UNITY, Maine — On a chilly night in late April, a spider crept into the thermostat in the greenhouse at Buckle Farm in Unity and, once inside, spun a web.
That small and ordinary act caused a catastrophe for farmers Jim Buckle and Hannah Hamilton, who had spent the last few months tending the seeds and seedlings in the warm greenhouse that they would plant in their fields when the weather allowed. The spider web, snugly woven between the thermostat’s electrical contacts, prevented the propane furnace from turning on and heating the greenhouse that night.
The morning after, Hamilton went in the greenhouse to check the crops. Her heart sank as she looked around and began to realize she and Buckle, her fiance, had lost all their tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings — thousands of dollars worth — to frost. Although it was easy enough to remove the spider and restart the furnace, the outlook to the farm seemed bleak.
“Without tomatoes, you might as well not go to farmers markets,” Buckle, who sold over $20,000 worth of tomatoes two years ago, said. “We even have a tomato CSA. We would have had a lot of explaining to do.”
But instead of explaining the bad news to their customers, they took a chance and reached out to fellow farmers and growers, asking for any extra seedlings that could be spared. Buckle and Hamilton said this week that they’ve been overwhelmed, in the best of ways, by the answers to their pleas.
“We got a huge response,” Hamilton said.
Buckle said the calls, emails and Facebook messages offering extra seedlings or just words of support came from near and far.
“Most people just don’t want you to fall on your face,” he said. “Farming is like a marathon that is run 10 months of the year. We all know how slim the margins are. And there’s always someone that needs help.”
Tim Davis, a grower at Sprague’s Nursery & Garden Center on Union Street in Bangor, was one of the people who read about the farm’s plight on Facebook and who reached out to help, delivering some tomato and pepper seedlings to Unity.
“I was able to give him some of my extras, which helped get him where he needed to be,” Davis said. “We gave them a really good deal, just basically recouping the costs of the seeds, pots and soil. Unity is far enough away that he’s not really in our market, per se. But even the small greenhouses here I’ve always felt that it’s better to be a friend than a competitor.”
That kind of kindness has meant the world to Buckle and Hamilton.
“We lost the whole crop, but guess what, all these people came through, and we’re back on track,” Buckle said. “I just think that there’s camaraderie among farmers, especially here in Maine.”
‘Like a tomato graveyard’
Two weeks after the furnace failure, life has normalized at the Buckle Farm. The afternoon of May 9, while unseasonable snowflakes fell from leaden skies, inside the greenhouse it was warm and smelled richly of green, growing things. Hamilton worked deftly to separate some of the tomato plugs they had received after the disaster, repotting the tiny seedlings into larger containers.
At the farm, they grow 6 acres of vegetables and non-tree fruit and 4 acres of pears, apples and plums, which they largely haul down to Boston to sell to chefs and at market. And they know all about hard work and the feeling of being at the mercy of the weather. Last summer Buckle and Hamilton were among those who helped Misty Brook Farm in Albion recover after a destructive microburst ripped through its fields.
Normally, the farmers check the greenhouse around midnight to make sure that everything is OK. But the day before the disaster, they had been pulling rocks from their front field and were so tired they slept through their usual greenhouse check.
“I was in shock,” Buckle said of the sight of the frost-bitten seedlings.
The farm is known around Boston for its bountiful selection of tomatoes, usually growing 30 types of mixed heirloom and other varieties. It was hard for the farmers to see all 3,500 tomato seedlings, about 700 pepper plugs and about 300 eggplants plants need to be removed from the greenhouse.
“We filled the back of the truck and brought it over to the compost,” Hamilton said. “It’s like a tomato graveyard.”
Seth Kroeck, the owner-manager of Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick, said that he definitely understands their plight.
“When you hear about something like this that has happened to anybody, it hits you in the gut,” he said. “We’ve been farming here in Maine for the last 14 years, and we’ve had plenty of problems like that. We even had a similar situation five or six years ago with an apprentice who did not set the heater correctly on our greenhouse. We ended up losing all our tomatoes. And we had a lot of people who stepped up to give us plants so we could carry on.”
Kroeck said that he is planning to give Buckle and Hamilton some eggplant seedlings.
“The farm community in Maine is small and relatively tight-knit. We all know each other, and we’re happy to lend a hand,” he said.
Meanwhile, Buckle and Hamilton are still on the hunt for hot pepper seedlings to replace the ones they lost, but thanks to the help of other farmers and growers, they have a good feeling about this season. It might not be business as usual, exactly, but they are pretty sure it will work out fine.
“We know we’ll get through it,” Hamilton said.
But at least one thing has changed permanently because of the greenhouse furnace debacle: they check the thermostat all the time to see if any more unwelcome visitors have gotten inside.
“I didn’t like spiders before,” Buckle said. “Now I definitely hate them.”