Robin's Outdoors

Originally published in Lancaster Farming on June 2, 2012

When you pull into the driveway of Maine Sea Salt you park beside a house, what seems to be a garage, and four very long greenhouses. If it weren’t for the greenhouses and a small sign out front you wouldn’t know you’d just pulled into a business that is rapidly growing.

Tom Cook holds one of the salts made at Maine Sea Salt

Steve Cook became unemployed in 1998. He discussed options with Sharon, his wife, but nothing fit his personality. He remembered customers at his family’s lobster pound comment on how much better lobster tastes when cooked in sea water rather than tap water. That was the beginning of Maine Sea Salt. The first product Maine Sea Salt offered was a one ounce bag of salt used to cook lobsters. They expanded from the one ounce package to table salt and expanded again to add flavors. There are no artificial ingredients added; not even a drying agent.

The process is surprisingly simple. A tanker truck is filled with 8,000 gallons of ocean water at a nearby beach. At this time, the tanker pumps water into each of three solar greenhouses, also known as reducing houses. The greenhouses are covered with a double layer of six millimeter greenhouse poly. The ground is lined with high density black plastic that has been approved by the FDA for contact with food. The water is two to three inches deep at the beginning of the process. Sunshine and breeze go to work. There are no fans or other equipment involved in the evaporation process.

A reducing house at Maine Sea Salt.

When the water has been reduced by 80% it’s pumped to the third house to finish the evaporation process, and the greenhouses are refilled. It takes an average of 30 days to complete the process.

This process depends completely on the weather. If the days are cool, damp or cloudy the water evaporates slowly. Hot, dry weather is best and in Maine, there aren’t many of those days. The length of daylight peaks on June 23, the longest day of the year. The temperature inside the greenhouses can rise to 110* It slows significantly in October. When the water hasn’t evaporated adequately before the next tanker arrives, the fresh water is added to the greenhouse, pushing the denser, heavier water to the far end. The water doesn’t blend.

One thousand pounds of sea salt.

The Cooks have added natural flavorings to the salt they offer. Herbed contains thyme, marjoram, sage, fennel, and lavender. Dulse is a blend of dulse (seaweed) and salt. They also offer Garlic, Lemon and Peppered, all blended on the premises. They also offer two kinds of smoked salts, Apple and Hickory. Salts are smoked behind the house on a small scale where they can be watched carefully. Smoked Apple is lightly smoked and somewhat sweet. Hickory Smoked has a smokier flavor. Margarita Rimming Salt is offered in Natural, Cranberry and Lime flavors, and can be used in the handcrafted rimming board they sell.

You can purchase several flavored salts for the rim of your Margarita glass.

The process is simple yet labor intensive, and they’re about to add a lot more labor. Tom Cook has been busy building six new greenhouses since the middle of April. He hopes to have them complete by June 1.  They are 15’ x 200’, the same size as the four original greenhouses. Maine Sea Salt will be using a total of 30,000 square feet of space when the new greenhouses are put into use. Business is good and continuing to expand.

Tom Cook spent a month and a half building six addition 3,000 square foot high tunnels to be used as evaporating houses at Maine Sea Salt.

The tanker will deliver two 8,000 gallons loads and it will be split between four reducing houses. The water will be deeper and take longer to evaporate initially, but will be split between six houses to finish drying. They currently produce 20,000 pounds of salt a year and expect to double that amount.

Maine Sea Salt markets their salt at shows, stores and online. Their website is www.maineseasalt.com.

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