- [Announcer] Initial funding for this video project was provided by The Paper Store at the bridge on Main Street in Vinalhaven.

For newspapers and magazines, books and gifts, film processing, fax service, whatever, stop in to The Paper Store.

(soft piano music) - [Narrator] In winter, trips across Penobscot Bay are mostly for necessity.

Like a tree absent of its leaves, the ferry deck is void of tourists and summer residents.

Winter is for islanders.

Those who know a place season to season.

- You can feel the island beginning to close in on itself.

And suddenly, you recognize every face you pass on the street.

It's like a big family had been scattered for the summer and the big family gets back together again after summer's over.

- It's the secret place in the winter.

It's not always the sunny day but people draw closer here in the winter 'cause they know they have to depend on each other.

And they can.

(dramatic piano music) (car beeping) (people murmuring) ♪ I once was lost in sin ♪ But Jesus took me in ♪ And then a little light from heaven filled my soul ♪ ♪ He filled my soul with love ♪ And wrote my name above ♪ And just a little talk with Jesus made me whole ♪ ♪ Now let us have a little talk with Jesus ♪ ♪ And we'll tell him all about our troubles ♪ ♪ He will hear our faintest cry ♪ ♪ He will answer by and by ♪ And when you feel a little prayer wheel turning ♪ ♪ And you know that a fire is burning ♪ ♪ You will find a little talk with Jesus makes right ♪ ♪ Yes, makes it right - Well, they have pea beans and yellow eyed beans and coleslaw and hot dogs and brown bread.

I think that's it, what they have on the plate.

But they like it real well.

(laughs) - [Interviewer] Why?

- Well, I don't know.

It's just a good old Vinalhaven supper, I guess.

(laughs) - [Leader] Small tables will each have one coleslaw.

Glass tables too.

One hot dog on each table.

Baked beans.

One small bean.

And one large bean on each table.

Okay?

Brown bread, two on each table.

Everybody got that?

- Yeah.

- Yep.

- Okay.

- [Baker] A nine inch pie, you get eight slices.

Out of a nine inch pie.

So that's what I go by.

Like these, see, I get eight pieces.

Eight.

These are nine inch pies right here.

So all of them, except for that's a 10 inch one there.

- It looks thick.

- It is, it's real, try to get a piece.

'Cause they don't clean it out.

They clean it fast, that one right there.

- I soak seven pounds of beans, big beans overnight, and by morning, they've swelled up to just about here in the pot.

And then in the morning we add all the stuff that goes with it and add water, boiling water, and bake them all day.

- [Interviewer] On top of the stove?

- No, bake them in the oven.

- [Interviewer] Oh, you stick that in the oven.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Interviewer] So what's in there?

- There's molasses, there's brown sugar, there's white sugar, there's powdered mustard, salt, onion, salt pork.

- I want you to turn it over and there should be a number on it.

Now we're gonna draw a number out of here.

And the number that's picked along with two numbers on each side of it will wash dishes after the supper.

(all laughing) Isn't that how it works, no?

Okay, we need a volunteer to draw a number.

No peeking.

What number is it, Jenny?

- I can't tell.

- You can't tell?

It's your grandmother's writing.

(all laughing) Number 46.

(all clapping) - [Cook] You don't want to boil your hot dogs.

You want your hot dogs hot.

You want them to be heated all the way through.

You do not want to boil them 'cause if you split a hot dog for baked bean supper, you can't serve them.

- [Interviewer] What?

You can't have a split hot dog?

- [Cook] Some of the old timers, they go awful crazy when you give them a split hot dog.

Oh geez, that's why the water has to just be hot enough I can just barely put my hand into it.

- [Interviewer] So it cannot have, it cannot split.

- [Cook] Cannot split.

If I serve a split hot dog, I'm booed out of the kitchen.

- Anybody hungry?

(all laughing) Okay, be patient with us.

Okay, this is the third string, but it's the first time they've all been together on the floor, so.

We'll do the best we can, be patient.

(people chatting) ♪ But Jesus is a friend who watches day and night ♪ ♪ I go to him in prayer ♪ He knows my every care ♪ And just a little talk with Jesus makes me whole ♪ ♪ Now let us have a little talk with Jesus ♪ ♪ Let us tell him all about our troubles ♪ ♪ He will hear our faintest cry ♪ ♪ He will answer by and by ♪ And when you feel a little prayer wheel turning ♪ ♪ And you will know a little fire is burning ♪ ♪ You will find a little talk with Jesus makes it right ♪ ♪ Yes, makes it right (water trickling) (soft piano music) (water rushing) (motor whirring) - We open at four in the morning.

