A mild winter and warm spring means that the city’s fruit trees are blossoming, and the farmers on the outskirts of the city have been hard at work preparing seedlings in their greenhouses. In two more weekends, the indoor farmer’s market will close for the season. Meanwhile, an increasing number of farmers have begun setting up their tables again in Deering Oaks Park (Saturdays, 7 am to noon, beginning on April 28) and in Monument Square (Wednesdays, 7 am to 1 pm).

Since we moved to Maine a few years ago, my wife and I have bartered work for vegetables with our friends at the Snell Family Farm, which has been growing fruit and vegetables in Bar Mills for four generations.

I came to know the Snells by going to high school with their oldest daughter. But working for them at the Saturday farmers’ market, I’ve come to meet some of their hundreds of customers, many of whom have been buying from the Snells for many years. They swap jokes and planting advice and recipes. It strikes me as an unusually personable relationship between a small business and their customers. And it’s by no means unique to the Snell Family Farm: I see similar interactions happening at virtually every booth in the market. Eating is a social activity, and good food has a way of solidifying good relationships.

So because Portlanders care so much about good food, they also care a great deal about the people who provide the raw ingredients. For decades, the city has taken pride in the working waterfront that supplied the city’s seafoods; now, there’s a growing pride associated with the fields of Portland’s working hinterlands.

Vestiges of yankee frugality and self-reliance helped these small businesses squeak through through the decades of globalization and corporate agribusiness. But to explain these enterprises’ current success, more credit is due to a new, post-globalization desire (both among Portlanders, and among the people who choose to move to Portland) to have a closer and more honest relationship with the natural resources we rely on.

Local restaurants — from fine-dining establishments to taquerias to comfort-food diners — prominently list their farmers on their menus, and the farmers markets themselves have been attracting increasing numbers of customers over the past decade. Farmers are collaborating with chefs on equal footing in the city’s increasingly serious food culture.

This week, while we wait for the last threats of frost to fade away and planting season to begin in earnest, SPACE Gallery is hosting their annual Food+Farm series, a collection of programs that highlight and celebrate local foods and farmers. Highlights this year include a screening of The Harvest / La Cosecha, a documentary about child migrant farm workers, a “Grow Fair” with events and workshops for gardeners, and a presentation from Daniel Klein, the producer of the Perennial Plate webseries.

Photo: Urban Farm Fermentory’s window installation at SPACE Gallery. Photo by Christian MilNeil.

In the fracus of First Friday it’s easy to lose sight of what artists in Portland, and creatives in Maine in general, have in common. We talk about authenticity, respect for materials, an awareness of time and the craft of making as attributes of the Maine brand that Portland’s creative economy embodies. Starting this Friday night, at the Coleman Burke Gallery in Brunswick, (and running through May 19) is an opportunity to see a version of that shared sensibility enacted in the work of five accomplished Portland artists.

 A Thickening Rhythm is a show curated by artist Julie Poitras Santos that brings together work that embraces “slowness.” Of the five artists in the show, Lauren Fensterstock, Carrie Scanga, Ling-Wen Tsai, Deborah Wing-Sproul and Julie Poitras Santos herself, all teach at Maine College of Art (MECA) except Scanga, who teaches at Bowdoin College. The pieces range from Fensterstock’s Colorless Field, a black-on-black expanse of tall “grass,” to Scanga’s Ballast, a lightweight stack of intaglio printed “bricks,” to Tsai’s silent Water & Wind video and Sitting Quietly installation of noise-canceling headphones, to Wing-Sproul’s Intimate Distance, a 24-minute video that explores what it means to be seen, to Poitras Santos’ raven mirror/unravel, a performance for actors wearing feathered wings to the constant sound of rolling dice.

Coleman Burke also has a gallery in Chelsea, in New York and a storefront in Portland. The Brunswick space is in the converted Fort Andross Mill building. The Mill is a bustling hive of creative economy activity similar to the State Theatre building or the old Railroad Terminal buildings in Portland, but with the addition of restaurants, a huge indoor flea market and a Saturday morning farmers market.

Fans of “Slow Food,” will enjoy the pleasures of slow art as well. And the drive from Portland to Brunswick, where Bowdoin is located, is easy and not particularly slow, and good eats are just down the hallway from the gallery at the Frontier Café.

