{"id":23138,"date":"2022-04-12T13:32:29","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T18:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seacoasteatlocal.org\/?p=23138"},"modified":"2023-01-23T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T16:28:00","slug":"mona-farm-a-story-of-the-chicken-and-the-egg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seacoasteatlocal.org\/mona-farm-a-story-of-the-chicken-and-the-egg\/","title":{"rendered":"Mona Farm: A Story of the Chicken and the Egg"},"content":{"rendered":"

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How does one go from growing up in Paris, France to becoming a poultry farmer in Danville, New Hampshire?\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Well, for Phil Nugent, 77, it all started with summers spent at an aunt\u2019s farm in Northern France. There, he helped care for the chickens, geese, rabbits, ducks, and turkeys that free-ranged around the property. Shortly after, he volunteered at farms that offered lunch in exchange for milking cows and harvesting apples for cider. (Some of the cider was turned into apple-flavored brandy, or <\/span>eau de vie<\/span><\/i><\/a>, which translates to \u201cwater of life\u201d via a local distillery that arrived by cart.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rural summers were interrupted at the age of 14 when Phil\u2019s family moved to New York City for his father\u2019s job. He kept a community garden plot in his early 20s, living in North Andover with his wife, Gertrude, who grew up in Estonia. <\/span><\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until their son, Francis, a middle-schooler at the time, found an ad for a house and seven-acres in Danville that Mona Farm was born. The farm name comes from an Estonian word meaning \u201clittle egg,\u201d a nickname for Francis long before the first chick on the farm was hatched.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n