TURNER — “Where does your food come from? Who is your farmer?”

These questions are painted in yellow on the front of a barn at Nezinscot Farm in Turner, and they are questions that owners Gregg and Gloria Varney have been attempting to answer since they first started participating in Open Farm Day 24 years ago.

On Sunday morning the Varney’s once again opened their barn doors to more than 100 people for a tour of Nezinscot Farm.

The Varneys purchased the farm in 1987 from Gregg’s parents, Warren and Marguerite, and began participating in Open Farm Day shortly after as a means to educate locals about how local foods are made and how a farm is run.

“Farming is a dying industry, so Open Farm Day has given us a chance to educate people about farming, how cheese is made, those kinds of things,” Gloria Varney said Sunday morning, shortly after showing a group of people how to make mozzarella cheese from scratch.

“I consider our farm a place where young people can come and see how they can do things themselves. We’ve been getting a lot of young families coming in who weren’t aware of what we were doing here.”

With the help of their five children and summer interns, the Varneys raise and care for dozens of different farm animals, including goats, chickens, Angora rabbits, cows, chickens, ducks and six alpacas, which they received a week ago.

In addition to the animals, Nezinscot Farm has acres of land dedicated to growing fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs.

“We grow all the food that we feed to the animals,” said 20-year-old Ashleen O’Brian, a Bates College student who works as a summer intern at the farm. “Gloria is also a herbalist, and she has both a culinary garden and medicinal garden for her herbs.”

The medicinal garden at one side of the Varney’s house includes several different herbs, including St. John’s Wort, stinging nettle, blue vervain and astragalus. There’s even a small crop of catnip for the Varney’s cats, which can be found slinking through the Nezinscot Farm store or sitting on the front porch, greeting customers as they walk in.

Many of the people who visited Nezinscot were curious about the different methods that the Varneys use to keep their farm afloat, including Joe and Schara Mailhot from Lewiston, who were participating in Open Farm Day for the first time.

“Right now, we’re starting to learn about gardening in our own yard,” Joe Mailhot said as he patted a baby goat with his daughters, 2-year old Molly and 1-year old Gemma. “We’ve become more and more convinced to eat as local as possible.”

Schara Mailhot said that they are currently keeping baby quail eggs in an incubator to hatch them.

“I think it’s the perfect thing for a small quarter-acre plot of land like we have,” Mailhot said. “We’ll have our very own quarter-acre homestead.”

Meanwhile, in Monmouth dozens of people filtered in and out of Friends Folly Farm to catch a glimpse of its Angora goats and rabbits, as well as the resulting hand-spun wools and fibers.

Marcia Marron, who owns the farm with friend Pogo Pogorelc, said that when she first started the farm in 1988, it consisted of two Angora goats that they used for mohair, the name given to the silk-like hair.

“We moved to Maine from Massachusetts in the early ’70s so having a farm was a new thing for us,” Marron said. “We knew we wanted animals, though, something to keep us productive. We got two neutered males to start, and we loved them dearly. We’ve been into them ever since.”

Eventually, the amount of mohair and Angora fiber the Monmouth farm was producing became too much for Marron and Pogorelc to keep up with, and they ended up building a spinning mill where they could produce and spin mohair in bulk.

They later bought a yurt to house the different fibers and wools they have for sale and have recently begun to purchase other animals, including chickens.

Pogorelc said that although they consider themselves a medium-sized farm, they have been able to connect with many farms statewide.

“We recently sold a couple of Angora goats to Nezinscot Farm,” Pogorelc explained. “Over the years, you find yourself making a lot of friends with other fiber farms and agriculture farms. Us goat farmers are a real connected group.”

Marron and Pogorelc said that they have been participating in Open Farm Day for 10 or 15 years and that they enjoy the chance to teach people more about local farms.

“We want people to understand where their food or fiber comes from,” Marron said. “People have lost their connection with animals. I work in the school system, and there are kids who think that milk comes from Walmart, rather than cows. Today is a chance to educate people and let them know what their options are.”

mdaigle@sunjournal.com