Ken Bailey’s Chevy 12-passenger van has no back seats. Two broken plastic sleds and a variety of junk rattle in the back as he bounces down the rutted path to the shore to pick up his clams. Cigarette butts overflow from the ashtray and soda bottles litter the passenger side. Sharp white lettering on the sides and rear read “Ken’s Clams” with his phone number. The van is brownish grey-almost the same color as the mud from which the clams come. Ken’s a clam digger and an entrepreneur.
“The hardest part of the job is lugging them out,” he says, gently placing 12-pound net bags of steamer clams into the sleds, which he nestles into the rear of the van. “It’s awful easy to break them at this point.” Ken is a rough guy, but careful with his clams. He’s made up bag tags with his license number. He carefully fills them out and pins them on the bags.
As he was gathering up his bags of clams from the digging area Rob Beale, Department of Marine Resources patrol officer, comes down the shore. “Ken’s a hard worker,” Rob says “I see him out here a lot.” Rob helps Ken lug clams up the shore and they share details around the latest closures, weather and the shoreside buildings nearby.
Bailey, of Brunswick, has been through a lot. Besides working his way through two trips to prison in his 20s, Ken’s tried many avenues for making ends meet. He keeps coming back to clamming. Over the last 16 years, he’s built up his skills and now can pull four or five pecks, “with no brokes,” in a tide. Some people dig more at a time, or twice in a day, but at age 52, Ken’s content with what he can do. He explains his entrepreneurial endeavors with pride tinged with self-awareness and some regret. His various endeavors off the water have all failed.
Between 1988 and 1990 he was convicted with several counts of drunk driving. His daughter was born in 1990. Ken divorced his wife in 1995. The two now live in New York State. “All of this was because of the alcohol,” he said. Ken has too many reasons for failure: run-ins with the law, licensing, landlords, women and children, trouble with alcohol and his admittedly rough demeanor. Ken has three brothers and was abused as a child by his father.
“My father was a quahogger-when he did eels and worked in the ice house in Brunswick in the 50s. He was a carpenter at Seabrook and the Wiscasset power plants. He whipped us with a belt-what seemed like a lot.”
Ken started as a “poacher” he says, following other diggers in, digging by night, in closed areas and nights where it wasn’t allowed-between 1988 and 1990. When his daughter was born in 1990, he cleaned up his act, buying a Phippsburg commercial license. He now has a Harpswell non-resident license and the respect of his peers. He digs one tide a day in good weather, finishing up with about $100 a day, depending on the wholesaler’s price. He brings in five pecks each day-at 12-and-a-half pounds per peck. These days, Ken drinks socially – but “I usually stay sober as I always am the designated driver.”
His start as a poacher taught him to sell his clams to whomever would buy them. This served him well as he moved towards being a licensed harvester in the market place. He developed contacts and made connections within the industry-making good customers by delivering a high quality product at a reasonable price. But in 2006 the law changed and harvesters could no longer sell to restaurants and retailers.
The Maine State Legislature created that law in response to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirement that all shellfish carried over state lines be documented in a paper trail all the way back to the harvester.
The FDA wanted to create a system in which spoiled or contaminated shellfish could be easily tracked. The State Legislature followed the FDA’s suggestions-with one exception: harvesters were allowed the option to sell clams from their homes, which Ken Bailey still does. While selling from home is a portion of the open market, it severely diminished the overall opportunities for harvesters who were particularly entrepreneurial.
Rep. Brian Langley (R-Ellsworth) has run Union River Lobster Pot, a family-style restaurant in Ellsworth since 1996. He used to buy clams in the summer from local diggers in the Ellsworth area. The FDA requirements affected him by making him buy from wholesalers. He found that clams arriving at his restaurant were often four days old. Langley wrote the bill LD 447 to solve that problem. “Here on the coast of Maine we ought to be able to get fresh clams onto plates of our customers in four hours-not four days.”
The legislature passed the bill and Gov. John Baldacci signed in on May 28. It will not be enacted until January 1, 2010.
Ken Bailey has a sandwich board sign outside his home in Brunswick advertising his daily price. He is allowed by the current law to sell from his home, but not to deliver to anyone except a licensed wholesaler. This has been a major problem for Ken, who is four months behind on his rent.
The new law will allow harvesters to sell directly to retailers and restaurants as long as the buyer holds a new license and submits to managing monthly landing reports and occasional inspections by DMR shellfish inspectors.
David Etnier, deputy commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources said, “We had nothing against this bill. It adds in an inspection element, which is a value to us. It also is likely to raise the price which harvesters can earn from their summer product as well as lower the cost to customer.” Etnier is pleased that he’ll be able to bring shellfish inspectors into restaurants and retailers where inspectors have not been authorized to go in the past.
While this law’s passage bodes well for the future, the present does not look good for Ken Bailey. Red tide has closed almost the entire Maine coast to clamming for June and July. Despite the fact that Ken is a hard-working, professional clam digger with a good work ethic, he’s been unable to pull together a steady stream of income from clamming in this combination of economy, red tide and, bad weather.
Like some other diggers, Ken does not believe that any one solution will cure the problems he’s facing. “I don’t really know how this will affect me yet,” he said. “I’m not sure who will buy the new license. If they all do, I’ll be in a better place, I think. We’ll see in January, I guess.”
Roger S. Duncan, a photojournalist from Bath, co-authored the 12th edition of The Cruising Guide to the New England Coast.