There are so few things not to love about the last weeks of summer leading up to the first days of autumn here at the Eolian Homestead in Oakland, Maine. Fruits and vegetables are abundant, there are heaps of garlic to clean, and the freezer is starting to have its corners filled in. The days are still warm enough to want to find a shady spot for afternoon breaks but the air is crisp in the evenings making one lean a bit closer to the campfire or find a blanket to wrap up in once that sun dips down below the horizon.
Our little ever-growing homestead sits on a hair over five and a quarter acres. We produce a few thousand pounds of produce on our mix of wetland, forest and open space, just a stones-throw from the beautiful Messalonskee Lake. The aim is to increase the quantity and variety year after year. Our location is nearly ideal for our current goals of growing the majority of our food, providing excess to our community to cover costs and educate about sustainable practices.
The quiet town of Oakland is nestled in the heart of the Belgrade Lakes Region. Neighboring Waterville, the petit bustling college city with an arts and culture scene, has grown exponentially over the last decade. The structures here at the Eolian Homestead have a foundation and beams that predate Maine being a State, with additions and amendments that mark the steady march of time that they have survived as the state has undergone massive shifts in transportation, industries and lifestyle.
Now you may think from this picture I have painted it is all walking down to the lake for the towns summer series of concerts and hosting dinner parties for friends but let me tell you, life on a developing homestead has many daily battles. For instance, my wife Molly has been at war with the groundhogs this year. They just will come in and ravage a bed of greens or peas just when they are getting near their peak. Happy to sit there and nibble away at your hard work.
Historically I have been the primary setter of traps. We use snap traps for small rodents and live catch and release traps for anything larger that we can catch. This year however the pressure from groundhogs got so bad that my normally very willing to share wife learned the ins and outs of setting and baiting traps even going so far as to make trails of bait from a den to capture one particularly crafty groundhog. She likes to tell the story of seeing me at my most excited, which I will include a bit further along in this piece, but let me tell you now… I have never seen my wife so proud as when she caught that damn groundhog. That’s not even where the story gets good though.
We have a place that is remote from other growers to release critters we catch and this fellow we were delighted to send off that way. We wrap the trap in a blanket and place it on some cardboard in our vehicle (trapped animals tend to make a mess). After getting out to our spot for rehomed pests, I get out and start to remove the critter of the day. He had one last thrill for Molly though. As I lift the cage out, I must have nudged the release enough for him to lift it and slip out. Of course, he runs away from the large hairy fellow holding his cage. Where does he go, right through the car and out the door Molly has just barely gotten out of. I had seen her run and jump before but not that high and never have I heard her make that noise. I played it as cool as I could but I couldn’t help but laugh a bit and smile knowing that our most rascally critter of the season got in one last prank on his old land lords.
We purchased the land and our home back in 2021 knowing we wanted to build it into an example of environmentally conscious food production combining our passions for education and small-scaled human-powered agriculture. I have a background in agriculture, youth work and volunteering that has seemed for some time to be leading to owning a homestead with intentionality and the opportunity to educate at the center of its focus.
Leaning in and making the move really seemed like a no brainer to us. Who in their right minds wouldn’t want to contribute to their community’s wellbeing by playing in the dirt? Who doesn’t love eating and sharing foods that you intimately know the source of? Little did we know we were also signing up to play the role of Elmer Fudd to the rascally ground hogs and deer that are very grateful a couple of vegetarians planted such a wonderful buffet for them. What path in life doesn’t have its ups and downs, at this point we couldn’t be happier with the wild and sometimes frustrating path we are on.
My wife Molly and I are closing in on our third autumn here at the Eolian Homestead. Our primary focus has been getting the house shored up and updated while establishing a permaculture food forest that we hope will one day not only sustain us, but enrich our neighbors and community. We both work regular jobs to make sure the bills are paid while pouring ourselves, our free time and our souls into developing this homestead. The steady stream of tasks, both expected and out of the blue, keep us busy and on our toes. Building, prepping and planting beds throughout the spring, summer and fall, weeding, tending to perennials year-round, maintaining a steady flow of micro greens in the grow room, weeding, planning and scheduling in the dark days of winter. Did I mention weeding?
Starting out our first year here we would place our excess out by the road in a cooler with a small handmade sign similar to the ones you will see peppered throughout much of our rural state. This past spring we made the plunge and built a permanent roadside stand from beautiful Maine grown and milled cedar. Now you will find the stand stocked in the spring with bouquets of flowers lovingly arranged by Molly, all summer long any abundance we have to offer, and our increasingly popular variety of garlic Art’s Abundance accompanying our late summer and autumn crops. On occasion you might even find things like our tender spring garlic scapes at fine establishments like Meridians restaurant.
The prices in our stand are always suggestions everything we offer up for sale is priced as “pay-what-you-can” because we are committed to the belief that everyone deserves access to local, high -quality produce as well as touches of beauty. We believe that communities, when given the opportunity, rise up and support the folks working to make that a reality. Thus far we have not been disappointed by our community and the support of neighbors and friends.
In the time we have been here we have planted dozens of fruit trees ranging from dwarf apple trees to full sized stone fruit trees along the lines of plums, peaches, cherries and nectarines. The summer of ‘23 we began establishing tree guilds, planting gorgeous rings of flowers that have a symbiotic relationship with our young fruit trees, and will help defend and nourish them for decades to come.
Spaced amongst the trees and their guilds we have cultivated over fourteen hundred square feet of beds for annual crops, asparagus, rhubarb, fruit bushes, flowers and herbs. We love introducing less-common fruits and all the cultivars we can, hoping to be able to offer cuttings to other folks to propagate on their land in the future. Little of this would have been possible without the financial support we receive from participants of our CSA, friends helping at work parties and the folks that stop in at our stand.
We take great pride in experimenting with plants that have shown potential in zone 5b, while also cultivating native plants that are known to thrive here. My wife Molly swears up and down that the most excited she has seen me is when our first round of mushroom logs fruited. I may have come running out of the woods with my hands in the air letting out delighted cries of “huzzah!”. Wait until next year when she sees my exultation at our hopefully successful ramp and ginseng beds.
My endless tending to the boil outside during the maple sap runs in the late winter and early spring may drive Molly a little crazy, but she doesn’t mind the delicious stash of sugar and syrup we are able to produce right here at home. Finding more ways to use our excess sugar and fruits are one of my great joys. This winter we hope to be able to enjoy passing the time with some of our home-brewed strawberry mead and lots of sweet treats.
We continue to add new elements to the homestead, for example this year we planted our first beds of ginger and sweet potato. We are always playing around with different soil building techniques along the lines of Hugelkultur beds, biomass mounds and traditional composting. We do as much as possible to support local pollinators, and as of yet have managed to avoid the use of black plastic and other materials that leech unwanted elements into our soil.
In the years to come we intend to add more varieties of mushroom logs, bring in both ducks and laying hens and, if I get my way, a lovable dairy cow. Like any winding road you walk, it is hard to predict what will be around the next bend.
We will keep planting, tending to our land and hopefully hosting lovely garden parties. If you want to swing by this fall for some garlic or whatever else we may have available that day, you can find us at 47 Belgrade Rd. Oakland, Maine or on the good ol’ Facebook at Eolian Homestead. Come on by!
