David's Folly Farm Hours and Information

Welcome to the farm!

David's Folly Farm is located at 1390 Coastal Rd. in Brooksville, Maine.

Our farm stand in the barn will be opening for the 2011 season on Friday, July 1st! We will be open Wednesday and Friday afternoons this year from 1 pm - 5 pm.

Off the farm we do the following markets:

Brooksville Farmer's Market at Buck's Harbor on Tuesdays from 9:30 am - 12 pm.

Friday Morning Market in Blue Hill at the First Congregational Church on Fridays from 9:30 am - 11:30 am.

We're also participating in Farm Drop this year at the Blue Hill Wine Shop on Thursdays. Check out farmdrop.org for more information.

We are happy to fill custom wholesale orders for parties and weddings as well, including vegetables and flower arrangements.

We can be reached at 207.326.4445 or davidsfollyfarmstead@gmail.com


May 25, 2010

PIGS!!!

Large Black Sow

We're getting pigs!!!! Greg and I are going to be getting 5 Large Black/ Berkshire heritage cross piglets on July 1st, and we can't wait!! It took us forever to find piglets but we lucked out and found the perfect cross heritage breed. Our neighbor Deborah Evans breeds and raises large black crosses but unfortunately we are getting our piglets from someone else, hers are all going to the butcher. We stopped by her farm last week and got to see her beautiful animals. She has the best dogs!! They're Australian shepherds and they were so friendly and cuddly. I couldn't get enough of them. She has quite the operation over there. She's raising so many animals, a herd of different breeds of goats, sheep who've just had the cutest baby lambs ever, guinea hens, 2 donkeys, 1 llama, 3 dogs, 3 large black sows, 11 5 month old Lg black/ Tamworth piglets, and a brand new litter of 8 Lg black/ berkshire piglets. They had just been born that morning when we stopped by. It was quite a sight to see and her farm is beautiful. Her property is located right across Smith Cove from Castine. It was beautiful. Here are some shots of her animals and farm.
Strawberry

The farm and other fun things



 
The barn
Our honey bees
 Plant house
 
Basil

 Melons
 Pasture

 The Jungle
 Flower Plot
 Peppers
 Tomatoes
 First ocean swim of the year at the town landing.
It was heaven!




The Farmhouse

 During our cleanup/ move in phase we found a stack of old pamphlets about David's Folly, written by Minvera Cutler. "The house, four square and white, in good Maine tradition, was built in 1819 by David Wasson, a ship builder who retired to become a farmer." We also learned of how David's Folly got it's name. "In those days, people scoffed at the idea of farming so near to the sea and called the new venture David's Folly." Minvera bought the property in 1920 and ran it as a bed and breakfast / earthworm farm until well into the 80's. Anyways, here are some pics of the house and property. It took us a while to get the house looking like this but I think it's quite nice now. The front of the house looks different now thanks to my Mom, Greg and our friend Mark. We moved the wood pile into the barn and my mom and I planted flower beds.  I'll take some new pictures of the exterior and post them tomorrow.  Hope you enjoy!!

May 9, 2010

Burning Blueberry Fields




Our good friends Costas and Sally Christ own and run an organic wild blueberry farm called Blue Sky Organic Blueberry Farm in Harborside, ME. Their berries are amazing, so sweet and plump. Every other year they burn some of their fields to promote more blueberries the following year. The year you burn a field forces the plants to put all of their energy into forming new growth underneath and producing more foliage. The following year the plants produce more berries than they would regularly, both to make up for the loss of the previous year and because of the extra foliage, which provides the plants with more vigor. Pretty cool. Greg and I were invited to help burn one of their fields this year. It was crazy. Lots of fire, water and panic attacks. It was a perfect day to do it - wind blowing in the right direction and nice and dry - and because of that the fire stayed under control and everything went pretty smooth. To control the fire legally you need 1,000 gallons of mobile water at the site and about 4 to 6 people with indian pumps. You spray the edges of your fields with tons of water and amazingly IT STOPS THE FIRE. It was fun but definitely not something I want to do on a regular basis.

May 8, 2010

COMPOST!!!!




Our compost arrived the other day and boy was it some nice compost. We bought 30 yards from Kinney Compost in Knox, ME. Wes Kinney is a real sweetheart who really knows his stuff. We'd like to think he makes some of the best compost in Maine. All organic and natural, it has a horse and cow manure base with a number of additions from the sea. Wes turns the compost a number of times in its aging process and regulates the temperature to promote microbial activity while regulating weed seeds and ensuring that the compost never gets too hot. There was some compost on the property when we arrived but it isn't quite ready, so hopefully next season we'll be on a more self sufficient track in the compost department.

May 3, 2010

Tilling and Seedlings and Planting Oh My

After a couple of very busy weeks our hard work is really starting to pay off. We tilled under the over wintered clover crop a few weeks ago and the soil is looking great. After adding a healthy dose of some of Maine's finest compost (http://www.kinneycompost.com/) and amending the soil with some powdered lime and crab meal the plot was ready for bedding up.


We do all of our plantings in thirty inch beds with one foot paths in between. The primary plot will be divided into three sections, each made up of eighteen forty eight-foot beds, which for the most part will be subdivided into two twenty four foot plantings so that we are planting half of a bed per week for our weekly successions.



We direct seeded our first carrots this week, as well as a bed of arugula and mesclun. We use a 4-way seeder for densely planted crops like carrots and greens, which allows us to plant twelve rows to the bed in straight rows. In the background you can see our first planting of summer squash and zucchini which we set out under a layer of remay. The remay creates a micro-climate for the plants, keeping them and the soil about ten degrees warmer than the outside air.



In the plant house things are coming along great as well. During week one we built some shelves along the back wall for seedling tables. In the center are a couple of simple saw horses providing more table space. It's a small space but with good timing and management it should suffice for the scale we are producing on.



In no time the tables were almost filled up. We seeded all sorts of crops including onions, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, peas, beans, beets, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and more. The wooden frame in the middle is a box I built to keep mice out. We had some visitors the first night we had seeds planted and they devoured a number of our bean, melon and cucumber seeds. It is a simple box made with scrap wood fit for the table, and a screen is nailed to the top so that the soil blocks still have good air circulation. We ended up catching them in some traps we set and since then they haven't caused too much of a problem.



In just a couple of weeks almost all of the seedlings had popped and many are ready to go into the ground. We plant all of our seedlings in the plant house using soil blocks. A technique created by the Dutch and modernized by Eliot Coleman, soil blocks are created using a soil block maker. There are different sized blocks for different seeds, but the general idea is that you form a tray of blocks with moist potting soil and plant your seeds in those blocks. When the seedlings are ready to be transplanted or potted on, you simply pull the soil block from the tray and plant it in the ground. The roots of the plant hold the soil together and the system eliminates the need for any pots. In addition, you are only using the minimum amount of space required for each crop, and in a small plant house like ours, we need all of the space we can muster up. But I'll write more on soil blocks later.