(soft piano music) - Preservation of the places and things that make our communities strong is important to continuing a rural way of life.

Coming up next on "The Best of RFD Main," we'll take a look at our state's rural heritage and the need to understand its significance, as we move into the future.

(seeds shaking) (man yelling) We'll meet those who find both land and sea and hear firsthand how people are adapting their livelihoods in new ways.

People from the County to the coast share their hopes for what the future will bring, stay with us.

- [Instructor] Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from Rural Development.

Part of the U.S Department of Agriculture.

(upbeat music) - Giving back more than we take from the main coast has never been more important than it is today.

- The islands remember just kind of the tips of an iceberg and it's, you know, it's all of that productivity that is- that is underneath the waters, that is influenced by what happens on those islands.

And there's, you know, Islanders in my experience have a tremendous conservation ethic.

I mean, it's just ingrained in the life style, the way of life.

- It's never too late to strengthen the kinds of relationships that allow our communities and natural resources to remain in balance and thrive.

Hi, I'm Sandy, your host for the best of RFD Maine.

You know, there's a quote from the landscape painter, John Muir.

He said something like" when you start to look at something by itself, you'll find out that it's linked to everything else in the universe," and how true that is.

We're all linked together, past, present, and future.

In this next piece, we go to Aroostook County where many people say they can still see the rural Maine the way it used to be and meet among other people.

Glenner Johnson and Kathy Olmsted, especially, who are two of the forces behind Echoes Magazine, a Northern journal which preserves the past of Aroostook County but has also concerned about its future.

Let's take a look.

- I think television's wonderful.

I sit in my recliner and stare at it for long hours, I assure you.

- If television and, you know with all due respect if it replaces our storytelling traditions, then how does a young person know where he or she is coming from?

The children needs to play more outdoors.

You'd go by in the yard.

There was always the children out in the yard playing.

Today they're sitting in the front room in front of the TV.

- If that's all kids have, you know if that's their total culture, they've they've missed a base.

- Having a magazine like Echoes helps to get stories out to people, not just in this community but all over the country.

- We feel are trying to capture some of the things that have been lost in many other places before they're lost here because there are qualities of community that are at risk.

What we're seeking is the people who remember life before television, before shopping malls, when they, they they know how to provide for themselves.

What is one of the most common questions that you're asked when you go somewhere?

Where did you come from?

We want to, to to remember the things that give us a foundation that gives us a strong place to put our feet down.

I spent most of my life with high school aged people as a teacher and drama coach and all, and and I through the years would feel sad to hear them say, "Oh I can't wait to get out of here and get where there are exciting people and real things are happening."

And it's good that they go somewhere else and see some of the world.

I applaud that, but I think Echoes helps them to have pride.

I think that there's a wonderful thing that happens when people come from outside to see what we're doing.

I think that it energizes us.

I think that it gives us some incentive in some ways to to keep on figuring out who we are so that we can share that with people who are coming from away.

The qualities of community that people talk about when they come here or when they write to the magazine are the friendliness of the people.

People who know you by name, going into town and not having to lock your car when you go to the grocery store.

And I'm hoping that that Echoes can tell that story is to help recognize that it's not just about the past but it's about what we can do right now to, to be to meet the future.

- Sometimes meeting the future requires a lot of creativity.

As you will see in this next piece, on the Bell Family and their farm on Cobscook Bay.

- My son, Brian.

Bob's two sons and my daughter they're the eighth generation here.

The first Bell arrived here in 1765 and he saw the potential for a gristmill.

And that's what he basically wanted to do.

But in talking to the Native American and East port they directed them to the site.

We're looking at the original mill site.

Uh, some of the cribbing is where the Millsap beyond it's cribbing where a schooner would dock.

And we heard that the Gates would open automatically as the tide turned.

And then when the turn to go out, there was bang shot.

And when the head got great enough that's when the grinding of the flower would start.

He came from Scotland at the age of 14 and married a school teacher and moved back.

And I guess it was East port and they settled on a piece of property across the bridge over on this little hill after they determined the gristmill site.

- I know we have a letter from his brother who was asking if there was an opportunity in New England at that time because his family had been barbers and the King had taxed powder that was used in the wigs and the hair of the people.

And it was putting them under duress at that time.

And so I don't know his age, but he was younger than Robert.

- It seems like there's been plenty of opportunities for the land to have gotten sold.

People moved off the property, but there's always seems to be some reason that Ebell has stayed here and lived and, and kept the name namesake to the property.

- I love farming.

And it's great to just see that aspect of it's kind of slipping away from the area of Maine.

And it's getting real hard to make a living this way.

So I'd like to find something that I can have more of the farm is a hobby and something else that's more my like money earner.

- I find that for me to stay here, you've got to love the land and my wife calls the farm I mistress.

So she, she can be jealous at times but it's first the love of the land.

And then it's surviving with your wits and being an opportunist to dictate what you do to stay here.

And that goes in a faster cycle.

It seems like every generation and we've already have done, I could probably list five different occupations already to try to stay here.

(man yelling) First, it was sheep.

We had a hundred head of sheep.

And then we went into dairy cows and went to 120 head of dairy cows in 78, those were sold.