Usually about quarter past four.

We have some fishermen that come in before they go out to haul, to get their breakfast.

Then they sit down, they chat for a while.

And then we have some other women that come in early in the morning that have to go to the jobs.

We sit down and chat at what we call the family table.

(people chattering) Just where people sit down and talk about whatever they want to talk about.

We know what they want before they even speak.

The waitress who's on in the morning, sometimes they just write it down.

They don't even ask them what they want.

We sell a lot of ham and cheese.

We sell a lot of garden omelet.

- [Interviewer] What's in a garden omelet?

- Zucchini, green peppers, red peppers, onions, mushrooms.

But we'll put anything in an omelet for the guys.

Anybody asks for, we usually, if we have it, we'll usually cook it for 'em.

- [Interviewer] Do you find people have heartier appetites in the winter?

- Oh yeah.

Especially first thing in the morning.

- [Interviewer] So the wintertime, how do you keep your spirits up with these long winters here?

- Well, sometimes that isn't easy.

You kind of get down in the dumps but we have a good group that comes in here.

So there's always someone to perk you up.

(muffled upbeat music) Usually when I'm working, I don't talk.

(laughs) - [Interviewer] I'm sorry to do that to you.

- That's okay.

I just don't usually, I can't concentrate.

(overlapping chattering) - And have a look at a flyer.

(overlapping chattering) Anything you want, you can get here at Bob's, see?

- Here comes the world's worst troublemaker.

(bell jingling) - See?

(men laughing) Got any asbestos pipe wrap?

(man laughs) Huh?

- Asbestos, yeah, I think so.

- They're on sale today, too, Phil.

- Are they?

- [Man] Everything's on sale here.

- How come you walked out on our singing the other night?

Don't think we didn't notice.

- [Man] I had to go home, lick the cracks of the mattress for an hour to get rid of the bitter taste.

(men laughing) - It was Bob, wasn't it?

- You had a lot to do with it.

'Cause you was off key all the time, Billy.

- [Man] Yeah, I got somethin' for ya right here.

(man mutters) - 1943.

- She said-- - '43?

- Hello, buddy, what you doin', huh?

- I like it when Bobby told one of the schoolteachers up here, I won't tell her name but he had to build her a new seat for her outhouse.

He said he sat her on the boards and he said he wore out four pencils 'fore he got around (laughs).

- [Interviewer] But you're doing the ice boats yesterday?

- Lee.

Mighta had one on the-- - Louis, he's too heavy.

- Too heavy.

- I reckon that was-- - Gee.

No, I don't like the ice boats.

- Bill rode on?

- It's somethin'.

I'll hear on the phone.

- [Interviewer] Does it go too fast for you?

- Too fast is right.

- [Man] Well, life in general is too fast for you, Louis.

- That's the only way they'd let us-- - Well, hey, I gotta go because I gotta do the 10 o'clock mass.

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

- Bless you.

- [Interviewer] What do you like about winter?

- Nothing (laughs).

No, well, you get together and socialize, work in the summer.

What's he selling now?

- [Narrator] Vinalhaven is home to the largest offshore lobster fleet in the world.

More than five million pounds of lobsters are caught and exported by the island's lobstermen each year.

Lobsters are most plentiful during August and September.

But that abundance also brings down the price and, so, each year, a portion of the catch is saved for the barren winter months.

- It's very simple, it's just a cove that's been closed off of the dam, to create a lobster pound, and the purpose of it is to, well, we put lobsters in 'em early in the fall and September and they're shedder lobsters and the price is lower then and then we feed them and they harden up and (machinery whirring) usually first week of February when the market calls for it and price is right, we start taking 'em out when the demand is there.

- [Narrator] This is one of the Vinalhaven lobster companies lobster pounds.

In the saltwater of this tidal pond, over 26,000 lobsters settle down for the winter.

Next to it is a second cove with an equal number of lobsters.

- At first, they're very active and they eat a lot and they move a lot and, and they're trying to get out of the pound, too, also.

