Low Low Tides
Thank you for your interest in the 2027 Low Low Tides workshops with Smithereen Farm and Greenhorns.
We're hosting five Low Low Tides harvest sessions in 2027 focused on harvest for production. Low Low Tides is an immersive, seaweed harvest experience. Harvesters, no matter your experience level, get hands on and waist-deep with the seaweed harvest. We welcome first-time and experienced harvesters.
The seaweed we gather together during the Low Low Tides sessions is our harvest for the year. We solar dry it and then use it to produce our Smithereen Farm value-added products.
Participants at each workshop will be trained in seaweed harvesting technique and then sell the seaweed they harvest back to Smithereen Farm at the end of the workshop for a bulk rate, potentially earning back some or all of the cost of the workshop. Outside of the group harvest sessions, participants can harvest seaweed for personal use if desired.
Low Low Tides is about learning, being in community, and enjoying beautiful Downeast, Maine. Please join us for a few days of hard work, good fun, and beautiful wild seaweed and seashores.
The harvest dates for 2027 are:
April 7–10
April 20–22
May 6–10
June 4–9
July 2–7
Licensing
In order to participate in any Low Low Tides event, you must obtain a Supplemental Seaweed harvest license from the Department of Maine Resources. Learn more about obtaining your license here.
Location
All harvest days will begin at Smithereen Farm in Pembroke, ME and take place at beaches and coastal areas in the surrounding Cobscook Bay. Exact addresses will be provided upon completed registration.
Transportation
Smithereen Farm is located in Pembroke, ME, ~3 hrs and 45 minutes from Portland and ~2 hrs from Bangor, ME. The easiest way to get here is by personal vehicle. There is limited public transit available from the Bangor airport to Pembroke via the West Bus Coastal Connection.
Lodging
All participants will be provided basic lodging ("indoor camping") at Smithereen Farm in one of our farm accommodations. Participants are expected to bring their own bedding and towels and anything else they need to feel comfortable for the week. Outdoor camping is also available at Smithereen Farm's blueberry barrens.
Meals
The arrival night of each program, we provide a farm-fresh meal for all harvesters. After that, participants are responsible for providing their own meals. Please plan to bring things to cook. You can also purchase food directly from the Smithereen Farmstore (beginning in May). You will have the opportunity to coordinate with other participants in your cohort before the session in order to plan meals together.
Gear
We recommend participants bring a wetsuit or chest-high waders for harvesting seaweed, as well as gloves and lots of warm, dry base layers to change into. A full pack list will be provided upon registration. Smithereen Farm has some seaweed harvest gear to lend.
Program Cost
The program cost for all Low Low Tides events is $100-250 sliding scale. Even with this fee, Greenhorns subsidizes the cost of the program to make this learning accessible. If this cost is out of reach, please send us an email [email protected]
This fee covers:
- Housing for all participants during each session
- Dinner on the first night
- Seaweed harvesting instruction from experienced teachers
- The ability to harvest under Severine's DMR license (a legal necessity for commercial seaweed harvesting)
- Access to the wood fired, Bill Coperthwaite style sauna every afternoon
- Access to the Reversing Hall Agrarian Library during your stay
Additional costs to anticipate:
- Travel
- Your individual DMR seaweed harvest license
- Food during your stay
- Individual recommended harvest gear
As stated above, Smithereen Farm buys back the seaweed harvested during group sessions which mitigates or negates the cost, depending on how much you harvest.
For Maine residents only: Any additional harvest not sold back to Smithereen Farm is for personal use, not commercial, and must not exceed 50lbs per day.
Cancellations & Refunds
In order to secure your spot in any of the Low Low Tides harvest sessions, please complete the form below. Payment is due upon registration and is non-refundable.
Algatourism Events
Later in 2027, we will announce a series of Algatourism Events that involve seaweed harvesting, catered meals, spa days, and a more retreat-style experience for farm guests. Stay tuned!
Registration is required of all attendees.
Questions? Please email [email protected]
Low Low Tides is a format we have created to welcome people into the magical world and community of seaweed with caring harvesters and passionate seaweed advocates, with shared meals, lectures, films and other ‘ alongside’ educational programming. Attendees will learn a lot about the natural history, ecology and hand-harvest techniques of our wild seaweeds. They will also learn about Smithereen Farm's value-added processing and our approach to ecological wild food economies. Seaweed harvesters will have the opportunity to sell their harvest to Smithereen Farm at the end of the program.
We are led once again our harvest captain Kacie Loparto, a local seaweed harvester with decades of experience.
More about our unique tides:
Spring tides are the most extreme of the year. They expose the rocky ecosystems of the lower inter-tidal where edible seaweeds lie glistening in the early morning light. The incredible ecosystem of rockweed is exposed at every low tide and we encourage you to go bathe in its bubbling glory—but the edible kelps are harvested as tender teenagers in the colder months. If you are serious about edible seaweeds, join us early in the year.
Cobscook Bay’s extraordinary diversity and marine productivity is a product of these massive tides, the cold waters, many rivers, forested slopes to the sea and many embayments lined with eelgrass and rockweed beds–nurseries of juvenile fish and crustaceans, phytoplankton and the microscopic larval phases of marine foodweb.
In other segments, we look upstream and downriver to explore the landscape of our home region of Downeast Maine. We bring you episodes on ALEWIVES, BERRIES, CIVIC HALLS, and SEAWEED. Immerse yourself in a multi-media learning experience with short films, audio interviews, and collected articles and images that inform an approach to ecological farming, rural enterprise, and coalition building.
Life begets life: elvers, alewives, scallops, clams, worms, periwinkles, mackerel, mussels, crab, lobster–we have the most diverse fisheries of the whole state of Maine here in Washington County. Historically of course, it was the herring that drove our economy–the humble sardine canned by the millions by hard working women working long hours in cold conditions. Thanks to the Labrador current, the water is still cold, and a few of our grande old sardine buildings are still standing. We welcome you out in it to experience a place unique on the Atlantic coastline, still home to all its endemic wild fish species–edible, abundant and relatively unpolluted, and the beautiful towns and people who love her.
We bring our harvest baskets in the dawn light–many hands make quick work of the short harvesting window before the ocean comes back to cover up her secret gardens of red, brown and green macro-algae, the seaweeds of Downeast Maine. Kacie teaches the basics of seaweed harvesting and we have other teachers (listed below) for various of the sessions open to a larger public and homeschool community.
About Kacie Loparto
Kacie Loparto has worked as a seaweed harvester for several seaweed businesses between 2007 and 2015, on both coasts, both well established. She became began with an apprenticeship with Larch Hanson of Maine Seaweed Company, over several seasons becoming well versed in the work and rhythm of the wild seaweed harvest and drying. Extending her experience to the waters of the West coast Kacie worked with Pacific Wildcraft Seaweed. She assumed leadership roles helping the owners of these businesses train new workers in nearly every aspect of the seasonal and cyclical work. Today Kacie enjoys traveling three hours up the coast to Pembroke, ME to lead workshops in foraging the seven primary edible varieties of seaweed found on the Maine Coast. Although Kacie no longer sells seaweed as she once did under the guise of She Sells Seaweed there is nothing she enjoys more than walking along Maine’s piney coast smelling the salt air, wading into the water, gathering the beautiful seaweed.
