Glenda Pereira: 00:07
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant professor with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and dairy specialist, as well as an assistant professor of animal science within the School of Food and Agriculture. And we have Jacki Perkins, who is the organic dairy and livestock specialist for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. I’m really excited to have a conversation with you about your role within the Maine community as well as MOFGA’s role. So welcome to the Farmcast.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 00:41
Hey. Thanks for having me. As Glenda said, my name is Jacki Martinez Perkins. I work for a branch of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which I’m now gonna call MOFGA. I work in the farmer programs division.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 00:55
Our department is, like my colleague Caleb Goossen, who’s our crop specialist, likes to say, the organic version of UMaine Extension.
Glenda Pereira: 01:08
I 100% agree.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 01:09
That’s fair. Yes. So I was like, whatever they do, we do it for organic. So the other branch of MOFGA is MOFGA Certification Services, also known as MCS, and they’re the regulatory side. So they’re the ones going and doing those inspections.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 01:29
Organic certification helps provide consumers with a standardized, verified product for organic production practices. Those are all written into USDA standards. Every certifier gets audited to make sure that they’re following the rules that they need to follow. So, yes, MOFGA goes out and audits farms, but then MOFGA also gets audited on its audit process. So there is oversight all the way throughout the USDA, and it allows our food producers to sell to consumers that they’ve never met.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 02:06
Maine’s wonderful. It’s got food sovereignty, and that allows us, as a very small community, to go talk with our farmers, see how they do things. But the reality of the larger economy is that our consumers oftentimes want to know more about their food, and organic certification provides a level of that, of verified third-party verification. And so that’s kind of where MOFGA lands in the food system in the state of Maine.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 02:40
Yeah. And
Glenda Pereira: 02:41
And there’s so much more, but yes. And I just wanna say that for maybe new and beginning farmers, and if you’re not in the state of Maine, every state, and in some regions some are regional, has its own certifier. So I just wanted to state that if you wanna enter organic production, reach out to your certifier within your state because they’ll be the ones to help guide you through the certification process. Yeah. That actually
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 03:10
Kind of coincides with something else I wanted to talk about, which was the Transition to Organic Partnership Program. The National Organic Program convinced the federal government to allocate funds to help producers that wanted to transition to organic get some guidance because not every certifier functions the way that MOFGA does. MOFGA has its certification body, which is the regulatory body. They literally can’t give advice. They can say you’re doing it wrong or you’re doing it right.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 03:38
And then when a producer is struggling, they kind of punt them to farmer programs, which is what I do. We go through and make sure that, yes, you’re compliant with certification. If you’re not compliant with certification, then here’s how we get you there. But the Transition to Organic Partnership Program was a wonderful program that is wrapping up this year, where it paired certified mentors and paid them for their time with uncertified mentees who wanted to explore becoming certified organic. And one of the most exciting things that happened in the last year was that the organic dairy market opened up.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 04:21
And so we got to pair a bunch of dairy farms with mentors, which is great because dairy is probably one of the most complicated aspects of certification because there’s just so many moving pieces. And especially in the state of Maine, because we have raw milk laws and can sell raw milk, they then have to become a producer-processor as far as their certification goes. Because there are layers to the certification. There are different scopes and aspects that you need to pay attention to. Pastures are actually supposed to be managed like a crop and rotated and treated not necessarily like a row crop, but like you would any other crop.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 05:03
So it’s all
Glenda Pereira: 05:03
And that’s critical because, and this is dairy-specific. Yeah. Of course, you got Jacki and me on the podcast now just talking about cows. Cows. We’ll circle back.
Glenda Pereira: 05:13
Alright. But it’s critical because for the NOP requirements, you have to utilize pasture in your rotation. A minimum of a hundred and twenty days per year, and 30% of their dry matter for dairy cows has to come from pasture. And in the state of Maine, because we have such a short growing season, I really think pairing up folks, mentors, and mentees to help with that forage production and setting them up for years ahead, like you were saying, part of this TOPP process was pairing folks together, but then forage is not a one-year turnaround. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 05:47
It’s a multi-year process, fertility, etcetera. So I think that’s really great that MOFGA was able to collaborate and help facilitate some of those pairings because forage is so critical, and even more so in the state of Maine where you can only grow for four months, maybe.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 06:05
Yeah. At least you’re in Alaska. One of the most interesting things about the TOPP program was that it was not certifier-specific. And neither is the state of Maine. Somebody in Maine can use a certifier from California.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 06:19
It’s fine. They just have to be audited annually according to the rules. MOFGA doesn’t certify everybody in the state of Maine, and we also did pick up New Hampshire. Yeah. Our technical assistance outreach from farmer programs to our New Hampshire farms, our farms in Aroostook County, and our farms on Vinalhaven has to be coordinated and targeted.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 06:42
But we do on-farm visits. To Glenda’s point about the pasture and the fact that if you’re stewarding it well, then it gets better over time, those on-farm site visits are super important to go see. What’s going on? What species do you have? What do you want it to be?