(chuckles) Which figures.

- They're not stupid.

- No, they're not.

They know how to get out and you have to keep an eye on that, too, on the fence and make sure that's all in one piece, you know, so they don't get out.

But as the water gets colder, and you can see it, we keep track of the temperature, and as the water keeps getting colder, they'll start settling in, you know, and numb right up and they burrow a little hole, a little hole in the mud and just settle right into it.

Most of 'em do and they'll slowly, slowly keep until right about now, they're all pretty well, pretty well settled in the mud.

- [Interviewer] What do you feed them?

- Herring or fish racks.

- How often?

- You start off feedin' 'em every day and then they fall off, they don't eat as much.

You do it with a bait bag.

This is where you tell 'em what they're eatin' and where.

Put like three bait bags in this clown and you fill all the bags.

And every day, you check 'em.

Now, those bait bags are empty, then you feed 'em.

If they've got a little bait left in 'em, you wait until the next day.

- [Interviewer] You want them to get good and hungry, huh?

- Oh, yeah, it's better to starve 'em a little bit than it is to overfeed.

- Really?

- Yeah.

(motor whirring) - In mid-winter, it is time to send the lobsters to market.

Over the course of several days, divers will scour the bottom of each tidal pond, plucking the lobsters from their winter nest.

- The diver's holding onto a hose about that big, which has suction.

He has one hand on that, he's going along the bottom with his other hand, scooping lobsters toward the holes.

And then when they hit the area of suction, they're sucked right up the hose, up onto that conveyor belt which brings them up into the building where they're weighed and then into crates, 100 pounds to a crate, and sent right out the back of it, back into the water and on.

- [Interviewer] Do you see 'em or do you just feel for 'em?

- [Stephen] You can see probably about five feet.

- [Interviewer] Oh, you can?

- Yeah.

- Okay, so when you get down there, what is it that you have to do?

- Well, you just gotta keep swimming.

When you first come in, there's a lot of lobsters, so it's a lot easier, but, now, they're just scattered here and there so you'll see one off and you gotta swim over and get that one and back and forth and... - But the crates go right up that conveyor belt, into a truck, and they're on their way to wherever they might go.

- [Interviewer] How long before these ones they're harvesting today will go out?

- These'll be shipped tomorrow morning, yeah.

They'll be gone.

- I went to the doctor's last week and he said, "Your blood pressure's up a little bit."

He says, "I think you're pushing too hard."

Well, I said, "Maybe I'll work four hours in the boat shop "and then I'll spend the rest of the day "cleanin' the bench."

And he went, "Ah, ah, ah," he says, "While you're cleaning the bench, "you're thinking of something else to do."

(Phylo chuckles) But, oh, I don't know, I'm not gonna worry about the blood pressure, the hell with it.

You know?

- [Narrator] Phylo Dyer is a boat builder.

More than that, he is an artist, a perfectionist tied to the sea like generations in his family before him.

Born on Vinalhaven, he started off following in his father's footsteps as a lobsterman.

During the off-season winter months, Phylo took up another family tradition.

Like his grandfather and great-great-grandfather, Phylo began to build boats.

- I think the hit and miss lesson is the greatest teacher because if you throw a piece of wood and it don't fit, then you got to keep trying to saw it to fit a little better.

You know, it's like cooking a steak.

If you cook the damn thing and it's burnt, you cooked it too long.

- [Narrator] Wooden boat building is a vanishing art.

No two boat builders are the same, no two boats exactly alike.

Like lobstermen who guard their bottom, boat builders guard their numbers, their formulas and measurements for cutting wood known only to them, learned after years of trial and error.

- And there were times I thought I'd tear my hair out because the planking, I couldn't believe it.

They'd look like the Nessie monster over Loch Ness.

They were narrow on both ends because the distance here, you see, is so much, you got about 19 inches here, but here, you got over 40.

So you've got to build out somewhere and hold back.

But another thing, I didn't have any crooked cedar.

You're supposed to have crooked cedar.

Cedar, you can't beat native cedar.

They used it for years and years and years, but it was the most durable thing there was.

They used Alaskan cedar, but the goddamn stuff, Alaskan cedar has got wind shapes in it.

It's wind-shook.

You know, they got some nice wind up there, the trees are going like this.

