Making a Living on Maine Waters #198

Abigail Carroll:

So I always grew up with this belief that you could launch yourself into something and learn it and become successful at it. Also, I found that it's often your shortcomings and in life that actually turn out to be your big gift, the thing that makes you actually a little special or different.

Jon Keller:

I wanted a book that any lobsterman could read and say that this is true to the place and to the industry. Every lobsterman I know that has read it has thought so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 198. Making a Living on Maine Waters Many Mainers make their living on the water. Today we speak with two individuals who are doing so in quite unique ways. Abigail Carroll is the founding farmer of Nonsuch Oysters, which is located in a nature conservancy in Scarborough. John Keller is a writer whose latest book, Of Sea and Cloud was inspired by years of experience working in the secluded lobstering culture of rural Maine. We hope you enjoy our conversations with Abigail and Jeanne. Thank you for joining us. As someone who has lived most of our life basically on the coast, I'm fascinated by other individuals who are doing interesting things with the coastline and maybe in ways that I hadn't necessarily thought of before. Today we have with us Abigail Abby Carroll, who is the founding farmer of Nonesuch Oysters, which is located in a nature conservancy in Scarborough. Abby is also a third generation Maine entrepreneur. Pretty interesting background you have here, Abby. Thanks for coming in.

Abigail Carroll:

Thank you for having me, Lisa. I'm really delighted to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful background. I'm loving that you have undergraduate degrees in French and Spanish literature from Barnard. You have a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia. And you spent a decade in Paris. So you're back.

Abigail Carroll:

I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you're doing oysters.

Abigail Carroll:

I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me a little bit about that path. It's quite varied, but I bet there's a story behind that.

Abigail Carroll:

Well, I have to admit I did not expect to become an oyster farmer. It was probably the farthest thing from my mind and I was living in Paris and I had a sort of personal disruption in my life. I broke up with a long term boyfriend and came back to Maine for the summer and wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. Was I going to go back to Paris? Was I going to go back to New York where I lived before I went to Paris? And I stumbled into somebody who wanted to start an oyster farm. And as I was feeling a little bit purposeless, I thought, well, I can get my head around a business plan and write a business plan for this person. Unfortunately, that got a little complicated and I wound up owning the farm. So this, what was originally intended to be a consulting project, wounded up in my owning this 4 acre farm in Scarborough. And I wasn't quite sure what to do because when I engaged to consult for this person, the last words out of my mouth were, okay, I will write you a business plan, but I'm not getting on the water. Of course, those are famous last words. So I dried my tears, went to Cabela's, bought a pair of waders and just got my hands dirty. And it's been five years since then and it's been rocky, turbulent road. Farming's really hard. You gotta figure things out. It's very hard to ask somebody else how to run a farm in a certain area, because farming is really site dependent. So there are nuances on every different field, I imagine, just like there are in every different little cove where you might do oysters. So while there are certain standard procedures that everybody follows, you always have to kind of tweak them. When do you bring the seed in every year? When do you plant the oysters? How do you configure your gear? What are your predators? All of these things make farming oysters in different locations very particular. And so we've sort of been learning as we go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I want to talk to you about the oyster farming process, but I also want to talk to you about the impact of an entrepreneurial family on you and your decision to say, sure, I can do this.

Abigail Carroll:

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely owe a lot of this to my dad. I mean, I think there's a spirit in the Family in general. But my father, really, as somebody who's reinvented himself many times in life, and so I always grew up with this belief, I just never even questioned it, that you could launch yourself into something and learn it and become successful at it. And sometimes also I found that it's often your shortcomings in life that actually turn out to be your big gift, the thing that makes you actually a little special or different. And in farming, you know, it's been really. Learning to farm has been really hard. It's been really challenging. And actually some of the most important hardships have been things like, you know, keeping motors running, you know, keeping pumps running. A lot of the sort of like just mechanical stuff is actually what's holding us back. It's not actually the farming. So sort of struggling through a few seasons that weren't as productive as they might have been, because I'm trying to learn it, learn how to be a bo, learn how to, you know, teach other people how to help me build this farm. I've sort of had to reach out in some other different directions, which have been new and exciting and fun for the oyster community, I think, in general, which is last year, for example, we started an oyster tour program. Now, had my farm been humming along like it's supposed to have been by now, maybe I wouldn't have done that. And the oyster farm tour was a good way for me to kind of of work some of the assets that I have, which is. I actually really love talking about what I've learned and sharing that with people. And people seem to like to hear about it. People want to know right now how their food is grown. They want to know what it's like to live on a farm. They also want to know how hard is it to change your life and build a new one in a new way, like you've done, like I've done. And so I think people are kind of drawn to the farm for a variety of reasons. And by doing the tours, we've really been able to create a new revenue stream for the farm, which has helped us get through some tough seasons, and it's built our brand a little bit more. It's built a real loyal clientele. People have come from all over the nation to Maine for vacation. They come on our farm, and then they go home and they want our oysters. So I think in certain respects, the farm, not just, you know, being super productive right away, has been an asset. We've spent some time building the farm in different ways, which have been really Fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You mentioned that sometimes the things that are your difficulties can end up being your greatest asset. Tell me about that for you. What does that mean?

