By Peter Smith
Published: August 30, 2007
The Forecaster
CHEBEAGUE ISLAND—Chuck Varney pops his ancient Chevy into second gear for the climb up Roy Hill Road, a dirt road roughly dividing this three-mile island in half. He kills the engine near a patch of overgrown rye, a grassy strip of cleared land between stands of poplar, white pine and oak.
Last year, this 8.3-acre slice of heaven, Second Wind Farm, came days away from becoming a fast-growing segment of suburban Maine, another residential subdivision.
Farms across Cumberland County are a little like the island’s fleet of sagging Volvos and aging Fords: They’re seen as a dying breed. From 1974 to 2002, the county’s land in farming declined some 10,000 acres, as tillable land increasingly was subdivided for new home construction. Second Wind Farm bucks a seemingly irreversible trend. It’s a subdivision becoming a farm.
Three years ago, Varney—a muscular 45-year-old who has built lobster traps and homes, cleared land and “worked whatever they had out here”—started felling trees on the 171-foot hill, the highest point in Casco Bay. He had been hired to clear the forest for three house lots for Tom Fernandez, a residential developer from Massachusetts.
Fernandez went to Cumberland’s Planning Board with three lots for development. Land on each lot would be selling for about $100,000, Varney said, a value that had nearly tripled over the previous decade. “Eight hundred times overpriced as farmland,” he said.
Worse yet, a subdivision ordinance required a road nearly twice the size of Roy Hill Road to be built to the new homes. One morning, Varney returned to his dew-covered truck and found a note scrawled on the windshield that said, This Is Sad.
He started crying.
“It was too beautiful to be developed,” Varney said. “I said, ‘What am I going to do? I don’t have money for a project like this.’”
Two hundred years ago, the island was covered in subsistence farms. In the 1960s, when the island’s last farmers George Higgans and Ed Jenks died, the last farms went too. Island life slowly began to change in other ways. Land values rose. New landowners began to limit public access. “That doesn’t settle well with me,” Varney said. “I’ll let anyone cross this land. I just want it to be open and welcoming for everyone.”
The day before excavation was scheduled to begin, July 15, 2006, Varney agreed to buy the farmland, under a three-year purchasing plan.
Between other jobs, he continued clearing stumps, cutting firewood and timber. He planted cover crops, set spruce posts for a fence and marked walking trails. Now, Varney has to confront another reality: Paying for the land is expensive.
Vegetables and sheep aren’t likely to cover the farm’s price. Varney incorporated as a nonprofit and is seeking tax-deductible status. “Without some type of other funding, it just would not be possible,” said the nonprofit’s executive director Pamela Curran.
Varney, who serves as the nonprofit’s farm manager and the landowner, has been discussing a possible conservation easement with the Chebeague and Cumberland Land Trust, said Susan Burgess, a land trust representative. An agreement, which has not yet been made, could essentially buy the farm’s development rights while Varney would retain land ownership. Second Wind Farm is also in ongoing negotiations to secure additional grant funding.
But to make a profitable lamb business on the land, Varney said he would have to slaughter 90 sheep a week, a proposition he’s not excited by. “I’m aiming to be gentle on the land,” he said. “I’m aiming towards organic.”
Last week, Varney walked around the corn patch and the sheep paddock with his “best pirate friend” Laura Hamilton, 6, Ginny Ballard, a Chebeague resident, and Peter Carleton, a school teacher from Connecticut.
All three have been pitching in—an effort they hope will be a lasting one.
The group’s long-term goals include walking trails and educational experiences for children—from the island, from Portland and “from away.”
“A lot of kids don’t mow their own lawn,” Varney said. “They have someone come in and do it.”
He and Hamilton hand-planted the corn this year. An expanded garden, a greenhouse and a barn may be in the works. The historical society may be partnering on an exhibition on the island’s agricultural history.
A woman pulled up at the farm and said, “You got any eggs?”
“Just six or eight,” Varney said. “But I got 25 layers coming Sept. 9.”
For now, Second Wind Farm is still catching its breath.
For more information on the land trust’s efforts, call Sue Burgess at 846-4851.