🔒Editor’s note: How oysters and potatoes find their way to our tables

In this issue, we delve into oyster growing and potato chip making.

Maine’s oyster “farming” sector has grown rapidly in recent years. Maine-grown oysters had a dock value of $14.8 million last year, and you can expect to pay quite a bit more at the oyster bar.

Mainebiz worked with one of our freelance photographers, Jim Neuger, to document the process of growing, harvesting and serving oysters.

In search of the best shot, Jim has braved foul balls and errant pucks to shoot baseball and hockey games. He’s climbed a ladder on the roof of the Time & Temperature building to get just the right angle. To light a photo shoot in an alleyway, he ran an extension cord from a nearby drug store.

There’s an old saying, “It took a brave man to eat the first oyster.” And it took a brave photographer to get out in a small skiff on a cold spring day — all in the name of documenting the Maine oyster trade.

See Jim’s photo essay.

Heading north, Aroostook County-based reporter John O’Meara looks at the construction of a 96,000-square-foot potato chip factory in Limestone.

Interestingly, while potatoes grown in the County are processed there for french fries and value-added meals, this will be the first potato chip factory in Aroostook. Up till now, the potatoes that would be turned into chips were sent to Connecticut to a Frito-Lay plant.

As John reports, there’s a logical reason for processing them closer to the source: Potatoes are largely water, so once they’re cooked they’re a whole lot lighter — and cheaper to transport. And one of the partners in the chip-making plant is also in the trucking business, so that’s what you call a win-win.

See the Taste of Maine story.