🔒Cecily Pingree: Focusing on sustainable agriculture

North Haven filmmaker/restaurateur Cecily Pingree has a lot to say about the importance of supporting local agriculture. Her films “Meet Your Farmer” and “Betting the Farm” highlighted small farms in Maine, including operations at MOO Milk, which stopped production this spring.

Her newest venture, a renovation of the historic Calderwood Hall building in North Haven's downtown, provides year-round housing for five residents of North Haven, an island in the Penobscot Bay notorious for its lack thereof. It also houses a small grocery store, The Market at Calderwood Hall, and a pizza restaurant, both of which put into action Pingree's belief in the importance of the farm-to-table movement.

Mainebiz: Why is farm-to-table important?

Cecily Pingree: It's a movement going across the whole country, not just North Haven or Maine, but it happens to be super strong in Maine. I've spent a lot of the last five years doing video work on farms, “Betting the Farm” and “Meet Your Farmer.” The [Calderwood Hall] restaurant piece and the marketplace is a really good place to have people shift the movement and have people aware of what's going on in agriculture.

We'll get a shipment from [North Vassalboro-based] Crown O'Maine Organic Cooperative once a week and buy anything from on island. The great thing about COMOC is it's an incredible organization sourcing food across Maine, a unique marketplace. As much as we can, we're using local ingredients in the restaurant.

MB: Talks about reviving MOO Milk fell through. What's your take on what's happening?

CP: When you watch “Betting the Farm” those guys had so many highs and lows. It seemed like they had good sustainability, which is hard to find, particularly in the milk business because in the national marketplace there are so many highs and lows. They had carved out a niche, the product had a name for itself. With the plant processor and the machine, which are two of the reasons why they folded, I think that it's really unfortunate and probably somewhat typical of business. You have something major like that and don't have a lot of capital or a lot of investment and you get a million and a half dollar piece of machinery that busts and there was no other option. I've talked to a lot of the farmers and the CEO. Stonyfield Farms is buying their milk for organic prices, but they put so much hard work into building the [MOO] brand. Obviously it's a big deal because for all those farmers it was a really exciting movement, to own your own company, to sit on the board. To have a voice in calling the shots was unique in the milk business. It's tragic and the farmers are bummed out. Back to square one.

It makes me feel sad and overwhelmed for those farmers that put so much work into building the company and put a lot of their investment and time into it. In the big scheme of things, the most interesting part to me is that you've got this big farmer movemen, but one of the hard things about it is making sustainable businesses and marketplaces for those products. If we want businesses like MOO Milk there has to be these kinds of things — whether it's farmers markets, farm-to-tables — little movements that are helping these farms succeed.

MB: What else has the Calderwood Hall renovation added to the community?

CP: I knew that with the lack of year-round housing, that would be good for people who live here, work here and can bank on the fact that they don't have to move out in the summertime. The lights are on year round in a big building right in the middle of Main Street. My hope for this space is that it can be flexible and become something people can rent out for weddings or parties. We're doing something nobody else is doing, but not infringing on anyone else's business. In a small town you have to do that to be successful. It's a small pool to pull from and there's definitely so much crossover you've got to work with everyone else out here to make it work.