POLAND – The dairy farm of third-generation farmers Dennis and Cindy Ferland has been voted the best farm in Maine.

At the Eastern States Exhibition in Springfield, Mass., a regionwide agricultural fair, the Ferlands were awarded a silver cup with the inscription, “New England Green Pastures Winner, Maine, 2002.”

The judges, all past winners, agreed that the farm on Hardscrabble Road is clean, well-run, profitable and environmentally responsible.

“You have to love it,” said Dennis Ferland, 52. “Your heart has to be in it.”

But in a decade or so, when the Ferlands are ready to retire, no one will love it like they do, he said. Neither of their sons are farmers, and Ferland figures that the 350 acres on which he grows hay and corn will be chopped into lots.

“What will be here?” asked Maine’s farmer of the year. “Lots of pretty homes.”