Joe Grady is all about the pasture.

He and his wife, Laura, have worked Two Coves Farm in West Harpswell for four seasons, raising beef, sheep, poultry, eggs, vegetables and hay for sale to local markets and buyers.

“We’ve always been big fans of following natural systems, and on a farm like this, it’s about the pasture,” Joe Grady said. “Let the animals harvest the products of the field, they leave their nutrients behind, and then they move on. We’re moving animals around all the time.”

He gestured toward a flock of sheep in the middle of a distant field overlooking Mill Cove.

“Those sheep started off way at the left side of that field,” he said. “In a few days, they’ll be all the way over to the (right) other side. The grass is all neat and short and healthy, and there’s no need for a mower.”

It’s good for the animals and soil, and the relatively small scale of the farm eliminates the need for excessive chemical treatment to boost crop production. It seems to be working: Hay production this summer is up 35 percent from 2011.

The Gradys once had a small farm in the hills near Fryeburg but there wasn’t enough land for what they had in mind. They ended up on the spine of West Harpswell, with Widgeon Cove on one side and Mill Cove on the other, because of a program called Farm Link. Engineered and administered by Maine Farmland Trust, the Gradys were matched up with 88 acres owned by a Harpswell family looking for a working tenant.

In order to breed the next generation of farmers, there needs to be land for them to farm, said John Piotti, the trust’s director. But preserving open land for agricultural use also means beating real estate developers and the huge selling prices they often command.

“The highest and best use for farmland is farming, not dropping a big house in the middle of it,” Piotti told a crowd of about 75 people during a recent open house to show off Two Coves and the Gradys’ operation.

Maine Farmland Trust sponsored the open house through its Forever Farms initiative, which works to preserve working agricultural land for future generations.

The trust was founded in 1999 and holds several open houses each month on working farms throughout the state. Through establishment of easements, held either by MFT or a local land trust, land use is limited to sustainable farming. Development for other purposes — such as selling it for housing or to build commercial space — is prohibited. The crops-only restriction reduces the tax rate on the land, which helps farmers reinvest more money in their growing operations.

Currently, the trust has arranged for easements on more than 34,000 acres and through 380 farm families statewide. jtleonard@timesrecord.com