Whips of wind and waves of salt water run circles around islands all along the coast of Nova Scotia, as if casting rings of protection around their inhabitants or invoking a little magic with the tides. Onya Hogan-Finlay and Kim Kelly draw on this salty magic as they build their small-scale solar evaporation saltworks in the LaHave Islands.

Hogan-Finlay and Kelly are no strangers to magic, but salt harvesting was not on their radar when they set course for eastern shores. Moving from Los Angeles back to the East Coast was based on a gut feeling. Hogan-Finlay had grown up spending summers with family along the Miramichi in New Brunswick and Kelly was born in Massachusetts. Despite their eastern roots, choosing to build a life here meant taking a giant leap.

Hogan-Finlay and Kelly had been living and working in Los Angeles. Their paths first crossed years before their L.A. story was written. As a Concordia University grad, Hogan-Finlay was one of the founding members and curators of projet Mobilivre-Bookmobile project. The Bookmobile project was a mobile exhibit that disseminated art publications across Canada and the United States in a vintage airstream trailer. The Bookmobile stopped at schools, colleges, festivals and galleries to give students and community members the opportunity to explore artists’ publications and zines. Despite never having met in person, it just so happened Kelly’s zine was featured in the Bookmobile’s collection that Hogan-Finlay helped curate. Their paths crossed again in California when the two artists met at a show and fell in love. 

As an interdisciplinary artist, the vibrant arts community of L.A. provided Hogan-Finlay the opportunity to work as a teaching artist, facilitating hands-on learning with students of all ages in community arts settings and at UCLA. For Kelly, California was a place to balance her academic training in Landscape Horticulture at Oakland’s Merritt College with her creative background and passion for wild food foraging. She owned and operated Woodward Gardens – a landscape design company that specialized in native Californian plants and drought-tolerant lawn conversion. They were both part of expansive creative and urban queer communities, but they found themselves in search of a place where they could work with the natural world more directly. They had a vision of themselves as farmers and found themselves looking eastward. Finding land would not be enough, they wanted community as well. “We flew out for an informal research trip in 2018 to check out some towns in Atlantic Canada,” explains Hogan-Finlay, “On that trip we made a point to connect with folks in the queer community and artists, too. We were both drawn to Nova Scotia and landed in Halifax in 2019.”

They rented an apartment in the city and continued their search for their new home. When a sweet house near the water in Lunenburg County became available they couldn’t pass it up. This perfect house sat on a rock with plenty of sun exposure, tons of wind and the salty ocean just metres away, but it would take further research to determine how to thrive in this setting.

“When we first arrived in the province, salt-making was not on the list,” Kelly explains, “We knew we wanted to support ourselves in a way that harmonized with nature rather than harm it.” 

“It was clear that farming veggies on an acre of rock was not in the cards for us and that we would need to work with the landscape,” Hogan-Finlay adds, “so Kim did some research and started experimenting with the salt water that surrounds. One day we filled a cauldron with sea water, boiled it down and marveled at the delicate salt crystals that formed.” 

They soon set out on a path to be sea salt farmers with the goal of building a small carbon footprint production facility.

Around the world, and for millennia, humans have sustainably harvested salt from the sea – to season their food, trade as currency, cast for protection and mark special occasions. On the West Coast of Scotland, the Blackthorn Scottish Sea Salt company draws seawater up into tall towers. From there, the seawater slowly trickles down through piles of thorns while the wind helps evaporate the water, leaving a salty brine. The Kona Sea Salt company in Hawaii pumps deep sea water into the long tunnels of its enclosed solar evaporation system, using the sun to dry its salt all year long. On the West Coast’s Salt Spring Island, the Salt Spring Sea Salt company focuses on fleur de sel – the pyramid-shaped crystals that rise to the top during evaporation – recreating the conditions for these crystals and producing a fleur de sel that rivals the best in France. Here on the East Coast, there are several sea salt farmers who use sustainable methods, some of whom rely largely on solar evaporation.

In the Spring of 2021, Kelly and Hogan-Finlay launched their saltworks in their backyard, where they are prototyping sustainable solar evaporation techniques. OK Sea Salt’s small-scale production process relies on the sun, the sea, the moon, and the wind – as well as the hard work, creative vision and enthusiasm the couple put into its new company.

