down the water and the particulates drop out, improving water quality.”

A hedgerow on a California farm. (Photo courtesy Rachael Long)

A farmer looking to embrace the benefits of hedgerows as field boundaries first has to identify what kind of boundary they need. Bordering crop lands, hedgerows can be made up of wildflowers and small brush and planted in areas that otherwise could not be farmed, such as under power lines or along flood plains. If a farmer wishes to contain livestock or create a more structured barrier, living fences can be cultivated in the traditional European fashion.

“All broadly deciduous trees will coppice and lay to some extent,” explains Lamb. “Thorny species are preferred because the hedgerows are supposed to be a deterrent to livestock—I call them the original barbed wire.”

Living fences are carefully maintained by hedgelaying, using a technique called pleaching. Pleaching consists of cutting ⅘ through the stem of the plants once they reach suitable size, approximately the diameter of your forearm. The plant can then be laid over at an angle, creating a horizontal fence while the pleach cut calluses over and continues to send up new shoots.

The art of hedgelaying is complex, but in the UK, professional hedgelayers such as Lamb will plant, pleach and maintain hedgerows for countless farms. Here in the US, Jones is working to introduce the skill of hedgelaying through workshops and hedgerow consulting independently and through the Ontario Skills Network.

Long encourages those who don’t have the appropriate land for a living fence to still consider hedgerows. “Some people think they can’t put a hedgerow in,” she says. “But there are some new thoughts coming out for different mixes of plants. If you have an almond or a grape orchard and you feel you can’t put in shrubs and trees, maybe you just do yarrow, mugweed, milkweed, poppies and goldenrod—more perennials, just small, that won’t get really big.”

A hedgerow that includes perennial flowers. (Photo courtesy Rachael Long)

Long notes that once one farmer puts in a hedgerow, the idea is infectious. 

“The best thing is if you can find a champion farmer,” she says. “Farmers are always talking to other farmers, and they’ll look over the fence and see what their neighbors are doing and think that looks good, I’ll try that, too.”

Because of this neighbor-to-neighbor effect, Long has noticed that her area, California’s Yolo County, already has more hedgerows than the state average. “There is huge interest where I work,” she says. “I would say maybe 10 percent of the farmers here have adopted hedgerow plantings, while statewide it’s only one to three percent.”

There’s another, less quantifiable benefit to hedgerows, according to Jones. “A hedgerow creates a vista. It can contribute to a sense of place, a sense of belonging in the landscape and a sense of mystery to your landscape.”

The post Old Hedgerows are New Again as More Farmers Embrace Benefits appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Why not start a backyard homestead?

“At the beginning of the pandemic, the postal service worked,” says Kathy Halamka of the Unity Farm Sanctuary in Sherborn, MA. “That was the one thing that worked well. Chicks, goslings, poults and ducklings—all of these little guys can come in the mail, and that is a very regular way where the hatcheries send out their hatchlings.”

Mika, a rescue goose. Photography courtesy of Anika Wilson.

A duckling can be purchased for only a few dollars from a hatchery and provide entertainment for kids stuck at home. As a bonus, when the duck grows up, it produce fresh eggs. The idea was popular and soon hatcheries were selling out of chicks and ducklings. But as any poultry farmer knows, ducklings don’t stay small for long. Within two weeks, a baby duck will double both in size and in poop production. Long before you see any eggs from them, they will have outgrown your living room.

“We called it the time of the ducks,” says Halamka. Her sanctuary first noticed an increase in ducks and chickens—likely having outgrown their apartment homes and postage-stamp backyards—being surrendered to the sanctuary in the spring of 2020. Next came the roosters, surrendered as they began to find their voices. Finally, as people returned to work after the lockdown restrictions eased, entire flocks of poultry were given up to shelters. “We’ve never had that sort of broad surrender of hens,” says Halamka. “I would accept over a hundred hens at a time and have to find them new homes.”

Birds are the lowest cost option to begin homesteading. Ducklings, chicks and goslings are often for sale at feed stores in the springtime, and the thought that goes into their purchases can be the same as considering picking up a candy bar at the checkout. But the pandemic impulse purchases didn’t stop with poultry. Goats and sheep can be brought home for only a couple of hundred dollars—a purchase that might not require much forethought or consideration of feeding costs or vet bills. 

Greg, a rescue steer. Photography courtesy of Anika Wilson.

