Bowdoin Organic Garden

The Bowdoin Organic Garden is both an educational and production garden, striving to produce nutritious food and encourage culinary and agricultural exploration among the Brunswick community.  We received organic certification by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) in 2007 as a way to add credibility to our produce, draw attention to our program through MOFGA’s various publications and events, and gain access to their vast set of resources (publications, mentors, workshops etc.).  With our without certification, our growing methods reflect our ideas of healthy food and a healthy environment.  We look at farming as a way to feed and build the soil, not take away from it, and as a way to work with nature to feed ourselves, and we do this in a manner that can be maintained year after year.  View our MOFGA cetificate [pdf].

To that end, we do our best to limit the amount of petroleum and its derivatives that we use in our farming practice.  We do the vast majority of our work by hand with specialized tools.  We own one rototiller that we use judiciously to turn in cover crops, eradicate weeds from a planting section, and occasionally clear new ground.  In the past, we transported our supplies and made our deliveries in extremely sturdy, versatile bicycle trailers made by Wicycle, based in Ontario.  Currently, we deliver produce to campus via minivan.  

We invite school groups and community members to the farm to learn and explore, and make frequent donations of produce to the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program soup kitchen and food bank.  In the spirit of sharing what we grow, all volunteers take home produce when it’s available, and students and student groups are invited to work in exchange for produce for dinners and events.