CAPTAIN TENACIOUS

THE TASTY TALE OF A REMARKABLE RELATIONSHIP

It took two dogs to start one of the best human relationships on the Cape.

One night last spring, Rusty, an Airedale whose owner Florence Lowell had recently purchased the Naked Oyster, wandered into the neighbor's house to get acquainted with Pumpkin, a Golden Retriever owned by Eric Hesse, a local commercial fisherman. As it turns out Florence had noticed the fish totes piled behind Eric's house and was looking for an opportunity to meet him. For Florence, a native of Bordeaux, a port-city in the southwest of France, the fish totes reminded her of the fishermen's homes where she grew up. Florence asked Eric if there was some way she and her executive chef David Kelley could purchase some of Eric's catch for the Naked Oyster. Although Eric told her that most of his fish goes straight to auction in Gloucester, Florence insisted that he and David Kelley meet to see if they could work out an arrangement.

The rest, as they say, is history, and in this case really good eating.

Eric Hesse and the FV Tenacious

Eric Hesse is part owner and captain of two vessels-the 34-ft FV Tenacious, harbored in Harwich, and the 30-ft FV Mattanza, berthed in Barnstable Harbor. Eric uses one boat or the other, depending on what he is trying to catch. He is one of the diminishing number of commercial Cape Cod longline fishermen who ply the waters on Georges Bank.
Although Eric has been fishing for more than 23 years and loves his work, he is not quite sure how fishing got into his blood. His father, a sales executive with Proctor and Gamble, would occasionally bring his sons with him to Jamestown, Rhode Island when he reported for service in the naval reserves. This gave young Eric a chance to check out "a lot of boats". But Eric's most vivid memory was a visit aboard an anti-submarine ship where the cook took a liking to him and gave him as much ravioli as he could eat. With a belly full of pasta Eric got so seasick that he was gun-shy about boats for a "quite a while". When he was a bit older he had a 16-foot sailboat called the Bounty. He and his dad would go fishing, but Eric says he "never caught a thing". Still the call of the water persisted and Eric started to ride his bike to Osterville to hang out with the bridge keepers. By the time he was a teenager, Eric was working at the Chester Crosby & Son boat yard and soon he was hooked on boats. Today Eric lives in West Barnstable with his wife Lee Ann and two children, Zachary and Cooper.

In 1984, when Eric started fishing commercially in Cape Cod Bay, he primarily fished for tuna using a hand-thrown harpoon. The late 1980s were the heyday for tuna fishing, but then the catch began to decline as the fish inexplicably shifted northward to Canadian waters and became only occasionally commercially viable on Cape Cod.

Today Eric fishes for cod and haddock using long lines. To find fish, Eric and a crewmember, Jeff Sampson, frequently have to travel overnight about eight hours and 100 miles to Georges Bank. There, they will put out their gear, known as "tubs" among fishermen (hence the name tub-trawling for the fishery). Each tub typically holds 250 to 300 hooks, with each hook set 5 feet to 6 feet apart. Thus the total length of each tub is 1,500 to 1,800 feet. Eric and his crew generally combine 2 to 4 tubs together in each "string", and set 5 to 7 strings total. (The total number depends primarily on the tide; in stronger tides they set less due to the possibility of getting "hung down" on rocks and obstructions as the tide runs harder.) So the total length of each string is up to 1 mile or so, and on each tide they will set between 4,500 to 7,500 hooks.

The lines are set as the tide approaches slack, or about an hour or an hour and a half before the turn. Georges Bank longliners prefer to set the "south tide" or low tide. The fish forage during the slack water since it is physiologically less taxing for them. Eric and crew spend about an hour or more setting the gear then begin hauling it as soon as they are done setting, typically starting with the string they set first. It will take 4 to 6 hours to "haul back". According to Eric, "The fish are just as lively and vibrant after 6 hours as they are on the first-hauled string. I have known fishermen that, having developed mechanical difficulties after a couple of strings and returning to port, come back the next day to find the fish still lively and swimming strongly on the gear."

As he pulls in his lines, Eric never knows for sure what he will find. Some days the fishing will be richly rewarding (a good metric for Eric is 1/3 pound per hook). Many times very little will be hooked. Most frustrating are the days when a lot of fish are caught, but a predator like dogfish feast on the fish on the hooks leaving almost nothing to land on the Tenacious. The capacity of the Tenacious is 8,000 pounds of fish, but given the challenges of finding fish, it rarely returns full. In a typical week Eric will catch approximately 4,000 pounds of fish

In addition to cod and haddock, unanticipated fish, called "bycatch", are hooked as well. Eric says that "bycatch can be a dirty word" among environmentalists because in some fisheries it can include species that are over fished or endangered. Eric stresses, however, that longline fishing results in lower bycatch mortality since so many that are thrown back swim on unharmed. Some bycatch that is not endangered such as Acadian Redfish or monkfish, however, is VERY tasty. This fish Eric ices and sets aside for the Naked Oyster.