We went into managing the woods more intensively.

So we became woodcutters.

And from then we, we started an outside job of providing chips to local biomass plant.

And big thing we have now is a farm house that we have weekly rents to that house.

And it's from people that, that want a setting of a farm life with, with a vacation besides.

- You come here and it's just so quiet and peaceful and get to work on the farm equipment and everything.

And it was just really fun.

- I hope that Brian and Jesse and Erin and Rachel understand how lucky they are to be able to grow up here, coming from a major metropolitan area.

I'm a school teacher.

I know what the kids have to fight against every day.

And they're just really lucky to be able to this is a refuge.

A whole family seems so committed to one another in them to holding this piece of property and history together.

I never really thought of it much as keeping it in the Bell name, but it's more just because I love the place.

That is more my reason for definitely sticking around and keeping it.

- You know, it's not just the main landowners who have to think creatively about the future.

It's also the fishermen along the Maine coast.

When I was growing up, you could sit on a dock and catch a lot of flounder, even without bait.

And we'd have tub fulls of lobsters and clams cooking up on the stove for a Sunday picnic but that's not true anymore.

A few years ago, those of us will live around the Frenchman's Bay area, happened to notice this strange glow at night from the ocean.

And we went out in boats to find out what it was all about.

And it turned out to be the light from the new salmon pins where they're raising salmon.

We'd, we'd met the future: Maine fishermen raising their own fish.

(guitar strumming) - We have two sites.

One is Craig, which is down behind Harbor Island and to take a cold, which was up we'll say about 10 minutes away.

Both are the good sides.

How the business came in, started about 1988.

Salmon farm here on the Island, hatchery in Bingham, but about 1992, they were unable to go forward and then the bank took them over.

The bank kept it for a year.

And then the bank was going to get out of it.

So they were, they were going to auction it off and get rid of it.

So a small group of us went out and found some public monies and retained what salmon was left in 12 pounds and started up.

It means bringing fish in that are 18 months old from a hatchet in the Spring, raising them for a year and a half, and hopefully getting them up to MCIC size, fairly nine, 10 pounds.

It's quite impressive when you see it contained in 50 foot diameter pins and that's something an 80 foot nets and pins and that's go down in the water about 25 feet and then the cross on it.

So in the bigger nets, we raised 12, 14,000 fish and the smaller, the 50 foot pounds pumped 6,000 fishing.

We've now got a couple of hundred thousand salmon out there.

And last year was our first crop.

And we did, we did process over over a million pounds of gutting fish.

If someone hadn't done it if I hadn't it, it wouldn't have been here now.

It would have been gone.

I would have been fishing.

I'd been making a good living, but like I said every second week, we get out in the winter time up to 50 checks and that wouldn't have been.

♪ Two men out fishing on a warm and foggy day.♪ ♪They do the things they've done for years ♪ ♪ In different ways.

♪They get it wild, they can, ♪ It comes and goes, they say.

♪And the gambling might succeed and stay.♪ - I think the future is agriculture.

Every day we are increasing population wise.

That means we have to have more product to eat and the ocean just can't sustain it.

I don't think it can sustain it.

And even with the goals and regulations like the, which, which are necessary.

But, mankind needs food.

- Sonny Sprague is right.

When I was growing up on the main coast, I remember a lot of fishermen like Sonny Sprague and people would come, you know from a way they still do, I think and see main lobstermen and fishermen in their boats.

And they think it's a wonderful independent way to make a living.

But times have definitely changed.

It used to be that a boy graduating from high school with $5,000 could set himself up with a lobster boat and have his own business, but that's not true anymore.

It costs more like a hundred thousand today and there are all kinds of regulations and rules and, and so on.

But some Maine fishermen have still found a way to be independent.

♪Cool water run ♪Cool water run ♪Cool water run ♪Cool water run - I've been fooling around with it for probably 12 years.

I've had one major failure.

And that's probably what you learned the most from is failing.

You know, it's a real dramatic teacher.

The wild muscle is, you know, all over the coast of Maine.

And all we're doing in the cultivating process is taking the wild mussel larvae, giving, finding giving it a place to set, and we call that seed.

And then we thin it out to an ideal density and put it on a rope so that it grows in a water column instead of just laying on the bottom.

And by doing that, we shorten the amount of time it takes to grow to a market size muscle.

And by shortening the amount of time, it's a younger animal when it's harvested, it's more tender.

And because of the way it's grown it has no opportunity to get pearls or any grid in it.

It's hung in the water all the time.

So it's a real nice clean product.

The bigger percentage of the weight of the total animalism in me and not in a shell.

The shell is really thin.

You know, you can break that shell pretty easily.

So they're a little fragile, but as far as the person at a restaurant is buying them, he gets a lot more meat per pound of total shellfish than you do in a wild animal.

There's a shock hanging on every one of these lines about every, maybe three feet apart, two feet apart.

There's a, there's a sock that hangs down, and that's what the muscles grow in, are they socks that hang onto the water.

- I just thought it would be interesting to try.

It's different.

It's very passive on the environment.

You know, we don't add any feed.

We don't add any toxification, there's no disease control.