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 07:00
What are you feeding? And that has been one of the most fun things about my job because as a nerdy little ADHD kid, I brought home everything but llamas and alpacas. So I’ve had hands-on personal experience with a wide variety of animals, and it was fun when I got hired at MOFGA. They said, how do you feel about talking to people about livestock production practices? I was like, I do it all day anyway.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 07:27
Yeah. I said, you want to pay me for it? Awesome. Yeah. And I grew up on an 80-cow organic dairy.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 07:33
And my mom is a large animal veterinarian who is also certified in alternative homeopathic medicine. So it was just very integrated into how I grew up. And Glenda and I were talking a bit earlier about how we fit into the system. And it’s near and dear to me that I fit into the system. And I am not one to fight against the system.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 08:01
And working for MOFGA in an organic way seemed like it would. It’s not the answer to everything. But
Glenda Pereira: 08:10
And you’re a great resource to folks who are not organic either. Yeah.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 08:13
I’ll talk to anybody.
Glenda Pereira: 08:14
Yeah. And so just because you wear your organic dairy and livestock specialist hat doesn’t mean you won’t talk to folks who are practicing conventionally. Yeah. And so you’re open to being a resource for everyone here in the state of Maine and even not in the state of Maine, anywhere.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 08:29
I get phone calls from all over the country, and one of the most interesting things is that MOFGA is the home of the Common Ground Fair.
Glenda Pereira: 08:37
I was gonna say, so most folks probably know MOFGA from Common Ground
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 08:42
From the fair.
Glenda Pereira: 08:43
And your offices and everything are in Unity. Yep. So it’s right down the road from the fair.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 08:51
Yeah. It’s right there.
Glenda Pereira: 08:52
It’s right, yeah. It’s right on the same property. So
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 08:54
Yep. And so I think what happens is that these people come to visit family members in Maine. Everyone’s like, I gotta go to the fair.
Glenda Pereira: 09:01
Yeah. Thanks.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 09:04
As a staff member who stewards the fair, we love to see you all, and we are very tired when you go home.
Glenda Pereira: 09:11
And when is the fair this year?
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 09:12
September 20. Alright. Let me check my calendar.
Glenda Pereira: 09:16
Jacki’s checking. But the reason I’m asking is because if you haven’t been to the Common Ground Fair, there are many Extension folks that attend as well. Obviously, Jacki and her whole team from MOFGA are over there, but there are many other organizations that participate. And so it’s a really nice melting pot where everybody gets together. And when is that gonna be this year?
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 09:36
It’s the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh of September. So it’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Glenda Pereira: 09:40
Nice.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 09:41
The whole town of Unity and surrounding towns tend to shut down just because of traffic. So if you are going to the fair, plan accordingly.
Glenda Pereira: 09:48
I kind of wanted to maybe just briefly talk about, so you said there’s obviously the certification process, and maybe we’re gonna get there. There’s a certification process. Right? MOFGA is that body that does the certification for the state of Maine and New Hampshire. But then there’s the farmer programs.
Glenda Pereira: 10:04
We talked briefly about TOPP, but I really wanna talk some about those farmer programs because I think that’s really where the work is done to then make sure the certification is maybe done correctly. Like you mentioned, the certifiers really will say yes or no. But then you and your team of folks on the education side and management side really can help people on maybe, like, the prevention and technical support side. So I just wanna say you guys have a ton of programming that I sometimes benefit from. I even attend because I think it’s just good programs overall.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 10:43
Oh, thank you. We do try. We care. One of the programs that another one of my colleagues, Bo Dennis, runs is the Journeyperson program, and I work and collaborate with him on the Farm Training Project. And it just gets people in the door and helps them better understand and work really hard to get some hands-on experience.
Glenda Pereira: 11:04
So this Journeyperson program, tell me more.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 11:06
Well, the Journeyperson program wants farmers with a couple years’ experience because it will help them walk through some of their financial and record-keeping systems. So if you’re just getting started, it’s not usually a good fit for you just because it takes a couple of years to figure out how to run a business. And what we were finding initially, and Bo will tell you this, but what MOFGA was finding initially with that specific program was that the people that didn’t have any business experience were just kind of a deer in the headlights when it came to all that. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What?