Abigail Carroll:

I think the fact that I had sort of no experience in this sector made every day kind of special and new and exciting for me in a way that it might not have been for a lobsterman who becomes an oyster farmer or for a scientist to become an oyster farmer for me every day. One, it was a miracle that I got through it, and two, it was this sort of adventure. And so I started sharing this adventure online with people and telling the story. And the beautiful thing about having no experience and really very shallow expectations for myself was that I was never afraid to share the bad things. You know, the day I clipped the snowbank with the trailer and the boat slipped off and fell into the middle of Route 9, that wasn't an ideal thing to happen. But you know what? It ended up on Facebook and it's ended up in almost all of my slide presentations. When I do a public talk, people laugh. They get it. I've done other things in life where I had more sort of personal stake, personal investment, or I felt like I trained in something and something needed to work because I thought I knew something about it and I wasn't as free. It's been incredibly liberating doing something and throwing myself into something that I never expected to be in or I never thought about and I didn't really know anything about. I'm not afraid to ask questions. I go to UNE all the time. Can you help me with this? I call the scientist and I'm just not afraid of looking stupid or acting stupid. And it is so liberating. And it's been really helpful. It's been fun because I get to share more with the people who are listening, the Facebook fans and things like that, people following the journey. And it's been liberating because you can't do anything in life without falling. And if you don't, if you don't fall, it's like growing up skiing in Maine. They always said if you're not falling, you're not skiing hard enough. It's the same thing, you know, if you're not stumbling, if you're not tripping, you're really just not making big enough effort. And so I know I'm making a big enough effort because we trip up all the time, but things smooth out. And it's been really incredibly eye opening on a lot of levels. Of course, the stakes are high too sometimes. I mean, I've put A lot of personal investment in this farm and I really need it to work. Let it be clear, it's not a game. But figuring it out and rolling with the punches and just accepting the, the kind of hurdles and the failures along the way has been just really eye opening and I think we'll be stronger for it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Has it helped that oysters seem to have become more popular eventide? Moved in a few years ago, just down the street and they are just huge. And more and more people are doing raw bars. And what has that done for your business?

Abigail Carroll:

