ACADIAN EXPEDITION
SEPTEMBER 10-18, 2004

OVERVIEW

This expedition traveled through Maine and maritime Canada. Maine -- by census data the most rural state in the nation -- provided a perfect laboratory for examining issues effecting the survival of resource-dependent communities around the nation.

The Acadian Institute considered aspects of farmland preservation and the future of family-scale farming, the regional and global impacts of overfishing, conditions and practices in industrial-scale aquaculture, issues of watershed and groundwater health, changing ownership patterns in the northeast forest, and the impacts of global trade.

Fellows participated in lengthy discussions to understand economic and environmental trends in forestry, fisheries, and agriculture. Acadian Fellows traveled on foot and by canoe, raft, and float plane as they tour forest harvesting sites, fish canneries, and livestock farms, and study community efforts to protect habitat on a landscape scale.

FIELD REPORT

Steeped in History, Changing Fast
2004 Acadian Fellows Explored Farms, Forests and Waters of Maine, New Brunswick

A lobsterman shows the Fellows how to handle to catch without losing fingers. IJNR Photo by Andrew Weegar.

Portland, Maine, served as the starting and ending points for the 2004 Acadian Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources, September 10-18. This program was the fifth Maine-based IJNR expedition. (The first occurred in 1997.) Good-natured Andrew Weegar, IJNR associate director and principal planner of all Acadian affairs, led a group of 14 remarkably congenial journalists.

Not surprisingly, several hailed from Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Nova Scotia and Québec. Others, however, came from a far away as coastal Georgia and congested Southern California. These journalists represented daily newspapers for the most part, but also a Canadian wire service and affiliates of U.S. and Canadian public radio networks. A young but intrepid freelancer and a recent graduate of MIT’s science-writing program rounded out the roster. Actually, the staff went out on a limb by selecting a die-hard photojournalist to attend the institute. (That turned out to be a fine idea.)

To transport the group, Andrew employed a diverse blend of vehicles, vessels and other crafts. On one day, for example, Fellows found themselves circling Mount Katahdin in floatplanes, hurtling through whitewater in rafts, and then paddling and portaging canoes to a campsite. A few days later, they were bobbing across Passamaquoddy Bay in a lobster boat, sharing deck space with buckets of shiny herring scales.

While traveling across Maine and venturing into New Brunswick, the Fellows visited with a broad array of people who make their living from the land and the water. The journey began on the outskirts of Portland with a visit to 500-acre Smiling Hill Farm, which has belonged to the Knight family since the 1700s. The family has diversified the business, now bottling its own milk in recyclable glass containers, making its own ice cream and cheeses, offering cross-country skiing and hosting community activities.

Maine and other traditional dairy states are steadily losing markets and revenue to factory-scale operations in California and the arid Southwest. Maine now has 398 dairy farms, compared with 1,100 in 1983. Ninety-eight of these remaining farms will close in the next few years as their operators retire with no successors.

A visit to John and Sandy Nutting’s dairy farm gave Fellows a chance for some hands-on experience—milking Holsteins. Steve Sutherland of Halifax demonstrated why journalists should stay alert and quick-footed whenever standing behind cows in a milking barn.

Fellows got hands-on experience visiting Androscoggin Holsteins, the Nutting family's dairy operation. Photo by Steve Heaslip.

During other terrestrial phases of the expedition, Fellows visited logging operations in the North Woods, learned about changes in the apple industry and met with a beef and dairy farmer who has made the transition to organic production to keep his business alive. The journalists also toured a state-of-the-art water bottling facility owned by the Poland Spring unit of Nestlé Waters North America. The Acadian program devoted a substantial segment to exploring issues of water quality and water ownership.

In New Brunswick, the journalists inspected a salmon aquaculture operation, toured seafood processing plants and enjoyed a seaside encounter with men who harvest edible seaweed called dulse, using old-fashioned rowboats, picking the greens by hand and stuffing them into burlap sacks. The Fellows also ventured out in small boats to observe the rugged but fading tradition of fishing for herring with weirs, guided by Burton Small, a Grand Manan weir operator for more than 60 years.

A highlight of the trip was the unscheduled appearance of the aurora borealis over Mount Katahdin in the wee hours of September 15. Fellows were treated to this marvelous spectacle while bonding over a badly depleted supply of beverages on the banks of the Penobscot River. At daybreak, they arose refreshed and canoed to the Ambajejus Boom House, which has been preserved and restored to honor the Nineteenth Century log-driving culture of the North Woods. There they met Chuck Harris, the eclectic, self-appointed curator of the place.

Although it had been an unusually wet summer in the Northeast, Fellows didn’t so much as unpack their raingear until the last day of the trip. Andrew expressed disappointment that he didn’t have an opportunity to break in his new waxed-canvas pants.

Exhausted Fellows returned to Portland for a nice dinner and the highly emotional awards ceremony, during which they met IJNR trustees Diane-Hawkins Cox, Reese Cleghorn and Paul Rogers. While the Acadian journey may have left them feeling drained, the journalists still found the energy after dinner to discuss the rapid changes under way for the people and places they had encountered—and the myriad uses of shiny herring scales and dried dulse.