As a child of Matinicus, Usha Beaudoin spent a lot of time scrambling over slippery rocks. On an island only two miles long by one mile wide, she was always at the water’s edge, curious, investigating tide pools, discovering what remains on land when the ocean recedes. Time, tide and the sun are always making salt here, drawing crystals naturally from the water all around. One thing Matinicus teaches is patience; as a 10th-generation islander Beaudoin knows this in her bones. All her life this salt was calling, and one year ago Matinicus Salt Farm was officially born from the sea like Aphrodite.
Like many narratives nowadays, Beaudoin’s trajectory changed with the COVID-19 pandemic. She had been employed as a medical assistant in Portland, performing the duties of an indoor profession, a respectable career that ultimately felt disconnected, which she accepted as the onus of adulthood. “I assumed your professional life had to be unsatisfying, like just working for the weekend,” Beaudoin said. She gave birth to a baby in the early months of a global pandemic and suddenly she could not stay in a hospital, in a city, on the mainland. The island wanted her home. She and her partner returned to Matinicus, the most remote year-round inhabited island in Maine.
She always had a taste for salt and the hands of a maker. Her vocation sprung from the simplest need: In 2020, her family made soft pretzels, a favorite project and snack, but had no salt to sprinkle on top. Twenty-three miles from the closest grocery store through the saltiest of seas, there was no running out to pick some up. “Planning ahead is imperative out here,” she said. There it was, the moment. Necessity. Inspiration. Invention. Beaudoin got to work, gathering seawater and her mother’s camp stove, reducing the liquid, the art of evaporation. But the result was a salt too sharp, not soft enough — not like what she tasted in tide pools, dried slowly by the sun, crystal tender and flaky like fleur de sel.
Beaudoin is a woman who plans, who researches, who tests; she is a scientist. She uses the word protocol to explain her methods. She contacted “all the salt companies in the world, obnoxiously,” she said, in an effort to get a handle on the process. She referenced “Salt,” Mark Kurlansky’s sprawling global history told through the everyday mineral. Homer called it a divine substance, but it was through trial and error that she landed on the simplest, and for her the best method of manufacturing salt the way Mother Nature intended. In a greenhouse on 17 acres of off-grid land owned by her family, Beaudoin watches and waits for two to three weeks as the work is done slowly and with great delicacy. “There are quicker ways to get here, but none of them taste as good,” she explained. And the salt is delicious: delicate, with a minerality all its own.
Inside the arched plastic structure of the greenhouse, which Beaudoin tends daily, the temperature is sauna-like, more than 100 degrees. There are three long rows of tables, covered with a fine mesh, that resemble touch tanks in a children’s aquarium. Pulling back the veil, Beaudoin revealed the white salt formations. Multifaceted, swimming in what’s left of the water, almost alive. This is wild salt in all its jagged, craggy, shape-shifting beauty. When a product is mass produced the machinery and market demand consistency, uniformity. Matinicus Sea Salt is hand harvested. Each little jar is unique, and has been crafted by a person with knowledge and care. A gas-powered hose draws seawater up the cliff face. The tables are filled with thrice-filtered seawater. Then the waiting period begins. During which time, owner-operator Beaudoin tackles all correspondence, accounts, packaging, shipping, design, going to market and all the other aspects of a burgeoning retail and wholesale enterprise.
Beaudoin does not do this single-handedly. Her mother, partner, and daughter all spend summers together on the island, in a home that has been in the family for generations, and lend their hands to the work. Beaudoin and 6-year-old Ruby walk or ride their bicycles around the island on their daily errands. They visit the greenhouse, the post office, lectures at the one room schoolhouse, bingo at the Congregational church/community hall, and story hour under the trees, outside the little lending library. Along the way they gather the petals and hips of rosa rugosa, sour cherries, wild chamomile, blueberries, raspberries and fire weed from the roadside meadows and green grass paths. At the shore they forage for seaweeds, including tasty truffle seaweed and fluffy Irish moss. Some of these plants are for art projects, herbal tea, and cakes, while others will go into jars of wild sea salt with, say, smoked juniper or strands of earthy sea truffle.
Traveling around the island Beaudoin credits her community, by name and by household, many of whom have directly helped, or supported her, keeping an eye out, watching her daughter, picking up packages, checking the salt when she’s off island. She grew up with these people, they witnessed her whole life, now they know Ruby and call out excitedly when they see her. The Beaudoins are beloved by their island brethren. People and planning are essential out here. “There’s an entire background behind the business, behind me. You have to think ahead,” she said. “Have enough supplies, have extra, because the weather is always changing. Make do, mend, be adaptable.” Building and rebuilding the greenhouse after storms, digging through the granite to sink the posts, collecting the seawater, harvesting and bottling the salt, all this hard work is done by hand, human hand, independently and together, the way an island always tends to its business. This is how Matinicus Salt Farm salt is made. In the wild, interconnected.
There is no convenience culture on Matinicus. Not a general store, restaurant or vending machine. Wi-Fi is spotty. Groceries, toiletries, medicine and water all must be purchased and brought from the mainland. The only place to buy something to eat or drink is the bakery shed run by Matinicus’s renowned pilot/author/teacher/factotum Eva Murray (who is also a columnist for the Villager), who sells baked goods, including the most delicious hunk of crumble topped blueberry cake, along with a selection of cold beverages and frozen treats like coffee popsicles. You may get an invitation to a community lunch or into someone’s home for supper, or even a room for the night, if you’re stranded. Beaudoin was a generous and hospitable host when I visited for a day to learn about the salt farm.
As it got to be late afternoon, I saw how the island support network can spring to life in a moment of need — my own, in fact. A neighbor relayed that there was one last plane departing for the day, so Beaudoin drove at mad, gravel-rousing island speeds (20 mph) on the dusty unpaved road to meet the pilot and any other errant travelers on the last flight off the island that day. As we took off, Beaudoin and Ruby were waving hard, proud of their place in the world. Looking out from the plane at the green patches of land sprouting in the clean blue ocean below, the taste of salt lingering, going back to Matinicus — to the salt works and wonders — felt inevitable.
For more information, call 207-798-9423 or visit matinicussaltfarm.com.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.