Well, it's great. I mean, the joke is that I kind of landed accidentally in one of the hottest markets in America and it's been fun to be part of that process. I would never have chosen to be in agriculture. I would never have chosen to be in the food industry. I've always been a big fan of food. I spent so much time in France that of course all the sort of food culture there wore off on me. But. But it's just sort of been incredible to be part of this really prescient, important movement. It's important to Maine, it's important to the country. You know, in America we import 91% of our seafood. There's, you know, we need more of these local producers. It's really hard. Small farms are not working. In2013, the average farm operate at a net loss of $1,400. The farm model, big agriculture is filled with problems. Small agriculture is filled with problems. Everybody's struggling. We need a new model in farming that's clear, but we also need to bring it home. We are a net importer of the New England scallop from China. Come on. And it's not just patriotism. This is about the environment. This is about the carbon footprint in the early 20s. If you've read Mark Kurlansky's book the Big Oyster, he writes how in the early 20s, the average American ate about 600 oysters a year. Then we polluted all the waters and all the oysters died off. And then we became a nation of Thai shrimp eaters. And it's really wonderful that the oyster is coming back because it's symbolic of so many things in the country right now. It's sort of, sort of a new twist on the back to land, back to the ocean movement. It really reflects a much more thoughtful approach to how we're living our lives and to how we're eating and how we're thinking about our food and the environment in general. And the crazy thing about oysters you know, I was never particularly an environmentalist. My carbon footprint was terrible. Flying back and forth from France, you know, and I spent my whole life traveling around the planet. That's a terrible carbon outlay for a single person. But what I've learned being an oyster farmer is just how sensitive the, you know, earthly creatures are to our, our impact. So on my farm, I grow two. I grow this one type of oyster, the Crassostria virginica, which is the oyster that everybody along the eastern seaboard grows, with very few exceptions. What makes these oysters different from Florida to the northern Maine is the environment they're growing in. You can call that terroir, you can call that merroy, because the fruit oyster farmers created their own word, their own French word, actually, which is even better. But what that really refers to is the huge impact that the environment has on that one single creature. So when I give these oyster tours at our farm, we start at the nursery and I show them little baby spat and everybody coos and caws because they're adorable. And then we go out to the farm and I show them that we have oysters grown in bags and some that are growing on the bottom. Now, we're a pretty shallow site, so the difference between where the bag grown oysters is and where the bottom dwelling oysters is, it's a matter of a few feet. But the bag oysters are pure white, they're white as snow. And the bottom oysters are this deep, lush green. And that is just a small shift in where they're lying in the oyster in the water column. So what I always tell people on my tour is, well, think about the impact of when we put overboard discharge. You know, think of the impact of our septics. Think about the impact of, you know, the carbon we're all putting into the air that's coming down as acid rain and changing acid levels in the ocean. Just these little impacts have such a big consequence for sea life, marine life, that it's incredible. And you never live too far away from the ocean to care about your impact on the water. Because the watershed for the Gulf of Maine extends all the way into Canada. So you're never too far away from the ocean to have this concern you. So that's been sort of another big part of my becoming a farmer. It's like, oh, wow, this really matters. You know, before global warming, well, it was kind of convenient because it meant I could come home in September from Paris and it would still be beautiful, you could catch a swim. But now I'm like, wow. You know, the acidification of the ocean, it doesn't really affect us so much, but it really affects the clamors and the green crabs that have migrated north from warming temperatures in the water. Well, on the one hand warming temperatures are great because they'll make my oysters grow faster. On the other hand, they're bringing all these diseases in Maine that we've never had before. The green crabs are here and the green crabs are going and they're eating up all the little crab spat in the, in the sand spat is the babies. And so we're really seeing a real shift in our coastline. That is, it's of concern to a lot of people and it should be of concern to all of us because it's going to impact all of our lives. You know, if we can't have clams, what's a lobster? A dinner in Maine, you know, and there's lots of people making their livelihoods from clam digging. You know, these things matter. They really matter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

i had noticed recently where I live in Yarmouth that the clam diggers are back. And it made me think, well, where did they go? I mean, I guess there was the winter, but I know that we have problems with red tide in this part of the world. And as a non Mario person, I'm not a farmer, I'm not an agriculturist, I really don't, I don't spend a lot of time wondering about this sort of thing until something appears that wasn't there before or something disappears.

Abigail Carroll:

Right? And I think that's the problem. We're always sort of reacting to natural disasters or oil spills. We need to do more to think about how we can prevent them. But I think I don't know where the clamors went. It was very cold this winter. So many people probably weren't out digging. I know that we weren't out much for the oyster farm, and I know that the lobstermen really had a hard time getting out. But what did really shock me when I was first writing this business plan and looking along the Maine coast for a site, I was shocked, absolutely shocked to see how much of the Maine coast is not open to shellfish harvesting because of fecal contamination. It is shocking. And I think that was just the beginning of this huge shift in my own thinking. Just all these maps are public information. You can go to the Department of Marine Resources and you can look up pollution closure maps and you can go check out your neighborhood now where we harvest shellfish. The waters are very, very clean. The state does an incredibly thorough job making sure that nothing's pulled out of sites that are, that are have a potential to be contaminated. But it's really thought provoking to go and look at those maps and think, here we are in Maine, which is supposed to be this wonderfully clean, pristine state, and we really have just a huge amount of coastal waters that we can't use for certain types of aquaculture, nobly shellfish, because the water quality is not good enough.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And just to be very clear, fecal contamination. That's poop.

Abigail Carroll:

Yep, that's poop.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So we've got that kind of contamination. And I'm also interested because my father's family grew up in Biddeford Saco river. And in fact, two of my father's uncles drowned in the Saco River. And that was at a time when it was massively contaminated. There was mill runoff, There was actually feces, poop in the water. There was just all kinds of disgustingness. And we're now at a time where, thank goodness we've cleaned all this stuff, stuff up. But does that also make you wonder, you know, the industrial background of the state, does that also make you wonder, like in the long term what kind of an impact it's had on the habitat that maybe you're farming oysters in or other sort of sea creatures being?