Ashley Pankratz, senior manager of rescue & placement for Farm Sanctuary, an organization dedicated to advocating for farm animals, recalls a case of sheep and goats in Dutchess County, NY. The herd started with only a few animals, but,” Pankratz said in an email, “they quickly reproduced, and their guardian was unable to provide appropriate care. Soon, there were dozens of animals in need.”

Farm sanctuaries and rescues have long been places where people can turn when they have an unwanted rooster, but, since 2020, the number of animals in sanctuary care has increased significantly. The Farm Sanctuary, with locations in Watkins Glen, NY and Acton, CA, received 1,255 requests for placement in 2018. Now, it averages more than 1,500 requests a year.

 Anika Wilson is a farmer and florist from outside Portland, ME, who was enlisted in the rehoming of more than 50 poultry from an island in Maine’s Casco Bay. The previous owner collected rare-breed birds, and she had amassed a large flock by the time she died in her 80s. “Luckily for these birds, they had a great caretaker on the island,” says Wilson. “I imagine that it would be a great challenge figuring out what to do with so many animals if you are not somewhat involved in the homestead world. It would be a lot to inherit.”

Wilson notes that the entire situation could have been avoided with forward planning. “In this case, a ‘death plan’ or ‘animal will’ that would provide for the animals would have been useful. In many cases, I think the most important thing is to really think before adopting creatures like this: ‘Am I prepared to care for this animal for x amount of years?’ and secondary to that, ‘Do I have options if I find, down the line, that circumstances change and I cannot care for them?’”

Anika Wilson.

Many people do not consider the longevity of animals when they take them on. Goats and sheep have an average lifespan of 10-15 years, while cows and pigs can live more than 20 years. Feed bills, veterinary care and infrastructure costs add up quickly. Livestock care can be physically demanding, making it difficult to keep up.

The most common animals surrendered to farm sanctuaries are poultry. Unwanted roosters from hatchery purchases make up the majority, and flocks from people who did not check their town’s ordinances on poultry are common. Sheep and goat purchases during the pandemic are more difficult to calculate, in part because goats and sheep are often paid for in cash from farm to individual, rather than sent via the postal service from a company with invoices and records. 

Halamka says animals are often surrendered or rescued and end up at the Unity Farm Sanctuary because of caretaker deaths, home foreclosures and long-term illnesses. But there can be more abrupt cases, too. 

“Sometimes, people literally move out of the apartment,” says Halamka, “and leave behind the mini pig or other animal. They literally walk away with the animal in the apartment. It’s very sad for me to have to work with animals that are found and have to be rescued.”

Planning can avoid these situations, as can a little bit of humility. Halamka is grateful that the majority of the animals she has seen since the pandemic are surrenders, and she notes that to surrender an animal you just have to call or email your local sanctuary

Following the pandemic uptick in livestock rescues, the hustle at sanctuaries has not slowed down thanks to inflation and foreclosures. Inflation has meant both that people’s budgets have been cut back, sometimes not leaving room for the livestock, and that people are again impulse purchasing poultry thinking they’ll get “free eggs.” 

The conclusion seems simple. Animals should never be impulse purchases and require more planning than just a feed budget and proper housing. Ideally, if you are investing in animals, you should also make a plan in case something happens to you, so that the animals don’t end up at a sanctuary looking for a home.

The post Impulse Chickens and Trendy Goats: The Pitfalls of Modern Homesteading appeared first on Modern Farmer.

If you are a woman, the challenges don’t stop there. You may be the only woman fishing out of your harbor, vying for respect in an industry that throughout its long history has welcomed only men onboard. Every day, you’ll be working to prove you belong on the boat and not keeping the books back at the wharf.

When Krista Tripp was 18, she’d completed all of the hours at sea necessary to get her captain’s license, but her parents submitted her brother’s paperwork to the State of Maine and not hers. Why? Even though Krista had been hauling traps since she was eight years old and running her own boat since 15, the expectation was that now she’d settle down and start having babies. 

“My brother and I shared the boat, we had 150 traps and I became obsessed at an early age,” Tripp recalls. “I knew that was what I wanted to do. But, as a girl, my parents didn’t really take me seriously.”

Tripp would spend the next few years working as a sternman off of a scallop boat in Massachusetts. Eventually, she returned to Maine, and after 14 years, she got herself off the waiting list and became the captain of her own lobster boat. Today, she has been captaining her own lobster boat for more than eight years. 

