Starting Thursday, June 4, Port Clyde Fresh Catch, the seafood of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative, will be available at the Rockland Farmers Market each week.
Picked shrimp meat, halibut fillets, and halibut steaks will be available this week at the market, all processed and frozen in the cooperative’s new Port Clyde-based processing facility. Starting June 11, the cooperative will also have fish fillets available and a Community Supported Fishery (CSF) pickup location at the farmer’s market.
The Rockland Farmer’s Market is held every Thursday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. through October 15 at Harbor Park in Rockland.
The cooperative is honored to be joining the market. “We’ve looked forward to our first market day for a long time,” said Glen Libby, president and operations manager of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative. “It is an important step in our cooperative’s plans to reconnect Maine’s people with fresh local seafood.”
“We’re thrilled to have the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative join the Rockland Farmers Market this year-we’ve been looking for a vendor of fresh, Maine fish for years, but we’ve been unable to find a local fishmonger to participate in our market,” said Caitlin Hunter, president of the Rockland Farmers Market. “Having fresh, local fish at the market makes us truly a full-service farmers’ market, plus, we’re supporting this great concept of the CSF.”
In addition to the Rockland Farmer’s Market, Port Clyde Fresh Catch has nine other CSF pickup locations set up for the summer. The cooperative’s fishermen harvest fish such as haddock, cod, grey sole, monkfish, flounder, pollock, hake and halibut in the summer, and Maine shrimp in the winter. CSF subscriptions and wholesale sales of fish are available at anytime during the fishing season. In fact, the cooperative’s local wholesale summer delivery route for restaurants and food cooperatives begins June 10.
In addition to the arrival of fresh seafood from Port Clyde Fresh Catch, Thursday, June 4 will be a momentous day at the Rockland Farmers Market for other reasons. A film crew will be on hand to film Captain Annie Mahle, co-owner of the Rockland-based schooner J. & E. Riggin, shopping at the market for the passengers and crew of her vessel. This film will be used to produce the pilot for a possible weekly television series that would feature Captain Annie preparing a meal of local foods featuring a different farmer’s or fishermen’s products each week.
The Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative created the first CSF in the United States during the winter of 2007-2008 and continues to expand pick up locations and seafood offerings each fishing season.
For more information about this summer’s Port Clyde Fresh Catch seafood sales, please contact Laura Kramar at laura@midcoastfishermen.org. Kramar is the Marketing and Branding Coordinator for the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative.