Unplugging the summer machine
Using frugality, ingenuity, and industry to make it year round on a Maine island.

  

   

“We live very simply in order not to have to earn very much,” notes writer, food historian and island denizen, Sandy Oliver. She and her husband, Jamie MacMillan, have a host of talents between them, and they often need them all to remain here in their island home on Islesboro. “Sometimes,” she adds a bit wistfully, “I wish I didn’t have to live so tightly.” But they are remarkably self-reliant.

What does self-reliance look like for this frugal Maine couple? It seems to have three main components. They raise the bulk of their own food. Sandy practices a kind of controlled professional generosity. They derive their incomes from a wide range of sources.

First the Food

“In years that we have a garden,” continues Oliver, “we are mostly self-sufficient in vegetables. There is not much we have to get from the store.” They plant out 365 onions; by Sandy’s calculation, “We average an onion a day. Some days we eat no onions. And then we’ll make refried beans which takes a whole load of onions but feeds us for two or three meals.” They plant out 25 pounds of potatoes, enough for their two-person family and the company they welcome. Their self-sufficient garden also includes four dozen heads of garlic, two mud buckets-full of carrots, beets, the proceeds from a hill each of butternut, buttercup and delicata squash and pumpkins for pie and Halloween, and three to five hills of summer squash, zucchini, yellow summer squash, and patty pan.
  

The inevitable flood of zucchini doesn’t faze her. Sandy makes soup bases with the bonanza by first roasting them in her oven, then puréeing them in a food processor, and, finally, freezing the results. Come winter, squash this way tastes great. Tomatoes are more problematic on a Maine island. In hot summers, they ripen enough to produce a glut that demands putting up. “Most years, however,” Sandy sighs, “it’s hard to get them ripe.” Summer also means broccoli, four to six plants, a “largish patch” of corn, green beans, as many as Jamie will let Sandy plant, and lettuces and greens all summer long. “We can easily afford to eat so much organic because we grow it,” quips Oliver. Come fall, they gather apples from neglected trees. The meat from the two pigs they raise every other year, farmers’ market chickens, some gifted venison, and neighbors’ eggs, give them enough food to spend far less at the grocery store than most families.

Sandy finds her relationship to food is not very different from that of the earlier humans she studies as a food historian. “Self-sufficiency is always a matter of adjusting. When we have a lot of root vegetables, we eat a lot of root vegetables,” notes Oliver. “Every year we have a slender season, March to June. This has always been thin for mankind all through the ages – of course, we can always go to the store, though we try not to.”
  
   

Sensible as it is, this is a very different relationship to food than most of us have when strawberries in February don’t even raise eyebrows. What income Oliver and her husband earn pays for things they cannot provide themselves. “What we aim for is to pay our electric bill, buy our firewood, things like paper towels, grains and sugar, keep our vehicles on the road, and pay our taxes and health insurance.” Notes this island businesswoman, “This house, our land, and its capacity to produce, gives us real security.”

Nineteenth century meets twenty-first in the office of Food History News. Millie the cat, who knows a good thing when she feels it, sleeps near the woodstove that heats the office.
Jamie MacMillan Photo

Controlling the Urge to Generosity

Being a well-known historian means Sandy Oliver often gets requests to write or lecture, often for little or no remuneration. Over the years, she has learned to control what she calls her professional generosity or “gift work.” She puts herself on a gift-work budget of three freebies and three cheapies per year, for both speaking and writing; and these engagements must be in nearby towns. That gives her a total budget of 12 charitable professional acts per year. As Oliver notes, “This gives me permission to do things but keeps me from being a sucker.” This allows her to volunteer freely in her own community on private time.

Income Diversification Equals Survival

Summer on this Maine island is, in Sandy’s words, crazy. For years, one third of her household income came from renting party glasses, linens, and serving pieces to summer folks. However, come May, she’d find herself feeling discouraged rather than elated when the brides and their mothers began calling – so she’s given up the party rental business. For Sandy, like for many year-round islanders, summer is an isolating time of year. “Everyone’s racing around trying to make other peoples’ vacations nice.” In contrast, fall and winter are the seasons for connecting. Neighbors get busy with community activities such as community chorus, adult ed, and the Girl Scouts.

 



In a wood-heated kitchen much like that of her ancestors, Sandy Oliver peels foraged apples for a pie. Jamie MacMillan Photo
  
Sandy says that her husband Jamie has been working very hard to get himself “unplugged from the summer machine.” In fact, they would both like to find themselves independent of island income. But this is hard to do in a place where, as Sandy observes, “In the summer, you can get yourself out of any hole you’ve gotten yourself into over the winter.” Summer wages are addicting at the same time that summer schedules are dehumanizing. One young girl was put on a $100 per week retainer by the island’s golf pro; this, so she would not take other babysitting jobs and would be available for the times his family needed her – she was paid this in addition to the usual high island babysitting fees. Here on the island, lawn care goes for a dollar a minute. Painters and builders pull down $25 an hour. Housecleaners can bring in $18 an hour, cooks $20.
 
Sandy Oliver and her husband raise most of the vegetables for themselves and their well-fed guests in a 20’ x 50’ garden. Jamie MacMillan Photo
 

But escaping the summer machine might not be possible this year. Sandy’s income in years past came equally from three sources – one third from writing a quarterly paid-subscription newsletter, Food History News, and some freelance writing; another third from the party rental business that she’s given up; and the final third came from speaking engagements, workshops and conferences. However, as Sandy states, “Right now, museums, libraries – everybody’s broke.” So she doesn’t expect it to be a good year for this kind of income.

Given the uncertainties of this coming year, Sandy expects this will be an important one to have a large garden, and a good time to develop some new business ideas using the skills and equipment she has. She is also looking for a summer intern, one who has studied library science, to help organize her extensive collection of historic cookbooks and manuscript materials. Notes Oliver in closing, “I’m long-term optimistic about all this, with very little short-term evidence that I have any reason to be.” It is belief systems like this that make entrepreneurs tick.

To subscribe to Food History News send $20 for one year to Food History News, 1061 Main Road, Islesboro, ME 04848. You may also enjoy Sandy’s Web site, www.food historynews.com. Here you will find all sorts of interesting stuff for foodies and you can purchase Sandy’s award-winning book, Saltwater Foodways.

Kristina King is a market grower of authentically raised fruits, vegetables and heirloom plants and is the leader of Slow Food International in Maine. She consults on a range of seemingly unrelated issues, such as visual merchandising, space planning, landscaping, and market development. You may reach her by email at onemorninginmaine@yahoo.com, or by calling 596.0248.

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