FEATURES
Farming Ahead of the Curve

by Judith M. Powell

Dairy, crops and much more

The retail wool store was the first enterprise Gloria began when she and Gregg started the farm. It serves the year-round gift market plus hosts classes in crafting, spinning, weaving and felting. Photos by Ryan Burnham.

When young adults from private college choose to hang out weekends at your farm, when families come for information and healthy food, when people pay to learn how to farm and add value, success has been achieved. Gregg and Gloria Varney of Turner Center, Maine, earned their reputation for showing how a healthy lifestyle is something to be treasured. Their farm is a destination.

Since they met 25 years ago, Gregg and Gloria have been developing the dairy that Gregg’s grandfather started three generations ago. Now, the diverse operation, with dairy, crops, livestock, and gardens, includes a full-service Farm Store and Café featuring farm-grown products and home-made foods, Tea Room serving fancy pastry, Wool Room with fine homespun goods and classes and Cheese Room where 12 specialty cheeses are made. With both parents working full-time on the farm, Nezinscot Farm life is centered on family and home and hard work. Being innovative, clever and alert to changing times keeps the Varneys ahead of the curve.

Getting to Nezinscot Farm takes the traveler through a bucolic countryside of rolling hillsides and open pastures across narrow bridges over the bending river.

Turner, Maine, is prime farm country. Early settlers in 1780 knew the undulating valleys carved by two rivers would be productive. They built farms along the Nezinscot River’s curvatures on its way to the 178-mile Androscoggin River. The farmers, praised as “wide-awake and intelligent” by the commissioner of agriculture at the turn of the century, decided early to market cooperatively and, in 1882, formed a cross-commodity agricultural board called the Turner Centre Dairying Association to market butter, cheese and evaporated apples. The fertile area became Maine’s most productive farming community. Now, the Varney’s Nezinscot Farm is one of only four dairies still operating. When Gregg graduated high school in 1972, there were 30 dairies on one road alone.

Gloria makes 12 varieties of cheese every two to three days, and Nezinscot cheeses are gaining in recognition as demand from restaurants and specialty shops grows sharply.

Love at first sight begins the story. “My dad and I came to pick up meat at her father’s butcher shop, and I looked up and saw hay bales flying out of the barn loft,” Gregg says. Gloria had just graduated college with a degree in community health education when Gregg proposed, and they married in 1987. With a degree in animal science and ag economics, Gregg was ready to take over his father’s business, so the energetic young couple bought the farm and started out highly motivated.

A young couple shifting course away from the pack is taking a huge risk, and that’s exactly what Gregg and Gloria did when they converted to organic production to become the first certified organic dairy in the state of Maine in 1994. Sticking their neck out in an unproven market took guts. Turner’s generations of skeptical conventional H. P. Hood producers adopted a wait-’n-see posture. It took seven years before a second entrepreneur, Gregg’s cousin, joined the Varneys in getting certified.

“We were looking for alternatives,” Gregg says, because milk prices were dropping in 1994, from $18 a hundred-weight down to $12, and then down to $10 a hundred-weight. Getting organic certification from NOFA Vermont, before Maine’s licensing agency was in place, went smoothly, as Gregg had stopped spraying corn and using chemical fertilizers in 1976.

Gloria and Gregg Varney with their children.To Gloria’s right is Roy. To Gregg’s left is Everet. In front of Gloria is Natasha with Samantha to her left. Sitting in front with the white cowboy hat is Mackenzie.

Producing organic milk has paid off. Their Brown Swiss-Holstein-Jersey crosses supply milk for Stonyfield Farm organic yogurt via CROPP (Wisconsin-based Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool). As the economy and organic demand sagged last year, CROPP’s forward thinking set quotas for supply management, a move Gregg credits. The decision cut pay price by $1 per hundredweight, and CROPP used the savings to turn surplus milk into dried milk and cheese.

Gregg could handle CROPP’s pay reduction because he grows most of his feed and buys minimal organic grain to supplement the grass-based operation. He feeds fermented earlage, which provides nearly all energy the cows require. Four years ago, Gregg experimented on a few acres, picking and grinding the entire ear of mature field corn, including husk and cob for fiber, and ensiled it in bunker silos where it fermented. The trials resulted in a palatable and nutritious, high-energy fermented feed. Varney’s 24 tons per acre of organic silage beats the statewide average of 18 tons per acre, and his first of three cuttings of haylage on the 250-acre parcel used for pasture and crops is in by the first week in June most years. Fog from the rivers protects the fields by moderating the temperatures on the intervale lands.

Condensing corn rows is another production method Gregg uses. Planting in 15-inch rows instead of traditional 30-inch rows means plants get more sunlight and roots get more nutrients. The ground shades faster, which slows weed growth requiring less cultivation.