Given that Eric travels 100 miles offshore on a 34-foot boat, weather dictates how often he goes out. In the summer he will typically be out four days a week, while in winter it can be as little as once a week. Eric says that while he is used to the long voyages with little sleep and the physical demands of commercial fishing, he feels that fishing for a living is "actually tougher mentally than physically". Eric never knows what is going to happen when he heads out to work. He smiles as he explains, "To succeed you need to get up in the morning convinced you are going to go out and be 'the man' and get a big catch," but with a sigh he continues, "even if you have had bad luck and have not caught many during your last few trips."

Once he has caught what he can, Eric turns toward home and motors for eight hours back to Cape Cod. When he arrives in Harwich at Wychmere Harbor, a truck meets him to take most of the fish to the display auction in Gloucester. The display auction, a relatively new innovation in New England, is helpful to line fishermen like Eric because all the fish to be auctioned are laid out for buyers to examine before the bidding starts. Eric explains, "This allows buyers to compare quality, and that quality gets rewarded in the price." Eric and the Tenacious are well known in fish buying circles. Among others, Legal Sea Foods, the freshness-obsessed Boston-based chain, is familiar with his boat and keeps an eye out for his fish.

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With his catch iced in the holds on deck, Eric has time to talk on his satellite phone on his way home. One of the calls he looks forward to is with David Kelley. He tells David what bycatch he has and what is "on the top of the hold" and, as such, the most fresh. Upon arriving back on the Cape, Eric delivers the fish to the Naked Oyster where it will be on diners' plates within hours.

For a busy restaurant like the Naked Oyster, fish directly from a fisherman presents challenges. The fish are delivered whole, which means someone at the restaurant has to break them down into serving portions. Filleting and portioning is a skill that has become uncommon among restaurant staff. Fortunately the solution to this problem was right in the Naked Oyster kitchen; David Kelley discovered that Anthony Bennett, one of his chefs, was a fish cutter in his native Jamaica. Quickly recruited into a new role, Anthony is "unbelievably" quick at filleting fish, according to David.

A bigger challenge to overcome, however, is the cost and unpredictability of buying fish from one fisherman who has to work with the vagaries of the sea. "Sometimes he catches a lot, sometimes nothing. Other times he catches something unexpected," Kelley said as he pointed to a really large, really ugly whole monkfish perched on ice on the Naked Oyster raw bar.

Eric and the Naked Oyster are flexible enough to make it all work. First, both Florence and David have a shared commitment to using the best ingredients, even if finding them is more trouble and costs a little more. The restaurant has to be able to deal with "lots of fish today" and then "no fish tomorrow" or "something unexpected".

Frequently this means making changes to the menu and in the kitchen at 4:00 p.m. just as dinner service gets underway. David Kelley says it is similar to the way he deals with the unpredictability of working with farmers. "You need to be prepared to think of a special on the spot when something unexpected happens," he says. "But there isn't much to it if you are willing to make and get a few extra calls a week," he says modestly.

Florence is more emphatic. Flexibility is worth it because "Ingredients, and especially fish, are where we don't cut corners." Florence is known to roam far and wide to source ingredients. For example when she wanted to use fresh, unfrozen gulf shrimp in the shrimp cocktails at Naked Oyster, she traveled to Louisiana to meet the suppliers herself. Florence stresses that using Eric's fish is part of trying to get things as fresh as possible. She emphasizes, "You can't put stripes on a donkey and call it a zebra."

From his perspective, Eric feels that Naked Oyster has become a small but reliable customer. They have purchased more than 3,500 pounds of fish from him since May of 2006. But Eric values Florence and David as customers more because of how much they appreciate and emphasize the quality of his work. This unique relationship between fisher and restaurateur/chef is the envy of many restaurants on the Cape that put a premium on local, fresh ingredients. And it all started with the late night visit between two dogs. No fish tale.

The Cape's longline fleet is supported by the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization and winner of the U.S. Commerce Department's Environmental Stewardship Award. For more information, visit www.ccchfa.org.

Naked Oyster Executive Chef David Kelley watching Eric and Jeff

THE RAW DEAL

THE PLEASURE AND "PERILS" OF DRINKING RAW GOAT'S MILK

By Jen Holloman

Jen Holloman and kids

"Okay Nosey,"

Meet Queen Nosey, aka Nosey Parker, aka Professor Nosey Ann Parker.

"Here we go, up in the milk stand…let's go!"

She climbs up; all it takes is the sound of the metal scoop being moved in the grain barrel. She stomps her foot, getting kicky, while she waits to have her udder cleaned.

Queen Nosey becomes impatient when you're not ready, nosing expensive grain onto the floor. I fumble with the latch and udder cleaning solution and, finally, in the funniest two-and-one-half-minute comedy of errors involving a slow human and a feisty goat, I start milking. I've trained myself to milk quickly before the grain bowl becomes empty. I focus on letting down her milk, and at last Nosey, the queen of the Ocean Song Barnyard, quiets, concentrates on her grain and goes through our twice daily ritual.

"Okay sweetheart, down we go…"

Gracefully, Nosey glides back to her pen, gives another goat a good headbutt on the way, and heads straight for the hay manger satisfied that her goat kingdom is in her orderly control. With her, you must be ready when she is….or it's off with your head.

What inspires us to go to the barn, twice a day, in frigid temperatures, sheets of rain, and sit there at night in the dark waiting for kid goats to be born? We do this for the love of these beautiful goats and for the love of their milk. We are new to the goat herding business and know a few things at this point: "A happy goat is a good goat"; you have to keep your barn cleaner than your house, there is no savings on cheap hay…(That's a joke for fellow farmers.)

Our main product for market is considered "potentially hazardous". It's milk and furthermore, as it comes from our girls, it's raw. (Screams of terror in the background.) After a rather vigorous round of research from a variety of sources for and against raw milk I would say that it does have its potential hazards, but so do talking to strangers and running with gum in your mouth. The odds are long, but both could kill you at some point.

"Raw" milk is not pasteurized in any way. Pasteurization is the process of bringing raw milk to a temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit, or 63 degrees Celsius, and holding it there for 30 minutes. In heat treating milk, the possible bacteria that are "potentially hazardous" to humans are destroyed, and it is a firmly held belief by many raw milk enthusiasts that with it are the positive health-promoting bacteria and nutrients as well.

For the consumers of raw goat milk, I guess it is the air of living dangerously that thrills them, but drinking raw goat's milk is the dairy equivalent of wearing sensible shoes. Goat's milk naturally contains the following beneficial ingredients: Vitamins A, C, B-6 and B-12, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin and Pantothenic Acid. It also contains the following minerals: calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, sodium, zinc, copper and selenium.

Raw goat milk contains amino acids, proteins and monounsaturated fats. It is safe to say that there are ingredients in raw milk that directly benefit your health. For example, over time through the consumption of raw goat's milk, the naturally occurring presence of monounsaturated fats can benefit the milk drinker by working with the body to lower LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and promote the creation of HDL (high-density lipoprotein), which in turn will offer help to those trying to improve their cholesterol levels. In an analysis of one fluid cup of whole cow and goat milk, the breakdown of beneficial ingredients in some cases is greater in the goat milk than in the raw cow milk. I will say for myself that there are few beverages as luxurious as raw cow milk. The creamy, rich texture makes it almost like drinking a cup of dessert.

"I hate that 'goaty' taste of raw milk!"

Yes, I know, the notorious goat taste makes you shiver. Well, we hate it too. The taste of goat milk is influenced by several factors; one, the general diet of the goats. Good, grassy hay and whether or not sweet feed is involved are critical factors. When we started, we had our girls on a 'sweet feed' replete with molasses, and the cheese we made from it tasted like Mascarpone (a dessert cheese). We have heard that adding garlic, leeks and onions to the goat diet will cause the milk to be off flavor. I don't know for sure about that one. I had great fun last summer watching Nosey Parker devour a Vidalia onion. It's good she sleeps alone. I didn't notice the taste. Our goats' diet is supplemented with fruits and vegetables from local health food stores and we feed them what they will eat.

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Safe and sanitary milk handling is what aids in making goat's milk taste delicious and creamy. Immediately after milking, the goat's milk must be stored in an ice bath and maintained at a temperature not higher than 40 degrees. After it is quickly and adequately cooled, it may be transferred into a refrigerator that holds the same temperature. This will eliminate an overly 'goaty' taste and will make the cheese you make delicious with a very mild, goat flavor. If you plan on drinking it, the same rules apply. We have made hot chocolate and cappuccino with our milk. In a side -by-side taste test, as a result of safe handling and cooling measures, there was distinctly less 'goaty' flavor in the milk. We had a person who was "forced" to drink goat milk as a child participate in our little experiment and she readily gave it thumbs up! Cooling and sanitation make the difference.

