By Jen Otterson,Staff Writer

WEST PARIS – As the Saturday morning sun beat down, 12-year-old Dan Costanzi and his 13-year-old cousin Trevor busily pulled weeds from a row of carrots. When the weed buckets were full, each boy hefted one and together they made a trip to the compost pile.

“So many weeds, so little time,” Trevor Costanzi quipped.

The boys and their family are taking part in an experiment in agriculture, organic farming and, ultimately, community. The weeds they pulled weren’t growing in their own garden, but in the gardens at Lolliepapa Farm, a community-sponsored agriculture, or CSA, operation owned by Jeanette and Donnie Baldridge.

“The idea,” Jeanette Baldridge said, “is that we should be able to take care of ourselves on a local level, and the community needs to support the farmers so that can happen.”

Each of the 12 members of the Lolliepapa Farm CSA supports its farmers, the Baldridges, through either a membership fee or through volunteering. Some help out through both money and sweat equity. In exchange, each member shares in the harvest.

“The community accepts the risk that the farmer takes,” Baldridge said. This summer, the risks have been high. Heavy rains have flooded the cucumber and spinach beds. Donnie Baldridge recently planted the green beans for a fourth time and composted a whole bed of lettuce.

“People will get their money’s worth over the course of the summer, but right now they’re not,” Jeanette Baldridge said.

This week, members of the CSA will receive a bushel basket with three bags of lettuce, beets and turnips with their greens, baby carrots, cucumbers and small bags of parsley and basil. Later, there will be melons and tomatoes, then corn and potatoes at summer’s end.

Dan Costanzi’s mother, Dr. Carolyn Costanzi of Norway, explained that the boys aren’t working for nothing. “They’ll eat the fruits of their labor.”

“Well, maybe the carrots,” Trevor Costanzi offered.

The Baldridges didn’t plant their 1-acre farm to suit the tastes of a teenaged boy, though. They grow a wide variety of produce, and teach their members how to cook anything that’s new to them.

“Nobody had ever eaten turnip greens before,” Baldridge said, “so I gave them recipes, and everybody liked them.”

In the fall, Baldridge plans to teach the farm’s members how to can their own vegetables, so the farm can continue to sustain them throughout the winter. Meanwhile, the farm has served as an outdoor classroom for students from the Boxberry School in Oxford, who volunteer as part of their science curriculum.

The Baldridges sell some of their organic produce at the Norway farmers’ market, along with eggs from organically raised chickens and artisan-style breads. They grind the organic wheat for 125 loaves of bread each week, which they sell at farmers’ markets and at the Fare Share Market in Norway.

“We’ve never worked so hard in our lives,” Baldridge said. Nevertheless, “encouraging local people to eat local food and to build their diets around what’s grown locally” has been “the most rewarding thing Donnie and I have ever done. Life is good”