sail freight projects
maine sail freight
The economics of sail-shipping with historic schoonercan work when there is also an educational ( sail trainees), celebrational (farm to table dinners) and curricular (semester at sea)focus on de-colonizing our trade relationships.
We have also supported multiple other sail freight projects, including Vermont Sail Freight and Caribbean Sail Freight.
Thanks to partners Crown of Maine Organic Cooperative, MOFGA and Maine Grain Alliance for their support.
Watch Severine Fleming's talk at the College of the Atlantic
Sail Freight has put on several events throughout the years, some of their posters are above!
press & media
WBUR | Schooner Delivers Maine Produce To Boston Harbor The Old-Fashioned Way
Portland Press Herald | Maine-made farm goods soon will wind their way to Boston by schooner
Bangor Daily News | Farm to ship: Floating Maine products to market catches wind
Boston Magazine | Shipping Down to Boston: Maine Sail Freight Arrives in Boston Harbor
Op Ed from Working Waterfront Magazine
Bangor Daily News | Shipping up to Boston: Farm activists transport Maine goods by sail
WERU Community Radio | BoatTalk
The Free Press | Schooner Loaded with 11 Tons of Local Food to Set Sail for Boston
Maine Today | Farmers Market on a Boat
Island Institute | Maine Sail Freight offers new way to think about trade
VERMONT SAIL FREIGHT PRESS
Food Matters | Fifteen Tons of Groceries, Sailing Down the Hudson
The New York Times Blog covers Vermont Sail Freight Journey to NYC
Seeking a more sustainable way to get his grain to market, the Vermont farmer Erik Andrus conceived the Vermont Sail Freight Project to find out if this model could work again today. In April, he raised more than $15,000 on Kickstarter to build a 39-foot-long plywood sail barge named Ceres (after the Roman goddess of agriculture). The Greenhorns, an Essex, N.Y.-based farmer advocacy group, and the Willowell Foundation, a nonprofit education organization, signed on as partners to raise additional funds, handle the project’s logistics and recruit farmers and volunteers.
“We’re at an inflection point,” said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, the founder of the Greenhorns. “Can we, as farmers, collaborate on a distribution system that matches our values and preserves the craft economy?”
The boat, loaded with 15 tons of cargo from 30 farms, is about to complete its maiden voyage down the Hudson. The crew has been hosting daily dockside markets at port towns from Hudson to Yonkers, selling pantry staples, like wild birch syrup, heirloom beans and Atlantic-harvested seaweed, and fresh produce, like blue fingerling potatoes from Juniper Hill Farm in Wadhams, N.Y., and shiso from Grange Co-Packer Cooperative in Essex, N.Y., which von Tscharner Fleming co-founded.
