🔒A forward-looking computer project led by Axiom Technologies holds promise for Washington County farmers and fishermen

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After pulling up lobster traps or scallop nets in salty gusts, beating sun or ice-cold fog all day, Mitchell Beal has to return home and fill out paperwork. Whether he's landed a full catch or he's caught nothing at all, Beal, a licensed fisherman, is required to file reports for the federal government, noting what he caught, how much, at what depth, the time he left shore, the time he returned and other data. It's just part of the job, but Beal says not having to sign his name over and over would be a relief.

"Even when you're not fishing, you have to report," Beal says, as he maneuvers his 40-foot lobster boat through Barney's Cove off Beals Island, a small Down East island community where he lives.

Beal says he's looking forward to the day he can type information into a digital template and zip it off to a federal agency from his laptop. That day may not be too far off as a two-year project to connect local fishermen and farmers with software to help them comply with government regulations and create best practices unfolds in Washington County.

But there are some significant obstacles. Many fishermen, including Beal, are not familiar with computers. They're on their boats all day, not at office desks where a computer is a vital component of professional and personal lives. Last year, Beal, who's 49, didn't know how to email — a relatively common situation among fishermen and blueberry farmers in Down East Maine, which produces 90% of the state's blueberry crop and has 23% of Maine's small- and medium-sized fishing operations.

Washington County, as of 2005, had only two towns with broadband connections, a situation that has improved due to Axiom Technologies, a small telecommunications company in Machias. In addition to spreading connectivity throughout the 2,500-square-mile county, the 14-person company won a $1.4 million stimulus grant in September 2010 to launch a two-year program to develop user friendly software for blueberry farmers and fishermen. The federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money was matched with $500,000 from Axiom and the Central Maine Medical Center College of Nursing and Health Professions, which is using half the grant to set up distance-learning program for nurses in Machias.

The hope is the technology will make Maine's natural-resource businesses more efficient and boost productivity and revenues by helping farmers and fishermen with marketing, recordkeeping and accessing information.

Before they can benefit from new software, many of them have to learn basic computer skills. "In order to introduce technology, we need to teach people and do it at a grassroots level," says Susan Corbett, Axiom's CEO. And before Axiom can develop the software, it has to find out what technology would actually help fishermen and farmers.

Last year, Axiom placed advertisements in local newspapers, seeking 10 lobstermen and 10 wild-blueberry farmers in Washington County to participate in its pilot project. In return for their participation, Axiom is offering computer classes and giving each person a $5,000 Panasonic Toughbook laptop, loaded with software, as well as high-speed broadband connections for two years at their home and business, all for free. Based on the information it gleans from its pilot members, Axiom will hire a software developer this winter to develop programs that Axiom will provide for free to all fishermen and farmers in Washington County. Axiom also intends to market and sell the software elsewhere, Corbett says.

"The end result is we're providing some level of education and increasing knowledge here in a creative way," Corbett says.

Teaching computer skills

Since January, Axiom's students have been attending computer classes taught by Jane Blackwood, a former public school teacher and manager at Axiom. She offers classes on a variety of subjects, from basic computer skills to Adobe Photoshop — she says the latter can help her students design logos, web pages or "labels for fresh-packed blueberries or jams." From the project's start, Axiom also opened its classes to the families and work crews of its selected group, and this fall decided to let in anybody with the faintest of ties to the blueberry and fishing sectors in Washington County, which Corbett says is "pretty much everyone."

On a recent Tuesday evening, Beal and wife D'Anna, as well as two blueberry farmers and a local woman named Beverly Taylor wandered into Axiom's low-key conference room for one of Blackwood's classes.

Wayne Hanscom, a 63-year-old lifelong blueberry farmer, had his sturdy Toughbook open in front of him on the table. He says he's participating in the program because "this is the computer age now. If you don't do this, you're not going to be on top of things." His daughter, who's also been attending the classes, now uses the accounting program QuickBooks to manage their farm's finances, and he uses Microsoft Excel to keep track of receipts for tax purposes, and checks the Internet for weather reports. He says he's looking forward to the day he learns how to use a GPS mapping program to better manage the chemicals he applies to his 32 acres of blueberries.

