Sara Cawthon (left) and Megan Taft stand in front of the Damariscotta River the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 10. Cawthon and Taft, the founders of Twin Villages Foodbank Farm, have been part of the Lincoln County community since the early 2000s, when they met as staff members at Camp Kieve in Nobleboro. (Piper Pavelich photo)
Many people walk through life with a passion, dream, or goal they hope to accomplish, and it’s not often they find a partner dedicated to the same thing.
For Sara Cawthon and Megan Taft, a chance meeting over 20 years ago not only brought them together, but enhanced their individual love of the outdoors and agriculture, leading them to found an institution together that encapsulates their life’s work.
In partnership with Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust, Cawthon and Taft founded Twin Villages Foodbank Farm in 2015. At the nonprofit farm in Damariscotta, the couple grows vegetables using organic growing practices, donating all of it to food pantries in Boothbay, Damariscotta, Newcastle, Jefferson, New Harbor, Waldoboro, Whitefield, and Wiscasset, as well as the CLC YMCA day care, the Head Start program in Newcastle, and programs at schools in Boothbay, Great Salt Bay Community School, and Wiscasset Elementary School.
Before they became an integral part of the Lincoln County community, Cawthon and Taft developed their individual love for the outdoors in different environments.
Cawthon grew up in a small farming community in Illinois where she often spent time at friends and family’s farms growing up, she said.
Graduating from the University of Missouri with a bachelor’s degree in park management in 2002, Cawthon was on the hunt for a job that would keep her out on the land.
Fresh out of college, Cawthon took a job at The Leadership School at Kieve Wavus Education in Nobleboro, providing support for youth programming during the school year. Making the drive from Missouri to Maine in about two days, Cawthon arrived at the Kieve campus and immediately met Taft, who was greeting new staff members in her role as residential director of The Leadership School.
“I just pulled up from my long journey and there she was,” said Cawthon. “I sort of knew right when I met her that there was something different, and I was right.”
A native New Englander, Taft had been working at The Leadership School for about a year at that point. She pursued working for the program after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in outdoor education from the University of New Hampshire.
“I wanted to find a job in my field,” Taft said. “I really love working with young people, and I wanted to be in a community where I had the opportunity to support young people in their growth and development and in the outdoors. Once I was here, I just fell in love with the community.”
Living on campus and working side by side each day, staff members quickly became a tight knit group of friends, said Cawthon and Taft. The pair recalled getting bagels together every weekend at Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta, now Barn Door Cafe.
The couple said they knew early on that each other was “special,” with Cawthon noting that she had a suspicion Taft liked her when Taft made her a birthday cake while at The Leadership School.
“Megan’s game is rainbow sprinkles,” said Cawthon.
“Nobody else on staff got a birthday cake,” said Taft. “It worked.”
After a year, Cawthon left to serve in AmeriCorps in Maryland. When she returned to Lincoln County, the couple made their relationship official.
By that point, their feelings for each other were evident, they said. The couple recalled that while Cawthon was serving in AmeriCorps, Taft planned to drive from Maine to Maryland to surprise Cawthon with a visit one weekend, and, at the same time, Cawthon had planned to drive to Maine to see Taft.
“Somehow we found out before we both drove eight hours in the opposite direction,” said Cawthon.
Soon after Cawthon returned, the couple found themselves moving to New Hampshire for Cawthon to attend graduate school at Antioch University in Keene. While Cawthon was earning her degree in environmental studies with a focus in agriculture, Taft ran the outdoor education program at the Oliverian School in Pike, N.H., and then led school-based programs for Monadnock Family Services in Keene, N.H.
While she had always been interested in the outdoors, Cawthon credits her time at Antioch University for sparking her interest in food accessibility and farming.
“When I was graduating, I started getting more interested in food and started going down the foodie-farmie route,” said Cawthon.
Soon after Cawthon’s graduation, the couple moved to Massachusetts so Taft could pursue graduate school. While she was earning her master’s degree in education with a focus on diversity and social justice at the University of Massachusetts, Cawthon kept busy, working on farms, making visits to Maine, and working in the University of Massachusetts orchard.
Taft said her passion for doing what she and Cawthon do today sparked while she was in graduate school. Her focus shifted to looking at her program through the lens of food access and justice thanks to Cawthon, who was learning new things about farming every day.
“At the time, living in Massachusetts, I was doing that and considering the impact that somebody’s racial identity or social class identity had in terms of their ability to access food,” said Taft. “Sarah was building the technical expertise around the farming and I was really thinking about it through the social science lens and specifically focused on race and class, and I think that’s where the foundation of what we do now took root.”