Well, down here in Maine, the trees grows in groves, they're right bunches, so they can't wave in the wind like they do up there.

Native cedar, you can build fences, to build houses, to build porches, and build linen closets out of it, it'll keep the moss out.

They make shingles out of it, siding, fences, oh, cedar is, they got somethin' they call Atlantic cedar, but it's not cedar, it comes out of Georgia.

And the state of Maine is loaded with cedar.

- [Narrator] In Phylo's boats, the sides are single strips of cedar that run from stem to stern.

Before attaching them to the frame, they are steamed, giving flexibility to the wood and enabling it to bend with the contour of the boat.

- We will make a rivet.

(hammer banging) Now, got to put the copper washer on the copper nails, see?

And the secret is to cut it just right.

You don't want to cut it too long 'cause it'll bunch up too much.

Now, you take that and we pick that up, just hold that.

- Jesus.

(Phylo laughs) - Okay?

Is that heavy?

All right, we pop that right in there and you put it against your knee, your leg, you see, 'cause you gotta hold that.

(hammer banging) And then you put a good head on it, see.

There we are.

See, now I got thousands of 'em to do.

This is what takes the time, is to do the riveting.

Now, you know what cotton is, don't ya?

Well, I've got some here and let me see.

- Did you say cotton?

- Cotton, that's what you caulk the boat with.

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, you caulk it, see.

And, oh, let me see if I can find it.

(mutters) Here we are.

See this here.

This is what goes in the seams.

See, this here.

And what you do, you unthread it, okay?

You unthread this and you take a wheel.

Take this here, this is after you've sanded yours.

And you just put that in there like that and you take a wheel and you just push it right in.

Then you prime her.

Then you use the miracle product.

This is what I use, this 5200.

Oh, it's the greatest stuff ever since they invented the goddamn wheel because you put that in, you can kiss the leaks goodbye.

It's the greatest stuff and-- - To Phylo, every boat he builds is a masterpiece.

A Stradivarius to be played by the sea.

In his lifetime, he has built more than 100 boats from pea pods to lobster boats.

They are like children turned out to sea, ready to stand the unexpected storms that come their way.

Like a parent letting go of a child, Phylo lets go of his boats, knowing he's done all he can to help them float a lifetime.

- When I build a guy a boat, I guarantee she wouldn't leak for 10 years.

And I built 11 boats and I never had one complaint.

Nobody ever come to me before the 10 years was up and said, "My boat's leaking."

- [Narrator] He'll tell you he's not a rich man and maybe he's not, but, then, how does one define wealth?

Years ago, to pass the winter away, Phylo Dyer began to build boats.

The hobby became a vocation.

The vocation became the man.

Phylo Dyer is a boat builder.

- I've never built this boat and I've got an order to build her.

She's a 30-footer.

We're gonna make it 31 and we're gonna make it a little bit wider.

See?

My boy, he comes back and forth and I think this winter, this coming winter, I may get him to come home and help me get going on it.

He can do the parts... (gentle piano music) - Do you remember your dad making that wonderful big snow den for you out back when we lived up at Kittredge's and he put candles in it, and you and Dick took possession of it?

- I do, but it wasn't the Kittredge's in my memory, it was up at the (mumbles) house.

- Well, it probably happened there, too.

I wouldn't be surprised.

- I remember, I remember there was a igloo like the fair.

- That's right.

- We went inside and there were little shelf where we built-- - That's right.

- Where we had candles.

- [Narrator] Some may define winter by the amount of snowfall.

There have been winters on Vinalhaven that so much fell it was best to work around it rather than try and remove it.

Some may define winter by the cold.

In 1918, it got so cold, Penobscot Bay froze over.

As the days went by, food and supplies dwindled.

No steamers could reach the island.

The Governor of Maine appealed to President Wilson for help.

Finally, the ocean-going tug Favorite opened a lane through the ice, carrying supplies and islanders who had been stranded on the mainland.

But in the chill of an island winter, it is family, friends, and memories that best define this season.

- All the way down and go down the fire hall and go across the street.

(Biscuit mutters) And what a walk, though, all the way back up that hill.

My God, it wasn't even worth it, really.

- I never did the-- - Not now.

- Not now, no, but then, it was like, oh, you couldn't wait to get to the top.

- Run to the top.

- Yeah, we'd run, we couldn't wait, you know?

- We had a big golden retriever.

