Couples of the County: Cultivating Love with Anil Roopchand and Kelly Payson-Roopchand

Growing up more than 2,000 miles apart in two different climates and cultures, both Anil Roopchand and Kelly Payson-Roopchand dreamed of a life close to the land.

The pair’s shared passion for agriculture would ultimately bring them together as young adults, and, they say, it remains one of the things that has kept their relationship strong through 20 years of marriage as they have realized their dreams together.

Today, Roopchand and Payson-Roopchand own and operate Pumpkin Vine Family Farm in Somerville. There, they raise their two children, steward the historic land, and care for a herd of dozens of dairy goats. Both members of the farming couple, though, can trace their love of animals and agriculture to a time before their arrival in Somerville.

In the first of many parallels in their lives, both Roopchand and Payson-Roopchand developed their love of farming as small, island-dwelling children. Roopchand has been farming since his childhood on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where he grew up near the island’s southeastern corner. The area was rural, and Roopchand’s family had a homestead where they raised a range of crops and animals.

“We had everything: chickens, goats, bananas, pineapples – you name it, we grew it,” he said.

Most of these items were for the household to use, not to sell. While the family was engaged in homesteading, Roopchand’s parents also worked outside the farm: his father was employed as a bus driver and his mother as a highly in-demand seamstress. Roopchand recalled ever-present bags of fabric and clothing awaiting altering in the family home.

Roopchand and his five siblings helped out on the farm and spent plenty of time outdoors in their youth. Growing up on Trinidad made getting around relatively easy, Roopchand said. The island has an area of just over 1,800 square miles, just larger than Rhode Island or about 2.5 times the size of Lincoln County.

“It was pretty fun growing up, because on the island, you know, you could easily get a bus and get pretty much anywhere you wanted to,” he said.

As a child, Roopchand always hoped to have animals and a farm of his own one day. After high school, he studied at the Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and Forestry, a residential associate’s program where he received additional training in skills he had been practicing since his youth, from seed identification to delivering calves. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture at the University of the West Indies in three years before embarking on a master’s degree in animal science.

It was this dedication to the high-level study of agriculture that would ultimately lead Roopchand’s and Payson-Roopchand’s paths to cross.

Payson-Roopchand’s journey began to take shape on Bailey Island, in Harpswell, where she moved as a first grader and began helping out on a neighbor’s farm.

“That’s where I fell in love with farming,” Payson-Roopchand said. “My mom always said I wouldn’t come home when I got off the school bus. I just went to the farm to do chores.”

Payson-Roopchand described the three years her family spent on Bailey Island as “magical.” She helped her neighbors tend their sheep and grow vegetables and even went out on their lobster boat.

“I just fell in love with the whole experience,” she said.

When the family moved to central Maine, settling in China for her father’s work, Payson-Roopchand was distraught.

But Payson-Roopchand’s fourth grade heart would soon be at least partially healed by the acquisition of some animals from her former neighbor’s farm. Payson-Roopchand and her mother attained several chickens and a sheep named Special K from Bailey Island over the course of one weekend when her father was away at a conference.

In this way, Payson-Roopchand kept her love of farming alive. As an undergraduate, she transferred between several colleges while seeking her path forward until settling on the University of Hawai’i at Hilo, drawn by their pioneering program of agroecology, which studies ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems.

“Even though my parents were not farmers, my parents were both definitely environmentalists … I always had that appreciation for nature, so I always knew if I was going to farm, it was important to do it in a sustainable way,” she said.

Payson-Roopchand then earned a master’s degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis and embarked on a doctoral degree program in agricultural education at the University of Florida.

For her doctoral research, Payson-Roopchand traveled to Trinidad, where a professor introduced her to a group of graduate students studying wildlife. Roopchand was among them.

“I was just walking in, and (Payson-Roopchand) was talking to the professor … He pointed to us, and he’s like, ‘You need to talk to those guys – talk to the wildlife boys,’” Roopchand said.

The two were immediately drawn to one another.

“There were all these different young men there, in this group, and everyone’s talking,” Payson-Roopchand said. “And everyone’s being young men. And (Roopchand) actually talked to me about my research and was interested in the same things I was.”

For their first date, the pair went hiking on a remote stretch of the Trinidadian coast. While it was clear from the beginning that their connection was special, Payson-Roopchand said she hadn’t planned to pursue a romantic connection while focusing on her doctorate.

“This is not my home country,” she recalled thinking. “How are we going to make it work? You know, I was there to do research. But then he was so nice, he was just the sweetest guy. And we started to have feelings for each other.”

The pair spent more time together and the quality of their connection became evident. Eventually, Payson-Roopchand moved back to the United States to continue her studies, but returned soon after to Trinidad to be with Roopchand. The pair moved in together to test the waters of their relationship further. After six months, at that point having dated for a couple years, the pair was engaged.

