A pocket ful of pansies Newburgh men’s flowers beat out the rest because they’re grown Maine tough

What would possess members of the small, tight-knit community of Newburgh to nickname three burly Maine men clad in Carhartt work clothes “the pansy men”?

It’s probably because they grow more than 30,000 pansies on an acre of their back field when they’re not out cutting wood.

Tending raised beds running alongside the Littlefield Road, Randy and Mark Mogan and Don Jewett stand out in the palette of fragile blossoms shuddering in the cool breeze. They fuss over lemon-yellow pansies with black centers, pale pink-and-white-hued ones and deep purple and red and maroon varieties. With calloused hands, they pluck the blossoms, preparing the flowers to winter over so passers-by will have a visual treat to behold come spring.

Some will attempt to buy the well-tended pansies. Others will simply enjoy the sight of the field of cheery flowers glistening in the morning sunshine.

Long-haul truck driver Ernie Wallace passes the field on his way home to Winterport. Although he has seen many sights in his travels across the state, it’s the gardenscape close to home that amazes him.

“I just think it’s neat how they do it, and it looks pretty good. It’s amazing how they plant them and leave them there over the winter, and in the spring there’s a field of pansies,” Wallace said.

In Newburgh, pansies have been associated with the Mogan and Jewett names for three generations.

“Well, you could say it was a family tradition – we kind of do it to make money, but we also do it to honor grandfather,” Randy Mogan explained.

The Mogan brothers’ grandfather Arthur Jewett, who raised vegetables for a living, started the pansy enterprise years ago. After Jewett’s death five years ago, the business remained dormant for two years until the next generation of “the pansy men” decided to take over the reins.

For woodcutters, mud season literally mucks up and wreaks havoc with logging. The Mogans and Jewett have a tough time making money at that time of the year. The brothers remembered their grandfather’s pansy business, and they and their uncle decided to revive it to supplement their income.

The Mogan brothers and Jewett are also out of the ordinary because they don’t grow typical pansies.

“These aren’t your typical hothouse [greenhouse] pansies. If the frost hits those, they die,” Jewett noted. “These field-grown pansies have spent the whole winter in the ground. They’re used to the weather, so they turn out to be much hardier.”

In mid-October, the Mogan family’s pansies were still in bloom, showing no signs of stress from the plunge in temperatures and bone-chilling winds. The men planted one batch of the pansies the last week in August, and the second group went into the ground the second week of September.

“People drive by and see blossomed pansies at the end of October and think we’re crazy, but we know what we’re doing. My father taught us well,” Jewett said.

In late October, the pansy men handpick the flowers’ blossoms and mulch them with straw when the ground freezes. When spring finally arrives, instead of running their skidder in the mud, the three men ready their pansies to sell at hardware stores. Local Ace Hardware, True Value and EBS stores sell the 14 varieties of the field-grown flowers. There the regular pansies may cost around $3.49 for a flat of eight, whereas the field grown sell for about $6.99.

“If you put their pansies next to ours on the shelf, you can’t give away the greenhouse pansies,” Randy Mogan declared. “Ours are so much bigger and brighter. Most people don’t care about the cost.”

In fact, some places, such as Corinna Gardens in Corinna, sell only the Newburgh family’s pansies.

A field-grown pansy takes almost a year to raise, but despite the costs of fertilizer, straw and the tender care given to each hand-planted seedling, the pansy men feel all the effort is well worth it.

“We sell our pansies better in more of the farming communities because people know us, know what they’re getting for a product and they know it’s worth spending an extra few bucks on the field grown,” Jewett said.

The pansy men promise their pansies are tough enough to withstand any blow or freak snowstorm come spring. Or your money back.

“I’d give the customers double their money back or more plants,” Randy Mogan pledged. Mogan takes pride in the family’s product and will make good on his promise. After all, he admits that he is “the pansy man.”

For information, or to learn how to purchase the pansies in the spring, contact M+M Services, 202 Severance Road, Newburgh 04444, or call the business at 234-2288.