Before dined, we took a walk/ride around town, and visited the Raye’s Mustard Factory.
The Raye family has been grinding mustard in Eastport since around 1903 in what is now a museum and retail store. It is the last mill in the US grinding mustard using the old stone process.Mustard is not something one would normally connect with the seafaring coast of Maine, until old-timers realize that sardines were once canned and shipped in mustard as a preservative. In the 1940’s, nearly half of all sardines processed in the U.S. were packed in mustard sauce, but by the late 1980’s, only about four sardine plants used Raye's sauces, down from 50 in the 1940s. The sardine market would not support a full-scale operation,so the current members of the family converted the business into a gourmet mustard retail operation, creating over 20 flavors. After grossing less than $50,000 in 1990, the plant now grosses $500,000, and they ship their product all over the US, to wholesale distributors, to regional supermarket chains, and to natural food and gourmet stores around the country. They haven’t abandoned the sardine industry either: the mill supplies three factories in the U.S. and two in Nova Scotia. The largest, Stinson’s Seafood in Prospect Harbor, Me., has been using Raye's mustard for 40 years and still buys about 45,000 gallons of mustard annually.
All the original grindstones (from France) are still in use, except the one sitiing out on the front lawn, which cracked in 1920.
Afterwards we walked down to the pier, where at low tide, it sits about 20 feet out of the water. The picture below was taken at somewhere around mid-tide.
The entrance to the dock is guarded by this fisherman and his catch.
