Transcription of Matthew DeGrandpre for the show Farm Fresh Maine #186
Dr. Belisle: We, on Love Maine Radio enjoy bringing the pages of Maine Magazine to life and today that’s just what we’re doing as we speak with Matt DeGrandpre who is the farm operations manager at Wolfe’s Neck Farm, born and raised in Freeport. Wolfe’s Neck Farm has always been a part Matt’s life. His grandfather Charlie moved the family up to Maine in the late 1960s from a dairy farm in Massachusetts and immediately began transforming and managing the farm. The reason I say that we’re bringing the pages of Maine Magazine to life is that you are actually featured in an article that was written by Sandy Lang and photographed by Peter Frank Edwards. That’s in our upcoming issue, so you’re a star. Thanks for coming in. We’re so lucky to have you.
Matt: You’re welcome.
Dr. Belisle: This is a little different than what you normally do on a day-to-day basis …
Matt: It is.
Dr. Belisle: As a farm operations manager, tell me what that looks like?
Matt: While I was welding about 30 minutes ago, so it kind of gives me a little bit of a variety of what all of the things that I’ve learned in the last 10 or so years kind of following around my dad and my grandfather and my uncle. It allows me to do things that I love and that’s auto mechanics as well as some carpentry and plumbing and heating and electrical and stuff like that. My day-to-day kind of chore list is just keeping the farm a safe place for people to come in and enjoy as well as a beautiful place and maintain it so that we can get the same quality of product out to the customers that they want. Things change after years, so it’s a big property to take care of.
Dr. Belisle: It’s a beautiful place.
Matt: It is, yes.
Dr. Belisle: It’s a pretty great place to work, to be able to look out there and you have the fields, you have the woods, you have the ocean, you have the animals.
Matt: Absolutely.
Dr. Belisle: What is it like in the winter?
Matt: Well, the winter is kind of a quiet time on the farm, lot more activity with people cross country skiing and snowshoeing the campground, but it’s also pretty quiet in the barn. It allows us to be able to bring power tools in and start making upgrades to the barn, just because we don’t have as much foot traffic and it’s a lot colder. Of course, with all the snow we’ve had this year, we’ve just spent a lot of time making these kind of the wintertime upgrade. Our chore list that we’ve kind of held off between haying season and the busy season, allows us to do those sorts of things in the wintertime.
Dr. Belisle: The first time that I went to Wolfe’s Neck Farm I believe I was bringing my oldest who is now 21 to watch the calves being born. Talking about foot traffic, you have a lot of people that come in and out to see the animals. You have a lot of schools and families and …
Matt: Yeah, the education department at the farm has grown quite a bit. It’s always been there, it’s at a little bit of a different level now. I think it’s a lot more of a focused people in this state that want to know a lot more about where their food is coming from. I think that’s happened more or less in the last couple of years as people realize what they’re getting at a normal grocery store isn’t what they want for their kids or for their families. As that has transitioned, I think a lot more people want to come to the farm and see the animals and see how they’re getting taken care of and know that it could be their neighbors, the person that’s feeding them in the morning or it could be a student that they have in class that’s down there after school helping out. It involves a lot of people in the community, people that need volunteer hours or high school students that need those hours can come and work there. It’s more of like a family of people not that we’re all related but we’re all there together doing, kind of accomplishing the same task.
Dr. Belisle: What has it been like for you to be a part of a family that works on a farm together? This is your grandfather, Charlie is 88 …
Matt: Today.
Dr. Belisle: Today as we’re recording this, I know that your uncle once was a manager also and your father has been involved. Really, this is something that a lot of people don’t have. They don’t get to see their fathers, grandfathers, uncles on a day-to-day basis as part of work. What’s that like for you?
Matt: Well, it’s an awesome thing. It allows me to kind of work off of them. I see them all the time and we all live within five miles of each other. It becomes difficult to be able to find ways to separate life and business, but it’s a lifestyle that we live and we choose to live. My dad takes care of the campground, so a lot of times in the summer, I don’t get to see him. I’ve got a July birthday, so that’s during the middle of hay season, so I don’t really get to see too many people at that time. it’s more like the winter time is when we get together and enjoy ourselves a little bit more as a family, but my uncle is a carpenter at the farm, as kind of retirement, hanging around, getting things done, helping us make the improvements. My grandfather is still around, lives on the farm. I live on the farm, so it’s a unique experience. I think it’s unique that there’s three generations still alive, still down there, still working hard, but I think what makes it special is that as I struggle to get through high school and going into vocational school, I didn’t necessarily, it wasn’t a big concern to me about learning the math and the English, it was more how do I get to be a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic, a farmer. What part of this class teaches me about that?