The couple got married on paper while Taft was still in graduate school. Taft said she went into the health services office at school to try to put Cawthon on her health insurance plan and they ended up having to sign a domestic partnership agreement to do so.
Soon after, Cawthon proposed, and the pair went back to where it all started to tie the knot in August 2008. They had their wedding ceremony on the Wavus campus.
“Folks came and stayed in the cabins … And then we did the ropes course before the wedding, actually, and people canoed and kayaked. It was cool,” said Cawthon.
The couple had to register their marriage in Massachusetts, though, as same sex marriage was not legalized in Maine until the end of 2012.
“Legally, here, it didn’t count,” said Cawthon.
“We’re part of marriage equality history,” said Taft.
The couple then found themselves moving to Wisconsin to be closer to Cawthon’s family. While there, they established Seed by Seed Farm, which they operated for about two years before deciding it wasn’t going how they dreamed it would.
“We loved it and we met a lot of fantastic people … But we never had time to eat our own vegetables,” said Taft. “We were like, ‘This isn’t how we envisioned this,’ so we knew we wanted to shift to not just working along in the fields.”
By this point in their journey, the couple was ready to come home.
“We knew we’d move around for school and jobs, but then the goal was always to come back to the Midcoast here because we just loved so much about it,” said Cawthon.
In 2011, they returned to Maine, settling down in Brunswick. Cawthon got a job as a farmer at Camp Chewonki in Wiscasset, and, a few months later, she shifted to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where she was the organic garden manager. Taft worked in the student diversity office at Bates College in Lewiston. In 2014, the couple welcomed their daughter, Adley.
Although they said they enjoyed living in Brunswick, the couple often found themselves visiting Lincoln County.
“We were always driving here,” Taft said. “On a summer night, we would just drive up to swim in the (Damariscotta) Mills … We were like, ‘Man, we end up here like every weekend.’”
Knowing they wanted to return to their roots, the couple left Brunswick and moved into a house on the Camp Kieve campus while they planned their next move.
“We really had this vision for this farm to be grounded in the community and be supporting, and we knew we were just going to do something nonprofit,” said Taft. “We didn’t really want to be growing for profit.”
The couple said they saw the need for increasing the availability and quality of fresh foods at Lincoln County food pantries; so, with the expertise and passion to do the job, they just needed the space to make it happen.
Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust Executive Director Steven Hufnagel wanted to help make their vision a reality. Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust donated use of its fields at Salt Bay Farm in Damariscotta and provides administrative support.
“Steven was so gung ho from day one and was like, ‘Let’s do it,’” said Cawthon. “I think Steven saw we were going to do it no matter what, so he really supported us and he was a big part of it starting so smoothly.”
For 10 years, Cawthon and Taft have been growing as much food as they can to help the community and have been inviting community members to the farm, where they learn how to be good stewards of the land. They often invite groups from local schools, such as Lincoln Academy and GSB, to come visit.
“It’s really kind of turned out like we’d hoped,” said Cawthon.
Through career changes, starting a family, and establishing farms, Cawthon and Taft have been there for each other, keeping each other grounded through the chaos of life’s twists and turns.
“We’re very yin and yang, which is how it works, and why it works so well with the farm and so well for our family,” said Cawthon. “Megan’s like my tether, or I would float off into orbit.”
While they didn’t foresee finding a home in Alna and establishing Twin Villages Foodbank Farm in Damariscotta, they knew from the very beginning that they would come back to Lincoln County, as it is one of the places they have felt most comfortable being themselves.
“This is a place where, as a queer couple, we felt safe … We always felt like we belonged here,” said Taft.
“We’ve felt celebrated, even,” said Cawthon. “This has been one of the main places we have felt without barriers for just being who we are.”
After more than 20 years together, Cawthon and Taft said one of the most important lessons they have learned is to keep up the “healthy habits” in their relationship.
They recalled that soon after their daughter was born, they started getting up at 5 a.m. to make sure they had time to spend together. They said their early wakeup call is still a priority in their relationship today.
“We didn’t have time for each other, and so we created that hour before the day starts from 5-6 a.m. to make sure we still had time with each other that’s like quality time,” said Cawthon. “We’re chatting the whole time, about nothing, about something … And that feels like a solid routine that we’ve kept that’s really important. Otherwise, I think we would miss a lot.”
(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.)
