Hello and hope you are having a productive and happy winter, we are Stowell and Marina- the brand spanking new farm interns at Rippling Waters Backyard Organics! We both grew up a few miles from the farm and have watched it grow and expand as a part of our Maine landscape- the fields reaching ever closer to the Saco, the new concrete compost bins springing up, tractors puttering between olive skinned farm hands- but never had the impetus to become involved, until now.
Early last January we embarked on a life-changing odyssey across the country. From snowy Pennsylvania to the arid Mojave Desert we lived out of the back of Marina's Toyota Tacoma, working for our room and board through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms program (WWOOF). Every few weeks we'd open the WWOOFer's guide-book to feast our eyes upon a host of unique organic farms and, pulling out our dog-eared atlas, move west into unexplored territories, well-springs of new ideas, radical methods of subsistence, fresh vegetables, soils of all make and kind, and ultimately - our future.
In Colorado we found one of the most hip farming towns we've seen, Paonia, nestled at the foot of the towering Land's End and Lamborn Mountains. There we worked on a large organic CSA vegetable and flower farm and earned the collective nickname of "The Mighty Mainahs." In New Mexico we tended a massive herd of goats 7,000ft up in a Native American territory speckled with striped pottery, tribal bunk houses, and other relics of the civilization once so powerful there. We put our fingers into the earth at a farm that supplied the produce for a Buddhist restaurant deep in the Zion area of Utah, and in Pennsylvania we made hundreds of bars of herbal soap and teas and received daily instruction from a wise farmer by the name of Rusty.
Through these experiences and more along the way we quickly realized our passion for farming, for growing things without the use of chemicals, and for upholding a way of life lost to those in highly urbanized areas of the world and lost to many of our twenty-something generation. We saw people thriving without money, we saw sunsets as we cooked on our travel stove, we saw our hands grow dirtier and our hair grow longer, we saw food from field to plate and we saw, above all things, the importance of work and how fulfilling it can be to sit beside a friend and pull weeds.
It is this tremendous energy we will employ in the fields by the Saco River, helping as others have before us to turn out nutritious produce from the soil there. Our hopes are to learn everything we possibly can from Julee, Richard and everyone else associated so that one day we can start our own small farm on Stowell's family land in Limington. So if you are driving by the farm some sunny day make sure to stop by, we would love to meet you and shake your hand among the swooping plovers and the wonderful things growing all around.
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