“We only collect water during high tide, at the full moon,” Kelly explains, “when there is the greatest water exchange. This kind of imparts a mystical quality. We really tune in to the moon and tides here.” At the full moon, the pair collects buckets of salt water to fill pans in solar ovens. These solar ovens are similar to the cold-frames used by gardeners. OK Sea Salt’s solar ovens serve a similar purpose – housing trays of salt water in frames of concentrated sunshine. In these ovens, evaporation typically takes four weeks. In the colder months, evaporation is slow and the water sometimes freezes. Hogan-Finlay suggests that this freezing can be helpful, “sort of like when maple sap runs and then freezes – through the process of brine rejection, the pure water freezes on the top and the saltier water settles at the bottom of the bucket.” 

“Freezing salt water can help make up for the faster evaporation that you get in the warmer summer months,” Kelly adds, “and it’s a fun way to be outside in the winter.”

To impart a range of flavours to their salts, they add foraged plants such as lovage, spruce tips and wild cranberry in salt blends and place sweet fern leaves within the cold frames to naturally deter pests from the salt pans. Once they’ve harvested the culinary grade salt from their solar oven pans, Hogan-Finlay and Kelly collect the crystallized bittern – a byproduct of the process. This bittern solution is higher in magnesium and not a recommended finishing salt. Hogan-Finlay and Kelly then infuse the crystallized bittern with wild roses and bayberry leaf, along with magical properties, to create their limited edition Ritual Salt, which has become a favourite for many of their customers and one that Kelly and Hogan-Finlay use in their own witchy practice. This kind of creativity and product innovation get these two salt farmers excited about the possibilities of sustainable sea salt production.

For Kelly and Hogan-Finlay, sustainability is not simply about living in balance with their environment, it is about community. They are members of the nearby LaHave Islands Marine Museum and speak with gratitude about their neighbours –their friend down the road who cooks for all the seniors on the island, the queer couple that does sea salt recipe-testing for them, the fisherman who flies a rainbow flag, seemingly in solidarity, the rural artists, farmers and other sea salt harvesters in the region and the purveyors of goods along the South Shore, including Ploughman’s Lunch and The Seaberry, that are just as strong on social advocacy as they are on providing quality goods. These two shops are among many in the region that now carry OK Sea Salt and they say their customers are thrilled to have a locally produced sea sea salt option. OK Sea Salt can also be found in shops as far away as California as people seek more sustainable alternatives made in North America. In return, Hogan-Finlay and Kelly give back to their community as creators, entrepreneurs and empowered, inspired role models for other queer creatives, small business owners and farmers all along the East Coast – and everywhere for that matter. 🌊

Sea Salt Tasting in the Sun

Sitting on Hogan-Finlay and Kelly's deck in the bright sun, with the shore just metres away, you can’t help but feel as if you are in the middle of the ocean. And you are, just about. Their saltworks sits about one third of the way down the South Shore coast of Nova Scotia from Halifax. It’s tethered to a tombolo (a sandy isthmus of beach), along the way to other tiny islands that go by names such as Bell and Rabbit, The Squam and Hirtle. A paddle from their shore and out through Wolfe Gut will take you to Tumblin Island and Wolfe Island to spots on Cape LaHave Island where you can pull up your kayak and stop for a picnic.

It was on a bright sunny day that Kelly and Hogan-Finlay surprised us with their inaugural OK Sea Salt salt tasting. We sat around a table as bird song mingled with the ocean breeze, the swoop of a hawk from above and the sound of fishers on the dock. We sipped local brew, as they grilled homegrown peppers, sliced watermelon, apples and tomatoes, and perfect hard-boiled eggs. We chose from natural, lovage and spruce tip sea salt varieties, sprinkling one after the other on those peppers and watermelon, tomatoes and eggs. We dipped apple in honey and sprinkled salt again.

There really is nothing on earth that compares with the simple beauty of hand-harvested sea salt, cured with wild lovage, sprinkled on a slice of watermelon, or tomato or an apple dipped in honey. 

Hogan-Finlay describes sea salt as “the distilled essence of a place," and it truly is. 🍉

www.okseasalt.com