FALMOUTH — In February 1999, Elwin Hansen broke his hip when some farming equipment fell on him. His doctors told him he needed three months to heal, but the fields couldn't wait that long. Within two months, Hansen was back on his tractor turning sod for a new crop of rutabaga. That year, the farm produced an average crop and a net profit of $10,000. Considering the way it began, the season seemed liked a victory for Hansen.
Some years in the 1990s, he said, expenses outstripped income. One year he lost his whole crop because of a moth infestation.
"The 1990s were not profitable years," Hansen says. "We were just making it."
Despite the robust economy of the mid- to late-1990s, thousands of Maine families found themselves in a similar predicament, or worse. According to detailed U.S. Census figures released Tuesday, 16,500 of the state's families - 5.2 percent - earned between $10,000 and $15,000 in 1999. Another 18,000 families earned below $10,000 that year.
Low incomes, though, do not always translate into poverty. Elwin Hansen and his wife, Jean, cherish a way of life that is vanishing in southern Maine. They grow all their own vegetables. They fill their freezer with meat from deer shot by Elwin, who has a special permit for farmers that lets him kill up to five annually in his fields.
The Hansens do their own home repairs. Their wood-fueled furnace heats their home and hot water. They harvest the wood from their own land, a 110-acre parcel in West Falmouth.
They don't have cable TV or a computer. They don't eat out more than once a month. In winter, they snowshoe and ride snowmobiles. In summer, Elwin Hansen occasionally takes a day off and goes fishing.
"We live in a different world," he says. "It's a fighting lifestyle. We've got to fight to keep our business going, and fight to keep our heritage going."
The Hansens are firmly planted in one place, representing a less-mobile time than the rest of Maine in the 1990s. About 40 percent of the state's population changed residences between 1995 and 2000, according to new census figures.
Elwin Hansen was born on the farm 62 years ago. His father started it in 1924. Elwin and Jean Hansen have been running it together since they got married 38 years ago.
The farm, the only commercial rutabaga farm in Maine, has survived because the Hansens have found a niche. It is too small to compete with the big potato farms in Aroostook County and Idaho, which rely on mechanical harvesters. But rutabagas are harvested by hand.
For that, the Hansens depend on seasonal help. They hire four workers in the spring, and six for the fall harvest.
The prosperous economy that grew up around the farm in the mid-1990s, though, increased the cost of rutabaga production. For one thing, the farm's labor costs soared. To attract and keep workers, the Hansens stepped up their pay, from minimum wage to nearly $8 an hour.
Also, the influx of well-off families increased development pressures and the cost of raw land. For the Hansens, that translated into higher land assessments. They now pay a property tax of about $1,000 a month, one of the farm's top expenses. The Hansens pay higher property taxes than most of the doctors and lawyers who play at the Falmouth Country Club, which is next to the farm.
Indeed, the median family income in Falmouth in 1999 was $87,000, making it the wealthiest town in Maine.
The wealth has only increased the Hansens' sense of social isolation. Decades ago, Falmouth was a farming community. Now there are only a few farms left. In the 1990s, several farms were turned into subdivisions or parks.
"Its hard being a farmer in a non-farming community," Elwin Hansen says. "We can't relate to our neighbors."
The proximity to wealth, though, has generated customers for Jean Hansen's vegetable stand, which she started six years ago after the last of the couple's three children left home. The garden's profits provide a cushion in case something goes wrong with the rutabaga crop.
In 2000, the Hansens hit some good luck, with a high-yield rutabaga crop that sold at a bumper price. They netted a $40,000 profit, which they used to replace the barn roofs and update farm equipment. Jean Hansen bought a new car, a Buick, to replace her 17-year-old Oldsmobile.
The Hansens doubt that any of their three children will take over the farm when they retire. They all worked on the farm growing up, Elwin Hansen says, and they know too well how much work is involved.
They're pinning their hopes on their three grandsons, the oldest of whom is 12. The boys help out on weekends in October and November, when the extended family helps get the crop out before the first deep frost arrives.
Staff Writer Tom Bell may be contacted at 791-6369 or at: tbell@pressherald.com
