My Story as it goes…

Part four-
September 2011

Now I live in Oakland, Ca which is an excellent place for me to sell seaweed. June-August I harvested seaweed in Mendocino, Ca. Harvesting seaweed on the Pacific is different from harvesting in Maine in a number of ways. This summer I exchanged harvesting into small wooden boats for a paddle and sea kayak. I spent long days harvesting and processing nori for the first time and sea palm and sea whip are other new varieties. I now harvest seaweed with a guy named Andrew, and his buddy Tom comes out most of the time and Andrew’s beautiful young children as well. Andrew is pretty cool, very proud of his ability to harvest extremely large hanks of Sea Whip meanwhile I just get nauseated. We had a “super” fun and wicked intense summer drying our seaweed in a beautiful meadow at a village called emerald earth sanctuary. We are also setting up a drying house on our friend Tim’s farm, but most of the time it is hot and dry inland in Mendocino county so no great need for indoor drying. I’m just getting settled into Oakland now as the harvest season wraps up. I am busily working on getting my seaweed into small markets and restaurant kitchens as well as continuing to sell through underground markets, online and to friends and new people I meet.

Part 3-

April, 2011

Here I am once again preparing to harvest seaweed in Steuben Maine. For the past two summers I missed the spring and early harvest because I was working at a school in Massachusetts as a music teacher’s assistant- no regrets! I decided this past winter to move to California to explore uncharted lands. I visited Ryan Drum the famous phycologist, botanist, homesteader on Waldron Island in Washington state. We harvested Bullwhip kelp, nori and a few other varieties of seaweed. In San Francisco I help out weekly at a few different urban permaculture farms and sold my seaweed at Forage SF’s Underground Market. I was hoping to get out on the water and harvest seaweed in California but the wind swept be back to this coast. There is a possibility I will explore seaweed in Mendocino come mid to late summer. So for now there is boat building, drying houses and lines to put up, a garden and green houses to tend to and seaweed to share!

Part two (2010)

This will be my third summer harvesting seaweed in Gouldsboro Bay. The life that I return to Down East is full of hard work, music making and merriment with friends young and old, healthy eating and caring for my body and soul. During my two summers and one long winter living in Down East Maine I made some great friends. One group of friends run a bread bakery called Tinder Hearth Bakery- specializing in spelt and sour dough breads baked in a handmade cob oven. Tim and Lydia head it up with the help of friends and family. All of the people I’ve met there in Brookesville are always creating beauty whether it be through music, building, baking or growing. They host regular open mic’s to raise money for the bakery and restoration of their barn. People of all ages perform from five to ninety five at the open mics. These friends value community, something that could slowly dissipate in parts of Maine where the economy isn’t vibrant enough to sustain all of the young people who are planning their futures. My friends at Tinder Hearth collective love their home and hope to help other young people keep their roots in Maine.

I will also give you a glimpse of another community of friends in Maine that live according to a certain worldview of self-sufficiency and creativity. My friends John and Irene welcome people onto their land in South Gouldsboro- they call their land Zocolo. Zocolo is a Spanish word for the place that people gather in a city- to socialize, to sell their goods, where children play and where music can always be heard. At Zocolo travelers, as well as John and Irene’s friends and family, visit and work and learn besides them. On any given day you will find them sheering sheep or building green houses. Irene may be slow cooking mole, a traditional Mexican sauce, while maintaining projects outside in the gardens or stacking wood. My friends rely on the energy of the sun to heat their adobe house. Interns are welcome year round as there is work to be done. Music, dancing, and warm open arms welcome me back to Zocolo.

I don’t have to leave my home in Steuben, where all of the seaweed work is done, to stay busy and in good company. Larch Hanson, my teacher, welcomes a crew of apprentices each season, April through October, to harvest, hang, and store the dried seaweeds. While living at the home on Wilderness Shores Road you may find me working in the garden planting long rows of carrots, parsley, beets and kale. There is also a woodshop where all of the parts for six Windsor chairs lay waiting. I hope to finish a few this month. When working in a salty environment it is important to have a way to heat up and rehydrate the body; for this we have a wooden hot tub and a sauna. And Larch always has a story to share with the many visitors that pass through- some, like me, stay a little longer than others.

The beginning of my affair with seaweed harvesting

I am from Pawtucket, RI where my seaweed is sold weekly at the Indoor Winter Farmers Market and in the summer through the Farm Fresh RI stand. I attended a little college called Warren Wilson College ’03-’07 in NC- where I studied elementary education while working in a beautiful herb garden, wild crafting in a beautiful Appalachian valley gathering plants for making teas, tinctures and salves.

It was almost time to graduate and I was yearning for the sea- so after dreaming ideas like home schooling children on a seaweed harvesting boat…I searched online and found a mentor, 4 little hand crafted boats and a beautiful bay in Steuben, Maine where I could learn all about seaweed. The home schooling turned into tutoring at a local nonprofit that supports migrant worker families.

We harvest in harmony with the tides. The tides are the lowest around the new and full moon. This is when we harvest. We throw on our wetsuits just before sunrise. With our knives and about 35 bushel baskets, we head out to the middle of the bay maneuvering around islands and ridges to familiar beds of seaweeds. With the seals and seabirds as onlookers we spend just a few hours cutting back the seaweeds from the rocks; our bodies heating up as we go.

-more of my story to come!

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