Two weeks ago, environmental activist, author and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, came to the Portland US District courthouse to join a midday demonstration “marking the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations unprecedented power to fund political campaigns,” according to a story in the Portland Phoenix. “City councilor Dave Marshall recently submitted a resolution that calls on Maine’s congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment abolishing the so-called ‘corporate personhood’ codified by the ruling. ‘We simply can’t win the battle against carbon if politics remains polluted by corporate money,’ McKibben says.” Dave Marshall’s resolution was indeed passed that Thursday night. The city council of Portland voted 6-2 to call on the state’s congressional delegation to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing “corporate personhood.” [Here's a good roundup of the issue from CommonDreams.org]

McKibben went on to give a lecture that Friday evening at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center hosted by the University of New England entitled, “Local and Global: Notes from the Frontlines of the Climate Fight.” [Here's the video of the talk.] That talk is being broadcast today on MPBN’s Speaking in Maine public affairs program.

Now Portland likes corporations just fine, but we like living and working to be in balance. We like our people to be people and our corporations to be corporations.

In fact, a lot of the companies that are attracted to Maine, and to the Portland area in particular, are trying to create solutions to the kinds of problems McKibben addresses in his most recent book, Eaarth, Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  ReVision Energy, Ocean Approved Kelp, Ocean Renewable Power, all presented at this year’s Juice 3.0 conference and are all based in Portland. Other Portland green businesses listed on the Maine Businesses for Sustainability include Blue Reserve Water, PDT Architects, Wright-Ryan Construction, and Coffee by Design. A great resource for local services with green practices is the new green business directory from The Sunrise Guide.

McKibben’s talk was Skyped live around the State to Belfast, Bangor, Houlton, and the Portland Public Library. Bill said he has been to all of these places, but this “is a very low carbon way to get around Maine!” He apologized, in advance for being, “a professional bummer-outer of people,” but then went on to tell what we can all do to make things better. He praised Maine’s initiatives in the local food movement and Portland’s permaculture efforts during the 10.10.10 day of action, but he also said we need to do more.

In particular, McKibben thinks that the injection of money into politics is crippling our government’s ability to make any substantive changes in our energy future. ”I gave a little talk at the Portland courthouse today,” he said, “because there was a demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United thing that sort of opened up fully the money spigots for corporate America to interfere in our political life. And this is just cheating. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, and Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, is caught giving money to the referees beforehand, it’s a national scandal. Everybody would be outraged, but if Exxon does it, then it’s OK. That’s crazy and we’ve got to stop it, right now.”

McKibben speaks from the deep Yankee tradition (see my discussion with Colin Woodard in relation to this). In fact, in 2010 he wrote a series of articles for Yankee Magazine subtitled How New England Can Save the World. And he was clearly speaking to a receptive audience that night in Westbrook, “The thing that keeps us from fixing things is our cynicism. This is how it’s always going to be. We need to be aggressively naive about this. I think we need to say, ‘This is not right, it’s not fair, it makes no sense. We don’t know how it got started, but it’s time to stop it.’ And we won’t stop it perfectly and all at once, but hopefully we can at least throw a scare into them. So we’re going to have people all over the country and they’re going to be following around their congressman with big signs pointing out how much money they’ve taken. And we’re going to be making up suit coats for them that look like those uniforms that nascar drivers wear, with decals, logos, for each of their companies. It’s shameful what’s going on and there needs to be some shaming done.”

Bill is not a naturally outgoing person and he has taken the mantle of activist leader somewhat reluctantly. In many ways, like many creatives, he would rather sit in his room and write. But there’s clearly something about the momentum of social engagement, and 350.orgs surprising victories, that keeps him going. Returning at the end of his talk to the theme of local foods he concluded, ”The secret is to have more fun than other people have, and part of that involves eating delicious, good things close to home, and frankly i think we’ve reached the point that i’m going to stop so I can eat some of them!”

Were there bakeries in Portland before Standard Baking opened its doors in 1995? Of course there were, but it feels like Standard has, well, set the standard for a constantly expanding class of artisan bakers throughout town. (Creative Portland’s Andy Graham remembers the bread when he arrived in the 70s was, in fact, being pretty dismal.)

Today, Portland is renowned far and wide for its baked goods. Just ask Bon Appetit, or Road Food authors Jane and Michael Stern, or FoodieMommy. But don’t spend too much time reading about our amazing bakeries. Instead, come here and enjoy what we enjoy, including…

Big Sky Bread, milling wheat and turning out delectable loaf after loaf in Woodford’s Corner for close to twenty years.