Heather Strout Thompson’s boat “Gold Digger” in Harrington Harbor. (Photo courtesy Heather Strout Thompson)

Heather Strout Thompson started lobstering at age 10. She fishes the state limit of 800 traps out of the rural harbor of Harrington, just outside of Jonesport in the deep Downeast of Maine. Growing up there, it was either the sea or the blueberry fields, and Strout wasn’t a fan of the blueberry fields. 

“My dad was the one who gave me the hardest time out of anybody,” says Strout. “I always wanted to prove him wrong, throughout my childhood and even now, to prove that I can do it.”

Down the coast in the endearingly named town of Friendship, Kelly Wallace started fishing at age five. When she was old enough, she bought her own skiff and started hauling her traps by hand. Lobster traps are typically hauled onboard using a hydraulic trap hauler, but Wallace would haul 150 traps—each weighing 50 pounds—by hand all through high school.

Wallace’s family has been working on the water for six generations and operates the Wallace Lobster Wharf. But she was the first female member of her family to choose to become a lobster boat captain.

“It’s definitely hard to be a woman in the fishing industry because you aren’t ‘one of the guys’,” admits Tripp. “A lot of men are really egotistical when it comes to their jobs being physically demanding—so when they see a girl doing the same kind of job, it makes them feel less of a man. They just aren’t as welcoming.”

But none of these women has let a little bit of ego hold them back. 

“I might not do things the exact way a man does things,” says Heather Strout Thompson. “But I can get the job done. I might not lift a trap with my arms—I might have to use my legs a little bit—but I can get it up there.”

Being a woman in the lobstering industry can be singular, but it is a challenge upon which all three women have thrived. And within the world of lobster fishing, the proof is in the traps hauled and the hours put in.

“I’ve noticed more men giving women opportunities,” says Thompson, “because they’re looking for a more reliable person to work with and women are very reliable. They’re going to do whatever they can to prove themselves.”

Tripp echoes the same sentiment. “Some guys think that women are great workers because they want to prove themselves more.”

“When I was younger, you never saw women on a boat, ever,” says Tripp. “I know a lot of other women lobstering now, but I never did before.”

Commercial fishing is one of deadliest professions in the United States. (Photo: Kirsten Lie-Nielsen)

The lobster industry is a tough place to make a living for anyone. It is the backbone of Maine’s economy and the iconic food of the state, but it has become a more challenging industry in recent years. 

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than any other body of water in the world, and to survive, lobster may follow the Maine shrimp north to Canadian waters. When fishing, lobstermen are careful to take only crustaceans of a certain size and to return females with eggs to the sea. Nevertheless, additional environmental regulations come down hard on Maine lobstermen, while the cruise ships and tankers responsible for pollution and whale strikes are largely unregulated. Since 2020, the price of fuel has risen steadily, while the market price of lobster has dropped. Commercial fishing remains one of the most deadly professions in the United States, making every trip to haul a risk.

With all of these hurdles, you may wonder why women are heading out to sea in pursuit of the recognizable red “bugs.” But Maine women are as resilient as the state’s rocky coast, and they seem uniquely suited to thriving in a trade that requires grit and diligence.

Marina Landrith is a 13-year-old aspiring lobsterwoman who fishes out of the picturesque harbor of Rockport. She currently holds a student license that allows her to fish up to 50 traps. On lobstering days, she launches her boat, fills her bait bags and motors out to haul her traps. 

Her family has been lobstering for five generations and she was inspired to begin by her uncle, who lives and fishes off of Matinicus Island, the farthest inhabited land off the east coast of the US. Matinicus is home to less than 100 year-round residents, the majority of whom are lobstermen. Landrith’s uncle has been taking her out lobstering since she was a baby.

“What I enjoy most about it is that I get to spend time with my dad when we go out to haul and the feeling of accomplishment when I get in from hauling and sell what I caught,” says Landrith.

Marina Landrith holds a student license that allows her to fish up to 50 traps. (Photo courtesy Dale Landrith)

She knows several women who lobster or assist as sternmen on lobster boats, including her own 10-year-old cousin. A sense of accomplishment and personal pride seem to drive every woman in the industry. 

“Nobody else cares that I’m doing this or not,” says Heather Strout Thompson. “It’s something within yourself that you have to push and want to be able to do. At the end of the day, you’re the one that’s going to sit back and ask, ‘Did I work as hard as I could? Did I earn my spot here?’ And I feel I have.”

