!
Casco Bay is the westernmost of the great bays of Maine, eighteen miles from headland to
headland. The product of glaciers, Casco Bay
is speared by a series of points extending in a generally southerly direction.
Beyond the points are the islands, many laying on the same axis for they had
been chopped off the peninsulas by the dull but indefatigable knife of the sea.
Maine has thousands of islands -- a survey in
the 1980s found 2,000 of uncertain ownership alone -- and if its coastline were
stretched taut it would reach the Panama Canal.
But nowhere is it more jagged and idiosyncratic, nor its waters more jammed
with the potsherds of glaciation, than in Casco Bay.
*
Some years back, the Maine Times claimed that
there are 768 islands and ledges visible above the 9-10 foot high tides. Old
tourist material referred to "The Calendar Isles," reflecting the
alleged island count, which goes back at least to 1700 when an English document
cautiously reported that
Sd bay is covered from storms that come from the sea by a multitude of islands, great and small, there being (if report be true) as many islands as there are Days in a Yr.
The US Coast Pilot doesn't tally the rocks and says there are only 136 islands and ledges. The Portland City Guide says 222 islands -- based on a state study that listed only those outcroppings "big enough for a man to get out and stand on. " And a 1992 computer-aided study found 763 islands and ledges appearing at mean high water. In any, case there are a lot of islands, rocks and ledges. It is here, perhaps, that the lobsterman, upon it being proposed that he undoubtedly knew the location of all the rocks, replied, "Nope. But I know where they ain't."
! The bay is also home to an unusual variety of wildlife. The Casco Bay Estuary Project reported in 1995 that 850 species had been identified in local waters. The density of organisms in the bay is more than twice that of Gullmars Fjord in Sweden and more then ten times that of Delaware Bay. Included are over 30,000 water birds of 150 different species, over 2000 harbor seals, and over fifty pair of nesting osprey and even a few eagles.
! Many of the islands are uninhabited. The country's oldest mail boat service plies among the largest of the others, bringing letters, tourists, food and palettes of construction materials.
!Sometimes Maine islands are named for people, sometimes for attributes. There are perhaps a score of Mark Islands along the coast. In Casco Bay alone there are four Green Islands, three Ram and three Mark Islands. The two lumps that sit like dinghies on the seaward side of Upper and Lower Goose islands are known as the Goslings. Other islands include Pumkin Knob, Pound of Tea, Little Bull Ledge, Crotch and Broken Cave. Some of these names evoke a story. Jewel Island, for example, was where -- it is dubiously alleged -- that pirate treasure was buried (by Captain Kidd among others). If you go to the right place at the right time, it is said you can see the ghost of the man who lost his life trying to steal the treasure. Sometimes the islands along the Maine coast just seem to be named right. A small projection with a few windblown trees in Casco Bay is called Irony Island. And sometimes the names have been bowlderized. For example, the Virgin's Nipples were once the Virgin's Teats and Burnt Coat Harbor was formerly Burnt Arse Harbor.
! Recent archeological work suggests that the Indians first came to these parts as early as 8,000 years ago. As late as 1870 Indians summered on Great Chebeague Island. In the 1950s you could still find Indian shell heaps near the stone pier at the end of Wolf's Neck and in Wolf's Neck Woods. In the late 17th century the Indians retrieved much of the land along the western Maine coast from the European usurpers in a series of bloody clashes. Not until the early 18th century did Europeans return to these parts, reasserting old land claims.
! The first Europeans to visit Casco Bay were probably Scandinavian fishermen, who could make the northern transit of the Atlantic and never be more than a few hundred miles from shore. John and Sebastian Cabot, five years after Columbus, passed through and charted Casco Bay on their way from Nova Scotia to the Carolinas. By 1602, when Bartholomew Gosnold arrived at Cape Neddick, his presence was considered by the Indians to be less than remarkable. John Bereton, the chrornicler of the voyage, wrote:
One who seemed to be their commander wore a coat of black work, a pair of breeches, cloth stockings, shoes, hat and band.... They spoke divers Christian words and seemed to understand more than we, for lack of language, could comprehend...They pronounced our language with great facility; for one of them sitting by me, upon occasion I spake smilingly to him with these words: How now sirha are you so saucy with my tobacco: which words (without any further repetition) he suddenly spake so plaine and distinctly as if he had been a long scholar in the language.
! Captain John Smith may have been the first person to put in writing the attraction the Maine coast would have to centuries of later arrivals:
Here are no hard landlords to racke us with high rents; no tedious pleas in law to consume us with their many years deputations for Justice; no multitudes to occasion such impediments to good order, as in the popuar States. So freely hath God in his Majesty bestowed his blessing on them that will attempt to obtaine them as here every man may be master and owner of his own labor and land; or the greatest part in a small time."