Borealis Breads, with cheese ficelles to die for, and a strong commitment to Maine grain farmers.

Katie Made Bakery, where the cheesecakes and pies overflow with love.

158 Pickett Street (aka One Fifty Ate), at the SMCC campus in South Portland, with legendary sourdough bagels worth crossing the bridge for.

Micucci’s Grocery, where baker Stephen Lazalotta has set up shop in the back, producing luna breads that are snatched up the minute they appear on the racks.

Scratch Baking Co., in South Portland’s Willard Square, where each day of the week brings different specialty breads.

Two Fat Cats Bakery, where the pies cry out to you, yearning to come home with you and meet your family.

Rosemont Market, three branches and counting, great baguettes, whole wheat scala and the closest thing to a New York bagel.

And that’s not even mentioning Mr. Bagel, or The European, or Good East Boutique, or Bakery on the Hill, or East End Cupcakes, or, or –

‘Nuff said. Time to eat.

Big Sky Bread

Two Fat Cats

Much of what makes Portland such a cool city derives from the first half of our name. We are a port, perched on the Atlantic Ocean. Because of that, we are utterly unlike, say, Waltham or Austin or Chapel Hill. With ports come piers and wharves. Facing the waterfront from Portland’s Commercial Street, you can count ten wharves from left to right, each with its own character. So as we prepare to ring in the New Year, lets sing out the praises of these fingers into the sea:

1. Maine State Pier is the most heavily used, since it houses the Casco Bay Lines, whose ferries link Portland to islands across Casco Bay. Come here to watch boats pulling in and out, as seagulls wheel overhead.
2. Next door is Maine Wharf, a true working pier. It’s home to businesses such as Morrison’s Maine Course (wholesalers of seafood specialties), Chase Leavitt (maritime services since 1854), the water taxi (to get a private lift across the bay) and the sea tow (to get your boat back to port when you run out of gas).
3. Custom House Wharf houses Sea Bags, where old sails are recycled into beautiful tote bags, and The Porthole, which many claim has the best breakfast in town. But it’s most known for Harbor Fish Market, perhaps the finest of its kind on the East Coast. “Iconic” + “Maine” = “Harbor Fish Market.”
4. To its right is Portland Pier, a curious mix of J’s Oyster House, small law firms, some condos – and New Meadows Lobster, at the far end.
5. Beside that is Long Wharf. Hardly a wharf, this is more of a huge parking lot, with an adjacent marina and DiMillo’s Restaurant, a converted car-ferry-turned-high-end-eatery.
6. Chandler’s Wharf is exclusively upscale condominiums. You probably don’t come here unless you live here.
7. Widgery Wharf is the real thing, unchanged for decades, chockablock with lobster boats, lobster traps, lobster processors, and a smell to remind you how authentic a town Portland really is.
8. Adjacent is Union Wharf, perhaps the most diverse along the waterfront. You’ll find the Maine Life Raft & Inflatable Service Company, an architecture firm, lobster businesses, the Nine Stones Spa, and the Maine Responder, a large vessel dedicated to cleaning up oil spills if/when they occur (she spent five months in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010).
9. Like the other piers, Merrill’s Wharf has lobster boats tied up along its perimeter. But it also has a warehouse recently gutted and refurbished to house one of the state’s largest and most venerable law firms, Pierce Atwood.
10. Portland Fish Pier (aka Merchants Wharf), the last in the line, is a mega-pier that is home to, among others, the Harbor Master, the Portland Fish Exchange (where daily auctions set the price for seafood locally),  social investment non-profit Coastal Enterprises, and the offices of U.S. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.

A world unto themselves, Portland’s piers and wharves, sometimes unnoticed and uninvestigated, are your gateway to this unique city by the bay. Make a New Year’s resolution to visit them all.

Photo of Merrills Wharf by John Spritz

As Christmas descends on Maine, it is amusing to meditate on how our mania for making shapes the season. Portland writer Caitlin Shetterly, whose book Made for You and Me documented a failed Californian relocation effort as the recession hit in 2008, has a tonic tale for everyone suffering for post DIY Christmas trauma. Her story, The Christmas Cookies from Hell (and 6 Reasons They Might Be Worth It) on Oprah.com, tells the tale of a unique family recipe for Penobscot Bay Ginger Cookies that maddeningly never quite turns out right—until the last batch. And that glimpse of perfection keeps her and her husband Dan coming back year after year to attain the elusive alchemy of butter and flour, molasses and ginger. The holidays are a time for lofty ideals rarely attained—peace on earth, good will towards man—but also a reminder of our will to make things right, to sculpt the fleeting flux, to be ourselves in what we do. Apparently the cookies taste pretty good too!

