Our farm is in a great location, East of the Moon, West of Gardiner.

So far, the town of West Gardiner is surprisingly free of sprawl, even though both the Maine Turnpike and Interstate 295 join together here, crowned by a new service plaza, with its array of junk food eateries, gas pumps and, incongruously, a high-end craft shop.

The town center -- if it can be called that -- consists of a no-frills town office, a no-frills fire department and public works garage, and a fairly new elementary school that is actually architecturally pleasing.

And just down the street is our famous West Gardiner Transfer Station, the town gathering place on weekends. The attentive staff will give you helpful advice about your recyclables (paper, cardboard, plastics, metal and tin cans). They also produce an income stream for the town.

Caution: Don't ever use the word "dump" within earshot. Not even the word "landfill."

When I lived in Deer Isle about 30 years ago, the road called "King's Row" ended at the town dump, which was then a landfill. Therefore, everyone called the road "Dump Road," much to the consternation of all the high-end King's Row residents.

Taxes haven't gone up for the farm in 10 years -- until this year, that is, when we saw a 12 percent increase because of a big increase in county taxes, a decrease in state support and an increase in the school budget. None of this was the fault of our parsimonious trio of selectmen, led by Victor Goodwin, backed by a very competent Town Office staff.

The fire department is top rate. When I had a chimney fire a few years ago, I gave a call when I saw the trim board around the chimney base start to smolder. Bingo! Firetruck arrived, and fire was out.

Another time, in 2003, we were burning the leftovers of a logging operation (we took out all the softwoods over 10 acres we planned to turn into pasture). Because there was so much duff, the smoke blanketed the neighborhood. A big pickup truck arrived in the driveway. A man got out and asked:

"Do you have a permit for that fire?"

I said, "Who are you?"

He said, "I'm the fire chief. Smoke is all over the town, including the town office (four miles away)."

Out comes the fire permit. I have learned over the years that burning without a permit is one of the biggest mistakes -- short of robbing Four Corners Store -- you can make in any town. The smoke, however, continued to billow from the pile for most of the next week.

The best part is that town government does a great job at delivering the most important service that can be delivered in Maine. It's not health care, nor is it police protection. West Gardiner has the best snow removal of any town or city I've lived or worked in Maine (total, five).

No matter how big the storm, our road -- which is not a major one -- is invariably clear no later than 8 a.m. That alone is worth the extra taxes we are paying this year.

Of course, there are rough edges, just like any town in Maine. For example, I have never heard so much gunfire, year-round.

Now that it is hunting season, the firing has intensified, even on Sundays when we can presume it's target practice. Best to wear orange all the time, preferably backed by some bullet-proof material, every day of the week, including Sunday.

If ever there is a shooting war in this country, we would be among the last to know.

Then there is the flatness of the place.

When I run in the morning, I become better aware of this flatness and the small undulations the road makes. I imagine the landscape 15,000 years ago, when West Gardiner was most likely covered by a glacial lake where sediments came off the mile-high glaciers that covered Maine. These sediments leveled the entire lake bottom, which bounced up after the glaciers retreated, draining the lake.

The glaciers also did a number on the earthworm population, which made a mad dash to the south for quite a while -- probably until Europeans re-imported them in the 17th century.

The sediments are pretty much heavy clay that is more suitable to make bricks and pottery, but also can grow hay, pasture grasses, mixed-woods forests. All these do well on our farm.

Raising vegetables in this soil is another story. For the past seven years, we have done battle with the soil and forming it into raised beds for better drainage, adding many tons of organic material (composted garden waste and animal manure from our own animals, the horse farm next door and a dairy farm a mile away). This is mostly done with hand tools and human labor.

Each year, more of the garden space is tamed and improved; each year, the quack grass, nettles and chickweed do their best to reclaim their former territory. It would make way too much sense to do a pasture rotation of beef cows, pigs and chickens over the entire farm -- making the best use of perennial grasses.

One of the nice things about West Gardiner is you don't have to make a lot of sense, and nobody really minds that much.

Denis Thoet, with his partner Michele Roy, own and manage Long Meadow Farm in West Gardiner, longmeadowfarm@roadrunner. com