Remember Goldie?

- Yeah, Goldie.

- He dragged some of us up.

- Yeah, pull up sleds.

He would, too, this dog was huge.

- We used to slide down, where you'd go down one hill and halfway up over the other one and then you'd just walk up that one and we used to alternate just like that.

- Lot of 'em, accustomed to making their own amusement and they got over here and, hey, there's, that's it, either you do or you don't have any.

- [Interviewer] You were talking about using the hood of a car and you sat it?

- She was in the trunk.

(woman laughs) It might have been-- - She was confused.

It was the hood, not the trunk.

- So what flipped over?

Sometimes my brother and I would use that to go slidin'.

We didn't always have a slide or else for a sled.

- Slide.

(Susie laughs) But sometimes we just thought that it would be more fun to take the, you know, hood.

And we'd grease the bottom up and it went like crazy.

It was kinda heavy to tow around to keep usin', but we did.

- It's a different way of life altogether.

- [Man] Local talent is the shows you have over here.

- And we've got a lot of local talent.

- Yeah.

- But our sense of a belonging, I think, you know, our real sense of belonging is here and is here on the island.

- Oh, yeah.

- Actually, because of a lot of the experiences that we bonded together with as kids.

(children chattering) (gentle piano music) - Years ago, one time down at the terminal, this lady come off of the ferry and she came into the office and she looked around and she didn't seem to be very well satisfied so I tried to explain to her this and that and I told her that the center of town was just up a ways.

So she left and she wasn't gone half an hour and back she come.

She didn't understand how anybody could live on this island.

And she run on this strain and finally, I said, "Lady, let me tell you something."

I said, "You're looking for something and you can't find it.

"And you're hunting everywhere that you can think possible."

Well, I said, "As far as we're concerned "over here on this island, we found it.

"And we're happy with it.

"And we don't go racin' around like you are "trying to find something "when you don't even know what it is."

And she sat there a few minutes and looked at me and said, "You know," she said, "Mr. Collie, I, "I think you've found a solution.

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do "is find something and I don't even know what it is."

When she left, she was just as happy as she could be.

- I think what happens is you're painting in the summer and the light is brilliant and in the fall, you have these rich colors and you're still caught up with that light feeling of summer and then, all of the sudden, everything changes and you're iced in and the colors change and no matter how seductive summer is, I always get caught up in the winter.

In the winter, there's this green that's under the ice and it's almost tropical.

And sometimes it's hard to work out these colors, it's not just a green, so if I write it down so I don't forget it, it's important and you can have kind of a constant.

But it's not always the same, it's just discovering new colors.

- [Interviewer] What color is snow?

- It depends.

It could be yellow or it could be that rich blue, that cobalt blue shadows, or it could be just that icy blank of the paper.

Just the white.

You're looking out and you're seeing snow and wind and you're hearing it and you're feeling the water buffeting the studio or the ice grinding underneath.

You can pull up a piece of the floor and look through and see this ice a foot below you.

And yet, it's warm in here.

This is a picture out at Browns Head Light and it's the town manager walking in the snow, past the lighthouse, and the day that I was out there, the wind was just howling and she was holding onto her coat and any other branch that was in reach and she was just being pushed along.

It was sort of almost like a scarecrow.

And the wind was just taking everything.

It was like she was, I wanted to do this painting because it was almost like she was going to fly out of the painting.

So, for me, the near and far idea of the painting and the space in the middle is, to me, to allow for the wind, there was just so much of it, and it jut was clearing all the surfaces of anything that wasn't held down.

And that feeling is here, the houses moan at night and the wind batters them and if you know you're going on the ferry the next day and the wind has blown all night, you know you're in for an interesting trip.

In the winter, everything is extreme.

It's, the temperatures are extreme, the changes from a day like today, which is a spectacular day, you can sit out on the porch, to a day where everything is just blowing off the end of the earth and you feel like you're at that end of the earth here when you can't go anywhere.

When I first heard about ice boating here, I had never heard of ice boats.

So I went on down to the pond and thought I'd take a look and take some pictures.

And I was intrigued with it.

And one of the ice boaters came over to me and said, "Are you going to paint those ice boats?"

And I said, "Yes, that had occurred to me."

And he said, "You can't paint 'em "if you haven't been on 'em."