For many Portlanders, our Farmers’ Market is just about the best thing in town. Twice a week from April to November, more than 30 farmers descend on Portland, and we get the benefit of fresh, local produce and meats from across Maine.

Come December, the whole operation just moves indoors, to the Maine Irish Heritage Center (the former St. Dominic’s Church). Starting this past weekend, the Portland Winter Farmers’ Market is open every Saturday morning, with farmers hailing from Sumner, Dresden, Etna, Greenwood, Unity, Bethel, up and down the Pinetree State.

This week, your correspondent saw an array of celeriac, Manchego cheese, duck eggs, fingerling potatoes, rabbit pot pie, bunches of winterberries, Anadama bread, cider, sunchokes, bagels, honey, feta marinade, and a colorful bounty of carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, garlic and more. Over on the stage, a fiddler and guitar duo serenaded the crowd with old-timey music. Kids ran around, parents mulled purchases, old friends reconnected, and pretty soon bags were stuffed with the makings of many delectable dinners to come.

Make your way to the big brick church at State and Gray streets any Saturday morning over the next few months, and join the foodie fray.

Photos by John Spritz. Top: Fishbowl Farm

Common Wealth Farm purveys free range duck and chicken eggs…and bagels.

A farmer’s market inside a former church basement? Well, why not?

Soaps, cheeses, and jams from Nezinscot Farm.

The Pickle Jar Defenders playing away.

We usually expect to get some high-profile press coverage about where to eat and drink in Portland in time for the summer folk, but hey, this is December! Yesterday, GQ published chef Rob Evans’ list of 10 culinary destinations all within walking distance of his Hugo’s/Duckfat empire. And just the day before, The Boston Globe came out with a piece by Johnathan Levitt on Maine’s New Drinking Culture.

True, it has been uncommonly mild. Maybe it’s global warming, or maybe Portland is just not as cold as people think it is. Whatever the reason, we’ve certainly become a year-round destination for foodies and these two articles do add a few new spots to the map.

Evans calls out Petite Jacqueline, Boda Thai, Otto Pizza and Emilitsa on Congress Street. Then he hangs a right and goes down Fore Street for the new Miyake, Gorgeous Gelato and, of course, Fore Street. Finally, he heads north for a nightcap at Novare Res Bier Café, dessert at Bresca and after-hours Jell-O shots at Sangillo’s.

Photographer and gastronome Johnathan Levitt decided to forgo the food and go right for the beverages. He has cocktails and conversations with the mix masters at The Grill Room, Hugo’s and Blue Spoon and samples the cider and mead at the Urban Farm Fermentory. Levitt then drives north to Freeport for the Cold River vodka and gin at Maine Distilleries before venturing to the midcoast for Oxbow Brewery in Newcastle and Three Tides Bar in Belfast.

The best quote is from John Myers of The Grill Room in The Globe, “When I told a friend of mine in D.C. that I was heading up here [in 2002], he told me that Maine was the perfect place to be when the world ends. ‘Everything happens in Maine,’ he said. ‘It just takes five years to get there.’ The cocktail revolution is right on schedule.’’

Photo of cocktail at Hugo’s by Johnathan Levitt

Part of what makes Portland’s First Friday Art Walks so much fun is that they have no epicenter. As the crowd surges along Congress Street, with smaller group investigating eddies in the Old Port, the Place To Be shifts from one locale to the next. One sure thing: if you stroll enough, and walk through enough doors, wonderful things will happen.

Last night, the December Art Walk that leads up to the holidays, there was an extra energy in the air. You could sense it at Congress Square: on one side, the line snaked into the State Theater for The Fogcutters present Big Band Syndrome (Lauren Wayne posted a video of the finale of the show); the other side of the square featured the Portland Museum of Art (free on Friday nights) and their hypnotic show on classic Shaker artifacts. Meanwhile, in-between, Art Walkers trundled up the stairs of the Flat Iron Gallery, in the pie-slice-shaped Hay Building, to sip and chew and ruminate on Art, Life, and Living in Portland.