Recently, I placed a notice in The Cape Cod Times asking for Cape Codders who grew up drinking raw milk to tell me their tales. Their reminiscences of life on Cape Cod back in the day, and the benefits of raw milk are fascinating. Most people drank it because it was "just the way it was." Some families on Cape Cod had small dairies and actually delivered raw milk, keeping delivery routes through Osterville and West Barnstable. People drank raw milk because that's the way it was, there wasn't thought of pasteurizing milk because everyone drank it "raw" (that is, unpasteurized). Many tell of being brought "out to the shed" to drink milk straight from the goat or cow as it came from the udder. Raw milk on the small scale produced few health concerns. It was often recommended by doctors as a curative agent for frail children and to prevent tuberculosis from developing. Of the respondents, only one had contracted an illness as a result of drinking raw milk. Most of the respondents, who are in their seventies and eighties, were very proud of their current health and attribute it to their raw milk drinking.

The government became involved in the regulation of milk to try to stem the tide and fears of tuberculosis outbreaks, and to eradicate the unsanitary, overcrowded conditions of some dairies that sold milk directly to consumers. Author of Real Food Nina Planck offers that: "In cities from New York to Cincinnati, most milk came from crowded, urban dairies where cows were confined indoors. Owners put the dairies next to whisky distilleries in order to feed cows a cheap, unhealthy diet of spent mash called distillery slop. They were remarkably efficient. In 1852, three quarters of the milk drunk by the 700,000 residents of New York City came from distillery dairies.

'Slop milk' was so poor it could not even be used to make butter or cheese. Unscrupulous distillery dairy owners sometimes added sugar, starch or flour to give body to the pale, thin milk. Others thinned it with water to make more money. Conditions were unhygienic. Bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis were common and cow mortality was high. The people milking cows were often dirty or sick."1

In retrospect, considering these unethical farming practices, pasteurization and intervention was not such a bad thing. In these modern times with state of the art milk parlors, the production of raw milk is a lot safer. Regulations, both federal and local, make it so farmers must produce a safer product.

In the past, raw milk was a staple of the Cape Cod homestead. Mariesther Love Robbins of Dennis Port shares: "I was brought up drinking raw milk from our cows, the last one I remember was Molly, and when she died, we got our milk from the man across the street. We had to drink raw goat's milk when my sister and I developed a spot (of TB) on our lungs. Most everyone in Dennisport drank the milk from Mr. Linwood's cows. As strange as it seems now, Mr. Linwood's farm was on Route 28 in Dennisport across from the Post Office. I am 70 now and in fairly good health, so I guess it didn't hurt me any. I don't ever remember having anyone come to check our cow to see if she was healthy. If she was standing up we figured she was healthy."

Many Cape Codders from one end of the Cape to the other commented that raw milk was the only milk until the government became involved. There was customarily a "family or neighborhood cow" somewhere and that buying pasteurized milk after drinking raw proved to be a taste failure to them. Arguably, raw milk, goat or cow, is how milk is intended to be used and enjoyed. Raw milk is real milk-so go ahead, live on the edge.

If you are interested in knowing more about raw milk, visit www.realmilk.com. The website of the Weston Price Foundation lists places in Massachusetts where raw milk is readily available.

Nota bene:
The nutritional data was gathered from The Nutrient Data Laboratory home page from the United States Department of Agriculture Research Service.

1Planck, Nina. "How Raw Milk got a Bad Rap." www.ninaplanck.com

PEACHTREE CIRCLE FARM

A LABOR OF LOVE IN SIPPEWISSETT

By Dianne Langeland

"The dirty little secret around here is that in summer we are just too tired to cook dinner," confides Heidi Walz. "By the time we get done with our "9-5 jobs" and tend to things on the farm, we are just as likely to pop a frozen dinner in the microwave than to cook up something we just harvested. In winter, we feast on what we put up at the end of the season, but in the height of summer, we just don't have the energy."

Welcome to the real world life of a part-time farmer. In 2004, Heidi Walz, who has B.A.s in English, and Social Thought and Political Economy and whose resume includes a 15-year stint as a chef in such far-flung destinations as Australia, found herself as co-caretaker along with her partner Carrie Richter of Peachtree Circle Farm, a five-acre patch of land just a hairpin turn off Route 28 going south.

