Low Low Tides Seaweed Harvest Workshop: May
May 26 – May 30
Greenhorns and Smithereen Farm partner to offer educational seaweed harvest events. This is our seventh year of offering Low Low Tides Seaweed Programming.
These events are multi-day educational and social experiences; at dawn we teach you to harvest responsibly and process wild algae for culinary use. In the afternoon we host teachers for lectures, and there are delightful shared group meals for those who stay on.
Our purpose with this programming is to share our love of the seaweed and wild ecology of the inter-tide, to keep learning and to learn and work in an embodied community of practice. The teachers join us in the water. Kacie Loparto has been learning / teaching seaweed for more than 12 years. The teachers we have chosen reflect some of the areas we feel are important for seaweed stewardship- read on for the afternoon workshop descriptions.
For more information on our theory of change, please read the Seaweed Commons position paper and articles www.seaweedcommons.org. Our goal is to grow a vibrant community of care to protect our access, our coastal ecology and our beloved ocean.
Harvesters must register with the Low Low Tides 2025 — Registration Form, and must obtain proper licensing. (We’ll help!)
We hand-harvest from Cobscook Bay and the nearby Bold Coast. We dry in our greenhouses, for Smithereen Farm to process in for commercial, value-added products like seaweed sprinkle, salt, broth mix, bath soak, and newly added this year… kelp soap! We think that the beautiful and intense physical practice of seaweed wild harvest is a great time for those who are passionate and/or curious on this subject to come, in person, and expose their thinking to the cold water and extreme tides. We offer simple indoor lodging for those interested in joining, and for committed harvesters who can join for the duration, we guide you in obtaining the appropriate licensing and pay for your harvest.
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SCHEDULE
May 26: Arrival
May 27, 2pm
Feini Yin, Communications Director at North American Marine Alliance
A conversation about fisher-advocacy, values-based seafood, and defending the ocean commons. For those who are new to the 'ocean space' it's not always clear that there are many civil society organizations working to represent the stakeholders of the ocean. Conservation organizations have played a role with environmental lawsuits to block salmon farms, protest toxic waste dumping, and address overfishing, but there are other kinds of organizing that are worth knowing about. Feini Yin will give us a talk about the ecosystem of such advocacy across the US, many of whom are partners with the North American Marine Alliance. NAMA's theory of change, approach to movement building, and outcomes of past campaigns can help us orient in our work with Seaweed Commons.
May 29: Ben Goldberg
FERTILITY CYCLES: Compost Toilet Workshops
Our life on the land here in outermost Maine coast is profoundly informed by fertility cycles. The products we are harvesting are those who have adapted to a relatively low fertility environment (wild berries, herbs, fruiting shrubs) and those which can metabolize their fertility from the cold nutrient rich waters (algae). Our gardens are powered by rockweed, woodchips and cow manure. As an educational and model agroforestry farm we are interested to learn more about intensional energy cycling and fertility cycling options that fit within our diverse farm operation. This is why we have brought some expertise from the Alchemist-era of back-to-the-land engineers, in the form of Ben Goldberg.
Ben is a lifelong learner and a student of curiosity. With degrees in Human Ecology and Environmental Education from College of the Atlantic and the Audubon Expedition Institute graduate field study program, he is a fan of experiential and practical skill based models of education. Ben now lives in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, which is also unceded Pocumtuck territory near Great Falls, and home to some of the richest soil in the world. Because he grew up playing in mud puddles, Ben cultivated an interest in water and soil conservation. This led to a career in ecological sanitation, which in turn led to a full menu of work and travel experiences, many of which were to install composting toilets in odd places such as national parks and on remote islands. Ben is also an experienced woodworker and consummate re-user of things, many of which end up in his projects. He especially enjoys building tiny houses and worm composting bins. When he is not doing any of those things, you
can usually find him paddling around somewhere in his canoe.
He will be working steadily building two code-compliant composting toilets and discussing his experience with VERMICULTURE (including a desire to explore the use of seaweed as a medium for worm composting to create a locally sourced fertilizer product); you can join in at will during the afternoons to chat and learn with him in a hands-on format. No separate sign-up is required for seaweed harvest attendees, although members of the public are asked to RSVP so we can plan refreshments.
May 27-30: Harvesting, drying, processing, learning!
Registration required: Low Low Tides 2025 — Registration Form
