Leslie and family at the new Farm
Welcome to Sturgeon Creek Farm in Eliot, Maine. Many of you knew us as Sidewalk Farms, a small urban farm in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that specialized in growing food intensively in an urban setting. As much as we loved that small farm, we craved and dreamed about something bigger where we could raise livestock and grow food on a much larger scale. In July 2018 our dream came true and we purchased an 18-acre farm across the river in Eliot, Maine. However, our new home had no sidewalks, so a name change seemed appropriate. The name Sturgeon Creek came from the original name of our adopted town of Eliot, Maine as well as the actual creek just down the road from our farm.
Sturgeon Creek Farm will be continuing to do some of the same things Sidewalk Farms was doing as well as a few new things. We will continue to offer organically grown vegetable seedlings in the spring of 2019, just as in previous years, with an order form available in March. We will be selling blueberries and strawberries during the summer as well as vegetables from our expanded market garden.
The new endeavors at Sturgeon Creek Farm will include raising broiler chickens and offering them for sale on the farm as well as pick your own blueberries and strawberries coming in a few years. We will begin selling our farm raised organic whole chickens in Spring 2019 and pick your own strawberries on a small scale in spring 2020. Look for pick your own blueberries in 2021.
The mission of Sturgeon Creek Farm is to grow healthy food using organic, sustainable, regenerative methods and to continue to share our knowledge with the community. We want to be good stewards of this amazing piece of land that we now call home. We plan to offer workshops on our new farm for people interested growing food. Some examples of classes include starting seeds indoors, using an indoor greenhouse, general garden and soil maintenance, care of chickens, butchering classes and more.
Being able to grow our own food is a very empowering skill to learn. As with many skills, the right tools and knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work make the goal infinitely more reachable. If we can teach people just a little about the importance of eating local food (and what is more local than your own yard), why we should avoid pesticides, insecticides and herbicides, and how to have more control in our lives about what we eat, then we are having the desired impact of raising consciousness about food sources and environmental issues and giving people more control over their food choices. We look forward to sharing our knowledge and our food with our great community for many years to come.