People were saying, “You need to study hard and you need to do these things.” I’m thinking, “How quickly can I get out there and put my hands on these topics.” That’s where my family comes to play as they all excel in a specific area. As we all come together as one, well they call that farmers, I mean those are the people that can do a little bit of everything. It’s important to have everybody involved because I think that helps make you a multi-purpose person.
Dr. Belisle: You graduated from Freeport High School and as you just mentioned you had some vocational training …
Matt: [inaudible 00:37:40].
Dr. Belisle: But you also did standards, English and math and all those things. Did you know when you were going through that you would someday be a manager at the farm?
Matt: No, not at all. My junior year is when I started at the Maine Vocation Region 10, in Brunswick. I started there knowing that I wanted to go for automotive. My dad’s older brother Richard runs a garage in Freeport. I’ve watched him and his success there. I thought, “Well, if I go to be a mechanic and kind of maybe follow Richard’s footsteps, I could run my own garage.” I’ve always wanted to be kind of working for myself. It’s enjoyable to be your own boss and to make your own mistakes and to learn into and then succeed. I thought that if becoming a mechanic, I can do that in Freeport and that people are always going to be driving cars, so that’s why I went into the mechanic part of it. When I went to the vocational school, I then realized that there’s a lot more to it than just day-to-day maintenance. There’s lot tricks and a lot of different things that you learn on a vehicle that I use every day at the farm.
That program at the Maine Vocation School brought me to Central Maine Community College, which is where I went to college, only because my teacher knew that was a good fit for me. I had already paid to go to another school. I had already decided to go to Massachusetts and go to a certificate school. He said, “No, no, no, I know your family, I know who you are, I know what you are going to do even though you don’t think you’re going to be doing it, I want you to take the day off and go out to Central Maine and do that program.” I did and I ended up pulling out of the school at Massachusetts to go to CMCC and went there for automotive. That was when I realized working in a dealership like my fellow classmates probably wasn’t going to be a good fit. Schooling was mainly trying to figure out who I was and what other people were thinking of doing and what I was going to do differently.
Dr. Belisle: That’s a lot to do. That’s a lot to handle. I mean you’re 25. A lot of people by the time they’re 25, still don’t know exactly what they’re going to do, still are trying to figure out what that all looks like. Was there some moment that some aha moment where you said, “Oh wait, I know what I want to do now.”
Matt: Probably, a lot of it has to go to the fact that when I was a baby, when I was a year old, my uncle who was a operations manager at the farm passed away. When he left, not only was he taking over my grandfather’s legacy at Wolfe Neck, he was also running his own farm. He had two girls there. He had all his own excavation equipment. He had built himself a life before he was probably 30 that was something that I would want to do and have all the equipment and have all the toys and be able to kind of live that dream of just being able to do kind of what you want on your own schedule. That was what he was doing and when he passed away and as I got older and learned more about what he was doing, I thought, “Well [inaudible 00:41:10] he want to be a mechanic, he went to school to be a mechanic, why can’t I just …”
As I got older, my grandmother would say, “Oh, you remind me so much of David, you remind me so much of David.” I thought, “I never got to know David, but I got to know that I got to learn what he was was as a person.” I feel that since my grandmother has passed away and my grandfather kind of tells me a little bit more about what David was doing. It’s a lot like what I am trying to do and starting to do. I think a lot of it just has to do with the family, keeps on going even when we have a tragedy like that. It really boils down to what my family has been doing and how happy they seem to be. That’s what I’m looking for.
Dr. Belisle: I heard the work toys. I think that’s what I think of my son and my nephews and just the awe that they have when they look at farm machinery or trucks or vehicles. There is this sense of joy and that you get to play with the big thing that moves. For you that must be great because you actually know how to fix it.
Matt: Absolutely yeah, I enjoy the outdoors a lot and I have ATVs and snowmobiles. When I go on vacation, I like to make sure I’ve got a big trailer behind me with a bunch of good stuff on it, but a lot of it too is old farm equipment. I’ve got an antique tractor. My grandfather has an antique tractor. We go to the fairs and do then antique tractor pulls. Engines are a hobby of mine and so it’s kind of fun to be able to wheel and deal and buy things that I can use on the farm that will maybe make me money in the wintertime, plowing snow and stuff like that. It’s a hobby and it’s definitely something that I’ve always loved doing and I’d like to keep doing it.
Dr. Belisle: How early do you get up in the morning?