The land was originally farmed by Hollis Lovell in the 1930s as a source of fresh produce for his restaurant, and is now part of the 210 acres of conservation land in the town of Falmouth that is owned and maintained by Salt Pond Areas Bird Sanctuaries. When they approached the land trust about leasing the property, Heidi and Carrie were only looking for a place to offer children's gardening classes. Teaching six consecutive classes one day a week was lucrative, but by the end of the first summer, their vision for what they wanted to do with the property had evolved: even though neither Heidi nor Carrie had a background in farming they wanted to bring the land back to its former glory.

Heidi Walz and Carrie Richter preparing to move some herbs

Knowing anything they did on the farm would have to take place outside of normal business hours, the following spring they focused their attention on the orchard, which, according to Heidi, had not been mowed or pruned for years. After they came home from their day jobs as landscapers, they sprayed and pruned the 125 apple, pear, and the peach trees on the property for which the farm is named. In the way of most new farmers they grew a little of everything to see what would grow without chemicals. Since that first season they have continued to farm organically.

In April 2006, Heidi was diagnosed with breast cancer. As both her maternal grandmother and mother had been through breast cancer, and considering the higher than average rates of breast cancer on the upper Cape, the diagnosis did not come out of the blue. She had surgery in May and worked through her chemo treatments. Despite experiencing some physical weakness in the two or three days immediately following her treatments every three weeks, that summer Heidi continued to work, and along with Carrie, planted 200 raspberry bushes as well as blueberry bushes, apple and pear trees, lettuce, tomatoes and herbs. They began selling their produce at the weekly Woods Hole craft market (held Saturday mornings), sold cut flowers to Windfall Market, and signed up Roobar in Falmouth as their first restaurant client. Rather than pick all the berries themselves, they invited friends to the farm to pick their own.

After a "semi-retirement period" in the winter of 2007 during which she underwent radiation treatment, Heidi and Carrie built a greenhouse for starting their seeds, they expanded their beds and crop space and they added two beehives to propagate their fruit trees. Continuing in their fashion of trying something new every year, they have added peas, rhubarb, garlic, eggplant and more varieties of heirloom tomatoes to their repertoire.

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In the fall they plan to put in asparagus beds and dig up Chestnut Bottom, a section of land running along the southside of the farm, which is at a slightly lower elevation than the rest of the property. Because of the different microclimate there, they plan to experiment with a new vegetable, perhaps pumpkins.

Although Carrie started gardening as a summer job during college, she, like Heidi, is a self-taught farmer. Heidi claims: "Carrie has a natural affinity for plants. And she reads a lot." April through November, before heading off to a landscaping job, Carrie has already spent an hour or so on the farm checking in on things. From 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. both Carrie and Heidi are landscaping at one of the 36 properties in Falmouth that they maintain. After work they are both back on the farm until the sun goes down, mowing, weeding, watering, pruning, whatever the season requires. They also spend their entire weekends on the farm. No wonder they are too tired to cook! Although at some point after the harvest, they do spend considerable time canning, freezing and preserving their produce.

They have two full-time and two part-time employees at the landscaping business, but only two high school teens helping on the farm. In addition four people who used to work at Peachtree Farm maintain their own patches of land.

In 2005, Heidi saw an advertisement placed by the town asking for applicants to form the newly chartered Falmouth Agricultural Commission (AgCom). Heidi, who grew up in Falmouth, was concerned about how much the rural character of her hometown had yielded to suburban sprawl. So she put her name up for consideration and soon found herself as chair of the nascent organization. Other members of the AgCom include a shellfish aquaculturist, a sheep farmer, a cranberry grower, a horse stable manager and a beekeeper, The AgCom's goals are to serve as a local voice advocating for farmers, work with the town board on issues facing farming in the town, help mediate/resolve farm related disputes and encourage agriculture-based businesses. According to Heidi, "The most important investment we can make in our community is to promote, maintain and preserve our local farms and food production."

During its brief two years in existence, the AgCom has created an inventory of productive farmland in Falmouth and passed at Town Meeting the state's "Right to Farm" bylaw, which encourages the pursuit of agriculture, promotes agriculture-based economic opportunities and protects farmlands in Falmouth. Heidi is most proud of the great strides the AgCom has made in integrating its advisory role within the framework of other relevant Town boards, committees and commissions.

When thinking big about the future, Heidi talks about offering gardening and cooking classes that emphasize the use of fresh, local ingredients at hand. She envisions white-linen covered tables set among the orchards illuminated by candles and the moon, where culinary tourists (and locals) enjoy a delicious meal. One day she would love to have a fine dining establishment connected to an organic farm. And she wants to get a cider press and make value-added products from the farm's signature peaches. Given what Heidi and Carrie have already accomplished in the span of a few years, we have no reason to doubt they'll succeed.