A Jonesport business that’s the last in Maine — and likely the country — to manufacture hand rakes for harvesting wild blueberries burned to the ground last week.
Owner Ike Hubbard, 84, designed and made tools for working the land by hand for decades in the Hubbard Rake Co. shop at his historical family homestead on Mason Bay Road.
He has long supplied workers in one of the state’s iconic industries while innovating and building tools for farmers across the country to harvest other berries, collect herbs and cultivate small farm beds. The fire, which completely destroyed Hubbard’s workshop and manufacturing capacity, also comes just weeks before the wild blueberry harvest in Maine, the world’s largest commercial producer of the fruit, gets under way.
Hubbard has a lot to do and is “biting at the bit” to get back to making the rakes he loves, he said Tuesday. His supporters hope to raise more than $65,000 to help clean up the site, pay staff, set up a new shop and replace materials so he can keep building and repairing rakes while inventing new designs.
“I still want to go,” said Hubbard, who added that he lost everything in the fire. After being in and out of the hospital for much of the last year, he had just started getting back into the shop again. “That’s my life.”
He’s been building rakes for close to 40 years in the Washington County town he grew up in. Soon after he moved home from southern Maine, the industrial designer created a sturdy new design for local harvesters that reduced damage to berries sold for the fresh market. Rakers who tested it called it the “Cadillac of rakes,” the BDN reported when he opened for business in 1990.
“I’m the rake manufacturer of the United States, to be honest with you,” said Hubbard, who now has customers across the country. “Everything that’s got a berry on it, I build a rake for.”
While the Down East blueberry harvest has become increasingly mechanized since then, hand rakes are still used in smaller fields, on uneven terrain and for berries sold fresh rather than frozen.
Rakers often swung by the shop for repairs during the harvest, said Debbie Salisbury, who has worked with Hubbard for decades and handles his office work. The place has been a fixture in town for generations – she recalled a firefighter at the blaze saying the building had been there for his whole life, and his grandfather bought rakes from Hubbard.
His shop and two vehicles burned to the ground in the early morning hours of June 29 from an unknown cause.
Inside were machines worth about $80,000 – some he made himself for the particular needs of rake-making – and supplies, prototypes of new designs, personal memorabilia and about $8,000 in finished orders.
Hubbard estimated losses total more than $100,000. The company also had to cancel orders from customers who were depending on supplies for summer harvests, he said.
Hubbard couldn’t get the shop building insured because it was built from wood and he welded inside, he said. As fire precautions, he had added steel floors, limited himself to TIG welding, which doesn’t throw sparks, and made sure to shut off machines.
After decades in the business, Hubbard is still inventing. He planned this year to continue refining designs including a hand-pushed flame weeder made from a repurposed grill and a walk-behind rake on wheels that allows the user to harvest berries without bending over.
“That’s all he wants to do, is build rakes,” Salisbury said.
She and her husband are ready to keep the business going in the future, Hubbard said, and he also has employees set to work once they have a shop again.
Salisbury and other community members started a GoFundMe page Monday to help Hubbard rebuild.
The first phase aims to raise $25,000 toward cleanup, lost wages for his three shop employees, destroyed materials and prep work for replacing the shop, possibly with a prefabricated metal building.
A second phase would fund currently unknown costs for preparing the site and installing the new shop, along with replacing Hubbard’s delivery truck.
A third phase aims to raise about $35,000 to $40,000 for core manufacturing equipment.
Losses include a welding machine and water-cooled welding system, a milling machine, two cutoff machine saws, two drill presses, equipment for rolling materials, a radial arm saw and blades, and everyday tools, along with aluminum stock and sheet metal to restart production.
Hubbard hopes to be back at work in a new shop by this fall, though Salisbury expects it may take longer.
“He’s very eager, and we’re all working as a team to make it happen,” she said.
