Courtesy / Hart Farm
The old post-and-beam barn required considerable renovation.
August 20, 2021
Harvesting history: Millennial couple breathes new life into heritage farm in Holden
Courtesy / Hart Farm
Becky and Andrew Toothacker bought the 19th-century Hart Farm in March 2020, and today have it up and running after a period of decline.
After 20 fallow years and help from the Holden Land Trust and Maine Farmland Trust, a mid-19th-century farm in Holden has new owners who are rapidly bringing the operation back to life.
Becky and Andrew Toothacker bought Hart Farm in March 2020, and immediately launched into repairs and upgrades. They included extensive renovations of the farmhouse and barn, construction of infrastructure such as a greenhouse and an irrigation well, and soil reclamation.
The millennial couple planted four acres this past spring and instituted a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, program, which sells shares of their production. The Toothackers also are raising hogs as a method to help reclaim land and to sell for meat.
The couple uses “regenerative” methods, which utilizes a variety of soil building practices as well as livestock to maintain pasture and woodlots.
Saved from development
Hart Farm spans nearly 160 acres, 50 of which are tillable and nearly 110 of which are wooded. In 2011, when owner C. Evans Hart died, the century-plus-old farm was in jeopardy of being sold for nonagricultural use, according to a news release.
To save the farm and its open space, the Holden Land Trust led the “Campaign for Hart Farm,” purchased the property in 2017, and instituted an easement that would require future uses of the land to be agricultural.
Enter the Toothackers, who were looking for an affordable and scalable farm to buy.
Andrew Toothacker, originally from Portland, Ore., has a background in cooking, which led him to various agricultural experiences that included working on a farm in France.
Becky Toothacker, from Falmouth, Mass., studied social work and sustainable agriculture at the University of Vermont.
The two separately pursued professional farming apprenticeships and met during an agriculture and nature retreat for apprentices in upstate New York.
“We had the same core visions in mind,” said Andrew.
They developed an incubator farm, with a CSA program, on a couple of acres owned by Becky’s family in New Hampshire.
“We realized we didn’t have enough land to scale up, so we started seeking that out,” Andrew said. “We had the profit margin we wanted, but not enough to be a sustainable business year-round. We needed to grow seven or eight times the scale of what we had been doing.”
Courtesy / Hart Farm
Considerable work went into the farmhouse last year to make it livable.
They also wanted to transition from hand labor to mechanical cultivation, in order to achieve operational efficiencies that would produce more while lowering prices charged to customers.
They came across Holden Land Trust’s listing for Hart Farm which, in addition to farmland, also includes a trail network. The trust retains an easement on the trail system and maintains it for public use.
Maine Farmland Trust owns an agricultural easement on the property that ensures it will be a farm in perpetuity.
The couple paid $140,000 for the property, financed with their savings.
The structures needed considerable work just to get settled.
“Every square inch needed a lot of work,” said Toothacker.
Sweat equity
The couple launched into renovations last year.
Work on the colonial-style farmhouse included replacing supports, footings, and plumbing and electrical systems, a ton of plasterwork, redoing the floors and installing a new chimney sleeve. The couple performed the work themselves, with help from Becky’s parents; her father is a homebuilder and Andrew had worked with him for a while in New Hampshire on remodeling jobs.
Courtesy / Hart Farm
The Toothackers built a greenhouse to start seeds.
Work on the post-and-beam barn included jacking it up, replacing the sills, rejoining posts and beams that had separated, and a fair amount of reframing. The couple gutted the front room, which had been a milking parlor for the farm’s dairy cows, and turned it into a CSA pickup market.
Investment in the renovations to date has been around $40,000.
Further renovations are needed.
“The more we’re able to grow the CSA, the more we can take a chunk of that every year and directly finance this huge renovation project,” said Toothacker.
Also key to getting the farm up and running was equipment. They financed the purchase of a tractor and other equipment to prepare the fields through a bank loan and a $20,000 grant from Coastal Enterprises Inc.
Fifty of the farm’s 160 acres are tillable, said Toothacker. Last summer, they began turning and preparing the fields, which had become overgrown. They started seeds in a greenhouse — which they also built — and did an initial planting on four acres this past spring. The plan is to grow mixed vegetables, increase the acreage planted each year and grow their CSA. Plantings include lettuce, garlic, kohlrabi and bok choy.
“In any given year, we’ll grow 80 different cultivars at least,” he said.
CSA shares sell quickly
The community quickly rallied around the CSA, buying all shares for the 2021 season and donating three shares to families in need. The CSA offers members weekly pickups on the farm from July through October.