Abigail Carroll:

Well, in Scarborough, we are lucky because we're in one of the few grade A classified rivers in water classification rivers in Maine. But the Saka river is closed for shellfish contamination. And I can't really speak to the past pollution that's happened and the impact today from the mills and the sort of early part of the century. But I can speak to a new generation of young people that are much more conscientious about how we treat our waterways and how we think about our own waste. And I think we need to just keep betting on the future and keep proselytizing and keep getting the message out that everything we do has an impact and hopefully there'll be positive change moving forward. I think a lot of people are interested in renewable energy. I think, you know, a lot of people are interested in composting and being much more efficient about the way they buy things so they don't have as much waste. And, you know, everybody complains about buying electronic product because you get so much plastic. And, you know, I think there's going to be a whole new generation of thinking about all of this stuff that's going to be really helpful. And generations before just didn't have the information I think, that we have now, and they didn't think about it. I think people were so excited to get things going. The Industrial revolution, wow. We can send trains places, we can, you know, we have cars now. I mean, that was so exciting and we got such benefit from that. But like everything, you know, there's a new invention that needs to be refined a little bit. What's really interesting about Biddeford, though, was that those Biddeford mills were all hydropowered. It wasn't hydroelectric. It was hydromechanical power. So if you go to the basement of those mills, there are all these tunnels and the river used to run right through the basement. So of those tunnels and the pressure of the water would move these mechanical rods and they would be upstairs moving more rods, and those would all power sewing machines. Then we replaced it all with electricity. And now we're like, gosh, how could we harness that hydropower in the river to produce electricity to now produce, you know, to help power the mills? So it's funny because we're kind of coming full circle. You know, we're looking at hydro in a different way. And it's just. All of it's just so interesting. And I think a lot of what's going on today is actually that we're looking kind of backward and saying, okay, well, what worked back then? You know, hydropower actually worked. You know, having your own farm or your own garden worked. You know, after World War II, it's my understanding that everybody planted a victory garden. And that was just part of the popular culture. My grandparents had a victory Garden. You know, he was a lawyer. My grandmother was a professional. They. But it was part of what you did as an American. You planted food in your backyard and you had some self sufficiency. That's just what America was about. And to. We kind of lost that. The 80s globalization and trust me, all I ever wanted to do as a kid was travel the world and I did a lot of that. I'm all about getting out and going elsewhere and traveling the world and world markets and things like that. But I do think there was something special about this sort of American spirit, which is we are self sufficient. Not totally self sufficient, but we still have a responsibility to ourselves and to our communities to be somewhat self sufficient. I think it's a good lesson. I think our grandparents knew it and I think, you know, my parents, my parents grew all sorts of animals, but that was not something I enjoyed. My sister wasn't 4h, my brother's a gardener. I was the urban rat in the family. It's the great irony of my family that I'm actually the farmer now. I love pavement, but I still love cities. And I have to, you know, I have to say, if I were making carrots, it just wouldn't be the same. I am making oysters. And oysters are a luxury product and they're elegant and it's fun to shuck them. I love going to events and shucking them for people. And I love the sort of culture around the oyster. When people come out on our tours, we can take up to six people under my Coast Guard license. And I have this beautiful porcelain plate that my brother and sister in law gave me and I shuck the oysters on it. I make up a little mignonette sauce on the boat. It's a little, there's a little pomp and circumstance. We're on a dirty workboat, but there's still a little pomp and circumstance. And I have to say that that makes it a little bit more fun for me because it sort of feels a little elegant and, and kind of not too far from home.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I know that I now am intrigued and would like to go out on the boat and have some oysters and some mignonette. How can people learn more about Nonesuch and the tours that you do? I'm imagining you have a website.

Abigail Carroll:

We do. So nunsuchoisters.com and I think it's also important to note that I am perhaps the precursor in Maine. But what we're hoping will happen is that this will inspire other farms to start doing tours as well. And the sort of big idea is to support a main oyster trail much like you'd have a Napa Valley trail like wine map. And the hope is that we're going to establish lots of little farms up and down the coast where you can either find have oysters at their location or actually get on the water with them like we do and people can. This will be a whole new tourism avenue for Maine. And you know, people think of Maine as a lobster state, but oyster connoisseurs think of Maine as an oyster state. Maine is really good shellfish. It's the cold waters.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you very much for doing the work that you do and for jumping in and taking a chance and becoming the founding farmer of Nonsuch Oysters. We've been speaking with Abigail Carroll, who has been farming nonesuch oysters at Hautevan Nature Conservancy in Scarborough. Enjoy.

Abigail Carroll:

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy. When was the last time you took

Abigail Carroll:

a break from what you were doing,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up?

Abigail Carroll:

I know that during the course of

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream.

Abigail Carroll:

Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But when I do, I feel energized. Because in those moments, I'm able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to

Abigail Carroll:

accomplish, how I want my business to grow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sometimes those are the aha moments.

