Of Horses and Chrondrus Crispus

HORSES HARVESTING IRISH MOSS ON PEI

A long time ago I spent a summer in Rockland, Maine living on Lurmonds Cove.  If that sounds familiar, its because the cove had a recent brush with fame when a schooner went aground there a couple of years ago.  Back then I shared the cove with the Rockland waste water plant, the Maine State Ferry Service and Marine Colloids.  The latter occupied the shore opposite me and is notable in my memory for lots of lights at night, for a constant low humming sound and for the stack pushing out clouds of vapor.  On foggy nights the lights and vapor combined to create an industrial tableaux  reminiscent of an impressionist painting.

I soon learned I was living across from a plant that processed Irish moss into the very valuable product additive, carageenan. Irish moss got named for the people of County Carrageenan, Ireland who used to collect it to make pudding. It got valuable when people started to use it as a binder, thickener and stabilizer in things like ice cream, beer, toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, diet soda and a host of other products.

In Rockland the lowly moss (chrondrus crispus) was cooked down and dried out to a  powder and sold as an additive  for pharmaceuticals. It was and is valuable. I knew some people on the supply side of the business who made a  living raking the moss and selling it to  Marine Colloids, which was called Sea Pro back then. It was a small investment for the harvesters, a rake or drag, a $50 permit and a wonky tin skiff and they were in business. It was a low overhead operation. Like clammers, they had a minimal investment in equipment (compared with say a lobster catcher) and an heroic investment in hard labor to make a living. Working along the tide line at low tide they harvested the moss by raking it up.  It was then transported to the plant.  Processing smelled pretty bad  and what remained afterwards left the cove by the truck load headed for the old quarry that served as the dump.

I didn't think much about the Irish moss-carageenan connection until I saw moss being harvested with horses on Prince Edward Island a couple of weeks ago. At the time I was struck by the contrast between the horses and harvesters gathering moss and the wind turbine farm on the bluff above harvesting energy for the island. The juxtaposition of horse power of the past and wind power turbines looking toward the future has stayed with me. Yesterday I went through my trip photos and found some still images and a scrap of video of harvesters working their horses along the surf line.  I was pretty far away, but here it is anyway.  There's more about harvesting moss at the Harvests of Prince Edward Island page.

Prince Edward Island

July 8, 2011--Left Belfast in the late morning headed for Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia for a few days. Stopped in Sussex, NB for the night near a nice little park.

July 9, 2011-- Crossed the bridge to PEI in a driving rain and about lunch time and headed for Charlottetown to find the house where Ted and Jane lived for two years back in the late 60's. We spent the day hanging around town. We couldn't find the bowling alley we visited in January of 1969 when I hitched to the island from North Andover, MA to see my girlfriend.

July 10, 2011--From Charlottetown to the west side of the island today. We poked along the shore and for me the most interesting part of the day way watching some men harvesting seaweed, maybe Irish moss, with horse drawn drags at North Point. The men stayed on shore while horses waded into the surf pulling drags behind them. It was fascinating. Eventually they worked the horses back to shore, emptied the drags into a wire basket which was hoisted up the bank on a little boom and winch operated by a man on the bluff above the cove. I want to know where they got horses willing to walk out into the surf and be buffeted by waves again and again. It was nice to see a sea product harvested with real horsepower. The horses were working just below a bluff shore where a wind farm was thrumming away valiantly making electricity for the island. The contrast in technology was a little unsettling.

Hush Puppies--Shoes for Squares

I have to say that I thought Hush Puppies were pretty much shoes for squares. I didn't know they had a gastronomical importance as well as the pedigerous meaning that I was aqquainted with. That all changed at a little restaurant on Harker's Island (NC), The Fish Hook Grill. I linked to it, but you should know there isn't much on their web page. Fortunately, there's a lot more to the actual place. The restaurant has a lot of black and white photos of local people and events on the walls and a very local menu. It was a friendly stop for a couple of off-season tourists from Maine. After I ordered up the shrimp sandwich and asked a few questions about the origin of the shrimp the waitress asked if I'd ever had a hushpuppy. I guess my speech gave me away. I thought of the basset hound logo of the Hush Puppy shoe brand, I mean that was my only frame of reference. She explained hushpuppies were a local favorite as a side dish with seafood and she'd make sure I got a couple to try.

Miss Faye, in the kitchen, told me they were made from a cornmeal based just-add-water mix and then dropped in hot fat for a few minutes. Sounded pretty good to me. Served with horseradish and mustard dipping sauce and butter in case being fried in oil leaves them a little dry for sensitive palates, they are a delight. I'll bet they're every bit as deadly as donuts as well. I came home with a bag of mix (no they didn't sell it at the Grill, but it was available in lots of other places).

Oh, and before I forget, I have to admit that I have a pair of those shoes, but I don't wear 'em much.

