Sense of Place: The New Hampshire Seacoast.
I spent most of the early 1990's living in Portsmouth New Hampshire or Kittery, Maine. Portsmouth was affordable and surprisingly complete, a perfect micro city. The other area communities are robust and live-able as well.
The seaward face of the area is part of the last stretch of sandy beach littoral before the coast goes rock bound and cobble strewn north of Portland, Maine.
There is a significant inland body of sea water called the Great Bay where a workable brackishness and substrate is attractive to Oysters. There were rumors of rare bold Atlantic Salmon nosing up the Piscataqua back then and current data tends to confirm a ghost presence at best.
This makes the bay a growing center for sustainable mariculture. One of the more notable projects is a mussel farm off the Isles of Shoals.
The bay is fed by a lacing of small coastal rivers that all make home to good spots of farmland and this is where the region has really seen growth. The first indication is a fairly extensive network of farmers markets for nearly every town in the area. This indicates a good solid local loop that marks a rebirth of patterns that obtained in the pre-supermarket era.
The markets, in turn, are served by an impressive variety of sustainable farms . Seacoast Eat Local has made a handy portal into the region. Slow Food Seacoast also offers detailed pieces on the growth of ingredients options.
The farms, for their part offer a number of models and foods. Willow Pond offers a place for individuals to share in crop creation in a community farm design. Meadows Mirth and New Roots hew closer to a family farm model. All of the former focus on produce, flowers and herbs.
Lasting Legacy, McClary Hill and Riverslea farms are examples of different meat, egg or poultry operations with Riverslea also preparing wool.
And finally, Seacoast NRG gives a glimpse into energies directed to energy alternatives and completes a sense of how this unique corner of New England is moving away from the fossil fuel era.