Abigail Carroll:

If we all took a few moments

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

out each day to stop what we are doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can, in fact, come true. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm sure I've said more than once that one of my favorite things to do is get into a good book. And especially to get into a good book of fiction. Today we have with us the writer of this wonderful book of fiction Of Sea and Cloud. This is John Keller. John Keller actually is an interesting individual. You'll learn more about his latest book, Of Sea and Cloud was inspired by years of experience working in the secluded lobstering culture of Earl, Maine. Keller now lives year round on a sailboat off the coast of Maine, but he typically returns to the Montana backcountry to guide each fall. Between the mountains and the sea, he's made a lifestyle out of working in and writing about traditional labors and the disappearing cultures that surround those labors. Thanks so much for taking time to come in off your sailboat.

Jon Keller:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now you live in Addison?

Jon Keller:

Yes. Not full time now. Right now I'm in Portland, in South Portland, actually, on my boat.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay. So wherever the boat takes you, you are?

Jon Keller:

Yeah. I spent the winter in Portland at DeMillo's Marina and then moved to South Portland this summer or this spring. So I'm here for a little while.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you're here for a little while. Why Portland?

Jon Keller:

I wanted to be around more people for a little while. I've been living down east for eight years and just kind of decided it was time to be around people and activity and bars and restaurants. So Portland seemed like a good place to try.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you have an interesting background in that you've not only worked within the lobstering community, you work as a guide. You also have a master's in fine arts and creative writing. You've written books and articles. How do you combine those aspects of your life?

Jon Keller:

It's pretty difficult at times and easy at times. At best, it's a good balance. I spend a lot of time in my head as it is, so working outside, like working on a lobster boat or digging clams or even guiding, is a good way for me to get out of my head and to experience the world in a more physical sense instead of sitting by myself at a desk writing or reading or thinking about stories. So it's really almost a meditative thing for me to work outside. And clam digging especially is that way because you're alone and it's quiet and really beautiful. And so, yeah, I get a lot of peace of mind from it and also a lot of energy, I think, from the people I meet doing that. And that's where all my stories come from.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As I was reading your book, you have an interesting way of writing dialogue.

Abigail Carroll:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And actually as I was reading it, I could almost hear, and I'm assuming this is what you're going for because you're trying to write to what you know. I could almost hear the Guys that I know are doing lobstering, you know, where. Off the dock where I live in Yarmouth. Yeah, I mean it's a. It really. There's a very specific way. There's a very specific way that people speak. There's a very specific usage of words.

Jon Keller:

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did you spend a lot of time listening to the way people were talking in order to get to that place?

Jon Keller:

Yeah, it's funny, actually, somebody. I did a reading at Longfellows the other night and somebody asked that question as well. And really working on the lobster boat. I was a sternman, so I was just spending all my time stuffing dead fish into bags, you know, baiting bait bags that would go into the trap. And we didn't have a radio for music or anything on the boat. And so the captain played the. Or just had the radio on the two way radio with the lobstermen all talking. And that would be on, you know, all day, every day. And just all the fishermen just going back and forth about whatever it is, you know, whatever's going on with lobstering or if it's about food, you know, they talked a lot about food or, you know, just gossiping and stuff. And so when I first started, I couldn't even understand what they were saying. So the guy I worked for would have to translate literally because their accents and. But it wasn't. Wasn't just their accents, it was their speech patterns and the way the words would actually be ordered. So it's like the syntax was different than anything I'd ever experienced before. So it took me a long time to really start processing it and be able to even, you know, after years of working there, I still had trouble sometimes understanding what some of them said. And. But so just spending so many long hours on the boat with that being. The only thing going into my ears is these guys talking. Just for, you know, 12 hours every day, it's just these guys talking over the radio. And I'd go home and write down a lot of lines. I took a lot of notes and most of the notes I took were lines, just quotes from these guys that I could remember. And so I had like, you know, notebooks of this stuff. And so slowly that just got into my head, I think, and I. So that's what I really wanted to come out in the book was this pattern of speech. Not just the lingo but the syntax, if that makes sense.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That does make sense. And it's interesting because you also have written after each day aboard the boat. He took copious notes on the people and dialect that amazed him. These notes eventually evolved into a novel, but he was hesitant about writing that novel because he felt that to write about a world so new to him would be a form of trespass. To Keller. Fiction writers have a serious responsibility, especially when writing about something that others view as sacred. And on the coast of Maine, lobster fishing is sacred. So I'm assuming actually somebody wrote this about you talking to you?

Jon Keller:

Yeah. That's taken from several interviews I've done in the past.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me about that. I think that that is something that many people worry about when they're writing is accurately representing an individual or a group of people or a culture.

