Taxes Paid, Garlic Planted

Standing at the counter of my town office, I counted out hundred dollar bills for the first parcel.

You pay your taxes with cash?’ a friend asked incredulously a few days earlier. We’d arranged to meet at Marmee Dearest’s, our local coffee shop in Kingfield, Maine, and I’d come straight from the bank. Having pulled the funds sent by my fairy godmother—a reader I’ve never met who believes in this farm enough to help keep it standing—the bundled bills were stashed in my wallet when I went to pay for our coffees.

“A check takes too long to process and my bank account isn’t that stable,” I explained. “I can’t guarantee those funds will still be there in three weeks when they finally deposit it.”

The 53 acres I own are broken into three parcels, so I get not one, but three tax bills. I paid the biggest one first—the one for the house and the outbuildings. It wasn’t until the clerk gave me the sum for the second that I realized I didn’t have enough to cover the other two parcels. I hadn’t accounted for the interest on tax bills two years past due.

“I’ll have to run home and pull some money from my heating reserve,” I told the clerk reluctantly. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Making the two mile trek—quite literally over the river and through the woods—I fought to tamp down my anxiety. I hated having to dip into the heating reserve. Those donations from my fairy godmother have allowed me to finally make Runamuk my priority—avoiding off-farm work.

Of the $6,500 she intended for heating fuel, only $2,200 now remains. Fuel is $5.949 a gallon today and I’m expecting upwards of $6 come January when I’ll need my next fill-up. Even with a small credit left over at the fuel company, I’ll need at least $2,100 more on top of the reserve to keep this big old farmhouse “reasonably warm” through the long Maine winter. And no—we don’t have a woodstove. Without a new chimney or an outdoor wood furnace, there’s really no safe way to put one in.

At the moment, I’m behind on pretty much all of my bills and utilities, and struggling to keep gas in the truck. I have no idea how we’ll get through this winter—say nothing of Christmas. But the taxes had to be paid, lest the town proceed with foreclosure—and there’s no way in hell I’d let that happen.

I’m sure I’m not the only one in the Northeast feeling this pain and panic, but at least the threat of foreclosure is staved off for another year—which is a victory I’ll savor in this moment.

Someday I’d like to have my taxes caught up, maybe even paid on time…if you can imagine such a thing.

What’s Been Happening on the Farm

IN THE GARDEN

Garlic: Since my last update, I’ve heavily mulched all three garlic beds with straw. We use straw because it’s typically seed-free, making for fewer weeds next season. The fifteen pounds of seed garlic was a big investment ($360 paid out earlier this summer), but I’m determined to grow enough to sustain my household for a full year, with a little to share with neighbors and CSA members.

Harvesting: I’m still pulling carrots I intend to store in a crate in the ground all winter. One five-gallon pail at a time, I’ve been bringing them in to sit in my un-heated pantry space until I’m ready to bury them.

Experiment #1: This week I cut a round of wire hoops for my trial bed of overwintering carrots and onions. Using bolt cutters borrowed from the guys next door at Wolf Classics (the old school turned landrover garage), I placed my hoops, then covered the bed with row-cover. That’s the first layer of protection that will hopefully carry this crop through to spring, allowing me a jump on the 2026 growing season.

Experiment #2: I managed to barter an arrangement for tractor-work, and yesterday the three-foot deep hole for my in-ground food storage experiment was dug, saving me a week’s worth of back-breaking digging. The crate is built with repurposed boards from raised beds I’d disassembled this spring, and 3x3x2.5h in dimension. We tacked wire mesh around the outside to deter rodents, and mill felt to protect the wood from the moisture in the soil. He prefers not to be on the internet, so no pictures of the dig—but I’ll share a shot of the finished result soon.

WINTER PREP

Irrigation: Still working outside to “put the farm to bed” ahead of winter, I enlisted the help of my son, BraeTek, in pulling the irrigation. Draining the hoses, PVC piping, and drip tubing is quite a chore when your garden is a half-acre or more. We also collected all of the drip tape, along with the remaining tools and equipment still on the garden.

Tidying the Addition: Once snow and ice block the barn’s back door, the addition on the backside of the house becomes inaccessible all winter. So we cleaned and organized it now—irrigation, garbage bins, transfer-station recycling—while we still can.

Tidying the Barn: While we were working in the barn, we moved the lumber purchased with reader donations back in early summer. It was meant to rebuild the sheep-tractors, if you recall—but everything changed when I sold the flock quite suddenly (full story here if you missed it). Those boards have been sitting in the middle of the barn ever since, taking up space and making it hard to move around in there. Now it’ll be used for trail-side benches and an information kiosk welcoming visitors to our nature preserve.