While commitment and drive push these women off shore every day to compete in the lobstering industry, the inspiration always circles back to family. The majority of lobstermen, male or female, are continuing a family tradition.

When Landrith thinks about her future, she can imagine life as a lobsterwoman. Someday, she wants to live on Matinicus like her uncle. “I think it would be great to live out there where my family grew up and I have visited during the summer for as long as I can remember,” she says.

Marina Landrith’s family has been lobstering for five generations. (Photo courtesy Dale Landrith)

Thompson points out that in the lobstering world, family goes beyond flesh and blood. “Fishermen are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met,” she says. “They’ll stop what they’re doing and help you, tow you in, give you a part to fix your boat, so you can get back to haul. It’s a family within the lobstering industry.”

And the family of women who lobster continues to grow. In 2021, 15 percent of lobster licenses belonged to women, compared to less than 5 percent in 2014. When tomorrow’s generation of lobstermen look back at their family heritage, it won’t be a men’s club anymore.  

“There’s different things that I might do that aren’t the way the men do it,” says Thompson. “But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong; it’s just different. Sometimes, you don’t have to do it the same as everybody else does. Do what’s best for you, what you are comfortable with and keep moving forward.”

The post Meet the Women Making Waves in Maine’s Tough Lobster Industry appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Bushey and his wife, Angela Faeth, moved to Peaks Island more than 20 years ago. From their home, they run a map company that focuses on outdoor activities and documenting trails. As soon as he joined the small community, Bushey became the de facto trail guru for the many paths covering the island’s 750 acres in Casco Bay. In managing the trails, Bushey found himself focusing on the trees and bushes that grew alongside as much as the paths themselves. Peaks Island, along with the rest of the state, struggles with invasive bittersweet, honeysuckle and Norwegian Spruce. 

That was the beginning of Bushey’s fascination with native and invasive plant species in Maine. He studied how they grew and ways to disrupt the growth cycle of the invasive plants to allow native species to thrive again. Then one day, he watched a documentary on the migration of the monarch butterfly.

At first, he did not connect the needs of monarch butterflies and their 2,500-mile migration to his work on Peaks Island. The monarchs’ travel takes them from the northern US and Canada to their breeding grounds in Mexico, and the trip spans generations of butterflies. They rely exclusively on milkweed plants to sustain their migration and feed each generation of monarch caterpillars. There are 73 varieties of milkweed growing in the United States, more than 30 of which are hosts for the monarch butterfly and its caterpillars. It contains a chemical compound called cardenolide, which is toxic to most would-be predators. This provides the caterpillars safety from being eaten, and it remains in the bodies of butterflies after they transform.

A monarch caterpillar (left) and butterfly (right). (Photos courtesy of Steve Bushey)

The population of monarch butterflies has declined by more than 90 percent since the 1990s. This is partially due to logging in their overwintering grounds in Mexico and severe weather during their migration. But studies suggest that a downturn in the nation’s milkweed supply has been the leading cause of the dramatic decline in the monarch butterfly population.

The toxin of the milkweed makes the plant incompatible with fields hosting grazing cattle or intended for hay, and milkweed is renowned for aggressive growth that chokes out field grasses. This makes it a natural enemy of many farmers, who deploy herbicide sprays to eradicate the plant. 

Fascinated by monarchs, Bushey thought about going to Mexico to see the butterflies in their breeding grounds. Then he realized he could help them on their journey from his backyard in Maine. “I flipped it around, and I thought it has to be a terrible journey trying to work your way down the East Coast through all those urban areas.”

“I had a lot of conversations with people on the island,” says Bushey. “I became an advocate for the bees and the butterflies. I became an advocate for encouraging people not to pull up the milkweed and to plant native flowers.”

Bushey was immediately impressed with the resilience of the milkweed plant. “Milkweed is an aggressive native grower,” he says, admiring how it can appear in disturbed areas of soil and how one seed can give rise to a plant that, through rhizomes, spreads into an entire cluster.

With his experience in mapmaking, Bushey recognized that he could help the monarch butterflies from home through propagation of the milkweed plant. He started to track where milkweed was growing on Peaks Island. “On my morning walks, I began mapping the locations of all the milkweed patches I could find,” he says. “I spent three or four weeks doing these long walks, poking around corners and talking to people in their yards.” Using GPS mapping technology, Bushey came up with more than 60 locations of milkweed patches on the island. And he noticed something interesting: “There were not many wild locations where milkweed was growing. Most locations were in gardens.”

