At the solar array at Hurricane Valley Farm in Falmouth are, from left, Mila Plavsic, executive director of the Falmouth Land Trust; Stefan Apse, solar design specialist at ReVision Energy; Silvan Shawe, executive director of Cultivating Community; and Badi Camara, farm manager at Cultivating Community. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

What happens when a food justice nonprofit, a local land trust and a solar energy company put their heads together? In the case of Hurricane Valley Farm in Falmouth, you get a community agriculture program that’s powered by the sun.

Hurricane Valley Farm, which is owned by the Falmouth Land Trust and hosts a food-access and growing program for asylum seekers and other new Mainers, now relies on a 20-panel, ground-mount solar array from ReVision Energy to offset its energy usage and become more resilient in the face of extreme weather.

The 62-acre farm off Route 100 was once slated to become housing, but it was saved from development when the Falmouth Land Trust purchased it in 2015.

“This is a very conservation-minded community, so it was well received when we decided to try to raise the money to save the farm,” said Mila Plavsic, the executive director of the Falmouth Land Trust.

Today, the local nonprofit Cultivating Community offers affordable growing space to over 50 refugee and asylum-seeking families so they can grow produce on the land. Cultivating Community has operated out of Hurricane Valley Farm since 2018, and the organization also has a community farm at the Littlefield-Packard Farm in Lisbon. Those who use the land pay a small plot fee, either for subsistence farming – growing produce for themselves and their families – or to grow crops to sell. The nonprofit has multiple other programs, including a youth leadership program and an urban agriculture program, operating multiple community gardens in Portland.

Plavsic stands in front of a 20-panel solar array that now offsets that farm’s energy bills and powers a battery backup. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

In 2022, Falmouth was awarded a $50,000 Community Resilience Partnership Grant through the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future in order to provide clean energy for Hurricane Valley Farm and Cultivating Community.

An early plan called for mounting solar panels on top of the farmhouse, but the roof was too small. Instead, farm operators ended up going with the mounted solar array, which sits on land that wouldn’t otherwise be used for cultivation, according to Cultivating Community’s Executive Director Silvan Shawe.

Most of the families that take advantage of the program are from different countries in Africa, according to Badi Camara, the farm manager for Cultivating Community who is also a new Mainer from The Gambia. Some of the families are from Mali, and others hail from South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo and Kenya.

Inside one high tunnel at Hurricane Valley Farm there’s corn, tomatoes, amaranth and kale. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

Camara said that many families grow crops one would find on the African continent like okra, roselle and African eggplant.

Often there’s some experimentation involved to see what sorts of familiar plants will grow in Maine.

“Sometimes they will go home and decide ‘I will take this seed with me and try to see what (will) grow here,’” Camara said. Last year he grew peanuts – which typically need warm, humid climates with extended periods of heat – and wasn’t sure how it would go, but his effort was successful.

In addition to outdoor community garden plots, some seedlings and plants are grown in “high tunnels” – covered structures that protect crops from weather and can extend the growing season. Peeking inside one of the plastic-covered high tunnels revealed corn, tomatoes, kale and amaranth.

Keeping the high tunnels powered through bad weather is one of the ways that the solar array can help the farm thrive.

“You need a fan constantly running to keep that outer layer inflated,” explained Plavsic. “In the early part of the growing season, when it’s still very cold (and) when those high tunnels are functioning really as greenhouses,” a loss of power and heat can cause all the seedlings to die.

But since the solar array was installed this past spring, the farm has been able to rely on backup power and hasn’t lost the fans.

The solar array is expected to produce over 12,000 kWh of electricity per year, according to Stefan Apse, a solar design specialist at ReVision Energy, offsetting 100% of the farm’s energy bills. The energy helps power ventilation, lighting, water pumps and refrigeration that both Hurricane Valley Farm in Falmouth and Littlefield-Packard Farm in Lisbon use.

The farm is still hooked up to the power grid and sometimes relies on power generated by the private utility company Central Maine Power (the sun doesn’t shine all the time, so the solar array can’t continuously offset the farm’s energy consumption), but the array also provides backup power. It’s connected to a battery that lives in the farmhouse, which can power the farm’s facilities in the event the grid goes down.

Not only is the solar array “launching them into a clean energy future that’s offsetting their electricity,” it’s also providing flexibility, Apse said.

“Here, there’s resiliency.”