Farmer/Producer Profiles: Backstage Farm

From Russia with Love

With slightly over half an acre in production, Backstage Farm can barely live up to its name as a farm. But what a productive little place it is!  Elena Bourakovsky and Bill Raiten lovingly tend their small patch of earth and produce an enormous variety of crops.  These range from asparagus to zucchini–as you would find on many other farms, but they also grow items that are hard to find at larger farms such as golden raspberries, sour cherries, gooseberries and currants.  The couple uses an extensive cover cropping system and adds seaweed and cow manure from the dairy farm next door to improve their already terrific soil fertility.

Bill had tried farming previously in New Hampshire and loved the way of life but was too busy with his passion for directing in theatres to stay in one place, yet.  He met Elena when he was directing a play in Leningrad in the late eighties, and they moved back to Blue Hill where they became occupied with the New Surry Theatre. In 1992, Paul Birdsall (Horsepower Farm) sold Bill and Elena their land, sited in that magical strip along Route 15, near the Blue Hill and Penobscot border, which produces so much of our region’s local vegetables.

Bill and Elena gradually increased the number of raised beds they worked each summer until they began to have more food than they could use themselves.  So, this past May, Elena painted the sign you now see from the road, and they began to sell produce at home and at the Blue Hill Co-op.  Next season, you’ll see Bill and Elena at the Blue Hill Farmers’ Market, too.  If you can’t wait that long, look for Elena’s delicious lacto-fermented veggies at the Co-op as “Moxie’s Dynamite Pickles,” “Russian Sauerkraut,” and “Dressed Up Pickled Beets”…while supplies last.