Then, Payson-Roopchand moved back to the U.S. to finish writing her doctoral dissertation and the couple initiated the long, complicated process of Roopchand’s immigration. To attain what is known as a “fiance visa,” the couple was asked to show photos of themselves together to immigration officers in a bid to verify their relationship, the pair recalled.

Before deciding to move to Maine, Payson-Roopchand asked Roopchand to visit the state in October, hoping the weather would be cold enough to give him a taste of what northern winters could bring.

“I forgot that the leaves were beautiful,” she laughed. “So I was like, oh, now he’s in love with Maine.”

When Roopchand did make the move, Payson-Roopchand said, the first stop the couple made after leaving Logan airport in Boston was an REI outlet, where they purchased cold-weather gear for Roopchand. Ultimately, Roopchand said, getting outside and enjoying the outdoors helped him adjust to Maine winters.

From the beginning of their relationship, Roopchand and Payson-Roopchand said, the extent of their shared passions and interests have united them despite the differences in their upbringings.

“The cultural difference was much smaller than our shared interests,” Payson-Roopchand said.

However, the couple still had to recognize and adjust to some differences, such as culturally different communication styles. From the early days of their marriage, said Roopchand, this has afforded the pair an understanding that they are capable of talking things through no matter how large a disagreement may feel.

In any relationship – and especially on a farm, where sleep is sometimes something of a commodity – disagreements happen, said Payson-Roopchand. It has always been a priority for the couple, said Roopchand, to address things as they come up.

“If we have a disagreement, we basically will talk through whatever needs to be done before the day is out … We don’t tend to put things off, and that works for us,” he said.

“We have that background of that first year of really learning, because we had those cross-cultural differences,” said Payson-Roopchand. “We realized we had to be very careful in our communication, and I think that established a really good pattern.”

The couple purchased the property that is now Pumpkin Vine Family Farm in 2008.

“We were at a turning point,” said Payson-Roopchand. “Do we go down to D.C. and do policy and research, which is what we were trained to do, or do we try and live out our dream, which is have a farm and run it ourselves?”

After a friend told the couple about the Hewett Road property, the couple decided to tour it. The site was the first property they looked at; Roopchand described the scene upon their arrival as “Beatrix Potter-esque,” with birds singing and rabbits in the grass. The pair met Don Hewett, whose family had homesteaded at the site, and began to dream about a life on the farm. The decision to take the leap suddenly seemed easy.

Since settling in Maine, they both have held a variety of jobs in agricultural research and science. Both have worked at Fedco Seeds in Clinton, and Roopchand also worked for a time at Lohmann Animal Health, now Elanco, in Winslow. Payson-Roopchand also worked as a clerk at the Somerville town office and is a writer and historian. One of her works, “Birth, Death, and a Tractor: Connecting an old farm to a new family,” chronicles the history of the Pumpkin Vine property through the arrival of their family.

The pair has two children, Keiran and Sarita, both of whom are now in high school. Having children strengthened their relationship even further, the pair agreed, by showing them new sides of each other and helping them refine their communication skills even further. Simply spending time together as a family has been among the couple’s favorite activities since their children were born, they said.

When the children were no longer toddlers, Roopchand and Payson-Roopchand decided to devote themselves fully to farming.

The couple began raising goats, and Payson-Roopchand began making goat cheese on site. The pair sold their first cheese at a commercial market ten years ago and have not looked back since, growing their herd from three to about 50 goats and producing multiple varieties of goat cheese.

They also host regular farmers markets on site throughout the year, which have become one of the few regular public gatherings in Somerville. The markets originated from the couple’s desire to sell cheese, but have metamorphosed into something much larger and highly rewarding, said the couple.

“There’s magic that happens here when people get together,” said Payson-Roopchand.

Roopchand said the couple had felt welcome in Somerville since their arrival, noting the formation of an informal “Somerville farmers’ network,” full of neighbors who support one another and offer helping hands when needed.

Pumpkin Vine Family Farm is growing, with a brand new milking parlor raised on the property this winter and plans for plenty of community events in the future. The couple said they are proud of what they have achieved together and grateful to steward the farm.

Their shared passion and commitment to one another, said Roopchand, had enabled them to realize their long-held dreams.

“Kelly and I are both lucky. We work really hard, but we actually are, basically, living the way we would like to live, and doing what we would like to do,” said Roopchand.

(The Lincoln County News is celebrating Valentine’s Day this February with “Couples of the County,” a twist on our “Characters of the County” column and a month-long celebration of local love. Do you have a suggestion for a subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County” and provide a way to contact the nominee.)