Till the soil, drop a seed, add sunlight and water. With a little time, and the right conditions, you might harvest a tomato or a green pepper. Sounds so easy, so natural. Yet is takes tremendous patience, persistence, and attention—a constant monitoring to ensure that conditions are conducive to growth.
I am not a gardener of plants and the soil. Yet my life depends on the life—and growth, as well as healthy sustenance—of natural things: plants, animals, fungi, air, water, soil.
In our climate-changed world these subtle, critical ecosystems related to human—and planetary—thriving are under pressure. Until Monday’s rain our soil was as hard as cement—hardly conducive to growth. (And two days past Monday’s rain, our soil is rock hard again.)
Hotter summers change growing seasons. Hotter summers also mean drier summers, stressing plants.
Earlier springs mean certain species blossom earlier. When our raspberries or apples ripen before the birds or mammals who disperse their seeds are ready, that dispersal system breaks down. (Read more about these systems in As Seed Dispersers Disappear, Forests Are Losing Their Futures/Rhett Ayers Butler.)
The impacts of the climate-changed world aren’t just on the land’s vegetative systems.
Here in Maine, you used to be able to walk into a tide pool and find tons of blue mussels. In our climate-changed world, Penobscot Bay has warmed up even more than most bodies of water, and the ocean’s acidity has changed. Our Maine blue mussels have disappeared from the intertidal zones. (Read more about that here.)
Mussels do a lot for other species. Their changing affects the larger populations of fish:
Maine’s commercial landings fell by almost half in the last decade — from about 14 million pounds in 2012 to about 8 million pounds in 2024, according to Department of Marine Resources records. (Read more about that here.)
Grocery stores are another part of our local food system. What we do there also has impacts. If we calculate the unattributed costs (the externalities) of foods transported long distances, we realize that choosing food from away (bananas, grapes, mangoes, avocados, etc.)—because of the green house gas and other emissions related to their transport—further contributes to the worsening of local growing conditions.
It’s for many reasons such as these that our local growing systems and ways to strengthen them are so much on our minds. Below you’ll read about food garden tours designed to explore these challenges. This fall CamdenCAN will also be hosting a working group on Food Sustainability designed to build a community of gardeners and other concerned residents exploring and sharing local food system solutions and ideas.
Together we’ll find ways to bolster the health of our local food system.
CamdenCAN Fall Activities and News
We’re excited by the slate of activities lined up for the fall. These include a benefit concert on September 27 (listed below); the launching of our Energy Coaching Program (sign up and read more here); Working Groups on Food and Gardening Sustainability, Energy, and Transportation; and a book discussion group (we’ll start with Human Nature).
This autumn we’ll also resume our Camden Talks Climate Series, which will include evenings devoted to Energy Literacy, a panel debating Sufficiency versus Efficiency, and a look at Emergency Preparedness Planning in Camden/Rockport. We’ll provide more information in our upcoming newsletters.
We’re also happy to announce that we’ve now got a fiscal sponsor and will be able to accept donations from those of you who’d like to help fund local climate resilience. We’ll be announcing more on that in upcoming newsletters, too.
If you have events you’d like listed in our biweekly newsletter, send them to camdencan2025@gmail.com. You can also check out camdencan.org for more.
Upcoming Sustainable Food and Gardening Events
September 5 and September 7, Friday and Sunday, Camden and Rockport, CamdenCAN’s Food Garden Tour. For more information, see here. Note that it may take a few days to get the password for the map
September 6, Saturday, 2-4 pm, 1 Thomas Street, Camden, Wild One’s Midcoast Maine (WOMM) is hosting a Native Plant Garden Tour at the home of Jonathan and Christy Cohen. Jonathan, VP Wild One’s Midcoast Maine, has installed his most recent garden beds with nearly 100% sustainably grown straight species natives, sourced locally from small independent organic growers. Come learn about Jonathan’s transition from cultivars to genetically diverse, safely grown, chemical-free natives. See more here.
September 14, Saturday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, Camden Public Library Amphitheater. Wild Ones Midcoast Maine’s Native Plants Sale.There will be shopping from local native plant nurseries; educational booths with various organizations; children’s activities; conversations with native plant growers, experts, gardeners, and landscapers; speakers; music; and more! A great opportunity to learn more about native plants and incorporate them into your own garden and yard. See more here. RAIN DATE is Sunday, September 28.
