John Weston, Weston’s Farm

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

John Weston is a seventh channel generation farmer who grows 60 acres of fresh vegetables and 2 acres of them are certified organic. He also coaches Nordic skiing at Freiburg Academy. Thanks for coming in.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm interested in this the fact that you've been doing the work on your farm for seven generations. Well, not you personally, but people have been on your farm for seven generations. Is that a normal thing as far as you can tell?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So seven generations and you still have three of them that are affiliated with the farm.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me about your family. Tell me how they first came to be in Maine, working on this farm in western Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When you say that most people in Maine came from Massachusetts, when your farm started out, Maine was Massachusetts. There was no Maine, because that wasn't until 1820. So how was it that your family decided, oh, we're going to go up further in Massachusetts and. And connect with this plot of land?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Your farm is right next to the river, the river that many people travel in the summertime, especially on inner tubes and canoes and things like that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's a floating circus. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And this has been an interesting thing for you over the years because. Means that your farm is part of a floodplain.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this also means sometimes that when you've had weather extremes that you've needed to adjust things a little bit. Most recently we had the windstorm that affected us on this part of the state with trees down and power outages. And you were mentioning to me that you got a lot. There was a lot of rain up in the mountains and came down and impacted your Christmas trees. Sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Christmas is a big part of what you do with your farm store. When we visited there this summer, we could already see the preceding, I guess, decorations, things, evidence that this was a big season.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When you were growing up, did you know this is what you wanted to do? Did you know that you were going to stay with the family business?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you and I had a conversation when I visited you on the farm about Nordic skiing. Because we were roughly contemporaries in high school and Freiburg Academy had a pretty great ski team. Still does, I believe.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, of course, as the ski coach over there. And Yarmouth also has traditionally had a very good ski team. And it's interesting for me to think that this is something that you've continued to do for all of these years. Some people, high school sports, they kind of, they fade into their backgrounds. But for you this has remained strong.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, I mean, even back when I was in high school, many years ago, the climate still didn't permit for snow on the ground consistently every single winter. So we actually would often travel to Freiburg or Sokopee Valley or other western parts of the state to ski. And one thing that is interesting about skiing is that it keeps, well, coaches and students outside. It keeps you in an, in a time of year when people are generally wanting to just hunker down. And my son played basketball, my daughter played basketball, my other daughter ski swims. But I was a skier so I was out there in those elements. And it really does keep you connected to the, to the seasonality of the state.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This self motivation that you're describing, I would imagine this would be fairly important if you are going to be a farmer, if you are going to work with your hands in an industry where there's some built in uncertainty with things like weather, for example, or market forces. So how have you used this internal motivation to continue to work in this business?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There's also a very strong sense of being connected to the community that I think your farm participates in. Last summer, one of the reasons that we went down there is that you reached out and invited us to your community dinner, which was delicious. All the local vegetables. I think you sent me home with an enormous bag of corn, which is probably the best corn I've ever had, by the way. So, so wonderful there. But also really impressive was the number of people that showed up to sit and essentially break bread together.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things that I enjoyed about our meal is that we sat at a picnic table with people that we had never met before who were nice enough to offer us a place at the end of the bench. And we got to talk to them a little bit about where they were from and how they came to Maine and how they came to the farm in particular. And it just, it struck me that that's not an opportunity that you get very often in this day and age to sit down with people for no other reason than they, that they're next to you, that they offer you a place. You know, we go to the restaurants and we sit by ourselves oftentimes or you know, we have these very self select populations that we kind of work within. Has that been an unintended or maybe an intended consequence of the dinners that you're offering?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's also a nice reminder that the food can really shine on its own. That it was obviously very well and lovingly prepared by Carol and the rest of the people that offered the, the dinner. But when you're eating fresh corn or when you're having. I think my favorite part was maybe the, the maple syrup on the vanilla ice cream, which I don't think I've had since I was a kid. You really can, you can just taste the food in a way that's different than when we go out places and it gets, you know, dressed up or made to feel kind of fancy, I guess, which is also good. It's just different.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things that I continue to hear about from people who have lived in Maine a long time is the necessity of having different things that they do as income streams. And this is something that we have really never given up on as a community. Many of us are doing more than one job. And this is certainly true in your case. You have a farm, but you have a farm that sells Christmas trees and you sell sweet Corn in the summer. And you also work as a Nordic ski coach. And that's just. It seems to be the nature of it if you choose to live in a place like Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, maybe as we have these conversations, things, solutions will continue to bubble to the surface. Haven't solved them yet. But it seems like maybe you've already even identified one ski industry farm. There's got to be some ways that this can be approached that maybe we just haven't thought of yet.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate the work that you're doing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I know that it's complicated, and I know that you have to think in. In small ways and big ways on a regular basis. But I do appreciate it and I appreciate your having us as guests this summer at your farm dinner. And hopefully we'll make it down not next summer, but the summer after that. Two years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've been speaking with John Weston, who is a seventh generation farmer who currently grows 60 acres of fresh vegetables out in the Freiburg area. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming in.