Steve Bushey with a milkweed plant. (Photo: Sarah Bryant)

Bushey was determined to expand the milkweed options for weary butterflies, and so as the monarchs began their fall migration and the milkweed went to seed, he turned from mapmaking to seed saving.

“People would pick their milkweed pods and hand them to me in brown paper bags,” he says. “I had one woman stop me in the middle of the street to hand me a bag from her car window into mine—it probably looked like a drug deal, but I was just receiving pods.” Bushey ended up receiving hundreds of pods.

Milkweed seeds are dried and stratified within their pods in the natural temperatures of a Maine winter, which helps the vitality of the seed. The seeds take five to six weeks to dry, and they can be laid out on screens or strung between rafters in a barn or shed, leaving plenty of room for air flow around the pods and allowing for the temperatures to drop naturally. Eventually, the pods begin to crack open, releasing their seeds. At this point, the seeds can be removed from their “parachutes”—the soft white fluff that allows them to blow and spread on the wind. 

Bushey sees seed pod gathering as an opportunity to foster community and intergenerational connection. “You can go outdoors and watch milkweed grow,” he says. “Watch the caterpillars, then the chrysalis, and at some point the butterfly comes out, and then you can start collecting the seed pods. Keep it within your community—so learn where to find the seeds, talk with people, get people to give you seed pods.” After the seeds are collected, the fun starts. “You can have seed parties, which can be messy but are great fun for kids. Then you can all make packages. It’s a lot of handwork—you can’t make money at this, but it builds friendships and a bond between the older generation and the youngest.” 

Milkweed plants (left) and Bushey’s seed packets. (Photos courtesy of Steve Bushey)

Bushey did not just dry, store and spread seeds for himself. To encourage milkweed growth across Peaks Island and the state of Maine, he started selling packets of milkweed seed. He took homemade seed packages to his local garden center where they set a display up at the register, and he shared the packets with anyone interested in growing milkweed. Before long, many of the gardeners of Peaks Island had started milkweed in their seedling trays.

For residents of New England, Bushey is happy to share milkweed seeds for pollinator gardens. Just reach out through the email contact at MapAdventures.com, he says, and he’ll put a packet of seeds in the mail for you. He prefers to keep his seed packages within New England so as not to introduce common milkweed to areas where it is not native, and he recommends researching on which variety native of milkweed monarchs feed in other regions.

Now the milkweed man of Peaks Island, Steve Bushey’s vision for the life-giving weed goes much further than Casco Bay. He imagines a world where milkweed is no longer seen as a weed but as a favored flower and connection point between generations of gardeners and seed collectors. 

“The monarchs’ journey is a multi-generational journey,” he says. “They die along the way and they have to lay their eggs and hatch butterflies, and it’s the next generation that makes it to Mexico. Imagine three generations of humanity sitting around a table talking, helping another species on their multi-generational trip.”

The post Meet the Milkweed Man on a Quest to Help Monarch Butterflies appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The caterpillars do not just destroy trees. They can do damage to people as well, thanks to the minuscule white hairs that they shed, blowing in the wind or remaining after the caterpillars have departed. The rash can arrive after picking up branches or leaves with moth hairs in them or simply by being outside near an infested tree on a breezy day. The red welts of the rash itch and burn and, unlike poison ivy, the bumps can grow to the size of a dime. The itching and burning can last for more than a week. In some cases, the hairs of the caterpillars can cause respiratory distress, and if you have pre-existing respiratory issues, these can be extremely serious. For farm workers, foresters and anyone laboring outside in Maine, this is one of the hazards of the job.  

Brown tail moths first arrived in the US in the late 19th century by way of Cape Cod. For nearly twenty years, the population exploded across New England, Quebec and the Tri-State area. However, the introduction of a parasitoid fungus and aggressive applications of obsolete sprays such as arsenate of lead brought the population under control by the 1920s. Minor outbreaks would occur throughout the 20th century. The parasitoid fungus, entomopohaga aulica, thrived in the cool, wet New England weather, keeping the moth population under control until 2015, when an outbreak began along the Maine coast. This outbreak has stayed largely within the state, which has entomologist Tom Schmeelk, of the Maine Forest Service perplexed. “There hasn’t been a clear definitive answer for why it has not expanded back to its reach in the early 1900s.”

