A historic small farm on Route 15 in Blue Hill is continuing to produce fruit, vegetables and flowers under new ownership, a year after its last owner worried it would become strictly a residential property.
The roughly one-acre property on Route 15 was known for decades as Backstage Farm. Started as a kitchen garden by Elena Bourakovsky and the late Bill Raiten, it also grew to supply a fermented food business.
Now, new owners MC Brower and Mike Sarraino are running a farmstand there under the name Lindenleaf Farm.
It’s located in a rare stretch of fertile soil – some of Hancock County’s best for crops – on the otherwise often rocky, acidic Blue Hill peninsula. The area has long been home to numerous other farms and targeted for agricultural preservation by local land trusts, and Lindenleaf shows another success at bringing in a younger generation of growers.
When Bourakovsky listed the former Backstage Farm last year for a move closer to her family, she worried it would end up as a second home or otherwise no longer be used to grow food, she told the Bangor Daily News at the time.
Small farmers across Maine who reach retirement age and look for successors often face similar concerns; that can be particularly acute on the peninsula, already an area popular for second homes that saw a pandemic-area boom in home values and new residents.
Enter Brower and Sarraino, who left Washington, D.C. for Blue Hill last fall in search of more space. They have continued growing organically where Bourakovsky left off.
“It was just kind of perfect,” Brower said of seeing the house for the first time.
The two are experienced gardeners, but describe themselves as new homesteaders. The farm is a big change from the seven-foot triangle of alley space in D.C. where one year they successfully grew a single pumpkin that was then stolen.
Three greenhouses and a covered tunnel at the Blue Hill farm were filled Tuesday with vegetables, herbs and flowers, surrounded by fruit plantings including cherries, peaches, plums, currants, elderberries, apples and multiple varieties of raspberries.
The property is too small for a commercial-scale farm, but it’s the right size to keep Brower and Sarraino busy when they’re not working their full time jobs, her remotely in communications and he outside of town in finance – especially now, picking raspberries multiple times a day that sell out by the roadside almost immediately.
They’re exploring the paperwork for contracts supplying restaurants in the future, particularly as an outlet for produce that doesn’t draw in as many roadside customers, and may venture into canned goods someday.
The farm’s new name refers to a linden tree behind the historic home, which Brower said is typically buzzing with pollinators and forms strong underground networks of mycorrhizae – fungi that have a mutually beneficial relationship with plant roots and help them thrive.
Similarly, she feels supporting local food supply chains benefits both farmers and the larger community, she said, something she feels Maine has taken a strong approach to prioritizing but can continue to invest in.
