About Us

Nina Crocker and Larch Hanson
Nina Crocker and Larch Hanson

 

Our Background

We are a family owned business on the coast of Maine. We hand harvest and dry Atlantic seaweeds and sea vegetables. Larch, the founder, has stayed at the work for four decades. You’ve come to the best source for highest quality and clear information. Come visit and see for yourself!

If you buy a share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), the farmer invites you to at least look over his shoulder and visit the farm so that you can learn more about where your food comes from.

And often, some of the shareholders end up working on the farm! It’s not too different at Maine Seaweed. Over the years, we’ve taken hundreds of apprentices who have found me through word of mouth, newsletters saved and passed on, or the internet. All of them have grown in self-confidence.

The Family Pack is the most popular item, and that’s like getting a big box of veggies from the sea (with a lot of recipes), filled in proportion to your appetite/demand and depending on what nature has provided in any particular year. If I judge it right (and I usually do), we run out of stock just as the new harvest is coming in.  As long as the seaweeds remain bone dry and are protected from direct light, their shelf life, after you receive them, is at least two years.

If you’re interested in other things I do, or you want to know more about why I’ve stayed at this work for four decades, check out my blog and contact me. I will email you and send you photos of the present activities.

 

Larch: "I had some cedar strips left over from building a grape arbor, and I said to Amelia and Angel, 'Why don't you build a little dome-shaped trellis for runner beans?' They took it and ran with it, and that fall I ended up squatted down inside it with my grandson, Gabriel, surrounded by all different sorts of runner beans. I especially like scarlet runner beans. They always attract humming birds, and the dry beans are great winter food."
Thibault, Brandon, Amelia, Angel and Dawn

 

Apprenticeships

If you are interested in an apprenticeship, write me a letter or email about yourself, and I’ll respond. That is how it all begins. I teach MORE than seaweed harvesting. If you have an interest in carpentry, furniture making, boatbuilding, gardening, writing, or massage/bodywork, there is something to learn here.  Nina is a professional photographer, and her cooking and photos are featured in our cookbook, Seaweed Soul:Recipes for a Nourishing Life.

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Video Presentation and Talk

If you have a group that would enjoy a video presentation about seaweeds, let me know, and we’ll put you on our stopover list for travel in winter.

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Bodywork Class, Cupertino, CA
Bodywork Class, Cupertino, CA

 

Structural Bodywork Workshops

Nina and I also like to teach massage and deep bodywork to amateurs and therapists of all stripes.  We bring four massage tables and all the props for a class of eight.  Cost: $350/person for 25 hours of instruction, usually on a weekend.  We ask that our hosts provide a space that is 25’ x 30’ and we are happy to work with small groups, couples, and individuals after we have taught the weekend workshop.

Contact Us

 

Alaria esculenta
Alaria esculenta

 

All About Seaweed

There are important health benefits to be gained from adding seaweed to our diet. Through seaweeds, the earth’s sea-blood strengthens our own sea-blood that we carry within us. As our air and water become more acidified through pollution, minerals are leached and depleted from our land fields, and they wash down to the sea, where the wild seaweeds incorporate them. When we eat seaweeds, we take these minerals back into our bodies, and these minerals help us maintain an alkaline condition in our bloodstream, which is a healthy condition, resistant to fatigue and stress.

Seaweeds have admirable qualities: they are flexible, they are tenacious, they are prolific, and they are the oldest family of plants on earth. These plants link us to the primitive vitality of the sea. They strengthen our own primitive glandular system and nervous system.

Don’t fear salt. Salt is necessary to life. If you are willing to sweat, you can move salt through you, and in the process, you will be actively creating your life and your dream from the universe-intelligent structures of the complex salts and trace elements that are available in seaweeds. Your body is an antenna, and your body can’t receive and comprehend the whole message from Universe unless it contains all the trace elements of the Universe. Quality counts more than quantity. If you eat the more complex salts of seaweeds, you will have less craving for simple junk food salt, and you will find yourself becoming more whole, satisfied and healthy.