Written by Sandy Stott | Your Land
Featured Photo: From left, Rol Fessenden, Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust board president, Mercie Normand, fundraising committee co-chair, Tom Settlemire, fundraising committee honorary chair and one of the founders of trust’s farmers market, Kristi Hatrick, executive director, Jamie Pacheco, director of strategic partnerships and project lead for the farmers market move, Julia St.Clair, agricultural programs manager, Margaret Wilson, board member and board lead for the farmers market move, Baxter Dempsey, Brunswick resident and POP Club participant, Jim Howard, president and CEO of Priority Real Estate and land trust market Pillar Sponsor, Glenn Hutchinson, president and CEO of Bath Savings Institution and land trust market Pillar Sponsor, Richard Mersereau, land trust board member and fundraising committee co chair. (Courtesy of James McCarthy)
On Sept. 24, well after actual ground had been broken, Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust held its ceremonial groundbreaking for its new farmers market, and, in a slightly longer future, a home for community programs and the land trust itself.
It seemed especially apt that this land trust, with agriculture central to its DNA, would come to Dionne Farm, which lies at the heart of Crystal Spring Farm along the conservation and agricultural corridor from Brunswick to Freeport.
On that day, 75 attendees heard from one of the trust’s founding spirits, former Bowdoin College professor and always-farmer, Tom Settlemire. Standing in a patch of field and near two towering conserved conifers, Settlemire recalled the rush of days in the early ’90s when he and other land trust founders learned that Crystal Spring Farm was for sale.
“We knew,” he said, “that we had to save this land from housing development. Developers could have put hundreds of houses out here. It was special farm land, some of the best in Maine, and beautiful terrain.”
The land was also on sale for nearly $700,000. “But we were rich,” Settlemire joked, “we had $4,000 in the bank. Still, we knew we had to buy this land for the community.”
And so, in a hurried and white-knuckled campaign, they did. Now, as the 75 of us in attendance that day celebrated the early work on the site (just over a mile from Brunswick center, and across the road from the current farmers market with ample, on-site parking planned), the Crystal Spring Farm land family has grown to 360 acres. Those acres include the site we stood upon, the 25-acre Dionne Farm, whose generously-supported purchase was completed in 2025 as a gift of place to our whole area.
Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust Agricultural Programs Manager Julia St.Clair then outlined the design of the new market, pointing to the “community spirit of the market” as the unchanging core that would center it. The trust’s Executive Director Kristi Hatrick thanked a number of the individuals and businesses who have made this early work possible. The morning grew brighter still; the sun was higher, warm beyond the recent equinox.
It was time for the symbolic, shovels-in-the-ground moment. Eleven worthies stepped forward, grasped a shovel each, a few planted a foot atop their shovel-blades, and everyone … posed. This circle of shovelers represented many of the groups who make the farmers market a center for our community.
People took photos, an appreciative burble rose from the assembled. Just as it should be, I thought as I lined up a photo against the backdrop of work that will host up to 50 local vendors, newly-planted shade trees, plus room for chairs and gatherings beneath a pavilion.
It will be a place where, harkening back to an early market saying from teacher and then market director, Rick Wilson, “you get to meet the face of your food.” And, as bonus, the many faces of friends and people from throughout the area.
So that seems a good way to point to the community promise of Crystal Spring and Dionne farms — putting faces to the land that sustains us, and which we must serve wisely.
A few years ago I had asked Tom Settlemire where his land wisdom originated: “That one is easy, — it was my parents!!!” he wrote. “My father told me at an early age ‘soil is the most important resource we have on earth — more than oil, gold, silver, anything. If you don’t have fertile, productive soil, you have nothing else. You can’t have people.’”
That belief lies at the heart of the land trust’s vision for the market, which will open to our community next summer.
Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission and its Steering Committee for the Restoration of Mere Brook, and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust Board of Directors. He writes for the AMC’s Appalachia and a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.