Courtesy / Hart Farm
A harvest day in June.
At the moment, the farm has a little over 30 CSA memberships. The goal is to have 100 members. From their experience in New Hampshire, the Toothackers had determined that number would provide enough income to finance year-round operations, which includes off-season purchases and infrastructure improvements.
Although they’re newcomers to the area, they didn’t have any problem attracting CSA members, Andrew said.
“This town loves this farm,” he said.
Many people remember C. Evans Hart, his children live on either side of the farm and the trail network is a popular walking spot, he continued.
“So bringing it back to life really touched a lot of people,” he said. “We put out signs that said ‘Join our CSA’ and we were able to attract the initial memberships we needed to get started. We credit our CSA for saving this farm.”
The amount of production this year is hard to say, because there are so many different crops.
“We’re not tracking yield in that sense,” he said.
Each CSA member enrolls for a 20-week period and is entitled to $25 per week worth of vegetables. The farm also services several farmers markets. And the couple founded the Holden Farmers Market to sell produce and provide a weekly market for fellow local producers, crafters and bakers.
Courtesy / Hart Farm
Pigs help to clear fields.
All told, “We’re probably harvesting 70 to 80 CSA shares worth. That’s probably about $2,000 per week worth of vegetables,” he calculated.
The couple performs all of the farm work themselves, although they have a volunteer list they tap into now and then. They receive a lot of support from a local family.
Heritage pigs
The couple is also raising heritage pigs, which for them means pigs that have retained their foraging ability.
“Heritage breeds can feed themselves, diversify their own diet and help reclaim land,” Andrew said.
That’s been helpful for reclaiming fields that had become impenetrable with grasses.
“Since we’ve put the pigs there, they’ve allowed us to retake that land by eating and rooting, and we can use that as farmable land again,” he said.
The Toothackers run a farm share program for the meat once the pigs are grown. They have 12 pigs at the moment. Two are registered breeding stock.
Customers have signed up for half-shares of pig meat. The two breeder pigs will be retained, but the others will be sent for processing this fall. A half-share is 70-80 pounds of meat, which is fully processed to customer specification. This week, for example, Toothacker was calling each share member to develop a checklist of meat products they’d like. That includes specifications such as how thick they want their chops, whether to smoke their hams and what flavors of sausage they’d like. Butchering will be performed by U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified slaughterhouse Herring Brothers in Guilford.
This winter, they’ll start a breeding program to grow the herd. Ultimately, the couple envisions raising 50 to 70 pigs per year. In addition to half-shares, they plan to develop smaller retail cuts as well as wholesale products for restaurants.
Learning curve
Although they had plenty of previous experience, there’s been a learning curve. Toothacker said his biggest concern was their lack of experience in mechanics, which would be needed to maintain farm vehicles and equipment. So last year, he earned a one-year certificate in diesel equipment engines and heavy equipment technology from Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor.
Courtesy / Hart Farm
The Toothackers worked with the University of Maine to build an experimental water source called a “novel shallow well” to provide an expected tens of thousands of gallons of irrigation water. UMaine will provide quantitative and qualitative data on the project.
“That was pretty pivotal,” he said. “That allowed me to have the confidence to service my own equipment and do my own fabrication for the farm. For example, I learned how to do welding. We were able to buy a really cheap dumptruck and I welded in a new floor. Now we use it on a dally basis.”
Ecological stewardship
For the Toothackers, the farm represents an “ecological stewardship” opportunity.
“There are so many opportunities with farming, both for community growth and ecological stewardship,” they said in a joint statement. “Farming is a way for us to feed our community, keep their dollars in the community, and localize their footprint.”
“When the Holden Land Trust purchased the Hart Farm, we had many lofty goals: conserving rapidly-dwindling farms, preserving the rural character of our town, and providing trails and open space for the community,” Kris Mangene Reid, president of the trust, said in a news release. “Not only have we exceeded our goals, but with Becky and Andrew at the helm, Hart Farm is rapidly becoming a productive part of the Holden community.”
On Sept. 26, Hart Farm will host a CSA Day event to introduce the community to the produce offered through its CSA; tickets are available on the Hart Farm Facebook page.
The CSA shares and half-hog shares for the 2021 season sold out, but the Toothackers plan to increase shares for the 2022 season. For more information, click here.
Hart Farm is open to visitors and hikers; the farm is located at 430 Copeland Hill Road in Holden, and has a trailhead with a public parking lot located just across the street from the farm house.
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