Headin' up to San Francisco
for the Labor Day weekend show
I've got my hush-puppies on
--Jimmy Buffet

Not a lot of folks on the ferry from Cedar Island to Ocracoke Island on the day we made the two hour crossing to one of North Carolina's Outer Banks. For that matter there weren't a lot of people on Ocracoke either. We had the beaches pretty much to ourselves and watched dolphins, or maybe porpoises, feeding along shore at the surf break. It was miles and miles of beach as far as we could see in either direction, with no one else in sight in most cases. It isn't bathing suit weather, but we don't need hats, mittens and jackets either. It makes a great switch from the cold and snow of home even in the off season.

Carolina Seafood Lunch

Note: We've been away from Belfast, traveling through North Carolina and visiting the Outer Banks.

Just as the New England shrimp season comes to a close I found myself at a fish market in Cape Hatteras, NC today surrounded by products strange and wonderful to me. There was no Maine shrimp, but there were Maine lobsters. A lethargic looking bunch of homarus americanus skulked in a counter top tank, waving an occasional, defiant claw at me. They were "on special" for $9.99, about twice what I'd expect to pay in Hannafords in Belfast. and a little more than what the The fish fish truck folks were getting a little less than Hannaford when I left for the sunny south last week. In addition to a case full of sea products and a couple of freezers, there was a small kitchen so that travelers like ourselves, with no way to prepare a seafood, could order up something. As well as the local shrimp, fin fish, oysters and clams the store stocked, there was an array of imported frozen shrimp and lot of other products from away.

I ordered up a red snapper sandwich ($9.99) served with coleslaw, chips and three sauces on the side ( tarter, cocktail, and horseradish mustard). I wish I could have tried the other options for the fish of the day sandwich because the snapper was really good and the fish of the day was really a choice of three; local flounder, grouper and the red snapper.

The Red Snapper, Fish of the Day







Window shopping through the fish case I saw that you could get Argentine scallops for $9.99 a pound or local scallops for $13.99 (on the sign) and $16.99 (in the case). I ended up once again marveling at how the local product is so much more expensive than the imported product. I went into this market expecting to sample some local seafood and I was successful with that, but I can see that here in North Carolina as in Maine a lot of seafood comes from far away.

The most interesting product I found in the store? That would have to be the smoked pork and crawfish sausage. I didn't know that such a thing existed, but it looked pretty good. I regretfully passed it up as I had no way to cook it, or keep it cool for a few days until I get home.

Down East?

This is Down East?

I figured I knew where Down East was, but traveling through North Carolina I kept seeing references to it while far from home. I first saw the phrase on a porta potty and couldn't figure out how it got so far from Maine. Did they run short and have to import some? Then I noticed a marina sign on Harker's Island read "Down East Marine". They specialized in selling garveys. Slowly, ever so slowly as we passed through the countryside it began to dawn on me that there are at least two Down Easts.


I was taken aback at first, but I got used to it. Lots of businesses use Down East in their name (apparently on the east side of North Carolina which is pretty much were the salt water is). I am impressed with how much coast there is and how many boats there are. On the way down to Beaufort we passed the Grady-White factory in Greenville (not the one on Moosehead Lake, by the way) and the brand is all over down here, but I can't help but notice how many of the homes we go by have a garvey on trailer all ready to go. Carolina Skiffs are the most popular, but other models are around, and not one of them is covered with a blue tarp or shrink wrap. I am many miles from home.

Lots of garveys everywhere

No wonder I feel like I'm seeing a lot of boats, there are over 300,000 of them registered in the state and one person I spoke to at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort told me there are Down East towns with three times as many boats as there are year round residents. I spent an I had a great time touring the museum and learning about the traditional boats of North Carolina. The museum has a couple of sharpies in the water and recently completed building a surf boat identical to those that were stationed along the banks as part of the Life Saving Service.

Shrimpier This Year

Maine caught shrimp will be, well, shrimpier this year. Fewer five year old shrimp, are available so most of the catch will be made up of or the smaller four year old class shrimp. The Northern shrimp season started December 1 and will close on April 15. The season is the same for both trap and trawl catch methods and allows 136 days of fishing, less than the 180 day planned for last year. I say planned because last year's season was cut short at 156 days because of the small population of shrimp. The same could happen this year as catch rates and stocks will be monitored and the the fishing season closure date revisited in February. Shrimp are hitting the stores and pedlars now.

Shrimp are caught in traps (fixed gear) not unlike lobster traps that sit on the bottom waiting for shrimp to swim in, and nets dragged through the water behind boats (mobile gear). I prefer to buy trap caught shrimp when I can because they don't run the risk of being crushed at the bottom of the trawl, releasing enzymes that hasten their decay. I'm also pretty sure that it takes less fuel to haul traps than to trawl.

There are three questions I like to ask when I buy shrimp: Where, when and how was this product caught? If the vendor can't answer these questions I move along and make my purchase somewhere else. I like responses like "These here trap shrimp was landed Tuesday morning in Port Clyde by one of the Reed boys." Often asking any question at all will bring up a lot of information about the product. And I soak it up like a sponge. While I prefer trapped to trawl shrimp, I'll buy either caught in Maine waters in the past few days.