Pre-Conference: Monday, March 24: 1-4:00 pm- $25 Fee
Tour of
We hope you will be able to join us for a pre-conference tour of The Iris Network and Goodwill's NueroRehabilitation Services on Monday, March 24th from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. Tour participants will meet in the hotel lobby at 12:45 p.m. to board the bus. Lunch will not be provided. The fee for this tour is $25.
Post-Conference: Thursday, March 28: 8:00 am -5:00 pm-$50 Fee lunch included
#1 Western Maine: Pietree Orchard (AgrAbility client), Maine Balsam Fir, A Wrinkle in Thyme, and Clay Hill Farm (AgrAbility client): Participants will visit an AgrAbility client family owned orchard, with a 75 -acre sugarbush for maple sugaring, and a farm store featuring a wood-fired brick pizza oven; a balsam fir pillow manufacturing business along with an eclectic assortment of other Maine made things; witness syrup making where the sap is collected by horse; a new solar heated 21st century Tesselact building; and an AgrAblity client's small scale angus beef farm in the western hills of Maine.
#2 Portland Area: Morrison Center, Dole's Orchard, Allagash Brewery (Half Day): Participants will tour a greenhouse where they grow houseplants, orchids, seedlings, and poinsettias and it is also a day program for people with disabilities; a family owned and operated orchard specializing in a variety of PYO fruit, and a retail and wholesale wood shop focusing on gift boxes and totes; and a micro-brewery that uses local cherries (grown at the orchard you will visit) to brew a seasonal Ale. This tour has a half day tour that will drop participants back at the hotel around 1:30 pm.
#3 Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, Mook Sea Farms, and Free Range Fish & Lobster: Participants will tour an educational dairy farm on the Ocean with a “mobile milker”-a hydraulic lift to raise cows for milking and access; an oyster farm that produces 80 to 100 million juvenile oysters (seed) annually for sale to other oyster growers throughout the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast; and a visit to a fish processing and distribution center at the of Portland's working waterfront.
#4 Veterans Farm tour: Applegate Deer Farm, Riverside Lavender Farm, Sebago Lake Ranch, North Star Sheep Farm: These farms are owned and operated by Veterans. Participants will tour a red deer farm where the equipment is run on bio-diesel and the home and outbuildings are heated with waste vegetable oil; a farm growing organic herbs, vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts, perennials, and lavender; an all-natural, grass fed beef ranch: and A sheep farm where more than 2,000 sheep roam the pastureland, grazing on certified organic grass.