It's just a natural process.

All we're doing is making it easier for the muscle to grow.

Anything that is a naturally occurring organism in a, in a Marine environment is subject to stress from over harvesting.

And this is not to say that, you know this one muscle farm is going to make a real big difference but the, the concept is right, that we will, we are taking care of our own source.

We're taking care of the whole cultivating process.

I've been a fisherman myself.

I've been a fishermen for more years than I've been an agriculturist or seafood dealer.

So I still have a very strong feeling for the independence and and the free operation that most fishermen embrace.

But the handwriting is not only on the wall it's in our face.

That thing of fishermen isn't very free operation anymore.

- This is much freer than being a fisherman.

Oh sure.

Because I have only my own imagination to figure out what to do with this 30 acres or however many it is that I'm working.

- I don't remember anyone eating mussels When I was growing up on the Maine coast in Hancock County Muscles were just there when we went down to the shore to go clamming or to have a lobster feed.

I first had muscles at the French restaurant in town where they serve them with mustard sauce, and they were delicious.

Of course, today muscles have become their own industry.

We have a smoke muscles all kinds of muscles, a very popular delicacy.

It took a lot of imagination to make Maine people enjoy eating mussels.

But as Ted Ames found out as you'll see in the next segment it is going to take more than imagination from Maine's fishing industry to move into the future.

- Well, we used to go until Christmas.

We use the gill net till Christmas around here, right up inside But, not now.

(pelicans screeching) - Twenty years ago, groundfish landings in Stonington would vary anywhere from three to 7 million pounds a year.

Took a lot into the economy of the town this size.

And today, gee, I'd be surprised if you landed a million pounds in the course of a whole year, probably half that.

- It's a good day.

Real good day.

- (woman) Today?

- Today.

This wouldn't be anything.

Here's five of them all...

I was referring to him.

He'd fish 20 naps, 20 miles.

You get 15,000, he's hauling 60 naps and going anywhere from 60 to 90 miles for this.

And this is good today.

- When fig grants became available, we were able to get funds for two hatcheries.

We recognizing that we needed to have a place to put them.

We were funded for making a survey of old spawning grounds for Cod and Haddock along Lane's coast.

The blue areas here are traditional fishing grounds that were reported by rich and good and both made fishermen, they surveys.

They found these fishing areas or reported fishing areas all through here.

My interview series with older fishermen, the fishermen reported that while they fished these grounds they found ripe fish, not on the majority of those grounds but way up in here, in the close to shore, literally the whole length of the coast.

It's a huge area.

In the Eastern half of the state of Maine alone, they, there are some ways in the vicinity of 250 square miles of reported spawning area.

Most of which are within state waters.

If we hadn't started now, we would never have found this information.

These were fishing areas that Haven't had fish on them.

Many of them haven't had fish on for 50 odd years.

Most people on the list were glad to share information.

Partly because there were no fishen in those locations anymore.

And they could see that if it were actually possible to restore fisheries that the people who are in the fishery today could enjoy the same- the same good fortune that they had had.

If you set it up so that people who fish from these small communities can compete effectively for the resource, it would be a tremendous economic gain.

Well sat, whenever you are You just go the length of the coast.

If you had an extra two and a half million dollars per year dumped into the economy of each one of those towns, what it would mean in terms of jobs in rural Maine.

And I think collectively, we'd love to have a groundfish back.

We don't want the groundfish right in the middle of a lobster area.

Many of us don't know whether that'll make that much difference on a lobster stop, but none of us want to take the chance.

The management plan to make this stuff sustainable, a management plan would have to be based on the area that, that local stock uses.

- And it would have to include the people who actually fish for.

If you are from Portland and you come down and fish a local stock with Jericho Bay, that's based in Jericho Bay, you have to take part in the management plan so that when those fish back off the shore or in a pre spawning aggregation, somebody doesn't come in and just wipe out the entire population like we did before.

That's a major change in management.

It means that we need to that we need to have local management as a key part of the process.

And it means that fishermen have to accept the responsibility for taking care of the resource, we're too good today.

It used to be you go out and if you could find them, take all you could get.

But today has changed.

We have the gear that allows us to take them all.

So we have to control our efforts one way or the other.

It seems that once you've cleaned an area out, it's forgotten and current fishermen just don't go there.

And older fishermen just don't have anything to say about it.

It's done.

It would really be exciting to be able to reverse that process, should change her coastal economy.

- Throughout this series.

We've met a lot of different people all over Maine who have one thing in common: Their great love of this place called Maine.

We all know that change is inevitable but Maine is a very, very special place.

So we'd like the change to be gradual and sensible.

I'm Sandy Phippen.

And thank you for joining us on this edition of The Best of RFD Maine.

Be sure to visit The Best of RFD Maine on main public television's home page on the worldwide web.

The best of RFD Maine was taped on location at the Page Farm and home museum at the University of Maine.

- Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from rural development, part of the U S Department of Agriculture.

- I find that for me to stay here, you've got to love the land and my wife calls the farm my mistress.

So she, she can be jealous at times but it's first the love of the land.

And then it's surviving with your wits and being an opportunist to dictate what you do to stay here.