However, it is suspected that Maine’s increasingly warm and dry spring weather has played a role. The fungus that proved so effective at controlling the moths naturally in years past requires a cool, wet spring to thrive. The moth larvae thrive on warmer and drier conditions, and Maine has suffered moderate to severe droughts since 2015. With no natural agents to combat them, the brown tail moths have thrived.  

When Sarah Pike purchased Tops’l Farm in Waldoboro, ME, in 2015, she had  a vision of a glamping getaway and farm destination. What she didn’t know was that many of the beautiful apple trees lining the property’s walk to the Medomak River had already succumbed to brown tail moth infestation. “Losing many of the ancient apple trees on the farm within the first few months of our stewardship to the brown tail moth, felt like the property lost a really important part of its story.”

Pike began to combat the moths. She attempted spraying the apple trees and tall oaks that surrounded her farm, but the moths kept returning. Eventually, Pike began a regimen of daily nest clipping and caterpillar squishing. The most effective way to combat the moths is by clipping their nests out in late fall or early spring, when the caterpillars are dormant and the nests are most noticeable. Barrier bands around tree trunks can also prevent caterpillars from attacking a tree, as long as any existing nests are thoroughly removed.

A tree after brown tail moths devoured it. Photography courtesy of the author.

While brown tail moths are generalists, they do seem to prefer fruit trees and oak trees, putting a strain on Maine orchards. Bob Sewall is the steward of Sewall Organic Orchard, the oldest organic orchard in the state. Sewall has been tending his orchard for more than forty years. Brown tail moth caterpillars first began to appear in his trees four years ago, and he quickly found them to be more destructive and persistent than any pest he had faced before. Having never sprayed his trees, his first focus was to prune the larval clusters out.

“We took over 1,200 nests out,” Sewall says. “And we still didn’t get them all.  It was a losing battle; if you miss one nest, that can defoliate an entire tree.”  

Fortunately for Sewall and Pike, sprays are available that are effective against the moths. Sewall uses a combination of BT and Entrust organic insecticide, and he now sprays his orchard twice a year with this mix. But spraying is ineffective in a 65-foot-tall oak tree, and the moth population across the state continues to grow.

While some urban towns have organized volunteer efforts to clip out the moth nests on town property, the battle against brown tail moths has been left largely in the hands of individual landowners. In a state covered in majestic, old-growth trees that reach up to the sky, clipping and spraying both require a tree crane, which has greatly hampered individuals’ efforts to fight the outbreak. The Maine Forest Service suggests that if hiring a crane is cost prohibitive, a collection of neighbors might combine resources to have their area treated, but such co-operation does not always occur.  

While Maine scientists hope for a natural decrease in the moth’s population, they are also working on other mitigation methods, such as the release of the female sex pheromone, which confuses the males and disrupts the mating cycle. “This would be highly specific to the brown tail moth, so no non-target effects on beneficial insects,” says University of Maine Forest Entomologist Angela Mech. “It is eco-friendly and has the potential to be highly effective for a large area.”

While we wait for new mitigation methods or a return of the moth killing fungus, Mainers will continue to suffer from the brown tail moth rash. Long sleeves and limiting outdoor time can help reduce the risks of the rash developing, but for farmers who have to be outside every day and often work directly in moth-infested areas, topical ointments and sprays are available that specifically treat the brown tail moth rash and can provide relief.  

“We are still in an outbreak,” Mech says. “We will be itchy this summer.”

The post Brown Tail Moth Outbreak Makes Life Itchy for Maine Farmers appeared first on Modern Farmer.

No other birds seemed ill, but the next morning, two guinea fowl lay dead on the floor, their heads puffy and eyelids swollen shut. On the third day, a duck would not stop sneezing.

That third day, I called the Maine State Veterinarian to inquire what we should do if we thought we had High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in our flock. I knew that avian flu was killing flocks of commercial poultry—the outbreak has affected more than 58 million poultry birds in the U.S. at last count—and had read about protecting my birds from the spread of the virus. But I had no idea what steps to take if I was afraid my flock had HPAI. 

Symptoms of HPAI include sudden deaths, sneezing and swollen heads.

