Antonio and his partner Amara Watkin-Anson, who both come from farming backgrounds, moved to Maine in 2016 and purchased 15.4 acres of off-grid farmland in Porter. The property has a rich history of being used as a safe haven for artists and the LGBTQ community, the couple said.
Antonio and Amara hope to continue that legacy. They aimed to start a farm that was mission based rather than money based. They wanted to expand fresh food access to communities and ownership opportunities for BIPOC farmers and workers.
“We have been involved in farm work where we were farming for somebody else or by ourselves, but that’s not the way we wanted to do it,” Amara said. “We wanted to invite people in who have the skills to push this project forward and build a real sense of community.”
That’s how the mission for the La Finca cooperative was born. In 2022, Antonio participated in CDI’s 9-month-long Cooperative Development Training Program, where he learned how to structure and start a cooperative. Then in January 2024, with the help of CDI, La Finca formally incorporated as a cooperative.
Read the rest at Cooperative Development Institute
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