Other Upcoming Events Promoting Sustainability, Resource Resilience, and Community Building for a Climate-Changed World
August 27, Wednesday (TONIGHT), 7:00 to 9:00 pm, Camden Yacht Club Sunset Seminars, Navigating Economic Justice and Sustainability in Coffee. Mary Allen Lindemann, Owner and Chief Creative Director of Coffee By Design. See more here.
August 27, Wednesday (TONIGHT), 6:00 pm, Rockport Public Library, Stewarding Tomorrow: How Rural Youth Are Strengthening Maine’s Communities and Rural Landscapes, a talk with Larissa Holland, JustME for JustUS Development Director. From hosting town forums to engaging their neighbors in conversations about environment and community, Holland will spotlight inspiring young leaders who are rooted in place and committed to preserving the values and landscapes that define rural life. Co-presented by the Maine Appalachian Mountain Club. For more information, see here.
August 29, Friday, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm, Rockland Public Library, Poetry Reading/Climate Change Workshop. Author/Poet Maggie Dewane offers reading, discusses benefits of nature journaling, guides haiku exercise. Free. Materials provided. Registration required here.
September 18, Wednesday, 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm Green Happy Hour with Midcoast Habitat for Humanity at the ReStore! Come grab a beverage with yours friends and colleagues in the beautiful ReStore, surrounded by salvaged and donated materials for your next building or renovation project. We’ll learn a bit about how Habitat works to expand affordable housing in our region, and what volunteer opportunities look like.
September 20 to October 4, WindowDressers Local Build for Camden/Rockland. Sign up here.
September 27, Saturday, 7:00 pm, Pascal Hall, Rockport, Lisa Redfern and the Good Trouble Project present a Benefit Concert for CamdenCAN. Save the date—more information to follow.
Saturday, October 4, Belfast: Climate Resilience Fair. Details here. EV Car demonstrations.
Other Climate Links of Interest (from CEBE)
(CEBE=Center for an Ecologically Based Economy, Norway, Maine—check them out.)
- The Maine Transactive Energy Pilot is still enrolling households. How it works: a nonprofit we’re partnering with has funding to deploy grid management tech to help scale it up. You enroll your large electric device(s) like a heat pump or EV charger, and they’ll aggregate them and demonstrate reducing demand during peak times, and reimburse you for the inconvenience of having slowed your EV charging temporarily or dialed your AC back a few degrees. Learn more and sign up here.
- Maine Climate Action Now and The Telling Room are offering a climate fiction writing workshop series for youth ages 13-18. Find inspiration in your own climate experiences, in the work of peer authors, and published cli-fi writers. Build a solid foundation with fiction tools such as character development, world-building, narrative structure, and voice. Participants will have the opportunity to explore dystopian, utopian, and “through-topian” climate writings. Five Tuesdays, Sep. 9 – Oct. 7, 4:30-6pm on Zoom. Free, and up to $125 stipend is available to support youth who need it to attend (no questions asked). Sign up here.
Concluding Thoughts
We Midcoast residents depend on the natural world for our food. What’s not always stated, but should be obvious, is that every living thing in the world depends on healthy ecosystems for continued thriving.
Human-driven pressures—from digging and burning fossil fuels, to forest depletion, overconsumption—are depleting the world’s resources and altering the planet’s climate. We’ve also deeply altered our worldwide seed dispersal system, the planet’s basis for healthy vegetative systems. According to the above referenced article in nature.com: “Human-driven changes (habitat loss, landscape fragmentation, invasive species, and direct exploitation of animals) have reduced the species diversity, trait diversity, abundance, and movement of seed dispersers.” If we work to reverse these changes we can create pathways by which we can protect and restore biodiversity, connection, and the functioning plant and forest systems.
We humans, agents of these destructive changes, have the chance to acknowledge and reverse our ecological damage. We can pull together and learn better ways, from rainwater catchment systems to replacing paved driveways with water-penetrable substrates that keep water nearby. We can create corridors for pollinators, so that yard by yard, we’re offering ideal habitats for our insect populations.
Our current challenges encourage us to talk and work toward a Midcoast where the natural world, and its needs, triumph. We know how to reverse the trends damaging our planetary systems. What’s required is care, attention, community, selflessness, putting planet over profit, conservation over convenience, community over individualism.
We can create a thriving, blossoming Midcoast, by planting seeds of change instead of status quo.
As ever, the choice is ours.