Nine years ago, Brooksville resident Anne Bossi was distressed about Jesse Leach’s application for a lease to raise oysters in the Bagaduce River close to her farm shoreline. Like many people faced with the prospect of an aquaculture lease in their “backyard,” she was afraid the venture would disturb the quiet, pristine river she had prized for 10 years and might cause a drop in property values.
“For 10 years, I’d seen nothing but water and birds,” she says. “I was not anxious to look out and see whatever it was I was going to see. I wasn’t entirely sure what that would be, what noise or activity level.” She was so upset by the prospect she even tried to lease the river bottom herself, but learned no one’s allowed to lease the bottom unless it’s going to be farmed.
Bossi says a combination of factors caused her to have a change of heart. “First off,” she says, “there was no choice. It was a done deal.” But she adds that “Jesse has been very nice to work with, and I gradually began to recognize that oyster production is not that objectionable. After all, we’re both farmers.”
She admits that after the hearing she felt guilty about objecting. Not a Maine native, she didn’t want to be like other people who move from away and then are unhappy with the noise of a working waterfront-the early-rising lobstermen and the odor of bait and traps in the yard.
Now, she and Leach can sit at her kitchen table and talk about the many problems they have in common as farmers. Both have to deal with a mountain of rules and regulations: she for making and selling artisan goat cheeses, he for raising and selling oysters and other shellfish. Bossi’s husband, Bob Bowen, delivers cheese to 24 stops every Wednesday; they go to four different farmers markets each week. Leach says he sells 98 percent of his oysters to wholesalers who send them out of state, but he also would like to sell at local farmers markets. However, rules are complex, requiring a federal Food and Drug Administration food safety certification.
Both talk about managing production to keep customers supplied year round, and they mention a variety of additional crops and animals they raise and have raised, in the continuous need to adapt to current markets and remain diverse enough to make a living.
Bossi says the first concession she asked of Leach was to preserve her favorite view. “I took Jesse into the house,” she says, “and dragged him over to the kitchen sink. ‘Jesse,’ I said, ‘I really love this view. I’d be really happy of you could keep it clear of buoys and floating things.’ He said he would, and he has. Periodically, he needs to put stuff there, but he moves it away quickly.”
About a year or two after he started using his lease, Leach realized that to have optimum use of his upwellers (a float, containing tanks, where pin-sized baby oysters grow to a size in which the oysters won’t fall out of mesh growout bags that float on the water), he needed electricity to run pumps that would pull a stronger, cleaner flow of water from the bottom of the upwellers. “I’d been using tidal flow to bring nutrients to the seed,” he says, “but it brought a lot of seaweed in and I had a lot of trouble keeping them cleaned out.” He asked for permission to tap into the farm’s electrical supply; Bossi and Bowen willingly granted it. They put in a pole, which Leach paid for, and a separate meter for the line he ran to the shore.
When Leach also asked if he could run a fresh water line from their supply to use for cleaning algae, secondary spat and other competitors from the mesh bags, Bossi and Bowen said no problem. “They’ve been just wonderful,” he says, adding that they have helped in other ways like telling him to put his floats up on their land in the winter rather than take them home.
Although Leach usually accesses his site from the town landing at the bridge upriver, he does use a strip of land on the farm property to store some gear and attach a float. At first he and Bossi agreed he would pay for this use, but it wasn’t long until they turned to bartering. Leach has helped put up a greenhouse, build fences and dig out hay. He encourages Bossi and Bowen to use his float, and if they develop a yen for some oysters, a bag will be hanging there for them. “They haven’t asked for much,” he says, “but they know if they need help, I’ll be right there. They’ve been there for me; I’ll be there for them.”
At the same time Leach was starting his oyster farm, Bossi quit her full time job with Heifer International (a nonprofit that campaigns to end world hunger) where she was field director of the Northeast, and switched to making goat cheese full time. She was concerned she might not make enough money, and when she mentioned this to Leach, he offered part of his lease to her if she wanted to raise oysters as a supplementary income. She took a one-day introductory course, but decided not to follow through on that option because the goat cheese business had taken off. (One of her cheeses, Sea Smoke, has been described by a Chicago Tribune food writer who tasted it at the American Cheese Society Competition as “the Holy Grail of cheese.”)
Bossi believes if she had known more about the actual operation of an oyster farm, she would not have been as apprehensive about Leach’s application for a lease. “I’d say to any riparian owner that it would be a good idea to see photos of different operations and get to know what’s involved as far as noise and disruption,” she says. “Everyone wants the water to be pristine, but a working waterfront is a good thing. It’s a way of life here.”