A Conversation With Ryan

Molly: Who are you and how do you know the farm?

Ryan: My name's Ryan Rodell. My mom is Sue Mack and I grew up on the farm. I lived there basically, until I went away to college, and then came back for a year after college, when we still lived in the Red House. The first project I did here after I graduated was to convert my father’s woodshed into the new farm house which is where my mom and Holly still live. I went off to the West Coast for a couple of years after that but then I moved back and now I live in Portland. Since I moved back I come out to the farm when I can, every other weekend or more often when we have a project and we’ve done a lot of projects. The biggest one was during 2020 and we had a great big crew of WWOOFers and because it was covid no one was really going anywhere, they were all long term folks. That was the time we built the addition on the house which is now the mudroom and the living room area. That took a few years to finish and since then we have done smaller projects like the porch and now we’re working on finishing up the chicken palace. Which is, I would say, halfway done. 

Molly: I hope it’s halfway! 

Ryan: Yeah, we’ve done most of the hard stuff. Well, three quarters of the hard stuff is done. A lot that is left is just the finishing touches and interior work which might take more time. But luckily there is no rush on that. Hopefully we get the roof on before the snow falls. That’s my goal and then we can work on the rest of it over winter because we’ll have some protection. 

Molly: I think it would be good to talk about your background in farming and construction projects. How did you get into all of it?

Ryan: My summer job in high school for probably four or five summers was working for the Chewonki foundation on their farm there. They have a great little farm. Actually not really that little and it’s a very unique farm because it is supported by the Chewonki Foundation which is a big nonprofit and environmental education foundation. They have a summer camp, high school semester, wilderness trips and all sorts of programming. They also run this farm that is a very ancient farm, a salt marsh farm that has been there for hundreds of years, a very classic New England subsistence farm, and they are able to operate it like they would have back in the day as opposed to how economics alone would dictate they run it. 

Molly: Because they have the backing of the non-profit foundation?

Ryan: Yeah because of that backing. So they don’t sell at the market at all; they supply everything; vegetables, meat, eggs, and milk, straight to the kitchen. Which is a big kitchen, it feeds hundreds of campers everyday in the summer. They have a big draft horse and do a lot of things with that which is not practical these days from a money standpoint but it’s an awesome experience. So we plowed the fields and they even had all the haying equipment so we had a horse drawn mower, rakes and everything and we would do everything as loose hay. When the day the hay was ready in June, which is when all the campers are there, we would get everyone on deck with pitchforks and you’re just tossing loose hay out of the field into the wagons and then into the barn. That was a great time. 

Molly: It sounds like a really cool experience. 

Ryan: Yeah it was really cool! They had pretty big gardens and you know lots of free and willing labor from the campers and students. Everything was harvested and they would cart it straight over to the kitchen everyday and set the menu based on what was available. Of course they had to supplement it with lots of other food. We were a drop in the bucket compared to the total consumption but it was still really cool. They had dairy cows too so everyone gets to learn how to milk and everything that comes with that. They have a full time manager who is there for usually a year and then some seasonal helpers and I got to be one of the seasonal helpers. 

Molly: And your carpentry and building experience? 

Ryan: So I had some experience working for my dad who is a pretty accomplished furniture builder and also during my summers at Chewonki there were always odd carpentry projects to do. They would hand me a broken feeder and have me fix it, and with their own lumber too. They did forestry and used a horse to harvest lumber in the wintertime. They had tons of lumber and they would give me the freedom to use it and make something. 

Molly: That’s a really cool closed circuit experience. 

Ryan: Yeah it was really cool because they would also do it all as low impact as they could. Harvesting in the winter time so there is snow to protect the landscape and with a horse so you don’t need to cut a big road. You can just cut individual trees and twitch them out with very little impact on the land. So it’s not very efficient but it is very sustainable. 

Molly: It seems like between growing up on the farm and having that experience at Chewonki you have always been very close to your food systems. Is that something you still are able to replicate while living in Portland?

Ryan: You know, not as much as I should. Like you know I’m always happy to get veggies and meat from the farm and I do have the Portland co-op right next to my house which is where I do the majority of my shopping. I’m fortunate that I’m able to kind of just naturally slip into that fairly well, but I don’t always keep in mind eating locally as much as I should. You know I go to restaurants and don’t always know where they are getting their food from. 

Molly: And we do have the best restaurants here. 

Ryan: Yeah we do. And you know a lot of them are very local, they buy a lot of meat and produce locally but you never really know. But there is no fast food around here so I never go to those types of places. When I moved here I did try to set my living conditions such that it became easy and natural to live comfortably and locally. For example I haven't had a car for almost 10 years now living here and that was very intentional. I wanted to make sure that where I lived was within walking distance of my office and other things I may need. 

Molly: Expanding on that, are there changes you would like to see on an individual level or a country wide level that would make a positive impact on your food systems?’

Ryan: The individual ones are really a challenge because the system really is so much stronger and with so much more inertia than any one of us can really hope to change. I think looking at the bigger system obviously the factory farm meat systems with birds, cows and pigs is absolutely unsustainable and horrific if you bother to think of it at all. It is so much easier for people to get out of their minds. So what can you do about that? It’s a real challenge because nobody wants to pay what it really costs to raise meat sustainably. Ultimately, we probably all do need to eat less meat. I'm not really of the mindset that vegetarianism is appropriate for everything.Humans are omnivores, I think it's completely ethical that we do eat meat. But the context really matters and raising meat ethically is very hard to scale. Eating less meat is a positive individual choice people can make. Or just eat a little bit less with every meal. When I was traveling in Japan I had some vegetarian friends and, you know, they really did struggle because there's very little that's truly vegetarian over there. There's a little bit of meat in everything, but it's only a little bit. On the whole, they eat a lot less overall. And that's would probably be better. You just have a little garnish or a little element of the meal that has meat. 

