Humble Family Farms

BY JAKE RIPLEY

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JAKE RIPLEY

Nestled in the foothills of western Maine, lies Humble Family Farms, a blossoming regenerative farm and home to one of Maine’s most well known medical cannabis brands. Doc, who leads the farm, has been a caregiver in the medical cannabis industry for four years, cultivating cannabis for patients and using his platform to bring awareness to the healing properties of the plant.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Not just plants on this farm. TOP LEFT: A sun-grown canopy over a trellis. BOTTOM LEFT: A final product after months of cultivation.

Doc is a seasoned gardener, with roots going back to organic farming with his grandmother on the coast of Maine, and a food lover, since his humble beginnings growing up around his family’s bakery.

It’s no mistake that family is the namesake of the farm; Doc, his wife and their three daughters have worked together to build out the farm to provide a healthy environment for their family to grow and flourish. Doc’s passions for farming, food, and family spread throughout the farm and its employees as core values — work hard, eat well, and provide for those you call family.

After working on large-scale mechanical projects throughout his twenties, Doc returned to his childhood love of farming and got back into the fields later in his life. Most recently, he has moved his vision onto 25 acres of harshly logged land to pursue a regenerative farming lifestyle of manicuring the rough land into selectively grown forest while returning nutrients to the soil.

Humble Family Farms’ new venture began with Doc’s design, dubbed on the farm as “food forests.” It’s a design that has been translated into a free flowing composition of meandering paths and flower beds connecting fruit trees with plots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers, which intermingle just as nature intended.

To add to his holistic approach to farming, Doc raises poultry and laying hens, which he also uses to turn over the topsoil and fertilize the land after his herd of angora goats cleans up the overgrown areas of brush and small trees. The angoras are sheared twice a year for their wool-like fibers called mohair.

Doc is also trying his hand at aquaponics. This past year, he raised a school of 500 tilapia that started out the size of a grain of rice and have grown to the size of a soda can. Some of the fish are paired up for breeding stock, and the rest are harvested for food when they reach a weight of three to five pounds. The wastewater from the system is used as fertilizer for in-line hydroponic beds as well as feeds for other crops around the garden.

The future goal of Humble Family Farms is to integrate Doc’s passion for delivering the highest quality medicine to his patients with his love for food and interest in overall wellbeing. His vision is to not only create a healthy place for people to find their food and medicine, but to also create a space where knowledge can be exchanged and displayed for the betterment of the community as a whole, a truly holistic approach to regenerative farming.

Maine’s new laws have allowed Humble Family Farms to expand greatly into the marketplace with a web-based delivery system where different regions of the state will be serviced throughout the week. This is Maine’s only current source for Humble Family Farms’ premium in-house products. We had the pleasure of tasting some of their flower. Check out our strain reviews on page 8.

TOP LEFT: HHF is home to an array of farm animals. MIDDLE LEFT: HFF Terp Sauce BOTTOM LEFT: HFF’s first shipment of tilapia for aquaponics.