{"id":1873,"date":"2008-11-01T11:39:17","date_gmt":"2008-11-01T15:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batesviews.net\/?p=1873"},"modified":"2024-07-08T13:45:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T17:45:18","slug":"the-maine-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2008\/11\/01\/the-maine-course\/","title":{"rendered":"The Maine Course"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gabe

Gabe Clark '02, with his wife, Amanda Waterhouse Clark '02, raise grass-fed beef on their farm in North New Portland, Maine.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Bates Contemplates Food<\/a><\/em> initiative is a call for an informed examination of food choices. For many of us, these choices involve what foods to buy. A select few, though \u2014 such as the alumni on enumerated below \u2014 are choosing what foods to produce for the people who buy.<\/p>\n

And while every food decision is a life decision, the choices made by people whose livings depend on producing food take place on planes different from the ones we occupy.<\/p>\n

At one extreme, there’s the importance of dirt. Dirt is furthest from your mind when you tuck into a sustainable, made-in-Maine dinner of grass-fed beef from Cold Spring Ranch<\/a> and organic salad from Hackmatack Farm.<\/p>\n

But for Gabe Clark ’02, whose cattle thrive on Cold Spring Ranch grass, and vegetable grower Nicolas Lindholm ’86<\/a>, dirt is all important. Soil quality can make or break their products.<\/p>\n

“It’s taken me years to realize that I don’t need to put so much attention toward growing the tomato plant,”<\/em> says Lindholm. “I put my attention toward growing healthy soil, and the tomato plant just comes along very happily on its own.”<\/p>\n

Then there’s the macro view. By choosing to work in Maine, Jason Perkins ’97<\/a> and the husband-wife team of Tim Kane ’82 and Beth George ’85<\/a> have engaged in a conflict that conscientious consumers face every day: what’s desirable vs. what’s local.<\/p>\n

Perkins is brewmaster for Allagash<\/a>, a popular craft beermaker. Kane and George run a bakery dedicated to the unusual grain called spelt. Both businesses can legitimately claim to be “local” and “sustainable.” And yet: Allagash brings in hops and malted barley from across the U.S.; Canada and the Midwest produce the spelt for George and Kane’s business.<\/p>\n

Neither Perkins nor the Spelt Right bakers<\/a> want to rely on supplies shipped long distances, with the attendant carbon emissions and loss to the local economy. All are actively seeking Maine sources.<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, they negotiate daily a thicket of complex food questions, just like the rest of us \u2014 except for the rest of us, the quantities aren’t in tons and livelihoods aren’t at stake.<\/p>\n

So, if you need a break from your own food choices or a new perspective on them, meet this group of Batesies whose most important food choice has been simply (but not so simply) to produce it in Maine.<\/p>\n

Photographs and reporting by Phyllis Graber Jensen<\/em><\/p>\n

Text and reporting by Doug Hubley
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bates Contemplates Food initiative is a call for an informed examination of food choices. For many of us, these choices involve what foods to buy. A select few, though \u2014 such as the alumni on enumerated below \u2014 are choosing what foods to produce for the people who buy. And while every food decision is a life decision, the choices made by people whose livings depend on producing food take place on planes different from the ones we occupy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,232,220,11009],"tags":[10855,10856,1417,3473,8105],"class_list":["post-1873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-environment-sustainability","category-service","category-the-college","tag-bates-contemplates-food","tag-bates-magazine","tag-dining-services","tag-farming","tag-vision-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62541,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873\/revisions\/62541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}