Did you hear about Laughing Stock Farm?

When restaurants in Freeport, Maine, were closed due to COVID, Laughing Stock Farm was in serious jeopardy.

You may have read this story. It was in the New York Times two weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Given the recent unrest and the fact we are one week away from Blue Monday (January 18th, the most depressing day of the year), Ralph and Lisa Turner’s story gives me hope.

Here’s the skinny, Ralph and Lisa are engineers by education, organic farmers by trade and passion. They began cultivating Laughing Stock Farm in 1996 with a 1/2 acre in Freeport, Maine. They have grown to having 13 acres and 80 laying hens. Laughing Stock’s primary customer has been Freeport’s restaurants. When the governor shut down the restaurants in the spring due to COVID, they found themselves with eight greenhouses full of produce and 10 tons of crops in cold storage. For my friends who didn’t grow up among farmers, it works like this, farmers invest everything in planting, often times borrowing against the future to pay for seed, fertilizer, additional laborers, etc…then they work their tails off anticipating harvest. By the time harvest comes, the money is long spent and the work is mostly done. It’s supposed to be time to reap the rewards,

This time the Turners found themselves with lots of stock and no buyers and no money to invest in the next crop. (As any story about COVID is incomplete without using the word, “pivot”, I’ll use it now.) The Turners pivoted. They opened a farm stand, bagging vegetables and selling them for $3/bag. Lisa said she anticipated selling about 10 bags of vegetables a day. They sent emails to folks who had participated in their CSA program. CSA customers shared the news and then those folks shared and before you knew it, Lisa had sold 130 dozen eggs. In Lisa’s words, “There were a gazillion people.” Many of the folks chose to over pay. In the end, not one item had to be thrown out, everything was sold.

The Turners have started 2021 with a fully stocked farm store, selling their own produce as well as dairy and meat from other local farmers. Lisa concluded the interview with “There’s a lot to be thankful for. And it’s an antidote to fear.” Amen.