May 24, 2025 in Pembroke

Join us at the Fourth Annual Pennamaquan Alewife Festival in Pembroke, Maine on May 24, 2025 from 10am to 5pm.

It's a free, family-friendly festival with a free buffet lunch of local food, biologist and horticulturist talks, live music, bike tune-ups and repair, arts and crafts, and more! The Smithereen Farmstore will be open, stocked with local food from Washington County and beyond.

We create learning opportunities, media and campaigns that engage “entering agrarians.” To young farmers we say: Thank you for participating in the survival of human culture through sustainable agriculture. Thank you for dignified work tending to land and water stewardship. Thank you for the food and the effort it took. Greenhorns, our small agrarian institution, offers you a beautiful archive of films and publications, an ongoing burble of cultural content and a procession of exhibits, films, and workshops. After a long search for farmland, we are gratefully lodged and rooted in the historic coastal village of Pembroke, Maine. Here's to a bright future, what we can make of it.

Join us in April, May and June 2025 in Pembroke, Maine for Low Low Tides: Seaweed Harvest Workshop and Educational Programming!

From March through June, we offer monthly harvest workshops sprinkled with educational talks, interpretive walks, and hands-on workshops. Curious about the wild world of seaweed? Come learn with us.

Help us continue this work

Your tax-deductible donation to Greenhorns will help us support ongoing programs, expand our reach, and continue our work towards agrarian reform and a healthy future for all.

2025 is Greenhorns' eighth season here in Downeast Maine. 

Our programming is open to the public, with free and low cost opportunities to participate in learning, care and harvest from this working landscape. As a mother-run organization and grassroots publisher based on a working family farm, our mission of many years continues anew, this year, in the following form:

• March through June — Our seventh year offering Low Low Tides Seaweed Harvest Workshops , immersive educational experiences, plus free public programming: presentations by artists, aquaculturists, and journalists and a few farm dinners too.
• May — The Smithereen Farmstore opens May 1 for the season at 12 Little Falls Road. We'll be open daily 9am–5pm through October 1. The Agrarian Library at Reversing Hall begins regular open hours—Fridays and Sundays from 1–3pm—starting May 2, through October 1.
• May — The Fourth Annual Pennamaquan Alewife Festival is on May 24. Join us for our signature springtime event! A free, family-friendly celebration of the fish. Free local food buffet, smoked fish, biologist talks, live music, bicycle repairs, and more. 
• June — The Midsummer Seaweed Symposium happens June 27-29, with ecologist walks, artist talks, early morning harvests, Spa Days, a special Natural Whisks for the Sauna workshop by Hudson Valley's Big Towel, and a farm dinner by chef Cortney Burns.
• July — Late-summer release of the New Farmers' Almanac: Volume 7! This month we'll host visiting architects and a Civic Halls open house and fundraising dinner.
• August — Maine Wild Blueberry Weekend returns with Chef Odessa Piper in the Summer Kitchen, and stay tuned for more details on Luddite Camp, a week of phone-free farm workshops.
• October — We welcome back Angus Dieghan of Rocky Ground Cider for another iteration of Cider Camp.
  
  
• We are proud to celebrate the launch of #EatDowneast, our USDA-funded campaign to promote Washington County local agriculture, in collaboration with Smithereen Farm and Crown O' Maine Distribution. See our new website with a map of local food producers and a Washington County Food and Ag Event Calendar! eatdowneast.com
  
  
• We'll continue our collaborative work on the Maine Civic Halls Initiative, supporting and advocating for the restoration and continued use of civic hall infrastructure statewide. Join the list to get notifications about grant committee meetings, in-person gatherings, and pop-up exhibits. Join us on the afternoon of July 26 for an open house at the historic Liberty Hall in Machiasport, with artists Michelle Hauser, Rose Marasco, and Sally Eckhoff, and in the evening at Smithereen Farm for a chef-prepared Civic Halls fundraising dinner. 
  
  
• We'll continue our work installing interpretive trail signage along the Pennamaquan River View Trail, built by volunteers and our Americorps VISTA for public access.

Come visit! The blueberries are ready in July, the cranberries in September. The library is always ready for research and exploration. Book your campsites via Hipcamp, or come for a longer stay and inquire about our lodging options.

The Maine Civic Halls Initiative seeks to preserve, restore, and support the role of civic halls as critical rural community-building resources in Maine.

Drawing on the expertise of historians, government officials, community leaders, business owners, economists, and active grangers/Masons, and citing original research, Greenhorns and project partners Maine Preservation and Friends of Liberty Hall produced a report on the current status of civic halls of Hancock and Washington counties. 

We are part of an international collective of seaweed growers, lifelong harvesters, scientists and advocates. We believe that the seaweed aquaculture industry should be developed with a precautionary approach: conservation minded, at an appropriate scale, and with local ownership and control. Farms should be small scale until knowledge gaps can be satisfactorily filled and the impact on wild coastal ecosystems and coastal communities is shown to be minimal.

Read our position paper: A Precautionary Approach to Seaweed Aquaculture in North America

Read our contribution to LUMA ARLES AR#1: Aquaculture

Read the ETC group's paper: The Seaweed Delusion