PASA UPDATE

Thanks to , Substack’s Raw Milk Mama, I’ve been connected to PASA—a nonprofit that supports sustainable family farms through education, research, and grants. It’s Pennsylvania-based, but serves farms from Maine to South Carolina. It’s been a long wait to speak with anyone there, but this week I finally connected with Chris Esposito about their grant process and what’s all involved.

It’s a great opportunity and I have the potential to access funds both for conservation and for business development. However, like any “free money,” there are caveats and hoops to jump through. PASA delivers 80% of the grant funds up front, which is much more attainable than other programs (specifically the NRCS EQIP program) that make you front the entire bill and then reimburse you after. Yet—on a $15,000 grant that still leaves me covering the other $3,000. They also require applicants to carry commercial liability insurance to access the funds and through the duration of the project, at the very least.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t have insurance—on anything except our vehicles. I keep the bare minimum in auto liability insurance in order to legally drive here in the state of Maine. The farm’s business insurance covered my products, all of my tools and equipment, as well as the structures on the property. Sadly, I had to let it go several years back when the price more than doubled after the industry started factoring in credit scores. My credit is sh*t, so my monthly rate went from $127 to $365, which was out of my budget then and still is today.

If I want these funds, I’d need to cough up the money for insurance, and that’s a big ask going into the winter heating season.

WORKING FOR FRANKLIN COUNTY
This was an unexpected offer presented by the Greater Franklin Economic and Community Development group, but I’m a firm believer in seizing the moment when opportunities like this present themselves. It’s part-time (just ten hours a week in winter, and five during the summer when I’m busy farming) and mostly remote, so I can work from home on my own schedule.

I’m having a lot of fun with it, too—working with Charlie Woodworth, Joel Gilbert, and my friend Steph Dunn. Serving this corner of Maine I love so much, while using my storytelling skills to promote the people, businesses, and places and help grow Franklin County. Best of all the farm gets to stay my top priority.

While I would have done that kind of community service regardless—because I believe in the work—there’s no denying the income will be a help with the outstanding utility bills and winter heating. However, there’s no way it’ll stretch as far as commercial insurance, so I don’t know that I’ll be able to take advantage of the PASA grants. I’m still marinating on that one…

Meanwhile, here I am, teetering on the edge—forever clinging to the notion that a farmer gonna farm—and somehow Greater Franklin has roped me into leading their November Marketing Meetup on video marketing of all things. They’re expecting me to stand in front of a crowd of successful business people and teach them how to use video to promote their business or organization.

………do you ever have those moments where you look around at your life and wonder: “How on Earth did I get here?”

Yeah. Me too.

Taxes Paid, Garlic Planted

Taxes paid, I crouched in the path between beds using a fat stick to “drill” a series of holes, three rows with four holes across, six inches apart in each direction. Then I plugged a clove of garlic into each hole before scooting further down the path, repeating the pattern on the next section. The sunflower stalks, dried and spent, stand hunched and skeleton-like against the sky, sentinels guarding the garden. Guarding me. Chickadees and finches flit in and out, alighting withered branches to feed on the abundant sunflower seeds.

Being outdoors and having my hands in the soil is the best remedy I know for stress and anxiety. It’s also where the frustration gets quiet enough for me to think clearly.

My insurance rate nearly tripled over a credit score (which—if you think about it—is just another made-up construct big business uses to pigeon-hole us, so it cheeses me off), and now that missing policy is what stands between me and a potentially life-changing grant. That’s the system working as designed: it charges you more for being poor, then locks you out of the help meant for people like you and me. And this isn’t just my story—this is the reality for farmers around the world.

Well, I’m done being anybody’s doormat. I choose to stand up and do something about it.

THAT’s why I do what I do—the farming, the nature preserve—the wildlife advocacy. It’s why I’m so vocal about REAL and local food access. This is the only reason I’ve been willing to step in front of a camera, and also the underlying factor in accepting Greater Franklin’s invitation to work with their organization.

I want to be part of the solution—and lead by example. We can’t wait for leaders. Leaders have failed us. And those who are fighting the good fight—they need our help. So it’s time to stop playing shy. Or making excuses. Or whatever it is that’s holding you back.

Do what you can, wherever you are, with what you have RIGHT NOW. Cuz the world needs more of that, my friends.

Until next week.

Your friendly neighborhood farmer,
—Sam

🫶Ways to Support Runamuk

1. Upgrade to a paid subscription at Substack. It’s what makes this work possible—and it gets you the full Vault, monthly Office Hours, and a live workshop every month.

2. Make a one-time contribution toward the farm and our wildlife conservation work through PayPal or Venmo.

3. Check out Runamuk’s Amazon Wish List to see what the farm needs to keep growing and feeding our community.