Over the two hours of her class, Blackwood explained the difference between software and hardware; what a taskbar is; how to open programs and resize windows; how to scroll down documents, how to click and drag, and more. Sara Banks, a business student from the University of Maine at Machias and tutor, worked side-by-side with the attendees. When a student expressed frustration with his progress, calling himself "stupid," Blackwood said, "We don't use the 's' word around here."

"Adults don't like to be wrong, and older gentlemen sometimes don't like to appear stupid," Blackwood says later. She compliments her students for being brave by learning these skills after a lifetime of being computer-free. "There's a real phobia to trying to learn the computer," she says.

Axiom's pilot participants may be computer-phobic, but once they finally break the code, so to speak, they're thrilled.

Kathy Garcelon, a farmer who grew up in East Machias, lives with her husband on a 210-acre tract of land known as Point of Maine, which is accessible only twice a day at low tide. At the tip of a peninsula, Garcelon's house has a wide view of the sea and several little islands. She and her husband raise a small herd of sheep and have a couple acres of blueberries. On a recent day, she sat at her kitchen table with her ToughBook, 100 jars of homemade black currant and gooseberry jelly on the big old-fashioned iron stove behind her. Her farm doesn't have any electricity, so last year, when she received her free laptop, she turned it on in the evenings when she ran her small generator. Axiom also installed a satellite on her home for the Internet.

"I was totally illiterate with computers. I just knew how to turn one on," Garcelon says. In the past year, however, she's become comfortable and recently used the Internet to research Icelandic sheep, renowned for their soft inner coats. She's also researched sheep diseases, discovering she'd been feeding her island sheep — a hardy stock accustomed to grazing on Maine islands — the wrong food and unknowingly making them sick. In time, she says she wants to develop a website to sell her homemade products, including jellies and felt blankets from the wool of her two new Icelandic sheep.

"It's like not having a car and knowing you can't go someplace and then suddenly getting a car," Garcelon says. "It's a freedom you didn't have before."

Seeing the data

For Mitchell Beal, a software program that allows him to quickly fill in his fishing data and then hit send would be the biggest benefit from Axiom's project. Beyond that, Brian Beal, a marine ecologist at the University of Maine at Machias and director of the Downeast Institute for Applied Marine Research and Education on Great Wass Island, says creating a program for fishermen to collect information over time could help them fish more strategically. Brian Beal has been hired as a consultant for Axiom's project, along with Kevin Athearn, a UMaine Machias economics professor, and blueberry expert Delmont Emerson.

Fishermen who have hundreds of traps can't always recall "what's going on with a string of traps three months ago," Brian Beal says. "Rather than have everything in their heads, this might be helpful for them in the future." Corbett says recording data such as catch numbers, rainfall, water temperatures and lobster trap GPS coordinates could, in time, result in visible and useful patterns.

Meanwhile, blueberry farmers could benefit by incorporating mapping software into their field operations. Coming soon is a new federal law requiring food growers and producers to track food origins to help trace food-borne illnesses.

Big players in the industry like Cherryfield Foods Inc. in Cherryfield are using sophisticated software already. Cherryfield adopted an extensive ArcGIS program in 2006, keeping track of such things as its chemical applications and mowing schedules, according to Farm Operations Manager David Yeatts. To make it easier for his crew to use the program while on tractors, Cherryfield developed a simplified touch-screen application anyone can use. Yeatts says the program has saved the company time, mistakes and money.

Because some fisheries and agriculture software already exists, Brian Beal says Axiom won't reinvent the wheel as it develops software. "If there is something out there on the shelf that we can use part of, or incorporate an existing piece of software, boy, let's do that," he says. "Otherwise, it might take much longer for us to build this software."

In the end, Brian Beal concedes many longtime farmers and fishermen might just stick with the way they've always done things. But for younger generations, it'll be part of doing business in a county that has struggled with outmigration of its residents, often the young ones, over the last few years.

Emerson, who's been working with blueberry growers his whole life, says, "For some of the older farmers, [learning the technology] is a challenge, but some of the younger farmers are used to computers anyway; they'll adapt pretty easily."

Rebecca Goldfine, Mainebiz staff writer, can be reached at rgoldfine@mainebiz.biz.