Their marketing plan is the real key to dairy profit. Any milk not sold wholesale is retailed in the Nezinscot Farm Store or Café under the Turner Center Creamery label: Milk and cream, fresh butter and clotted cream, yogurt and more than a dozen varieties of hard, molded and fresh cheese, plus goat milk products—cream, butter and cheeses, soaps and other beauty products—all made at the farm. Direct sales add significant profit to the dairy segment. Two full-timers assist Gregg in the dairy operation.

The Nezinscot Farm Store and Café

Nezinscot’s Farm Store is much more than just the vehicle for profit return to the dairy. Early risers, say 4:30 a.m., come to enjoy the pleasant aroma of baking. Gloria’s hefty breads come in 14 flavors from cheddar mustard or dilly cheese to the traditional wheat and oatmeal, baking 50 to 90 loaves every day. In the wee hours, Gloria prepares lunch specials, selects cheeses for tasting and rolls crust for Nezinscot’s hearty pizza, which comes heaped with vegetables, cheeses, meats and sauce. Nezinscot meats include dairy beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, pork, goat and duck and are sold Cryovac-sealed and frozen. The full coffee bar offering espresso, latte and specialty coffees is an unexpected treat to accompany many dessert choices like big fat cookies and rich cheesecakes. Many jams and jellies, sauces and juices that line the shelves are made in winter, using ingredients picked in-season and frozen. The array of good food, along with the knowledge that all is made from farm-grown ingredients and made here at the farm, urges customers to come back again. Through the daily cycle, Gloria and family demonstrate how good health is nourished from simple self-sufficiently—a living model of community health education.

Arriving visitors are drawn to the store in the large remodeled barn. Stepping in to grandmother’s old-fashioned kitchen with colorful cloths on country tables situated in private nooks throughout the space suggests making yourself to home and helping yourself.

The Cheese Room

A massive wooden door to the side of the store heralds the entrance to Nezinscot’s spacious new Cheese Room where Gloria makes 12 varieties of cheese every two to three days. After her recent trip to Italy, where she was guest lecturer at the Spannocchia Foundation, she decided to bring a feel of Tuscany to the high-ceilinged kitchen. Nezinscot cheeses are gaining in recognition as demand from restaurants and specialty shops grows sharply. Two full-time staffers assist Gloria in the store, café, gardens and kitchens. Seasonally more part-time help plus volunteers and interns work on the farm.

The Wool Room

Ascending a wide staircase in the store welcomes visitors into the lanolin world. Here, natural wools, fleeces, yarns of many country hues, knit sweaters, boiled wool and knitwear, sheepskins and blankets are organized for sale. Gloria dyes the yarn sheared from their own sheep, goats, llamas and alpacas. Spinning wheels and looms enclose well-seasoned wooden rocking chairs poised around a large braided rug where knitters learn or socialize. The retail wool store was the first enterprise Gloria began when she and Gregg started the farm. It serves the year-round gift market plus hosts classes in crafting, spinning, weaving and felting.

A cup of tea in the Tea House with delicious homemade desserts is a unique and exceptional treat.

The Tea House

How unusual is it to find a Tea House on a farm that serves full or light tea with flaky croissants and fresh scones? Nezinscot’s Tea Room occupies what was once the herdsman’s house and tool shed. Now, it offers a tucked-away retreat and a pleasant respite with nature among birdhouses, bees and butterflies, flower and herb gardens.

Learn homesteading & life skills

How-to classes in farming, organics, value-adding, business management—any of Nezinscot’s specialties—rotate on a seasonal schedule and are open to people experienced in farming or not, with or without accommodations. A hands-on approach under skilled tutelage is the format. Gloria enjoys discussing lifestyle choices and showing people how food and fiber is produced. Beekeeping, bread and cheese making, cow and goat dairying, running a farm store, herb and vegetable growing, canning and processing, small and large animal husbandry, sheep shearing and spinning, soap and sausage making are examples of the basics of life on an environmentally-sensitive working farm in the context of a healthy family setting.

Diversity, efficiency, creativity, beauty

Each aspect of Nezinscot’s diversified business brings a unique contribution to the whole; any one part by itself is not enough to sustain the working family farm; the combination of everything together maintains the business. The Varneys have figured out the formula. “We complement each other instead of compete,” Gregg says. “A little bit of a lot, and a lot of everything allows me to stay happy and do what I’m doing,” Gloria adds.

Not only is the Varney family still farming when so many are not anymore, they are making a success of it—and they have found a way to share their love of farming while educating about healthy food choices.

Visit www.NezinscotFarm.com to see and learn more.

The author is a freelance writer from Whitefield, Maine.