Jon Keller:

Yeah. Well, when I moved to Maine, I moved here to work on a boat. And I was done with schools and universities and so forth and just wanted a break from it. And I'd always wanted to work on a boat, so I moved here to do that. And I didn't have any intention of writing about it, but I just finished my mfa and, you know, my mind just works in stories. And so I'd write down these lines just because they're great, not because I was planning to use them. So it took me quite a while. I had worked on the boat for a couple years before I actually started writing. And I wrote just the first chapter of the book, which is now actually the second chapter of the book. And then I stopped because I didn't feel comfortable writing about it because I was so new there. All these fishermen down east, you know, they're 8th, 9th, 10th generation fishermen. And I'd been there for two years, and I just didn't feel like I was. Just didn't feel right. I was still kind of a tourist in that world. But after more time went by, I just kind of slowly realized that none of these fishermen are writing books about this stuff because they're fishermen. You know, that's what they do. They're full time. They're lobstermen. And I was a writer. And. And there weren't very many writers, if any, that I am aware of, that had spent that much time working on a boat and spending winters working in a lobster pound and digging clams and stuff. And I talked with the lobsterman that I worked for, and I remember one day he had said, you know, you're not a lobsterman. You know, you're a writer. So. Right. And that winter, I just sat down and took that chapter and just went with it. And I wrote the whole book in, like five weeks or six weeks that winter, just. And just all just kind of Spilled out. And then I spent the next, like, five years editing it. But so, yeah, I still. Even. Even so, I still do feel a touch of, you know, it's. You know, that's not my. That's not where I'm from. But I kind of mediated that by making the main characters first generation fishermen instead of ninth or tenth generation. And I hope it works. I think it's. I wanted a book that any lobsterman could read and say that this is true to the place and to the industry. And every lobsterman I know that has read it has thought. So

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

give us a little background about the book itself, about the story. Describe it for the people who are listening.

Jon Keller:

Early on, in the first chapter, there's a murder that takes place. And the rest of the book is kind of the fallout after that murder. And the larger context is that it's this very isolated fishing village way down east that is being confronted with these huge global forces, you know, economic forces as well as cultural and social. And so the price of lobsters has really crashed. And there's a fisheries guy from Boston who has a market in Japan, so he's looking to move into the harbor, this one small harbor, and raise the prices of lobster and kind of create a market there. And so between the murder and the price of lobsters and dropping and then this new guy moving into town, it kind of becomes this whirlwind of social and economic kind of upheaval in this really small, small village, I guess you'd call it this one harbor. And so the wharf, the local wharf, which is kind of the community center in that area, is changing hands. And the local. The pound that these. The lobster pound that these guys run is changing hands. And. And so it's just a lot of change at one time. And the bigger context, like I said, being the global forces that these people aren't really even aware of that's really affecting them. So kind of simply put, like, the price of lobsters goes up in Japan, and it affects a guy on the coast of Maine who isn't even aware that his lobsters are being sold in Japan. So it's just kind of these strange forces, I'd say.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And there's also a bit of a macabre element to this as to where the body goes.

Jon Keller:

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I don't want to ruin anything for people who are going to read this, so here's a spoiler alert for you, but why did you decide to go in that direction?

Jon Keller:

Well, a lot of that's because I wasn't sure I wasn't sure what I was doing while I was writing the book. I wrote the book really fast, and I wasn't very good at thinking through plot lines. You know, my writing is. You know, it just kind of comes as it comes. I can't make notes ahead of time. And, you know, if I sit down and think about, okay, this is where I want the book to go tomorrow, then it's not going to work. It's not going to go that direction. So it was kind of unfolding each day as I wrote. And what I ended up with was this pot, this huge book with a lot of pretty central characters. I mean, there's not really one main character. And from there, I had to kind of carve out a plot. And so through all these revisions, the body ended up in different places and it wasn't found. And then it was found, and I moved it around quite a lot. And then I just kind of arrived at how it is now with a lot of. I don't know if it's mystery or not, but a lot of uncertainty. And I wanted that. I mean, the whole book has got a lot of uncertainty in it.

Abigail Carroll:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it never. It feels like there is that uncertainty. Even at the end. Even at the end. You know, there was a murder, but it doesn't feel like things ever completely get resolved with all of this.