Glenda Pereira: 11:43
The Journeyperson program is fit for somebody who’s got maybe two to three years of experience under their belt.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 11:49
Yeah. Yep. And it’s always a cohort. It grants you access to a very popular listserv where farmers can come into a safe space and ask questions, trade resources, figure out what everybody is using for this. What are you charging for that?
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 12:07
How do you get from A to B? And we in the MOFGA farmer programs are there to support all of those Journeypersons. We call them JPs. And hopefully that’s there to keep them in the agricultural scene as they go forward. One of the most exciting things for me this year was that there have been more livestock people coming into the Journeyperson program.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 12:32
Livestock is pretty hard to get into if it’s not generational in your family. It’s a pretty steep learning curve if all you’ve ever had is a cat and a dog. I always laugh and tell people, if you can keep a cow and a horse alive, you can keep anything alive just because their physiological systems are complicated. Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 12:55
And it’s an everyday, year-round, all-day thing sometimes. Right? Like, oh, yeah. You’re out there sometimes at 1AM, 2AM, 6PM, 12PM. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 13:09
Baby monitor in the barn. It’s not a… Sometimes I joke about this. This is not true. But sometimes I wish I only existed in the plant space because plants are like, especially in Maine, we grow them for a certain amount of time, we harvest or they die, whatever. And then it’s okay.
Glenda Pereira: 13:25
Now I’ve got the winter to do whatever. With livestock, they’re still there in the winter unless you do, like, broilers or you process all of your beef and pork in that certain amount of time so then you don’t outwinter them. But dairy, that’s a whole separate thing, but that’s every day. And with dairy, it’s the milking thing too. Like you were mentioning, it can be a steep learning curve because it really becomes part of your life.
Glenda Pereira: 13:52
Right? Well, your chores sometimes are centered around what they need. Right? I definitely agree that it can be a big learning curve for new farmers. So they might need a little bit more, not assistance, but really just the community to be integrated into and to ask questions.
Glenda Pereira: 14:08
And if they’ve got a few years, the Journeyperson program sounds like it’s a good spot if folks haven’t checked it out.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 14:15
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely look into it. And that’s one of the things you can visit the MOFGA website for because there’s a certain application period, and then we gotta review the applications. And, yeah.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 14:26
Bo and usually a second colleague make the decisions on who gets in for the year. And sometimes it’s not a good fit or sometimes they just get deferred for a year, that sort of thing.
Glenda Pereira: 14:35
Yeah.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 14:36
And then for anybody that’s an active homesteader or gardener, we do that kind of support, which is I’ve been running a Pocket-Sized Pasture series. I get a lot of homesteaders at that because a lot of people have way more lawn than they wanna mow. And I personally have horses on an itty-bitty little postage-stamp piece of land, and I haven’t killed the grass yet. It’s getting better. But
Glenda Pereira: 15:01
The homesteaders, I think increasingly, we see folks come to Maine. Or, when I moved here, we were trying to find a house, and it was just like every house. There’s just always an influx of people moving here because they wanted land. They wanted property. A lot of our towns have good ordinances to keep minimal, micro-sized farms, maybe a couple of animals. So those folks need resources.
Glenda Pereira: 15:26
Yeah. And they’re in that beginning process. And most of those homesteaders, I would say, like, they probably have a full-time job. Yeah. They’re not doing this full time.
Glenda Pereira: 15:35
So I think most of the programs you’ve offered I’ve seen are, like, after work, which is nice because that’s the time when folks can get to a program after work.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 15:44
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on top of that, they just don’t show up. And if we’re gonna hold a program, we need people to show up.
Glenda Pereira: 15:50
Yeah. Do you think that has changed? So I’ve only been in Maine since 2021. And I can’t remember when you began in this role. But have you seen maybe a shift in the clients you’ve been serving within MOFGA, from generational farmers to now new and beginning farmers and homesteaders, or was it always the same type of clientele?
