Know your farmer - Habiba Noor

Each week we'll profile one of the seven CSA farmers who grows your food. You can also get to know your farmer by visiting him or her at a farm stand or farmer's market, or by visiting our farm sites during a monthly Friday Farm Tour event (see below for details).

This week your farmer is Habiba Noor. Habiba provides CSA shares and sells her produce at the Whole Foods Farm Stand in Portland and the Red Bank Farm Stand in South Portland (want to know more about our farm stands? click here). Habiba also pools her produce with other Fresh Start Farms growers to provide wholesale quantities of vegetables for schools, summer camps, specialty markets, restaurants, food pantries, and larger distributors.

Habiba Noor - I am from Somalia, specifically the area of Baidoa in a place called Aw-Dinle. I moved to Maine in 2008 and joined Fresh Start Farms that same year.

My family raised cows, goats, camels and chickens in our village. We also had a big camel that we used for transportation.

As a refugee, all of our animals died during our journey to Kakuma refugee camp, where we lived for two years before coming to Dallas, Texas.

When I was in Texas, I called Jabril Abdi, who lived in Maine and had already joined Fresh Start Farms. Jabril and I are from the same place in Somalia and we were both at Kakuma. As soon as he told me that he was working on the farm, I wanted to be there working on the farm.

Whether or not I make money, farming is a part of my life. Keeping this tradition is important because my parents and grandparents were farmers and I am keeping their memory with this work. This is why I farm.

In the future, if I live long enough to enter my future, I want to buy a house and farm. My kids are interested in learning to farm too but I don’t know if they will be farmers. I advise my kids that in the future, they need to work together as a united group. If they do that, they will succeed in achieving what they want.

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Monthly farm visits for CSA members and volunteers:
Friday, September 26 from 12:00p – 2:00p in Lisbon (Please note updated time)
Friday, October 3 from 12:00p – 2:00p in Lisbon

RSVP with Ashley if you would like to attend: fsf@cultivatingcommunity.org & (207) 761-GROW