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The Maine State Ferry Service is coming under fire for proposing a change in where its boats dock at night, even as it has made progress at resolving other sources of frustration for the island communities that it serves: namely, the staffing shortages and mechanical breakdowns that contributed to many trip cancellations this year.

Since the ferry service’s inception in the 1950s, many of its boats have spent the night at their respective islands’ ports off the midcoast and Hancock County, which has helped islanders with medical emergencies get quickly transported to hospitals on the mainland.

But as part of a broader set of changes that are planned in the coming years, the Maine Department of Transportation has raised the possibility of docking all of its ferries overnight on the mainland and instead providing funds for new emergency boats to serve the islands at night.

While the ferry service has not made any final decisions, it says that such a change would help it to cut costs, operate more reliably and attract more workers, who wouldn’t have to spend the nights away from their mainland homes.

However, union officials and residents of some island communities are concerned by the concept, arguing that it could create new barriers to emergency medical care and potentially deter workers from joining the service. Officials from Islesboro and North Haven have sent letters to the service sharing their frustration.

“We have grave reservations as to the process and the substance of this scheme. Substantively, this proposal makes many major changes to the current policies that raise significant and important public safety issues,” Islesboro Town Manager Janet Anderson said in her letter. “Frankly, we expect better than this type of treatment from the executive branch of our state government and find this very disappointing.”

Beyond the debate over where the ferries should dock at night, it has already been a busy year for the service.

It continues to update its fleet, after maintenance issues on some of its older ferries contributed to trip cancellations in the last year. That has included the addition of a new boat on the Matinicus route and plans for a hybrid-electric ferry that will join the fleet next spring. Maine is also closing bids this month for a ferry capable of fully electric operations to take over the Islesboro route in the next three to five years, according to William Geary, the director of the Maine State Ferry Service.

“Last year, unfortunately, we had three vessels out at one time, but we put the money in to make sure that we have safe, reliable ferries for our passengers,” Geary said.

To remedy the shortage of ferry workers, Maine DOT enacted fare increases that have helped it hike wages and hired an out-of-state staffing contractor, Seaward Services, to boost personnel in the interim. While the first Seaward contract was awarded on an emergency basis, the agency issued a request for proposals before hiring the company again for 2025, Geary said.

However, the hiring of Seaward has created some ongoing friction with the ferry service’s regular employees, who fear that it could put the service on the path toward privatization.

On Dec. 2, the union that represents them, the Maine Service Employees Association, sent a letter co-signed by 51 lawmakers asking the state attorney general to scrutinize Maine DOT’s contracting out of ferry labor in recent years.

But Geary pushed back on those concerns. He said that the service has filled seven regular positions since it entered the first contract with Seaward earlier this year, and it hasn’t needed to use any of the contractor’s workers since Dec. 9.

Various pay increases have helped the service to bring in more employees, including raises in January and July for all state workers, and higher overtime rates for captains and crew members.

However, with at least five vacancies remaining in the service’s ranks, Geary said that Seaward has helped to improve the service’s reliability, completing 97.5 percent of scheduled trips outside weather cancellations, and that the contractor will continue to be an important backstop.

“This is not, at all, a step towards privatizing the ferry service,” Geary said. “This is what was being asked of us, if not demanded from us, from the islanders to get the boats running.”

Geary also asserted that the proposal to eventually dock ferries on the mainland could help attract new ferry workers. Those workers must now stay in the crew quarters on the islands while they’re working, separating them from home and families for a week at a time, while also forcing the service to pay for the costs of those quarters.

But that proposal could become another flashpoint.

Anderson, the Islesboro town manager, raised specific concerns about it in her letter to Maine DOT Commissioner Bruce van Note.

Besides criticizing what she viewed as a lack of a communication from the agency, she argued that it can sometimes be important for island residents requiring emergency medical attention to receive constant care on their way to the hospital, which ambulance crews can provide on a ferry ride back to the mainland, but which would be harder to offer if island taxis or Life Flight helicopters have to play more of a role.

Geary suggested that emergency vessels could berth at the islands overnight instead of the ferries, but Anderson said in the letter that an island-wide EMS system could cost some $7.5 million to start and operate, including $5 million to purchase a vessel.

Peter Drury, a former ferry captain who lives on Vinalhaven and is involved with the union representing ferry workers, challenged the notion that berthing ferries on the mainland could help attract new staff. He noted that many service employees live far from the ferry terminals and suggested that some of them would be reluctant to move closer if their crew accommodations on the islands were eliminated.

“I think that the department is just failing to acknowledge the realities of what their employee pool looks like, and they just do not understand how mariners approach their occupation,” Drury said.

While Geary acknowledged that workers would have to relocate if the change happens, he thinks it would help to attract more employees who would want to be home with their families every night.

On a larger level, he noted that medical care is not the ferry service’s core mission, but he said the agency will give the concept more consideration before it makes any final decisions.

Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.

The Fameuse apple originated in Canada in the 1600s, but its role in Maine’s apple history was epic.

It’s thought to be a parent of the state’s popular McIntosh, which has been a staple for hundreds of commercial and private orchards around the state for more than 200 years.

The Fameuse and other old varieties like it, such as the Black Oxford, Cherryfield and Chenango Strawberry apple, almost disappeared but were revived and now thrive across Maine.

Their tales often go back to early settlers who brought the trees from overseas to plant on new homesteads and farms. Black Oxford, a Maine original, was discovered on the farm of an Oxford County nailmaker in the 1790s; a Hallowell tree planted in 1799 is still alive. Cherryfield was developed in that Down East town more than 150 years ago, then rediscovered by residents. The Chenango Strawberry apple was originally called Frank after the first name of a New York man who introduced it; others know it as Zepherus Chernogous.