! The first Europeans to settle on the neck divided it half longitudinally and built a stone wall over a mile long to mark the border. One family was named Shepherd and the other Wolfe, so the fence separated the Shepherds from the Wolfes. That was in the late 18th century and parts of the stone wall are still there under the hemlocks in the woods and along the path to the river. One half of the neck soon devolved to Nathaniel and Mary Aldrich who would have 14 children, several at sea. The foundations of the Aldrich house, the well, and the walls of the courtyard are still visible in the woods, especially in the winter time.
! During the 18th and 19th century, Maine's coast was intensively farmed. If you had cruised it, you would have been as likely to see a pasture as woods, or cows and sheep grazing on the islands. The field pines and the stone walls in the woods of Maine are reminders that most of the state's farmland has gone back to forest.
! Freeport's most important early crop was the pine tree. By 1685, the British royalty was already reserving the best trees in the area for use as ship masts. The king's arrow was scored on these trees and no settlers were allowed to cut them. The trees were transported in specially designed ships with holes in the their transoms from which the tall timbers would overhang. Some of these ships would leave from Mast Landing, which had deep water right up to what is now Bow Street. The eccentric angle of the east side of Freeport's main intersection allowed the oxen pulling the spars to turn the corner onto Bow Street on their way to Mast Landing.
* Early settlers would have found timber wolves, black bear, moose and perhaps even elk and caribou on the neck, along with more familiar species.
* In 1860, according to Tides of Change, there were 18 farmers on Wolf's Neck along with two mariners, a carpenter, caulker, brickmaker and a shipjoiner. But by this time, though, Maine farmers were already abandoning their fields for the west, as they would later for the factory. Walking through the woods today one can find not only stone walls from erstwhile pastures, but field pines with their distinctive broad-reaching branches that indicate they had once stood uncrowded in the sun.
* From the beginning, those on Wolf's Neck used techniques now known as organic farming such as mulching with seaweed, eelgrass, rockweed and marsh muck. According to Tides of Change, these materials, and other organic material, "were either collected on the shore and hauled by the cartful directly to the fields, or stacked in compost piles to be spread after the material had decomposed. Some farmers claimed to have seen beneficial results from spreading marsh muck on their fields for up to twenty years after it was applied. Farmers also used salt hay as feed.
* The Aldrich farm continued until the late 19th century when an agricultural census found George Aldrich working 50 acres of meadows, pastures, and orchards, 50 acres of woodland and tilling three acres. Aldrich's farm was worth $4,000, owned $100 worth of implements and $300 worth of cattle. It used hired labor for six weeks a year, mowed 40 acres, and had two horses, ten sheep, three milk cows and two calves. The farm produced 350 pounds of butter and its ten hens produced 160 dozen eggs.
* The same 1880 census found five milk cows at the Banks farm (including the 18th century buildings now known as the Salt Box property) had enough dairy cows to produce 1150 pounds of butter, along with two swine and 30 hens. Banks also grew his own wheat, which was unusual for the area.
* Wolf's Neck was farmed by Freeport entrepreneur E.B. Mallett around the turn of the century. Mallett built the big barn in 1890, then the largest in the state, as well as the stone pier. The latter was used by vessels transporting hay from Wolf's Neck to Boston for use by streetcar horses. In 1891 Mallett harvested 300 tons of hay from his farm.
* The Mallett farm was bought by well-traveled entrepreneur Stanley Wood who built the Stone House. Wood lost his fortune in the depression, writing
In 1929 I lost much money in the Wall St. debacle and did not meet the worst of that storm until 1933 when I finally lost the greater part of my million dollar fortune, and have since had to live on a limited scale. This had much to do with the discontent of my wife, finally terminating in separation and divorce, much to my regret.
Wood did not let divorce sour him on his Maine home, which he described as "the healthiest locality on Earth and perhaps the most beautiful." In his view only the Grand Canyon, Lake Louise, sunrise at Mount Everest and the shrine of Nikko on Japan were comparable. In his last years he lived with his dog in one wing of the house until the local doctor persuaded him to move into the village. For years thereafter the house stood empty and the land was not worked.
* In 1946, the farm was bought by Mrs. and Mrs. LMC Smith of Philadelphia. Although they originally thought of the place as a vacation retreat, they soon began looking for more productive uses. One of the first was an experiment in tree farming -- an effort spurred by the random felling of some 200 trees during Hurricane Carol.
* As part of the tree farming effort, the Smiths introduced the first wood-chipping machine to the state. The device, made in Fitchburg MA, was so novel that a field day was held to show it off to local farmers and woodlot owners.
* In 1953, the Smiths bought nine cows at $175 each and one bull for $300 at a Pennsylvania agriculture fair.
