STOCKTON SPRINGS, Maine — Just outside the door to the Highland Organics workshop on a hilltop in Stockton Springs is a box filled with rocks and water and surrounded with buzzing bees.
Theresa Gaffney placed the box there as a watering station for the bees, so the busy pollinators can take a break from their hard work and get a drink. But in lots of ways, the bee watering station also is a symbol of the kind of farm she and her husband, Tom Gaffney, have created on their 25 acres of blueberry barrens. The farm is certified organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, and the Gaffneys take seriously the idea of working in harmony with nature.
They also are intent on adding value to their blueberry crop by creating products such as teas and dehydrated blueberry “barque” that can be sold around the world. Those products have turned the farm from a seasonal business with a four-week season to a bustling year-round enterprise, they said.
“The most exciting part of what I do is that I get to look at the whole ecology of the land,” Theresa Gaffney, who manages the farm, said Wednesday. “And then I get to share these wonderful products with people.”
Those products begin with blueberries, which in mid-July are ripening thickly on the 12 acres in production this summer in colors that range from ivory to dusky, velvety blue, but they don’t end with the sweet blue fruit. The farm’s primary products used to be fresh and frozen blueberries, sold on the farm directly to its customers. That changed in 2004, Theresa Gaffney said, when a friend who was getting her doctorate degree in food science at the University of Maine, Orono, came to the farm. Dr. Kristi Crowe was searching for a National Science Foundation project she could do with a chemistry class at Hampden Academy.
“I said I had always wondered about blueberry leaves, if there’s any value to them,” Theresa Gaffney recalled. “She said, ‘Oh, probably not, but the initial research will be really fun for the kids.’”
That fall, when the leaves turned crimson, the students came to the farm to harvest them. They took them back to the lab and tested the leaves for the levels of anthocyanins, or antioxidants, and what they found was surprising.
“Kristy called me up and said there’s more antioxidants in blueberry leaves than blueberry fruit,” Theresa Gaffney said.
After the high school students’ results were double-checked at the University of Maine labs and found to be accurate, the Gaffneys had another question: What on earth can be done with the blueberry leaves? Antioxidants help protect bodies against age-related health risks, and wild blueberries’ high antioxidant levels helped label the familiar Maine fruit a so-called “superfood.” But no one had ever done anything with blueberry leaves before, and Theresa Gaffney wasn’t sure how to change that. So she applied for three Maine Technology Institute seed grants, ultimately winning $21,500 for the research and development of what she called Whole Plant Wild Maine Blueberry Tea.
To make it, red blueberry leaves harvested in the fall are blended with pureed, dehydrated and pulverized blueberry fruit. The tea, which can be served both hot and cold, is a sweet and refreshing crowd favorite, she said.
“The leaves have a very mild, sweet flavor,” Theresa Gaffney said. “It’s totally different than commercial blueberry teas. We introduced our blueberry tea in 2006, at the Common Ground Country Fair. We sold out. It was amazing.”
Organic Blueberry Barque, another of the farm’s value-added blueberry products, is blueberry puree that has spent 15 or more hours in the dehydrator until it is crispy and crunchy — and eminently snackable. Eighty pounds of blueberries becomes 10 pounds of barque.
“We would eat that while we were making tea,” she said. “It’s really good. One of the girls said, ‘why aren’t you selling this?’ People love it.”
In recent months, Theresa Gaffney has expanded the line of Highland Organics products to include tea made from chaga, a nutrient-and-antioxidant rich fungus that grows on the trunks of birch trees. She calls it a “forest herb” so as not to scare away folks who might think twice about drinking a fungus tea. The teas, barque and other products are available in Maine at Lupine Cottage, the Belfast Co-op, Conklin’s Maine Mercantile and the new Treasured Leaf Tea Co., all in Belfast; Rockland’s Maine Street Market and Brewer’s Tiller & Rye. They also can be ordered on the Internet at atasteofwildmaine.com, and found at farmer’s markets in Searsport, Rockland, Belfast, Orono and Bangor.
“It was just a little science project that was supposed to result in nothing,” Theresa Gaffney said. “We’ve been all over the world with our products.”
Her husband, who originally bought the land because he wanted a lot of space — not because he wanted a lot of blueberries — said that adding value to blueberries has been a revelation.
“I don’t know how anybody who is just selling blueberries at a roadside stand can stay in business because costs are so high,” Tom Gaffney said. “By adding value to your product, you turn a seasonal business into a year-round one.”
The sweetness at Highland Organics now is not found only in its plump blue fruit, he said.
“This work and this business has really been something sweet,” he said. “What’s become of this is nothing short of dazzling.”