By the 1970s, many such Maine trees were near the ends of their lifespans. Their fields were overgrown, the farmers who planted them forgotten. When Palermo resident John Bunker started rediscovering them, they were mostly “mysterious, anonymous gifts from the past.”

These apples, their histories and their abilities to thrive in Maine’s weather could disappear forever if someone didn’t take action soon, he realized. That led him to create the first Fedco Trees mail-order in 1984: a two-page handout, including 17 apple types, stapled to the Clinton-based Fedco Seeds cooperative catalog. 

Over the next 40 years, Bunker’s hobby grew into a business that has changed the state’s fruit tree landscape on homesteads and small farms, saving and spreading these varieties that could have been lost otherwise, along with other unique fruits, trees and ornamentals.

Though heritage apples are familiar to many Mainers, Fedco Trees’ current coordinator Jen Ries said there’s still work to do. Until everybody knows about heritage fruit and you can find it at any grocery store, the mission continues, she said.

Popular choices for Fedco customers today include the Black Oxford; Baldwin, one of New England’s oldest apples with origins in 1740s Massachusetts; and Northern Spy, an all-purpose from Connecticut first planted from a seed more than two centuries ago.

Estimates vary, but the United States likely had more than 7,000 such cultivars in the 19th century and probably has less than half that many today as commercial production focuses on favorites such as Granny Smith and Honeycrisp. More genetic diversity in plants means more resilience from weather, disease and pests, which disappears with extinction, according to numerous researchers, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Back in the early 1980s, local resources for Maine gardeners focused on vegetable production, according to Bunker. He thought people should have access to fruit education and tree stock too — plus, he had questions about their history.

He uncovered fruit names, history and characteristics through books, conferences, a booth at the Common Ground Country Fair, tracking down experts, finding mentors and, occasionally, knocking on a stranger’s door after driving by an interesting tree. Bunker estimates he’s spent hundreds of hours in orchards, botanical gardens and arboretums in Maine, Boston and New York.

He decided early on to make the catalog intelligent, honest, educational and focused on what he knew best — cold-hardy varieties growing in Maine.

If someone from Texas read it, he hoped they’d be inspired to start their own locally focused project. Heritage apple nurseries and preservation orchards exist across the country with a scattering of other “fruit detectives,” working independently and together in groups such as the Historic Fruit Tree Working Group.

The catalog grew, and a physical community did too around an annual in-person spring sale of discounted extra stock. That event was an equalizer, Bunker said, drawing businesspeople alongside homesteaders.

By 1994, his hobby had grown into a full-time job. Ries started working with him 22 years ago and took the lead at the tree division around 2020.

This year’s catalog has 170 apples and 650 listings, from cherries to groundcover plants to asparagus. Popular choices include the Madison Peach, Montmorency Cherry, Purple Heart Plum, American Elms and American Chestnuts, according to Ries, plus lilacs and cold-hardy heritage roses. The division sold more than 100,000 plants and trees last year.

Small local farms grow about three-quarters of this stock with mentorship from the company. Some have started their own nurseries.

Fedco also grows trees from farther south, such as the Chestnut Oak, with a native range from Georgia to southwestern Maine that’s now surviving farther east, and American Sycamore, which previously grew in the southern states and the central Midwest.

That’s in response to the way climate change is shifting growing conditions and bringing new pests, according to Ries. People are starting to plant southern species here to prepare for a warmer climate, a process called assisted migration.

The company also added a refrigeration system to keep its trees dormant through the winter, which they need to survive cold temperatures and grow successfully. In the past, it stayed cold enough to store them outside.

Things have changed on the commercial side of Maine’s apple landscape too, according to Renae Moran, a tree fruit specialist with the University of Maine. Twenty-five years ago, McIntosh, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious were dominant.

Honeycrisp, a patented fruit first sold in the late 1990s, is the focus for growers and the university’s research farm now, she said, along with other trademarked cultivars that growers are trialing themselves.

The university doesn’t have data for hobby growers, though she noted an increasing interest in hard cider. Moran said many farmstands carry heritage or antique apples, but sales are limited in comparison to commercial types.

Every year, Ries sees new customers be surprised by the variety of fruit that exists. She’s also seeing more new gardeners and people growing food in cities or suburbs, using the trees to feed their families, serve as memorials or mark life events.

Forty years in, Bunker comes across apple trees he sold that have grown large enough for grandchildren to climb on.

“It’s very personal for people to plant a tree,” Ries said.

MAINE (WMTW) – Many people Wednesday night celebrated the first night of Hanukkah.

The Jewish holiday officially started Wednesday at sundown.

City officials in downtown Portland lit a Menorah outside city hall in celebration.

The first night of Hanukkah and Christmas were on the same day this year for the first time since 2005.

Hanukkah’s eight-day celebration commemorates the miracle of the oil in the temple.

It is said there was only enough to last one day, but ended up lasting eight.

“It’s great. I think everyone should come together and celebrate because it’s a very festive day. Some people have a custom of giving you a present, called Hanukkah gelt, gelt giving something, we used chocolate gelt today, and you know it’s really a very happy time,“ said Rabbi Mo She Wilanksy, Chabad of Maine.

A Menorah will be lit up at the Statehouse with Governor Janet Mills.

Hanukkah festivities wrap up in the new year with a car-top Menorah parade into downtown Portland.

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