Smoking the old-fashioned way Monroe smokehouse business survives fire, bankruptcy to become the largest bacon producer in Maine

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To wander through the complex of buildings that make up Andrew Smith’s smokehouse businesses in the woods of Monroe is to take an adventure of the nose.

Each aroma becomes more pungent than the last. The attic of the carriage shed where fish and cheese are smoked holds a heavy, thick essence. The coolers in a new, state-of-the-art facility where dozens of pepperonis and sausages hang pour forth a spicy, sharp smell. The spice room slams the nose with allspice, garlic, anise and pepper, and as one walks by the hanging sides of bacon dripping with blackstrap molasses, the fragrance is sweet and tantalizing.

As Smith checks chilling temperatures and measures the water content of jerky, a smoky aura seems to cling to him, adding to his mystique. He laughs easily and is filled with stories. At first meeting, Smith doesn’t seem to have a care in the world, except just how good that next smoked sausage will taste.

“We are growing at about 20 percent a year. We are where we want to be,” Smith said recently.

Smith sells nine types of jerky, three dried sausage varieties, five kinds of snack sticks, one semi-dried product, smoked chicken, fish and cheeses, two kinds of ham and three types of bacon.

Smith is the largest bacon producer in Maine and the largest producer of dried meat products in New England.

“We will now just concentrate on expanding our markets,” he said, adding that he’s talking about hiring extra help. All of the work is done by Smith, two part-timers, a handyman, and Smith’s wife, Libby.

“She’s my right hand,” he said, “and the reason that I’m sane.”

But that easygoing exterior belies the history of Smith’s Log Smokehouse, which has survived two devastating fires, bankruptcy, and overcome Smith’s own beginnings as a wayward musician and vegetarian.

‘The Hard Farm’

“The biggest thing you have to know,” Smith said, sipping a hot, black coffee, “is that I didn’t know anything.”

A saxophone player who accompanied such greats as Screaming Jay Hawkins and Danny and the Juniors at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Smith was fast going nowhere.

“I would have killed myself if I had stayed there,” he said, referring to the dark, often drug-infested lifestyle of many professional musicians in the 1960s and ’70s.

So in 1971 he took a 360-degree turn, closed his sax case, bought some property in Monroe and vowed to live a life of simplicity.

“But I really didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how to change a spark plug, how water got to the faucet, how electricity came out of the socket. I wouldn’t have known a garden if I tripped over a watermelon,” he said.

He named his place “The Hard Farm” because it was. “Our attempts at farming were so out of context that the neighbors came up and watched us. We didn’t have a clue,” Smith said. That first summer, he cut wood with an ax and a two-man saw to heat his 11-room farmhouse.

“We ran out in January. Luckily, an old cider mill on the property had collapsed, and we burned that until spring.”

But he had a background in butchering. “I worked in my dad’s butcher shop when I was 9 years old,” he said.

After he received the bad news that many of the logs he had harvested with his own oxen were nearly worthless in a paper mill recession, Smith started to lose hope. “Things were weighing pretty heavily on my mind,” he said.

As he crossed his yard one day, trying to think of what to do with all his logs, the idea of a smokehouse came to him. “I think it was divine intervention, to tell you the truth. After all, I was a vegetarian,” he said.

His mom sent him the money for the chimney cement and the smokehouse arose. Business grew through word-of-mouth.

“We were very happily selling our smoked products all over the area when one day, about a year later, these two guys in suits came walking through the snow. They were state inspectors,” he recalled, giggling. “We didn’t know we needed a license.”

The business continued to grow, yet in 1993 Smith filed for bankruptcy protection. “I had 11 people working for me, not counting distributors,” he said. Smith said he was overextended and his goods were underpriced.

And then there were the fires. Two of them. One in 1989 and the second in 1996. A phoenix rising from the ashes is the logo on Smith’s delivery vehicles; it’s also depicted on a silver amulet he wears around his neck.

“That is what we did, both times. We rebuilt and began again,” he said.

TV show comes to Monroe

One of Smith’s favorite marketing stories is how the Food Network changed his life. “In 2004, the show ‘Food Finds’ came to Monroe and did our story,” he said. “That show wasn’t half over and our phone started ringing, and it didn’t stop for hours. By the morning, our Web site had crashed. We shipped hams to every state, to Hawaii and Alaska. They are still airing that show every once in a while, and we still get those phone calls.”

Today, Smith has a retail facility in the former Monroe post office at the intersection of Routes 139 and 141 where he has a drying room upstairs and a slicing and processing area at the rear. An attached carriage shed, which once served as a funeral parlor, is where all the fish and cheese are smoked. A narrow apple ladder leads to the attic, where the walls are thick and black from hours and hours of pecan shell smoke. Smith often adds very exotic woods, such as mahogany, that he obtains from his brother, who makes hand-turned bowls.

This is smoking the old-fashioned way, and it’s hard work. Three hams a total of more than 70 pounds fill a smoking cage, which must be lifted by hand through the trapdoor in the ceiling.

Across town, on the Back Brooks Road, a new facility has been built in front of two small log cabins. One was the original smokehouse store.

Things are a bit more modern in the new facility. The smoker is a big stainless steel box, controlled by computerized timing and temperature and surrounded by coolers, sterile workrooms and offices.

Smith said his one regret is his inability to buy all his meat, cheese and fish from Maine producers.

“There’s not enough beef in the whole state of Maine for my jerky,” he said. He uses only specific portions of cattle or pigs, and Maine packing houses are unable to sell him just those portions – he would have to buy the entire carcass. The seasonal growing habits of Maine farmers also work against him.

“If I need 20 turkeys in March, I cannot get them. The supply is just not consistent enough,” Smith said. He must buy his salmon from Chile, his pork bellies from Canada, and his cheese from the Midwest.

He uses minimal advertising and sells his products in a simple black-and-white package.

“I find the business easier to control now that we are smaller [since the fires],” he said. “I need every product to pull its own weight.”

Smith said it is difficult to adjust his prices to get a return for what he expends.

“We have to learn what the marketplace can bear,” he said. That’s one reason that during the summer, Smith attends farmers markets in Blue Hill, Stonington and Camden, among others.

“I find that the folks at those markets appreciate and are willing to pay for a hand-crafted product,” he said. “We don’t use any premixed recipes. We start from scratch.”

Smith said the “slow, deliberate race” of smoking suits him just fine. “Our business was born in the woods, raised in adversity and aged with fire and smoke,” he said.

“My motto is: The quality of the latest finished product cannot be superseded by the happiness of the moment.”

Smith’s products can be found at many farmers markets, at his store in Monroe or through his Web site, www.logsmokehouse.net.