Alna planning board

Alna gets new ag business, sets hearing for museum plan

Tue, 03/20/2018 - 8:30am

Donald and Marcia Lyons got Alna’s nod March 12 for their vegetable, hay and lavender business, SeaLyon Farm LLC, at 1788 Alna Road. Planning Board Chairman Beth Whitney said the board approved the couple’s business permit request and decided the proposed next five-year plan for Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum was complete.

The board set a 6:30 p.m. April 2 public hearing at the fire station for the Cross Road, non-profit museum’s proposal, Whitney said. The board and the museum have worked on it over multiple meetings.

In a phone interview Friday on his and his wife’s business, Donald Lyons, a retired Naval officer and deep sea salvage diver, said it will be in a lavender cooperative with a Cumberland County farmer. As for the hay, a crop last year went quickly with people arriving to take it directly from the field, he said. A dairy farm used to hay there, he said. “So we thought it would be criminal not to harvest and sell it.” 

The couple moved to the 21-acre farm about a year ago. “And we plan to farm every square inch,” he said.

The seasonal business will be open weekends and have a wooden, white sign with black lettering, according to the couple’s application. The business is a service disabled veteran-owned small business, a federal designation that helps gain access to programs, Donald Lyons said.

He added, the farm will have a “high tunnel,” like a greenhouse except the plants grow in the ground, not in pots. The farm is on Facebook and at sealyonfarm.com