So he took me out on his ice boat and it was a revelation.

(gentle piano music) - Winter in a place like Vinalhaven, it seems to me that it demands a sort of resilience, you have to be interested in things as they are to just see a sort of desolate landscape or an all-white landscape, what is there.

Years ago, when I lived in Nantucket, I did a painting of snow.

It was my pivot hedge all covered with snow.

And it was called A Mind of Winter.

And so I've painted winter over and over and over again.

I don't know why, it's like Beckett, in a way, it is a certain view of desolation, but it seems to me an accurate one, to behold nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

(gentle piano music) I think snow is very beautiful and very desolate and, I don't know, I can't tell you what I see in it.

I love the color white.

To find all the variations that it's possible to find in the color white.

Increasingly, I've done white paintings.

To find the nothing that is not there, to see that there is nothing there and the nothing that is, to find within that whiteness the nothing that is and to be able to face it.

I just feel that life has gotten...

So far away from us because we don't perceive things as they are.

We perceive it through all sorts of ideas, which I have come increasingly to believe are false.

That if we could just see what is there, it would save us.

- To learn the bottom is to learn where the shallow places are and the deep holes are and what time of year that the lobsters are in that certain depth.

You've gotta know all this.

You've gotta know when to move your traps because the lobsters are movin' all the time and you have to remember where you caught 'em from the year before and about what day you caught 'em on so to get your traps there before they get there.

So you have to learn the bottom where everything is, the shallowest parts, the deep holes, the in-between places and where the lobsters are gonna move.

It's just like playing checkers.

You've gotta move.

Almost ready for the next stage.

- [Narrator] On a bright Vinalhaven winter day, lobster traps are being built for the next season.

The assembly line is small, but each worker knows his task.

Winter is the off-season for lobstermen.

A time to forget about the bottom for a couple of months and focus on other needs.

A time to relax a little.

A time to prepare.

A pianist once wrote that the pause between notes is where the art resides.

Winter is that kind of pause.

A pause filled with possibilities.

It may seem just white and empty at first, like snow, like ice, like cold.

Empty as the surface of a winter ocean.

(dramatic piano music) (bird cawing) - [Interviewer] Can you tell me what you do in the winter time to keep busy?

- [Harlan] I'll go shrimpin'.

- [Interviewer] And tell me what a typical day of shrimpin' is like, what time do you start and what do you do?

- We leave the harbor about 4:30 so we can get to settin' out at daylight.

We have to run about an hour-and-a-half to get where we're going to fish.

- [Interviewer] And tell me about the process.

It's a net?

- Yeah, it's a net, there's chain on the bottom and the cans on the top.

And you have to tow on the mud and the chain, the shrimp hang right on the bottom, so the chains on the bottom and the cans keep the net opened up.

And you tow for an hour-and-a-half, two hours.

Then you haul your net back and dump your shrimp out and sit back and go for another couple hours.

- [Interviewer] Is it only shrimp that you find in your nets or?

- Yeah, now, because they got the, what they call a grate that lets all the fish and stuff out.

It sits like this as you're towing, and the shrimp hit these bars.

The shrimp go through these bars.

And the fish can't go through the bars, so they go out through this hole.

The shrimp keep going through here and end up in what they call the card end.

Then you just hoist that card end up and there's a pocket string on the end of it.

And you get it hoisted in the air and you just pull this pocket string and then dump this shrimp into the bar.

From April 'til December, I go lobstering.

- [Interviewer] Why do you switch over, why don't, like I see some people, they lobster year 'round.

Why do you decide to shrimp?

- Just for a change.

And to lobster, you gotta go outside and I don't think it's just that much in it, lobster in the wintertime.

I'd rather go shrimpin' for a change of pace.

- [Interviewer] Can it pay well?

- Yeah, you know, you do all right.

You know, if you can get the days in.

You know, for a dollar a pound, you don't have to have a lot.

Monday, we had 1500 and Tuesday we had 800 and Wednesday we had 800.

- [Interviewer] So, do you eat shrimp yourself?

- Yeah, I do.

Usually, we gotta get a stove and we cook some up, you know, during the day.

- [Interviewer] It's a good way to eat these-- - Yeah, we just, we got a kettle and we put a little salt water in it and boil 'em.

And they're nice and fresh.

I think they taste better cooked salt water myself.

Yeah.