Matt: Very very, well it’s funny, I get up at 3 every morning to stoke the wood stove because I live in the oldest house in Freeport, no insulation. I’m up early, doing the wood fire and then it’s pretty much coffee time. Then I hit the door, I don’t know about 7:30 to get to the farm. That’s about 8, about the time everybody starts getting going at the beef operation or the feeding operation that we currently are right now. Once we get to dairy, I’m sure it’ll be hours before that but it’s the afternoon that takes over when you get home at like 7:30, 8 o’clock. That’s when you wind down the day.
Dr. Belisle: That’s a long day.
Matt: It’s a lifestyle. You are doing some of your own things, doing a lot of the farm things. You’re getting what you need to get done and what the farm needs to have done and stuff like that. It seems like a long day, but keeps you busy. You get up in the morning and you’re not punching in. I’m not punching a time clock or anything. I’m getting up when I get up and hit the road, when the job’s done that’s when you get home.
Dr. Belisle: Also, there is a cyclical nature to it, so in the winter, you do a certain set of jobs and the spring it looks different and the summer and the fall.
Matt: Yeah, in the winter, you get to sleep in. Then, in the summertime it gets pretty crazy especially I run the haying operation for the farm. All of the maintenance that goes in before you even start the day, I mean we might not start cutting hay until the dew settles and that’s sometimes 11 o’clock. You’re up and you’re sharpening and you’re greasing and you’re changing oil and fueling things up and that takes a lot of time, plus you’re trying to get other people orchestrated on what their day-to-day task is going to be, while you are out in the field. Then, the spring and the fall, it’s so muddy down at the farm, I mean we’re right on the water. We’ve got heavy clay soils, water just sets right on top of it. You are just trying to keep people from going out on the fields early and running things up. There, it’s definitely a seasonal position that’s for sure.
Dr. Belisle: The weather that’s something that I wouldn’t have thought about does the clay and they are [inaudible 00:45:34] the fields and …
Matt: Totally yeah. Thank God for smart phones because I have my weather channel app and if I am up before, I can watch the news or if I miss the news in the morning, then at least I can look at my phone and be able to know what the day is going to look like because a lot of it is weather dependent. If it’s raining out, you’re not in the fields or if it’s that December 1st manure spreading deadline comes up and you are out in the fields in the rain, trying to get it done as quick as possible, a lot of it has to do with what the weather looks like and what kind of restrictions you were working against. We’re on the water, so we have lot of restrictions. They can’t graze too close to the water and we have to be careful about the amount of animals that we have close to the water and drainage. If animals are to get out, we’re right on some pretty major roads and they are heavily traveled in the summer times. Actually, we have got a huge campground there, so there’s over 120 campsites. Start getting a lot of that kind of traffic coming in and out, it’s really crucial to keep everything in and safe and sound. It is, it’s very weather dependent, it’s very seasonal dependent.
The summer times are busy season, but it’s only busy because it’s so hectic. I mean the rest of the year, you’re still just as busy, you still work in the same hours, you’re just kind of doing it a little bit either different pace or totally different projects or working under a roof, which I’m not used to doing.
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Dr. Belisle: You have to be pretty flexible, it sounds like you have to be flexible because of the rain, the snow, the time of year. It seems like some of what to do is planning and some of what you do is, “Okay, what’s right in front of me, right now.”
Matt: Yeah, I think the majority of it’s what you get when you wake up and what it’s doing outside. When it snows, I’ve got a small plowing business, so when it snows, I am out plowing snow. But, I know that I have somebody else who covers, who goes and feeds the animals. You can plan things, but you better write it down because you’re not going to remember it because you get down there and there’s a water tub that’s frozen or a circuit breaker is tripped and you got to figure out why the animals come first and they need to make sure that they are fed and watered. A lot of it, it’s all about just writing it down and prioritizing things. Then, of course your 10 extra things you get every day that are things you didn’t expect.
Dr. Belisle: It kind of reminds me of being a doctor. You can have a plan for the person sitting in front of you, but whatever it is that they show up with, you just go to deal when they are there.
Matt: Absolutely.
Dr. Belisle: Do you work with younger people when they come on the farm, do you work with people who might want to be farmers themselves or …
Matt: Not my job in particular. I think there’s people. My job is the operations manager. I’m on equipment all the time and it’s not a two seater, well unless it is a truck. It’s not like I’m really bringing people around and showing them what I do just because my job is so kind of equipment oriented. If I’m cutting hay, people will sometimes will come and watch, but a lot all the younger involvement is with my coworkers, either that’s their job or they’re in the barn more than I am. My job is in particular to like go out there and doing animal nutrition or being the vet or anything like that. a lot of my job has to do with the day-to-day operations and safety and stuff for the people that are there.
