“Midcoast Vegan aims to make bioregionally resilient vegan food utilizing traditional and experimental techniques.” ~Tim Holland, founder
If you’ve wandered a farmers market in Brunswick, Maine anytime in the last few years, you may have noticed something unusual: a line of committed omnivores waiting for vegan salami.
That’s the Midcoast Vegan effect. Since launching in 2022, this small, family-owned operation has quietly become one of the most talked-about names in New England’s plant-based food scene, not by imitating the big alt-meat brands, but by doing almost the exact opposite. Everything is made by hand, in small batches, on a permaculture farm in downtown Brunswick. And behind it all is a founder with one of the more unexpected résumés in American food.
From Stage to Smokehouse: Who Is Tim Holland?
Before he was culturing nut cheeses, Tim Holland spent two decades as an underground hip-hop artist. Performing as Sole, the Portland, Maine native co-founded the influential indie label Anticon in 1998 and toured internationally before eventually trading the stage for something slower: a permaculture homestead in Brunswick, where he lives and works with his family.
That backstory matters, because Midcoast Vegan is very much a product of the same DIY ethic that built Holland’s music career. Specifically, he has been vegetarian and vegan for roughly 35 years, long before plant-based eating was a market category. Consequently, he approaches food the way independent artists approach records: obsessively, personally, and without a template.
We learned all about Tim in our Maker Interview available here on YouTube.
What Midcoast Vegan Makes
The Midcoast Vegan lineup falls into two families, and both invite a closer look.
Fermented and cultured cheeses. Fermented and cultured cheeses. Holland’s cheeses start with real fermentation, live cultures, time, and patience, rather than shortcuts. The range has included lacto-fermented cashew cheese, cream cheese, sunflower seed brie, and hard cheeses built on sunflower seeds and other unique seeds and nuts. His smoked cheddar is a good example of this philosophy. It is a firm, sliceable wedge made from sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, and oats. The cheese is seasoned with miso, tomato paste, and a touch of mustard, then finished with natural hickory smoke. This product is entirely gluten-free. It behaves exactly like cheddar should, whether served on crackers or melted into an indulgent grilled cheese.
Smoked seitan meats. His wheat-based ham, salami, and prosciutto go through a precise, multi-step process he has compared to high-end baking. To achieve realistic textures, he even developed a unique technique for marbling. By wrapping differently colored seitan doughs together, he uses a blend of washed flour, his own vegan brie, and tapioca flour to create the fatty striations you would expect from a traditional charcuterie counter. The result looks the part and, more importantly, eats the part.
Those building blocks feed a rotating menu of prepared foods that have earned a devoted local following, vegan Maine Italian sandwiches, banh mi, breakfast sandwiches, and full plant-based charcuterie boards.
A Working Farm, a Forest Garden, and a First for Vegan Cheese
Here’s the part that separates Midcoast Vegan from nearly every other name in plant-based food: the farm isn’t a branding exercise. It’s the pantry.
Holland’s Brunswick homestead is a working permaculture farm and forest garden. In fact, a real share of what goes into his products is grown or foraged right there. He is the kind of maker who teaches community workshops on cooking with Maine acorns, which makes perfect sense for a permaculturist living in oak country. Wild and homegrown ingredients aren’t a garnish on the business; they’re the point. It’s what he means by “bioregionally resilient”: food built from what this corner of Maine can actually produce, season after season.
And Tim’s ambition goes further. The farm is poised to become the first true farm-to-table vegan cheese operation, with Holland growing the very seeds and nuts that become his cheeses. Dairy farmstead cheese, cheese made where the milk is produced, has centuries of tradition behind it. A plant-based equivalent, where the sunflower seeds and nuts are raised on the same land where they’re cultured, smoked, and aged? That has essentially never existed. Midcoast Vegan is building it.
Why “Family-Owned and Small-Batch” Actually Matters Here
Plenty of brands use those words. At Midcoast Vegan, they describe the literal production model. There is no co-packer and no factory. Instead, products are handcrafted and packaged at the family’s Brunswick farm. They are made in batches small enough that recipes evolve constantly. This ensures ferments get the time they need, and nothing ships until it is right. It also means the person who made your cheese is usually the person handing it to you across a market table. In a category where trust is everything, that transparency is the whole ballgame.
Where to Find Midcoast Vegan
Midcoast Vegan started as a farmers market and pop-up operation, and that’s still its heartbeat: you’ll find the family at markets and events across Midcoast Maine, and their products in independent shops between Brunswick and Portland, including longtime supporter Morning Glory Natural Foods. They also offer catering and wholesale.
And if you’re not lucky enough to live in Maine? That’s where we come in. We’re proud to carry Midcoast Vegan and ship it cold, nationwide, because food this good shouldn’t require a road trip to Brunswick. (Though honestly, Brunswick is lovely. Go anyway.)
Frequently Asked Questions
Who owns Midcoast Vegan? Midcoast Vegan is a family-owned business founded in 2022 by Tim Holland, a longtime vegan, chef, and permaculturist based in Brunswick, Maine. Holland is also known as the underground hip-hop artist Sole.
What is Midcoast Vegan cheese made of? The cheeses are built on nuts and seeds, cashews, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, along with oats and live cultures. Many are traditionally fermented. The smoked cheddar, for example, combines sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, and oats with miso and natural hickory smoke, and is gluten-free.
Is Midcoast Vegan’s seitan meat vegan? Yes. The smoked ham, salami, and prosciutto are entirely plant-based, made from wheat gluten (seitan) using a multi-step process that includes hand-marbling for realistic texture and appearance.
What makes Midcoast Vegan a farm-to-table vegan cheese maker? Founder Tim Holland grows and forages many of his own ingredients on his permaculture farm and forest garden in Brunswick, Maine and the farm is poised to become the first farm-to-table vegan cheese operation, growing the seeds and nuts used in the cheeses themselves.
Where can I buy Midcoast Vegan products? At farmers markets and pop-ups across Midcoast Maine, in select shops in the Brunswick and Portland area, and shipped cold nationwide through our online shop.
