The Nets

Spring Tide - Elvers

Spring Tide - Alewives

under construction.

207. 380. 9890

LIFE HERE

Menhaden Maiden.....bait fishing in covid season

Coming in to their home port - Friendship, Maine

Raising the winch man

The winch man

17 barrels to get up on the wharf and into the freezer

Each barrel of pogies weights about 400 pounds

17 barrels of Brevoortia tyrannus - member of the herring family.

Everyone works together

repeatedly wetting down the wharf to make it easier

Fire + Ice - Smelt

These photographs were taken in Maine over the past four years. With each passing winter my sense of the precarious nature of our world grows deeper and darker. I see dinghies and skiffs looking like they've been unearthed and revealed by retreating glaciers. There's a tiny ice shack serving as a punctuation mark; an exclamation point, written in sweeping calligraphic strokes of grey and black on white.

Sometimes these small shacks form villages and people fish all night. The sun sets and the camps begin to glow, becoming shadow-puppet stages. They are sitting on a slab of ice with a torrent of black water rushing below them, unseen.

Saturday nights become surreal - inside the camp there is a wood stove burning, voices and music surround you with the woodsmoke. The Clash is drowning everything else out. Smelt are frying.

I might guess that there are some here who might disagree with the notion of a warming planet - they might say, 'Look! We're standing on two feet of ice!'

I see a small village on thin ice run on extension cords lying in pools of melting river water. What could possibly go wrong ?

Up River - Lobster

under construction.

207. 380. 9890

A Life in Place: Blue Barren

This is Jeremy Howard, a 7th generation blueberry farmer from Hope, Maine. Brodis Farm has 900 acres and has been in the family for over 150 years. They have 180 acres in blueberry cultivation.

It’s 7am and I’m driving steadily uphill trying to find where he is working.

Soon I start to see evidence of farming - here, the totes used to transport the fragile berries.

This is the walk-behind harvester used for the berries bound for the distillery.

I came upon the farm tractor and followed it up as high as we could go.

The driver is Ron Howard, Jeremy’s father. The extended family all work together during blueberry season.

Jeremy and Ron set the strategy for the day.

It’s a perfect summer day in Maine and up on the top of Simmons Mountain the views go on for miles.

There are several single-head tractor harvesters scooping up berries….

…..all bound for hundreds of protective totes.

Gradually the totes get filled and are loaded onto a truck to be taken up north.

Meanwhile, in another field, Jeremy and Ron are hand-raking the berries that will be sold fresh at the Brodis Blueberry farm stand down the road. Jeremy’s grandmother, Gwen Brodis, owns the farm, and the extended family manages, operates, and sells the berries.

The shadows are getting longer and it’s time to head downhill to the barn. The drive is stunning.

After the hand-raked berries are collected they go into this ancient winnowing machine, probably made by Emil Rivers of Rockland in the 1930’s.

Jeremy is the picture of patience as the belt repeatedly flies off the wheel.

Jeremy and the Giant Crusher….where the winnowed berries go on their journey to the Blue Barren Distillery.

Jeremy is loading a tote-full of berries into the crusher which will drop in the vat below - some yeast will be added and it will sit for a week or two while the fermentation takes place.

Last year Jeremy and his partner, Andrew Stewart, decided to open a distillery on the waterfront in Camden. They named it Blue Barren.

Every face at the Blue Barren is happy. The distillery produces Blueberry Eau de Vie, Gins and Rum. …from the Blue Barren website: “We are a small distillery producing spirit in extremely limited quantities, this allows us to use the very best of Maine’s local produce in each batch. In many cases, we know the field, forest, or greenhouse that is the source of our ingredients.”

Andrew at the still.

Due to the covid-19 situation, the Blue Barren tasting room is temporarily closed to the public but offers local delivery and curbside pick-up and they are also selling at the Camden Farmer’s Market every Sat. from 9-12 and on Wed. 3:30-6pm.

www.bluebarrendistillery.com