For the past few weeks, sitting at my table at Saturday’s Houlton Community Market, I have looked down past other vendors and wondered about the attractive young couple selling organic vegetables. After finally approaching them I decided to write about them for this Conservation Corner.
Josh Drew and Corinne Crovo are both in their final semester of college – he at the University of Maine studying environmental horticulture and sustainable ag, and she at Emerson majoring in communications disorders. Both are “back home” this summer and Josh has been living in Littleton, growing out various varieties of vegetables in his organic trial garden, in addition to working an internship at the Aroostook Farm under potato researcher Greg Porter. Having worked at Mark Guzzi’s Peacemeal Farm in central Maine, who started Orono’s now very successful farmers’ market, it is important to Josh to be a part of the community and do his part in educating the public about the importance of what we eat. That’s what led him and Corinne to Houlton’s Community Market each Saturday. That, and a surplus of produce.
When I asked Josh about his agricultural philosophy, he told me that he really wasn’t interested in agriculture until he went to college and seriously began looking into the way our food is being monopolized by a very few companies who have no interest in the health of their customers. That research led him to begin growing for his own knowledge. He expressed the importance of being able to save your own seed and the need for bio-diversity for a healthy agricultural system. Those are the same reasons why he is opposed to genetically-modified crops and is concerned about crop contamination for organic growers.
Corinne echoes those views and adds that while she got into their organic trial garden because of Josh, she has really come to enjoy it on her own. She feels a bigger sense of satisfaction when she has cooked a meal using the vegetables they have grown and feels good about not using valuable resources to grow their own food, like synthetic fertilizers. They both would like to see organic farming grow and for local communities to begin buying organically from local farmers and understanding the reasons behind it.
After their final semester of college? Corinne will be headed off to an as yet unknown grad school and Josh will follow, hopefully landing a job at an organic farm so that he can continue to learn. One day they hope to return home to southern Aroostook and begin their own organic farm on family land. I, for one, would be very happy to look down the market square median one day and see two young farmers, dreams realized, selling their MOFGA certified organic vegetables.
Editor’s note: Angie Wotton loves her work as district manager for the Southern Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District. She also raises pastured pork and vegetables with her husband on their small West Berry Farm in Hammond. She can be reached 532-9407 or via e-mail at angela.wotton@ me.nacdnet.net.
