[Video overview: Doug and Heather Donahue, owners of Balfour Farm in central Maine, share their journey of purchasing their 100-acre farm in 2010 and creating a sustainable, off-the-grid operation. The video highlights their closed-loop system where they graze cows, produce milk, and process cheese all on the farm. It also showcases their solar power project, supported by Wells Fargo and Coastal Enterprise, Inc. (CEI), which helped them to become completely self-sufficient.

Visuals: A peaceful rural farm setting, cows grazing, owner interviews, cheese processing, working farm.

Audio: Spoken words from farm owners, and light guitar music.

Accessibility: Captions are provided throughout. No flashing lights or rapid transitions are present.]

[Music]

[On-screen text: Doug Donahue — Co-owner, Balfour Farm]

My name is Doug Donahue, and I own Balfour Farm along with my wife Heather.

[Heather Donahue]

We purchased our farm in 2010, and it’s a 100-acre farm located in central Maine.

[On-screen text: Heather Donahue — Co-owner, Balfour Farm]

So, on Balfour Farm we have a closed-loop system. We actually graze the cows, we make the milk, and we process the cheese all right here on the farm.

[Doug Donahue]

We had originally talked to the power company about bringing power out to the barn, and it was going to cost us about $100,000 to run the lines out here, and decided that if we’re going to spend that amount of money we would be better off investing it in our own power system.

[On-screen text: Emily Wood — Program Director, Coastal Enterprise, Inc. (CEI)]

My name is Emily Wood. I’m the program director for climate work at CEI, Coastal Enterprises. Maine is a very rural state. It’s really expensive to connect. And in parts of Maine where your power outage can last a week or longer, for small businesses that can mean a lot of money, thousands of dollars in loss for product. And so, for Balfour Farms it made a lot sense to be an off-grid array, so using solar and battery storage to offset their energy needs instead of connecting to the grid.

[Heather Donahue]

So, Wells Fargo was involved in our solar project in working with CEI, provided us with a reduced rate of interest on the loan. And that really made the difference between us being able to do the project or not.

I don’t think there’s anything I’d rather be doing than farming.

[Doug Donahue]

No, I love to farm, so yeah, we won’t ever do anything different.

[Heather Donahue]

It’d be really hard to go back to a 9-to-5 job.

[Doug Donahue]

Nobody would hire us.

[Laughter]

[On-screen text: © 2025 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved.]