Jon Keller:

Yeah, no, there's nothing. It's not a firm resolution. And that's one thing some readers have commented on, is that the end is definitely vague. But I think the whole book is vague in a way. And again, that was, for me, that is how I saw life down east, in a way, is like this. One of my friends down there who has lived there forever after she read the book, she made the comment that the book was kind of like living there in that if you talking to some people, like, say you walk up on a conversation, you don't know what people are talking about unless you know ahead of time what they're talking about, because everything references something else. And it's just such an old place that it's really hard to understand what's going on in a way. And I don't know if that makes sense, but. But it's. So the book, to me, is that way in that you really have to pay attention. Most of what's happening is under the surface, and everything has got a meaning that's under there. And so the reader has to really pay attention in order to pick those meanings up. And I think that was, for me, that was kind of what echoed my experience there. And it also, I think the voice of the voice in the book. It's hard to step out of that voice in order to explain what's going on. And I tried to several times to step back and try to explain because I knew there's a lot of diction in the book and a lot of things that happen just about commercial fishing and about boats and the ocean that people aren't going to know. But in order to, in order to explain those things, you're going to have to break from the voice of the book. And I just wasn't willing to do that. And so people have to tolerate the ambiguity, I think.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is there a part that you like that you'd like to read to us?

Jon Keller:

I like actually the first couple pages probably. I think the first few pages are the only time in the whole book where we see a lobsterman just going, just doing his own thing without any of this upheaval going on around him yet. Ebb tide and fog and three slashes with wooden oars. No land left. Only the fog, and the oars, like bones, creaked in their locks. A single gull rode the skiff's bow. The tidewater drained fast and the lobster fisherman named Nicholas Graves leaned his shoulder and spun his skiff and rode stern first together with the tide, and he and the gull both squinted into the fog. He told himself that his boat was moored here somewhere. He told himself that after a lifetime on the Atlantic, he could not be lost in this one small cove. He shipped the oars and ducked his head. He lit a cigarette. Water dripped from the oar blades. His sweatshirt hood was beaded with moisture and his hands were cold and raw. Fog like frost spread atop his gray beard and condensed on his glasses and trickled from the lenses to the coin sized patches of skin above his beard. From behind him, the gull watched. Nicholas turned to the bird and released a lungful of smoke and said, you tell me. He smoked and allowed the ebb tide to draw him toward the mouth of the COVID and when he was finished smoking, he dropped the butt into the water. The gull circled and landed. Nicholas took a plastic bag of crackers from his sweatshirt pocket and removed one. He turned fully around on the bench seat to face the gull and held out the cracker in his cracked palm. The gull batted its wings and craned its neck and hopped on one foot. Come on, nicholas said. You like them Quite well. The bird flapped its wings in place and jumped into the air and hovered over top Nicholas. For a split second, it landed again on the bow. Nicholas rested his knuckles on the wooden gunwale. He wiggled his fingers. The gull stepped hesitantly from the bow to the gunwale, as if understanding this beckoning. And it walked the rail. And in a quick lunge, it took the cracker and returned to the bow. Nicholas smiled to himself and turned in his seat and took up the oars. The gull disappeared into the fog, then reappeared like an apparition that hovered six feet above the surface of the sea. A few more slashes with the oars and he saw the gulls. He saw that the gull was perched on the bow of the moored boat. Then the entire hull shape of the boat emerged like the body of a centaur beneath a gull head.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There is something that is very, I don't know, like the calmness of the sea, I guess, while you're. While you're reading this. Just the sense that there is action, but it's the kind of action that happens in a. I mean, I can just imagine exactly what you're describing. You know, there's just a little bit going on, but you can sort of sense the fog, you can sense the quietness of it. You can sense the conversation the guy's having with the seagull. And there's a lot of that that goes on in lobstering and in fishing. There's a lot of sort of quiet moments that happen.

Jon Keller:

Yeah. Yes, definitely. Yeah, it's a lot of. Especially, you know, in the down east stretch of the coast. Yeah, there's a lot of. Lot of fog and just, you know, it's all there is, fog and water and rocks. And I think the voice of the book is really what I wanted to kind of give that feel. And the book is really written in a different voice than anything I've ever written before. So, yeah, hopefully it echoes the place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and now that you're living in the Portland area and you're still living on your sailboat.

Jon Keller:

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What type of voice are you? Was coming through to you at this point? What types of dialogues and conversations?

Jon Keller:

Yeah, I'm not sure yet. I'm at somewhat of a standstill. I've been working on essays, mostly essays about down east area still. So about digging clams and working on a mussel dragger and lobster boat and stuff. So I'm still working with that same stuff. And I'll go back there at some point. I'm just kind of here for a while and enjoying myself and trying to be social after. You know, writing is a lonely thing and when you live in a lonely place, they compound each other. So I just wanted to come up and get a breath of air, I guess.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you live by yourself on the sailboat?

