Farming with my grown kids:

Farming with my grown kids!

     I may have started farming with Gil who was 1 and Kenya who was 5 and sage was not even here yet.

The year is 2001 and I bought a farm! So I could be a stay at home mom and grow food for us and our community, and make pies and jams at a road side stand.

The years went by quickly, and yet slowly all at the same time. We home schooled and did very cool family outings. Raised animals, sheep and showed them at the fairs and spun there wool and raised oxen a team! Brought them home in the back of our Toyota 4 runner.

But now the year is 2021,

Gil is 21, Sage is 16 and Kenya has just married Eben and she is 24. Gil is off doing cool stuff on islands that  he has always dreamed of. He island care takes in Penobscot bay, starting his kelp and oyster farm, and selling his lobster boat and gear. Finished up at Sterling college in Vermont.  And now he is a island boy,

Kenya is married to Eben, and they are moving to Steamboat springs Colorado! Where Eben has taken a teaching job at the mountain school and Kenya is continuing her Doula business.

Sage is a freshman in Highschool of course homeschooled with her Oakmeadow Curriculum, and just loves being at the farm.

So what is it like farming with my grown kids? Well it is different then with little kids! They have there own minds and have a agenda of there own filled with there ambitions and dreams and in Kenya’s case with a partner. Sage and I are the primary farmers, and Gil comes home on the weekends to do repairs and buck up firewood for the upcoming season. Sage and I round around chasing her alpine ski schedule and then in the summer we run around chasing her softball schedule. And the rest of the time we do our best to have a even balance between personal and farm life.

We have the same work load at the farm, with vegetable production for 200+ CSA members, and wedding and event flowers, the farm stand open everyday 9-6 and a farm to table dinner in the summer and we top it all off with Farm camp for the kiddos and at the end of the season you have a very tired Sage and Mom.

But we can’t imagine doing anything else with our lives at this point. We are relentless in growing food for our community and cooking it up for ourselves, veggies, turkey’s and chickens and of course lamb.The farm stand is loaded with our goods that we passionately create, from ready bake meals and soups, wool socks that we hand spin the wool and knit up. Our farmstore is the hub of our lives, it is the first place we start each day at making pies and it is the last place we end in the evenings after the last customers have left. We welcome our visitors at the farm with tours of our gardens and greenhouses where we grow vegs and flowers and of course no tour is complete without a final visit to the barn, the home of Nestor and Ginger our team of horses and Roscoe our single ox and sheep, ducks, bunnies and hens.

Welcome to the new age of Winterberry farm and how we farm with grown children.

Mary of Winterberry farm