Glenda Pereira: 16:11
I’m just curious.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 16:13
There’s always been a nice steady supply of homesteaders. I think more of those homesteaders are getting into livestock, which is that Pocket-Sized Pastures. I like catchy names. Yep. And then what I have noticed on the production scale when we talk about livestock is that it skipped a generation or two.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 16:31
So Grandpa had cows. And now the grandson goes, I really wanna milk cows. So they don’t necessarily have the infrastructure in place, yep, or a firm grasp on the current state regulations and federal regulations around producing food because, boy, they’ve changed a lot since Grandpa was doing it.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 16:52
One of the interesting things about organic certification is that they do require a veterinarian when it comes to livestock. You need to have a plan. One of the things that we’ve been encouraging that isn’t quite written into the rules yet is having a euthanasia protocol. A lot of people get into it. They love animals.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 17:14
They want to do the right thing. Boy, you can spend a lot of money and a lot of time and the poor thing dies anyway and has gone through a lot of suffering in the meantime. And so, with the farmers that I’ve been talking to recently, it’s like, please write down your euthanasia protocol and then post it. Yep. And they go, oh. I said, in organic, it’s specifically important because we need to know. We want you to treat your animals. We don’t want those animals to suffer.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 17:38
Organic certification doesn’t mean that the animals are suffering. It’s just a standard of care. And if you don’t write down when to give antibiotics and then segregate that animal so that she’s no longer in the organic herd, he or she. I say she because most are dairy cows.
Glenda Pereira: 17:55
Well, yeah.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 17:56
And most livestock production relies on the females more than the males. But when is your tipping point that she can’t be in the organic herd anymore? And does everybody know that? And then how are we segregating that animal so she’s not in the organic system, yeah, until they find a new home.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 18:20
And then that tips further into, like, how long are they gonna stay sick before the intervention needs to happen.
Glenda Pereira: 18:26
Yep. Yeah. And so this brings up a good topic that I wanted to mention about some of the organic space. We exist a lot on the prevention side as much as we can because we don’t have all the tools in the toolbox that conventional farmers have access to. Yes.
Glenda Pereira: 18:40
My mom
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 18:41
Calls it farm hygiene.
Glenda Pereira: 18:42
Yeah. A good word for it. And so the organic farmers try to exist in the prevention space, but that’s not always the case. But it’s good that you bring this up because this is forthcoming. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 18:55
Organic livestock owners in the state of Maine will have to be thinking about a euthanasia plan as well as what to do when that animal does get sick and you have to treat it with antibiotics or with one other medication that isn’t approved for use in the NOP. So that’s good foresight. I wanted to talk a little bit about whether there are common things that livestock producers just need to keep an eye out for. This is a good one because this is coming soon. So to keep people thinking about what’s your euthanasia plan? What are you doing when that animal can no longer be considered organic on your farm?
Glenda Pereira: 19:34
Are there any other things in that realm that you commonly run into that folks maybe just forget about because of day-to-day things regarding organic production and certification? Just picking your brain now. I didn’t prepare you for this. No.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 19:50
It’s all good. Vaccines. I actually get a lot of pushback. Consumers call me up and say, why does organic support vaccines? It’s part of prevention.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 19:59
It’s part of prevention. And, boy, some of those pneumonias can really wipe out an entire herd or flock. Salmonella in poultry, that’s a tough one. And there are ways to be intentional about your vaccination protocol. My mom’s an alternative medicine veterinarian.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 20:21
She has strong opinions about these things, and we talk about it a lot. And we are a pro-vaccine family, but there are responsible ways to do it. For example, on my horses, I took blood titers, which measure the antibodies of a certain disease that they have in their blood. And because I wasn’t too keen on overvaccinating, I went ahead and took some blood samples. It’s an option to see how many antibodies they have. The old horse was through the roof on the amount of antibodies that he had, and the young one needed a vaccination.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 20:56
So I got him vaccinated. And it’s just one of those decision-making tools that you can have. Also, deworming, especially in sheep and goats. We don’t want dewormer-resistant parasites out there. So keeping an eye on things with FAMACHA scoring, you can do.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 21:14
I can teach people how to do fecal sample testing.
Glenda Pereira: 21:17
And I’m gonna put a plug in. We did have an episode with Dr. Rachel White where she talked about, specifically, the barber pole worm.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 21:24
Yeah.
Glenda Pereira: 21:24
But she talked about some of these mitigation strategies for parasites. And she’s been doing some programming. I think maybe you collaborated on some of it with FAMACHA scoring and some other things. So there’s a really good resource here in the state of Maine between you and Rachel White for learning how to do FAMACHA scoring and fecal egg counts. And I really like that you were mentioning that example with your horses because what you did was assess the risk of the horses getting the potential disease, and your younger horse needed to be vaccinated.
Glenda Pereira: 22:01
I don’t know if you vaccinated your older horse or not, but it did have antibodies. But you’re still taking a risk. Right? So everything is a risk, and you have to decide what risk you’re willing to assume. And in my opinion, in the prevention world, vaccines really decrease your risk of potentially getting a disease.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 22:17
Yeah. I agree. And again, I get some pushback. I get plenty of phone calls and emails. And where does MOFGA stand on vaccines?
