Once the resident chef for MOFGA, the Stonington farmer has her hand in a number of local, organic food projects.
Portland Press Herald
December 6, 2015
Cheryl Wixson is still described as “MOFGA’s resident chef” on the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s website, but she’s been easing out of those duties over the course of this year.
She claims to be retired from the post (even if you could have caught her moderating a Kitchen Licensing Workshop at MOFGA’s headquarters in Unity this past week). However, after talking to her about the community dinners she plans and cooks for 300 Deer Isle residents nine times a year, life on her farm in Stonington and her food processing classes, we are convinced that retirement is not a concept she thoroughly grasps.
ROOTS: Wixson was the first woman to get an agricultural engineering degree from the University of Maine. That was 1976. She’d spent her formative years on her father’s dairy farm in Winslow and though he sold the farm and became a teacher when she was in second grade, her love of agriculture was already ingrained, and it flourished in college. She’s still a major booster. “I don’t think we brag about the university enough,” she said.