Happy Monday! I hope you enjoyed another beautiful weekend in Maine. Today’s Maine Maven is Amber Lambke, local food enthusiast and active community member in Skowhegan, Maine.

1. Amber, tell us about your background. You are so involved in the local food and agricultural movement in Skowhegan. What ignited your passion in this area?

I grew up in Brunswick, Maine and have a Master’s Degree in Speech-Language Pathology.  My husband, Mike, a family-practice physician, and I met at a contra dance, and settled in Skowhegan after getting married in 2001.

 

Mike and I love to grow food and raise chickens for fresh eggs on our in-town postage stamp house lot in Skowhegan. Having bought one of the turn of the century ‘painted-lady’ homes in town, we affectionately refer to the property as ‘Agro-Victorian’. We maximize every square inch of our property for food production, but we must still leave some of the serious fruit and vegetable production up to the experts and those with real farmland.  Needless to say, when we moved to Skowhegan in 2001 we were thrilled to discover the Skowhegan’s Farmers’ Market and have volunteered and grow in the interest of locally grown food throughout the community.

 

When Albie Barden, a friend and mason from Norridgewock asked for my help organizing a conference that would feed the interest amongst farmers, millers, bakers, and oven builders in reviving grain production in Maine, I was thrilled.  Having just celebrated its fifth year, the Kneading Conference is putting Skowhegan on the map as a hotbed of progressive thinking around strengthening Maine’s agricultural economy.  At a time when rural downtowns are suffering the loss of industry and poverty is widespread,  I can’t think of a better focus than food production to bring back vitality to communities and make them places that our children will want to return to.

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