Charleston family farm lauded

CHARLESTON – National and state statistics often point to the demise of the family farm, but those statistics are far from the reality of Maine’s Dairy Farm of the Year, operated by Richard and Melvina Perkins, which is bucking the trend as a traditional, red-and-white farm on a hill.

The farm was selected for the honor by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service.

Asked Monday which word is the most important in “family farm,” Richard Perkins, 46, said he cannot distinguish between the two.

“There are times when there are three generations working in the same field,” Perkins said. “How special is that?”

Perkins’ 68-year-old father and 72-year-old uncle are often sought out for farming advice. Perkins’ son, Aaron Perkins, 24, works full time on the farm, and his wife, Melvina Perkins, is the farm’s calf expert, boasting a less than 1 percent loss of newborns. The couple’s daughter, Nicole King, married to an Easton dairy farmer, also remains an integral part of the Charleston farm.

Established in 1887, the Perkins’ “Alfaslopes” farm has been passed down through family members. Perkins was born in Maine and raised in western Massachusetts, but would return to the farm, owned by his uncle, Donald Perkins, for a week each summer.

“All the time I was growing up, I just wanted to get back to Maine,” he said.

Three weeks before his high school graduation, at 17, he was working on his uncle’s farm. “I bought my first farm when I was 22 years old with one child and another on the way,” he said.

For the next 16 years, Perkins farmed in Unity. When his uncle decided to retire from his Charleston farm, Richard and Melvina Perkins bought it.

“We went from milking 40 cows in Unity to more than 100 here,” Perkins said.

For Perkins, that is not disdain; it is pride.

From the new calf barn – “It’s a moo-tel,” he joked – to the design of the free-stall barn he added most recently, Perkins beamed while leading a tour of his farm.

“This is who I am,” he said. “I don’t know if it is the independence or the challenge that keeps me farming. Maybe it’s the open space or the ability to have time alone. I know I love watching things grow and harvesting the crops.”

And he does it well. Perkins grows alfalfa and other grasses, tills and harvests 500 acres, and maintains a herd of 218, with 171 currently milking daily and producing an average of 100 pounds per cow per day. He ships his milk through Dairy Farmers of America cooperative, and it ultimately ends up at Garelick Farms in Bangor.

“We stress cow comfort and quality forage, and we are making investments in our farm that show we are here for the long term,” Perkins said.

Future concerns, he said, swirl around consistent, high-quality labor, energy and fuel costs, and the unpredictability of the milk market as regulated by the federal government.

Perkins noted that “we are getting the same price today as we did in 1980 for our milk. Because of inflation, that translates into about half of the dairy dollar we got 25 years ago.”

To stay profitable, he said, a farm must stay current – modernizing and adding technology. Perkins installed the first multiarch solar barn in Maine and recently revamped an existing century-old structure with modern roll-up curtains, instead of walls, to provide ventilation and light.

“But the real key is knowing that you don’t have all the answers and surrounding yourself with people who do: a great veterinarian, soil and conservation experts, feed commodities technicians and cooperative extension,” said Perkins.

“And family,” he added. “Don’t forget the family.”