My interaction with younger people is only when we have big volunteer days and that’s when businesses or schools are coming and they want to help us accomplish some tasks.
Dr. Belisle: If somebody were interested in that type of work that you are doing in working on a farm, being an operations manager, since you don’t have a chance to talk to people coming onto the farm about this sort of thing, what would you tell that person?
Matt: I mean we do job shadowing. I’ve had some people that have come to the farm and worked there that their high school asks them to do a job shadow. I love doing things like that. There’s always time to help young people. I mean I’m young myself, but somebody obviously did for me, so I am willing to do it for them. I think that my story is a bit unique because of how young I am in the position that I am in now and kind of how quickly it all happened. I’m always open to have people come follow me around the farm session because am pretty good at getting work out of people.
Dr. Belisle: I like that so if somebody wants to come find out what you do, they have to prepare to actually do it with you.
Matt: Absolutely, you don’t chop without boots on. That’s for sure.
Dr. Belisle: It’s really interesting for me to think about your grandfather coming to Maine from Massachusetts with a specific intent of working on a farm. In fact, coming from a dairy farm and now Wolfe Neck is going to become an organic dairy operation again and in fact train other farmers to offer organic dairy. That’s a kind of a funny, it’s almost like it was meant to happen or something.
Matt: Yeah, you know what, it is kind of becoming like a circle of events. I mean I think when I first mentioned it to my grandfather, he thought, “Are you feeling all right, what are you doing, you understand this is five in the morning, five at night, milking seven days a week, this is a total lifestyle, this isn’t just what you think is a lifestyle.” I was over there with a coworker of mine and he kept saying, “Well, who are you going to have to do this and who are you going to have do that?” We’re saying, “Well, grandpa, they have equipment that does that now you just don’t bring wooden seat and a bucket and start milking.” I mean this is like we are using equipment and machinery and it is definitely going to be difficult change for us, but Wolfe’s Neck Farm’s purpose has been to raise and natural meat and beef. That has since changed and to be doing something that kind of puts Wolfe’s Neck on the map, the state of Maine on the map, New England on the map, younger adults that want to be in this field, I mean this is an opportunity for people to share a similar story that I have and that is someone’s giving you the opportunity.
I could be in a dealership right now. I’m turning wrenches and there’s people that do that and they are happy doing that. That’s great, but being a farmer means that you’re dedicating your life to something. There’s people that work on Saturdays and there’s people that worked, lead the night shift. You think, “Oh, man I hate to have to work Saturday night or have to work through the night.” But they are looking at you saying, “I’d hate to be working seven days a week and milking twice a day.” I mean everybody has a specific purpose in life I think and to be given an opportunity in which you can do what you think is best for you, I think that being a dairy farmer is an exciting experience for myself and for these young folks that want to do it as well. It gives them an opportunity. It’s in a perfect location. Freeport is so close to everything. That’s why I’m there.
I traveled, I used to drive a truck for company and go out West eight months out of the year. I did that for three years and came back and said, “This has got a little bit of everything.” It’s a unique place and I think that even though my grandfather thinks we’re going crazy, doing dairy, I think what started the farm being such a success is that he had a dairy background and he knew animal nutrition and he knew how to take care love animals. He touched those animals twice a day, every day, even though he wasn’t milking them that didn’t matter. His business was keeping his animals happy and healthy. I think that’s what brought on a good business to begin with and it’s a good business model and that’s what we’re going to do, just milking. It’s that. It’s a good opportunity for the farm.
Dr. Belisle: Well, I encourage people who are listening to, read the article that was written by Sandy Lang and photographed by Peter Frank Edwards for Maine Magazine, also of course visiting Wolfe Neck Farm. That’s always a possibility, although if they’re going to visit, they have to put their boots on and be prepared to work if they are going to be with you. We’ve been speaking with Matt DeGrandpre who is farm operations manager at Wolfe’s Neck Farm who is carrying on the family legacy. Happy birthday to your 88-year-old grandfather Charlie. I appreciate your taking time out of your very busy schedule and talking to me about what you’re doing. It’s very different than what I do in my life, but extremely valuable and it’s really wonderful that you and your family are doing this for us, thank you.
Matt: You’re welcome, thanks for having me.
Dr. Belisle: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 186, Farm Fresh Maine. Our guests have included David Herring and Matthew DeGrandpre. Read more about them in the April issue of Maine Magazine. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For preview of each week show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful one on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you’ve enjoyed our Farm Fresh Maine Show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
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