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 22:25
And they’re allowed in organic, and they’re a preventative measure. And deworming is not allowed in meat production. It’s allowed in some of the longer-term species like dairy. So you can deworm your dairy heifers. However, if it turns into routine deworming, you have to go back and look at your whole system to see where they’re getting contaminated.
Glenda Pereira: 22:50
That’s why it becomes management.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 22:51
Yep. And we go back. Sometimes when we walk onto a farm and we do these technical assistance site visits, it’s glaringly obvious where the problem is. And, boy, sometimes it’s a head-scratcher. But, again, that network is a hive mind.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 23:09
Hey, hive mind. I have this problem with this farm. The farm’s really struggling. Is there something else that you have seen that is similar to this? And sometimes it comes from all the way across the country.
Glenda Pereira: 23:21
And I think back to your point that there’s this sort of community that exists, and you can maybe be that starting point. If you’re a livestock farmer, you can reach out to Jacki, and you can connect folks…
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 23:37
To someone else.
Glenda Pereira: 23:37
Yeah. Someone else to then say, hey. Can we troubleshoot this? And on some of this stuff about community sharing, I think MOFGA has some equipment or stuff like that available, maybe, you know?
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 23:53
Yes. I run what we call SOOF. It’s the shared-use farm equipment program. And by run it, I mean I make you guys do the paperwork, and then I hand you off to our buildings and grounds crew because they know more about where things are housed, loading and unloading stuff, and what condition they’re in. And that program is an annual fee of $100.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 24:16
You can use anything in the program. There are some things in our pool that don’t travel very far. So if you’re local, then you can borrow it. And there’s a list of those things on the MOFGA website. You have to dig a little bit into the farmer resources page in order to find that list, or you can email me, jperkins@mofga.org.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 24:39
But Maine Grass Farmers Network was looking for a place to house their no-till drill, which has been super popular. Yep. There’s a rear-unloading manure spreader. There’s some tillage equipment, a plastic mulch layer that goes out fairly often, and then very random specialized pieces. We do have a chicken plucker in the pool, but it is homemade.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 25:00
And please clean it because it gets stinky if you don’t. And then nobody wants to touch it. My caution is that, especially with the no-till drill, everybody wants it at the same time. Yes. Of course.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 25:12
I have been pushing hard. If anybody out there wants to donate a livestock trailer, that is a piece of equipment that people don’t often have, especially our homesteaders
Glenda Pereira: 25:21
Yeah.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 25:22
To get their animals to the butcher. That’s not always needed at the same time of year every year, so that would benefit the community.
Glenda Pereira: 25:29
Yeah. Obviously, just making sure everybody’s cleaning and following the protocol and stuff. Keeping manure where you house the animals or trying to be as diligent with that and stuff.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 25:40
Yeah. And that’s right in the agreement that I make everybody sign before they’re allowed to come get stuff. And as far as payment goes, you can typically bring it to MOFGA with you. And if I haven’t gotten it from you, then you’re not gonna get to borrow anything else. Yep.
Glenda Pereira: 25:53
Good protocol.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 25:54
So that’s good.
Glenda Pereira: 25:55
Yeah.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 25:55
Kinda how that works.
Glenda Pereira: 25:56
And then you guys also have a great resource that I use as well, and somebody on your team keeps tabs on grants available to farmers.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 26:05
Oh, we try.
Glenda Pereira: 26:06
Yeah. You guys, I think, have the most up-to-date resource that I’ve seen. And so I’ll share that in the show notes as well.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 26:14
Oh, thank you.
Glenda Pereira: 26:14
But folks can, and like I said, you try to keep that updated. I think your team does a really good job, whoever puts that together.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 26:20
So, our Farmer Programs newsletter, if you wanted to subscribe to that, yep, for any reason,
Glenda Pereira: 26:26
Yep.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 26:26
Those grant opportunities end up there.
Glenda Pereira: 26:28
Yes. They do. We’ll share all of this. We’ll share some of this, not all of it because that’s overwhelming, in the show notes so folks can get access to it. But I think we covered a lot.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 26:38
Covered a lot.
Glenda Pereira: 26:39
Yeah. And if you need to, you can always email or call Jacki. So thank you so much, Jacki. This was an awesome conversation. We just touched the surface on a couple of things.
Glenda Pereira: 26:51
We’ll have you back to talk about more specific stuff. We’re excited for all the programming that you and MOFGA put on, not only for livestock but for other food producers here in the state of Maine. So thanks so much, and we’ll see you next time.
Jacki Martinez Perkins: 27:06
Alright, and I appreciate you guys having me out.
Glenda Pereira: 27:09
And if you have future topic suggestions, comments, questions for the Maine Farmcast, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.