Old Habits Die Hard.

For everyone at northern latitudes, the Spring Equinox means longer days. For us, this seasonal end to below-zero-weather comes with the well-entrenched habit of working away at peak Spring shipping, moving out cartons of our Organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes. Here, this last week, Caleb is adding another half-bushel box to the pile of packages waiting for daily pick-up by Fedex Ground. Yet over 90% of our shipments are smaller orders for home gardeners and those boxes are picked up daily by the Post Office.

Later in the week we were at a meeting at the local college. Among those also attending were friends we hadn't seen in years, retired Organic dairy farmers Vaughn and Laura Chase. As is the case with every retired dairy farmer, "retired" translated means they have swapped over from milking dairy cows to keeping a herd of beef cattle. Beef cows enjoy a much less regimented lifestyle and so a farmer's workload is substantially reduced.

After a lifetime of dairying, Vaughn mentioned he still rises at 3 or 4 am. Nowadays, mornings he takes a full hour-long walk, seven days a week. Farmers have their ways and old habits die hard.

     Vaughn & Laura were among the founders of "Maine's Organic Milk (MOM)" company, an effort some years back during turbulent times to start up a farmer-owned milk company.  The farmers' pioneering enterprise was captured by Cicely Pingree in her award-winning documentary film 'Betting the Farm.'  Vaughn & Laura are farmer-stars.

Caleb, Peter, Megan & Jim