We are a diverse, small-scale farm, currently in our first growing season. Our primary mission is to grow healthy food in a sustainable manner for ourselves and our family. We also sell surplus farm products in order to subsidize farm expenses, such as animal feed. In the future, we hope to earn our organic certification, expand our gardens, and market our produce at local farmers markets or through a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

Our farm consists of 23-acres including 20-acres of mixed forest, approximately one-quarter acre of organic gardens in vegetables and berries, and a small apple orchard. Our goats and chickens roam freely throughout several fenced acres of our forest to provide them with a diverse diet and plenty of exercise.

We grow the majority of our own food, including apples, berries, vegetables, eggs, dairy, meat, and maple syrup, in addition to cutting our own firewood. We believe in nurturing our soil and being involved with every aspect of our food production cycle. To this end, we build our own compost from local organic matter, start all of our seedlings in our indoor plant nursery, preserve our crops for the winter using various methods, and save seeds from our own vegetables in order to complete the cycle of gardening. We are not yet involved in growing hay or grains for animal feed, but we are looking into the possibility of creating some hay fields in the future.

We have three years cumulative farming experience and are always exploring new techniques and methods for sustainable food production. We hope that you continue to follow our progress as our farm evolves and we continue to learn, grow, and develop alongside our plants and animals.

Thom and Alia

Thomas Young and Alia Al-Humaidhi met in the fall of 2004 while research diving at the Santa Barbara, California Channel Islands at a beautiful site named Orizaba Reef. Both were studying towards degrees in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Thom was working on a Ph.D. at the time and Alia on her Bachelor's. We both grew up with a deep appreciation for Nature and for our connections as human consumers to our local ecosystems and to the global biosphere. Through our increasing understanding of the impacts of industrial agriculture upon the planet, we began to embark upon a personal journey into the world of sustainable and local agriculture. We soon became regular visitors to local farmer's markets and farms and aspired to start our own garden or farm to grow much of our own food.

Thom spent several months working on various organic farms in Oregon, California, and Costa Rica. He deeply enjoyed and valued the hard physical labor, outdoor work environment, and close association with natural rhythms – both daily and seasonal – that farming entailed. Through his time working on other farms, he began to realize that organic, sustainable farming was merely a form of applied ecology – the management of an agricultural ecosystem. Thus, farmers could benefit tremendously from having a strong academic background in the earth and life sciences, such as that which he and Alia possessed.

Although he truly enjoyed the ecological field research that he conducted for science, Thom doubted his ability to find personal fulfillment in the long months of data analyses, grant applications, and scientific writing that accompanied every field season. He also felt an ethical obligation to live as sustainably as possible, with minimal dependence on fossil fuels, and to reduce his impact as a consumer upon the Earth and its life support systems. After much introspection and deliberation, he decided to leave academia to pursue an ecologically sustainable lifestyle by attempting to grow as much of the food we eat throughout the year as possible. During this time of decisiveness, Thom went diving with Alia back at Orizaba reef, the place where they first met, and proposed to her underwater.

We completed our academics at UCSB, Thom graduating with a Master’s degree rather than a Ph.D., and Alia completing her Bachelor’s with Honors. We then moved to Maine so that Alia could pursue her career as a fisheries biologist, beginning her Master’s education at the University of Maine in Orono in the fall of 2007. We settled into our current location in Bangor and got straight to work. Take a look around the rest of our website to see what we have done.