What’s Happening? Join us in 2026!
SPA WORLD
Register hereJuly 13 - 16
A week of seaweed bathing, spa culture and the incredible and extra-tidal energy.
Benefit Dinners at Smithereen Farm
Get ticketsMonthly in Pembroke
Join us for chef-made farm dinners to benefit Greenhorns educational programming, often with additional experiences like bonfires, live music, or presentations
Cobscook Bay Ecology Series
Learn moreMonthly via Zoom with livestreams at Downeast public libraries
A speaker series bringing together neighbors, fishermen, scientists, and local leaders to learn about and celebrate the remarkable ecology of Cobscook Bay and the greater Downeast coast.
Low Low Tides Workshops + Public Programming
Learn moreMonthly in Pembroke
Our monthly seaweed harvest workshops bring together curious people to harvest, learn, cook, and eat together.
The New Farmers Almanac, Volume 7: Premonition
As a literary journal powered by farmers, for farmers, with farmers—in daily relation with the living world, Vol. 7 is called PREMONITION. Literature, as in dreamworld, allows our human psyches to sort, unfold and reorganize memories and meaning. Evolutionary life, learning from extremity, unfolds with inspiration, trembles towards survival. We are earth-bound beings tuned to a world wide web of soil.
Printed in full color for the first time, this Almanac challenges us to share our premonitions and respond to narratives of inevitability: what transmissions we are receiving from the living world?
100+ new works by:
farmers • artists • activists • organizers
journalists • storytellers • poets
teachers • scholars • scientists • chefs
Low Low Tides Seaweed Harvest
2026 Dates Open Now
Harvest dates for our 2026 seaweed workshops are open NOW! Join Smithereen Farm and other curious people for a week of learning, harvesting, processing, and eating together.
2026 is our ninth season Downeast.
We are a grassroots organization based on a working family farm, and we offer diverse public programming with free and low-cost opportunities. This year's programming focus is on ALL THE FISH who live here with us. This region is uniquely positioned to host the recovery of sea-run fish, and now is the time for action. Check out https://earthlife.tv/fish/ to learn about the native alewives here.
All season long, the Agrarian Library at Reversing Hall is open by appointment. Email [email protected] to request an appointment.
April 24 — Alexandra Moreton at Lubec Public library kicks of the Cobscook Bay Ecology Series
May 23 — Our signature springtime event: The Fifth Annual Pennamaquan Alewife Festival, a free, family-friendly celebration of the fish. Free local food buffet, smoked fish, biologist talks, live music, bicycle repairs with Mike's Bikes, kids puppet making with Lubec's Turtle Dance Art Coop, painting activities for kids, lecture by Passamaquoddy artist Eric Bacon, and a canoe ride up the Pennamaquan Free and open to all (RSVP required for canoe ride only)
May 30 — Calling artists for a FISH paint-a-thon with Natasha Mayers and her team at ARRT! (Artist Rapid Response Team)
May 30 — Benefit dinner for Cobscook Bay Ecology series with Chef La Mason and lecture by Abby Barrows
May 31 — FREE Mallet Brothers Concert at Bad little Falls park in Machias. In the morning there's a teach-in at DSF Hatchery in East Machias RSVP required
June-September — Cobscook Bay Ecology Series continues at Lubec Library
July 14 — Benefit Dinner to support the Cobscook Bay Ecology Series with Hannah Black and Seaweed Spa-fest with Saipua and Big Towel, register early!
July 15 — Peter Neill Eastport Public Library in conversation with Lavinia Currier
August 2-3— Maine Wild Blueberry Weekend with U Pick and open farmday, tour, refreshments at Smithereen Farm
Washington County Faire
September 5 — Mushroom forage and feast dinner Benefit for Cobscook Bay Ecology series with Sue Van Hook and guest chef
September 25-27 — Common Ground Fair, c/o Maine Organic Farmers and Gardners Association
October — Angus Dieghan of Rocky Ground Cider for another iteration of Cider Camp.
Eat Downeast!
We celebrate our home region with a map of local food producers and a Washington County Food and Ag Event Calendar!
The U-Pick blueberries are ready in July, the cranberries in September.
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.
New here? Check out THE BLOG, THE GUIDEBOOKS, THE RESOURCES MAP, and our sister organizations: AGRARIAN TRUST, NATIONAL YOUNG FARMERS COALITION . . .
A Digital Magazine & Podcast For The Intrepid Young Farmer
Check out our series EarthLife, looking upstream and downriver to explore the landscape of our home region of Downeast Maine. We bring you episodes on ALEWIFES, BERRIES, CIVIC HALLS, and SEAWEED. Immerse yourself in a multi-media learning experience with short films, audio interviews, and collected articles and images that inform an approach to ecological farming, rural enterprise, and coalition building.
View our latest EarthLife video, all about sustainable, human-scaled seaweed harvest at the Low Low Tides workshops we host in Pembroke every spring and summer.
Maine Civic Halls Initiative
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.
seaweed Commons network
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