* In the 1950s, the Smiths also started Recompense Campsites which would grow to over 100 sites on 25 acres adjacent to the farm.
* In the late fifties, inspired by Louis Bromfield's Malabar Farm, the Smiths began an organic beef operation called Wolfe's Neck Farm. By this time the herd had about 40 head.
* In 1960, the Smiths sued the central Maine Power Company to stop the utility from using pesticides on their land. The owner company settled the case, which the Brunswick Times Record called a "first of its kind," writing that the "legal action taken by a Freeport man last week to protect his farmlands from pesticides may well prove historic."
* The Smiths gave 200 acres of their farm to the state of Maine in 1969 for the park now known as Wolf Neck Woods.
* In 1973 Wolfe's Neck Farm brought the first round hay baler to Maine. LMC Smith had seen one at a trade show and quickly became an advocate of the "monster." Standard baling, he said was "haying the way the Egyptians built the pyramids." A single farmhand could put up 100 tons or 197 bales in one day compared to 15 tons of standard bales.
* Under the direction of Charles DeGrandpre, Wolfe's Neck Farm had some 600 head of cattle, using only feed grown on the farm and from leased fields nearby. With no corn-feeding, the meat was extremely low fat. Smith regarded the fat-producing corn almost as a pesticide. Meanwhile, the Smiths' own vegetable garden, based on organic principles, consistently won prizes at the Common Ground Country Fair.
* The farm experimented with a number of different approaches to silage. One early experiment involved "open" silos patterned after those on English farms. With mounds of chopped hay covered with black plastic, the air would be sucked out using an vacuum cleaner. The process proved disastrous to the vacuum cleaners and was discarded after a few seasons. Trench silos were also used for awhile.
* Wolfe's Neck Farm introduced Maine to the notion of cafeteria feeding of cattle. Hay was chopped in the field and blown into a trailer with a conveyor belt. The trailer would than be pulled past specially designed feeding stalls at the edge of each pasture, depositing the feed into long bins. For many years, it was common to see the cattle gather at the stalls upon hearing the distant sound of the tractor and trailer.
* One of the least successful experiments involved a hybrid called Sudax (a cross between corn and sorghum that looked like corn without a cob). Sudax was designed as a supplement and winter grain substitute and the initial yields (15 tons per acre) were impressive. But then, during a particularly rainy season, fourteen cows died in one day. An autopsy and subsequent analysis found that Sudax under extremely moist conditions could produce arsenic.
* In 1988 the farm developed an inexpensive, portable livestock watering system so that cattle could be easily moved to any of farm's 17 paddocks. A report found that benefits included the fact that "manure is not concentrated in a few places, vegetation is not beaten down in a few places, [and] the animals expend less energy in obtaining their drinking water."
* The farm was given to the University of Southern Maine by the Smith family in 1985. By this time, large farms were become more and more rare. In 1954 Maine had 23,368 farms; by 1987 it would have only 6,269.
* WNF began using shredded recycled newspapers for compostable cattle bedding. The newspaper was cheaper than sawdust and kept the pens drier, being four to six times as absorbent. The farm went through 1,000 pounds of old paper a year from the Freeport recycling program and according to farm manager David DeGrandpre, "the only problem is the calves keep fighting over the funnies."
* Later the farm would engage in a rare yuppie to rural technology transfer, as it received 2,000 pounds of used mash from Gritty McDuff's brew pub each week to help fatten the cattle.
* The farm also ran a test program in which a plot fertilized with sludge and another supplemented with cement plant tailings were compared with the growth results from a control plot. The plot using stone dust outshone the others.
* In 1992, community garden plots were made available at the farm for the first time.
* In early 1996, the university would announced that it was no longer able to operate the farm, bringing to an end a ten year troubled tenure. The WNF Foundation immediately began to create a new structure and concept for the farm which had become a run-down shadow of its former self.
* In just a few years, farm manager Eric Jensen, and Peter Cox, the president of the foundation, led a revival of the farm. WNF beef became the featured meat at the new Portland public market, there was a waiting list for its popular day camps, thousands of visitors came to farm for such events as the calf watch, and in 2000, the farm received a major statewide award for non-profit excellence.
* Jensen and Cox developed a Maine marketing alliance for natural beef that started with 10 farmers in the state but soon exploded to around a hundred as far west as the Mississippi and as far south as Virginia. The Farm had become the largest supermarket supplier of natural beef in the greater Northeast. But it also found itself in a situation not unlike some Internet startups - strong on vision and weak on necessary capital. Its fiscal state endangered, it worked out a long term license for its brand and leased its land to the much larger Pineland Farms Natural Beef. In September 2009, Pineland Farms removed its cattle from the farm.
$ More than 20,000 children and adults visit the Farm and participate in WNF programs each year. - ssmith@igc.org