BRUNSWICK

Seth Kroeck, who runs Crystal Spring Farm, is an unlikely farmer.

“I have an undergraduate degree in Asian art history and print making,” said Kroeck, who has been farming on 115 of 321 acres of Crystal Spring with Maura Bannon for the last 11 years. “Life happens. You end up where you end up.”

“Every day is different,” he said, speaking on a sunny Thursday morning at the farm, whose season is winding down. “There’s always a new problem, and something new to learn. On any given day, I do accounting, web design, diesel repair, animal husbandry and plant pathology. It’s endlessly interesting.”

He said he may want to continue farming as long as he’s physically able. After that, he wants to see the farm continue. Thanks to a new 50-year lease he has signed with the farmland’s owners, the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust, the land will be farmed for decades to come.

The lease also assures public use of other land at Crystal Spring for trails, a farmers’ market, community garden and provides proper maintenance of the farm and its buildings, according to a statement from the land trust.

Additionally, the new lease is transferable to a future farmer that would ensure that local agriculture continues into the future at Crystal Spring.

“I’m old enough so that I will not be farming in 50 years, so it allows us to either pass the farm on to our children, or to sell it to the next farmer as a turnkey operation,” said Kroeck.

According to the land trust, the lease makes demands on the farmer beyond those of normal landlord relations, including having access trails that will remain open to the public, sponsoring public events such as the New Lambs Day, and allowing for the land trust’s farmers’ market at Crystal Spring Farm to continue on non-leased land abutting the farmer’s residence and farmstead.

Under terms of the lease, the trust will continue to own the farmhouse and buildings. It also establishes a farm maintenance fund to be jointly managed by Kroeck, Bannon and the land trust.

The lease will allow Crystal Spring’s Community Supported

Agriculture program members to get produce from a successful and sustainable farm for years to come, according to Kroeck, who runs the CSA.

“Historically, it’s been a farm. It was owned by a family. It had not been actively farmed for a number of years as the farmer had gotten older. It was a lot of work on Seth and Maura’s part to bring it back to active agriculture,” said Angela Twitchell, the trust’s executive director.

Today, Kroeck and Bannon have 11 employees and apprentices working on the farm during the peak summer times.

Every year, Kroeck and Bannon farm 14 acres of certified organic vegetables, and raise 75 to 125 grass-fed lambs and between 12 and 18 pigs. The farm is also contract grazing and marketing other animals for another farmer.

The trust runs a farmers’ market with 40 vendors at Crystal Spring on Saturdays from May through October. “It’s probably the largest farmers’ market in Maine,” said Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust President Brad Babson. “We get as many as 2,000 people on a Saturday morning in the middle of the summer.”

About 80 plot-holders participate in the community garden.

“Many members of the community pick up their vegetables here twice a week,” Babson said. “That’s direct engagement with the farm for a large number of families.”

Crystal Spring also partners with Midcoast Hunger Prevention to grow food for its food pantry, according to Twitchell.

The farm is home to about seven miles of trails open year-round.

“It’s a multi-dimensional value to the community. Having an active, working farm is part of the quasi-urban landscape of Brunswick,” said Babson. “It’s nice to have a working farm here.”

Having the public at the farm nearly every day is an unusual situation for a farmer, said Babson. “That’s one of the very valuable aspects of the relationship that we have with Seth and Maura. We are able to combine our interests with public access with his interest in developing and building a successful farming operation. The idea of the lease is to bring these two interests together in a creative way that’s beneficial for both of us.”