Broad Arrow Farm’s Anna Hymanson will be The Carpenter’s Boat Shop featured
guest in its October virtual speakers series. (Photo courtesy Alicia Witham)
Anna Hymanson, whole-animal butcher and co-owner of Broad Arrow Farm in Bristol, will be the featured guest at the next gathering of The Carpenter’s Boat Shop monthly virtual speakers series at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19.
“Broad Arrow Farm and the boat shop share a common mission,” Alicia Witham, the boat shop’s executive director said. “We both want to leave this part of the world healthier than it was when we started.”
For Hymanson and Broad Arrow Farm, the means to that end is “regenerative agriculture,” a holistic approach to farming that improves soil health, increase biodiversity, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
With the oversight of Hymanson and their Broad Arrow colleagues, plants, animals, and soil microbes work together to create a healthy and productive system.
“I am passionate about community-based advocacy work around public health,” Hymanson recently told Edible Maine. “I focus on the benefits of healthy, affordable, and accessible food, especially as a means for both preventative health care, and chronic disease management. I am interested in the intersection of community health and food justice, while working to support sustainable agriculture.”
For its part, Carpenter’s local advocacy extends far beyond its core program of teaching a group of apprentices the craft of boat-building.
In recent months, it has participated in island cleanups with the Maine Island Trail Association and worked with Atlantic Challenge, participated in Community Cares Day and continues to help neighbors in need.
When Broad Arrow Farm and the boat shop go online for the October installment of the virtual speakers series, Witham said, “it’s neighbors helping neighbors.”
“What we’re doing here at Carpenter’s is exposing individuals to different ways of being, whether you’re choosing to be in the trades or to be an artist or to be a craftsperson,” Witham said. “That’s why we make time to participate in many field trips and take time for service in our community. Or we spent three days cutting firewood together because we want to give them that skill and also empower them to have that ability to do that in the future if they need to.”
The sharing between the two neighborly organizations takes place in various ways. Broad Arrow contributed food to Carpenter’s annual harvest dinner last month, and the butcher regularly advertises for boats that volunteers can donate to the boat shop to generate funds to support the tuition-free apprenticeship program.
Upcoming virtual speakers include Maura Niemisto, research associate at Boothbay’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences on Nov. 2, Rick Miller, assistant professor at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine and master at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass. on Dec. 14, and J.B. Smith, schooner captain and educator for such organizations as Vision Quest and Ocean Classroom Foundation on Jan. 25.
For more information about The Carpenter’s Boat Shop or to attend the virtual speakers series, email director@carpentersboatshop.com, go to carpentersboatshop.org, or call 677-2614.