Another wonderful thing, as always, took place at Otto Pizza, a few steps down Congress Street. Your correspondent was among the many who stood happily on the sidewalk, waiting in line to purchase a slice of what many consider to be the finest pizza north of Boston (and now Otto is in Harvard Square, too!). When it comes in as ideal and manifold a presentation as Otto offers, pizza can crystallize the creative economy.

Outside Otto, the sidewalk mambo was wending its way down Congress Street to Space Gallery, with many a stop along the way. Inside Space, one of First Friday’s mainstays, there was music, there was art, there was laughter, there was drinking, there were jostling crowds and a buoyant sense of pleasure in the air. There was also an Alternative Gift Market where you could buy donations to a wide range of curated non-profits and deliver them in a selection of limited edition, hand printed cards designed by artists Beth Taylor, Erin Flett and Jacqueline Dubois.

If you prefer your art au plein air, you could step outside of Space onto the sidewalk, where an open-air truck had pulled up to the curb. Just climb the ramp into the truck’s back to observe the paintings hanging within.

The crowd kept surging, now on to the Maine College of Art. Every year, MECA combines their First Friday participation with a huge holiday sale of items by college students and alums. This year, three floors were given over to a cavalcade of holidazzles, and so the crowds were especially strong here. Among the (hundreds of?) tables and booths, there seemed to be a particular emphasis on recycled treasures: playing cards converted into wallets, umbrellas converted into aprons, stamps converted into earrings.

For those who needed to retreat from the gleeful cacophony of MECA, there was quieter contemplation at galleries where one could, for instance, admire scale models, photos, and blueprints celebrating the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Or, upstairs at Cross Jewelers, you could sample “tastings” of various hot cocoas. Then back out into the street and more galleries, more stores, more music.

Until, in the words of Samuel Pepys, one has turned First Friday into First Saturday, “and so to bed.”

Photos by John Spritz

The creative economy runs on coffee, and as you would expect, Portland, Maine, has a plethora of fine coffee and great coffeehouses. If you’re a creative thought worker trying to figure out where to park your laptop when inspiration strikes, the variety can be overwhelming. How do you choose the the right café for you? Contributor John Spritz has come up with a clever psychographic taxonomy based on movie stars for Portland’s java joints to help you find your spot:

Perhaps the current epicenter of Portland’s Coffee Universe is Bard, at the corner of Middle and Exchange streets. Here’s where budding entrepreneurs set up shop early in the morning, laptops open and buzzing, conducting business all day long. There are some obligatory sofas at Bard, but the crackle of commerce (or, at least, intense discussions) is in the air. If Bard were a movie actor, it’d be George Clooney.

For a more relaxed cup, mosey two short blocks to Arabica, at the head of Free Street. You’ll see a few more suits than you do at Bard, because of the nearby law firms, but even so Arabica is a bit more laid-back. It registers slightly higher on the goofiness scale. If Arabica were a movie actor, it’d be Jim Carrey.

Need to dial it back ever more? Meander up to Hilltop Coffee House, on Congress Street. The place to be if you want to run across Munjoy Hill pols or neighborhood technocrats, Hilltop is quiet, quiet, quiet, all except for the hiss of the espresso machine. Movie star? Morgan Freeman.

For many people, downtown Portland means Commercial Street, and the coffeehouse reigning there is Port Bean. It’s a good deal brighter than the other venues, with large plate glass walls and a menu that stretches beyond the bean and leaf to include Real Food. Not much coziness, but a pleasant spot from which to watch the tourist world stroll by. Movie star? Julia Roberts.

Smack dab in the middle of Monument Square is the aptly named Spartan Grill. Good coffee, but hard to linger there. Low on ambience, high on efficiency. Movie star: Tommy Lee Jones.

Coffee by Design is the mini-empire that really built Portland’s coffee culture. Three locations across town offer different levels of funk and squeezed-in pleasure. The Congress Street location is Cameron Diaz, India Street is Will Smith, Washington Avenue is Michael Keaton.

Of course, if you want to wander further afield, there’s Borealis—the one bread bakery of the bunch—on Ocean Avenue (Tom Hanks), Udder Place on Brighton Avenue (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Yordprom—which features a light Thai lunch menu—on Congress Street (Johnny Depp).

And then there are the tea emporia – but that’s another article…

Arabica Coffee, photo by John Spritz