The State Veterinarian informed me that it would send a representative to test our flock. If the test was negative, nothing would happen to our birds. If it was positive, our entire flock would be euthanized to help prevent the disease from spreading. It took a few days for the test to process, and then I got the phone call.  

“I am afraid it is positive,” said Rachael Fiske, assistant state veterinarian in Maine.

The next day, officials arrived to euthanize our flock. Our birds were confined to their coop. The officials would capture them and put them in a confined box where carbon monoxide was applied, resulting in a quick and painless death. While they worked carefully to ensure the birds were not stressed, I could tell from the anxious honking of the flock that they understood the situation. The carcasses were then bagged in plastic and taken for secure disposal by the state.

The author holds two of her geese.

Our first poultry arrived in a peeping box at the post office in 2013. We had ordered five chicks and two goslings.

The goslings imprinted on us, and all summer they followed us and settled in our laps when we sat down. My family had kept chickens when I was a kid, but geese were a new experience for me and I spent hours searching the internet for details on their care. As I fell in love with these birds, I realized there was very little information on keeping them—my best research being an out-of-print book that I had to get through an interlibrary loan. So, I started jotting down notes and making records of their care.

By 2016, when we moved to Liberty, Maine, we had a flock of more than 20 geese (and an additional 30 or so chickens and ducks), and my first book, The Modern Homesteader’s Guide to Keeping Geese, was headed to the publisher. I had become The Goose Lady.

Because goslings imprint easily, most of the geese in our flock saw me as “mother goose” and our bonds were strong, with birds running to my side when I stepped out of the house.

For years, we kept our geese and ducks happy with water troughs and buckets, but in 2021, we dug out a farm pond for the birds. They took to it instantly, swimming, bathing and splashing all day in the new open waters—as did passing wild ducks.

As news of avian flu began to bubble in the winter of 2021-22, commercial flocks in the Midwest seemed the most affected. However, some speculate it is small farms and homesteads that have led to the proliferation of HPAI because free-ranging birds interact more with wild birds. The rise in popularity of backyard poultry in recent years means even more intermingling.  

In February 2022, a warm winter kept the pond waters open, and flocks of hundreds of migrating ducks used our farm as a stopover on their migrations north.

Information on HPAI suggested quarantining domestic birds: no interacting with wild flocks, shut your poultry in their coops indefinitely. I considered this, but our flock of geese was at the height of their mating season, fighting and setting their pecking orders for the year, and birds would be injured in an enclosed space for a long period of time. Even without injury, the unhappiness of the cooped-up geese was evident—and how long would goose lockdown last? Humanely quarantining our birds would require either major infrastructure upgrades, or a downsizing of the flock.  

The author’s geese in happier days.

By the end of the day on April 5, 2022, there were no living poultry on our farm. The morning had started with a honking, frolicking flock of almost a hundred geese, chickens, guineas and ducks. Now, it was eerily silent.

It would take several weeks to get used to that silence. The USDA required a fallow period of 150 days before we would be allowed to add new poultry to our farm, but it took much longer to process my feelings. They would reimburse us for the value of the birds, a poultice on the wound of loss.

My first feelings were of deep guilt, knowing that if I had kept my birds quarantined inside they would not have contracted HPAI. Never again would I have more birds than an indoor space could comfortably accommodate, even if that meant limiting ourselves to only a couple of birds. The hope that the avian flu outbreak would mitigate over the summer soon disappeared, and as we head into a new migration season, cases are once again increasing, prompting poultry farmers to remain vigilant. And while the decimation of commercial flocks has meant an increase in store-bought egg prices, many backyard poultry farmers, including myself, can no longer step outside to gather eggs.

Would I even add birds back? The answer remains unclear. Our flock brought us endless enjoyment, but that joy ended in deep heartbreak. For now, as HPAI continues to ravage backyard and commercial flocks across the US, birds are not part of our farm.

Kirsten Lie-Nielsen is a writer and educator in Liberty, Maine, where she and her husband are restoring a 200-year-old farm and raising Nigerian Dwarf goats and Babydoll sheep. She is the author of two books on homesteading, “The Modern Homesteader’s Guide to Keeping Geese” and “So You Want to Be a Modern Homesteader,” and she shares farming knowledge via her website and social media, as well as offering occasional classes. She can be found at hostilevalleyliving.com or on Instagram @hostilevalleyliving.

The post I Was ‘The Goose Lady.’ Then Avian Flu Came For My Flock appeared first on Modern Farmer.