Molly: In broths and such?

Ryan: Yes, exactly. 

Molly: As opposed to the main dish is the meat and then the vegetables are maybe the side. 

Ryan: Exactly, exactly. 

Molly: Oh, is the ship pulling out? 

Ryan: Yeah, looks like it. 

Molly: Speaking of food, what is your favorite food that you've had at the farm? 

Ryan: Well, what we had yesterday for lunch was really good. That brisket was very, very flavorful.

Molly: Did you guys have a staple growing up? What was the go to family meal?

Ryan: Did we? Well, so most of the time when I was growing up, we didn't farm that much. So we always had a vegetable garden and I helped my mom a lot when I was a kid with that. But the animals came later. When I was very young we did have a dairy cow but I barely remember that. Then for a while we had sheep when I was six or seven maybe. 

Molly: Why did you have the sheep?

Ryan: I’m not totally sure. I think we did eat some of them but I don’t think we were shearing them. The thing I most remember about the sheep is that when Hurricane Bob came along in ‘91 and it knocked the power out, the coyotes came in and killed the entire herd. 

Molly: Oh, wow. 

Ryan: Yeah they killed them all in one night, about eight sheep. They had been waiting for the opportunity. So that ended up being fairly traumatic. 

Molly: That is definitely the farm kid life

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I don't know. We didn't, when I was a kid, we didn't eat too much off the land so much. My dad was more of the cook. He made a lot of great, like Indian style dishes. He's a really good, he loves Indian food. And my mom also still loves Indian food too. 

Molly: Yeah. You guys all do. You all talk about loving Indian food. 

Ryan: Yeah, that was his influence, for sure. He made a lot of that stuff. Rice dishes like chicken tandoori type stuff and curries. So we didn’t grow up eating your typical New England diet. He always made really good chai too. He would brew his own, get the spices and brew it. 

Molly: Everyone loves chai these days. 

Ryan: Yeah, but he was ahead of the curve, and he never, because he couldn't stand it, got the premade stuff. So he made his own for a long time. 

Molly: So for now we’ll say that the brisket you had yesterday was your favorite food you’ve had at the farm. 

Ryan: Yeah lets go with that. And that really hit the spot you know? Especially after all that work we were doing lifting the rafters of the chicken palace. Yeah how are you feeling today?

Molly: I woke up a little more sore in my shoulders then I thought I would be. What about you?

Ryan: Yeah I’m pretty much fine now but this morning and last night my arms felt dead. 

Molly: Thank goodness for Jamie. 

Ryan: Yeah I know. 

Molly: This is a good segway to talk about the chicken palace. How you designed it and decided what materials we needed, can you speak a little about that?

Ryan: Well it was a multi-stage plan because the whole concept was kicked off by the idea that the house needs a foundation. And it turns out the best way to do that is to dig a foundation next to the house and then move the house onto it. But the current chicken houses are where we would dig the foundation so those needed to move. It started this whole domino effect and those chicken coops are good, thier about 10 years old, but we decided to build somthing nicer that will also have a stall in it for any other animals we may need to bring indoors. The new chicken palace will also have some storage which is good to. So my mom knows Dan who we get our hay from up in Auborn and he has acess to concrete contractors. The concrete foundation for the chicken house would have been a bigger issue if we didn’t know him because for most concrete contractors the job is so small it is not worth thier time. But dan was able to help us out with it and as soon as we knew he could we could go ahead and draw out a design. We of course used best practices and besides what my mom and Holly wanted for the structure it was down to me to decide details. We also had to think through the element of not having a huge work crew. So instead of builing one 20ft wall we had to split that up and things like that. The rafters were the hardest part but again there are already best practices around that for me to follow. I did consult various spam tables online which helped me figure out things like how much of an open span can a 2x4 support placed every 16 inches. So you need a little bit of trigonometry but you don’t really need much because, like most tradespeople, math is the core of everything but there are also just known best practices and tools so that you don’t have to directly interface with the math on everything. And each project you do you are getting better at those skills and the best ways to cut things and the easiest way to put trim on, all those things. 

Molly: Okay, last question. If you can pick one, what's your favorite memory or  a favorite story from the farm?

Ryan: Hmm. Good question. Well, we really did have a great crew here during COVID. It was a bunch of really really good people, you’ve met some of them. 

Molly: Yeah and Sue and Holly always talk very highly of that crew. 

Ryan: Yeah, they were awesome. And it was really nice because I also spent a lot more time there, too. So that was a great time just to be a part of that and those enthusiastic young workers and you know, they go off and do other things but they always come back to visit which is nice. So maybe it's not a single memory, but I've really enjoyed how there are so many people who just keep getting pulled back to some extent. Even if you know, it's just for a visit. Very few people can come back for any extended period of time and that's fine but to know that it’s important enough in their minds that they want to stay in touch is really cool. 

Molly: Yeah I like the feeling of having that wide spread extended community. You don’t always know where everyone is but you know that they’ve impacted you and vice versa and you have good memories from the time they spent here. 

Ryan: Yeah a couple of years ago when we insulated the bunk house it was bittersweet because so many people had signed their names up there on the ceiling and written messages. Sue and Holly documented it before we covered it. And of course there is the WWOOFer book that everyone signs which is cool to look through. 

Molly: Yeah I like reading that. Well thanks so much for chatting. I wonder where the cruise ship is headed next?

Ryan: Maybe Bar Harbor.