Jon Keller:

Yep. What's that like here? It's really, it's a great way for me to live in a city because it's. I can, you know, come into town and do the city thing and see people, but I can also walk down the dock and step onto my boat and be on the water and look out the window at the harbor and it's quiet and it's beautiful and it's. So that's, I really need that. It's a good, good way for me to step out of everything. I have a wood stove on my boat so I can sit by the fire and be on the water. And it's something I need, I think, and I enjoy. And that's why I do all my writing. So I write on the boat. It mediates the urban lifestyle for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And how does this contrast with the time that you spend in Montana?

Jon Keller:

Well, it's. What I've been doing for the past few years is I go back in the fall, so clamming season has ended for me. I've ended, stopped clamming in September and I've gone back to Montana and guided elk hunting in September, October. And so it's worked out well seasonally because the clam price of clams goes down in September and you know, the big summer pushes over. So it's nice to kind of finish that season up. And then I Get on an airplane and go to Montana and go up in the mountains and see a lot of my old friends. I lived out there for 12 years, so a lot of my friends are still there. And it's a nice, nice way to just kind of get out of, get out of Maine and get up in the mountains. Because I, like I said earlier, I never, never leave the coast. When I'm in Maine, I stay South Route 1. And so yeah, my mountains and land based activities usually center around Montana. Actually, until this year, Montana has also been like my big social time. So I go back and spend a week or two in Missoula. And coming from down east to Missoula, that was like going to a big city. I could see all my friends and go out and be social for a couple weeks, then go back to down east and hole up at the end of this peninsula where I lived in this little cabin. But now it's. I don't need that. Probably the only guy that ever goes to Montana for the urban life. But it's a good mix.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you decide that you wanted to be a writer? What was your background? Where are you from?

Jon Keller:

I grew up in New Hampshire and it's just, I don't really decide, you know, I think if I could decide, I'd decide on something else. But my sister's a writer as well. Her name's Abby Maxwell. And two of us talk a lot about that, that if either of us felt like we had a choice, we would do something else. You know, like looking at people with real jobs and 9 to 5 job and it just seems so nice, you know. I love the freedom of my lifestyle, but it's a constant struggle and writing is not an easy thing to do. I meet a lot of people that want to be writers and my attitude is if you can do something else, do it. But it's never really been a choice for me. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning and every time I have a job I save up enough money until I can take time off and write. It's just how my brain works and what makes me feel good. At the end of the day, it's not really a choice for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How has it been to do things like readings at Longfellow Books or this interview here or some of the stuff that's around the business of actually selling your book.

Jon Keller:

Yeah, I'm not very good at it. I'm getting more used to the readings and stuff. But the first few, it was really hard to come out from being Just alone at a desk for so many hours and alone in a lot of ways where I was living. And I mean, I'll do what I can do, but. Yeah, that's.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're hoping it'll sell itself, I think, is what you're saying.

Jon Keller:

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's just. I'm not a self promoter at all. It's just.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, somehow you got Anthony Doerr to write a little quote on the front of your book. He says it's a gorgeously written exploration of faith and loyalty, love and dishonesty. I will never forget these characters, these waters, the harrowing dramas that unfolded upon and beneath them, which is pretty great. He's a National Book Award finalist, and I read his book also. All the Light We Cannot See. So somehow you got somebody to believe in this.

Jon Keller:

When I went to Boise State, he was a teacher at Boise State of mine, and he and I. He did an independent study with me when I actually wrote the first novel I ever wrote. And so he went through my first novel with me and we just kind of maintained a correspondence ever since. And. Yeah, so when that book came out, he read it and really liked it. So it was really great.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people find out about OC and Cloud and the other works that you've done, John?

Jon Keller:

I have a website. It's johnkellerauthor.com and Tyrus Books has a website as well. And yeah, the book is on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and hopefully at local bookstores as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'm very appreciative of the time that you took to listen to the people around you, to capture them, put them on the pages of this book. And I wish you all the best as you continue to do your writing. Because you're right, it's not. It's. You're correct. It's not an easy task, but it seems like it's something that brings you great joy. Yeah.

Jon Keller:

Oh, yes. That's what I'm doing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been speaking with John Keller, who is the author of Sea and Cloud. And people who are interested, I think that this is most likely available in local bookstores, including Longfellow Books.

Jon Keller:

Yep, they have it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you, John. Thanks for coming in.

Jon Keller:

Yeah, thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to Lovemain radio show number 198, making a living on Maine Waters. Our guests have included Abigail Carroll and John Keller. For a preview of each week's show. Sign up for our e newsletter and like our LoveMain Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as DRLISA and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you you. So please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed making a living on Maine waters. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam. Sa.

Jon Keller:

Sam.