Chief Salty Strategist

Heidi Feldman.

Here’s a fresh, whimsical, salty 2025-ready version—light on its feet but still grounded in your story:

Part geek, full-time foodie, and part farmer-at-heart, Heidi traded in her tech career for dirt under her nails and salt on her lips. She co-founded Down Island Farm to grow gorgeous ground crops and to help revive one of the Island’s oldest traditions: crafting Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt, crystal by crystal.

Heidi and Curt share a fierce love for all things local — from the food on their plates to the solar-powered magic that turns Vineyard seawater into those briny, beautiful flakes.

Her entrepreneurial spark comes from a mighty lineage: a big-thinking dad, her mom Joan’s steady wisdom, and two powerhouse sisters — Sharon Rowe of ECOBAGS™ and Ellen Ornato of The Bolder Company™. And, of course, Curtis: builder of dreams, shaper of salt, and the love of her life.

If you'd like, I can make it more humorous, more poetic, or more concise.

Under-the-Radar Mastermind

Curtis Friedman

Curt and Heidi grew up just 20 minutes apart in CT — he on a family farm, she in the suburbs — yet worlds away in experience. Lucky for MV Sea Salt, those worlds eventually collided.

Curt’s path moved from art to architecture before he found his true medium: carpentry. Today he’s a master carpenter and co-owner of South Mountain Company, the Island’s premier employee-owned design/build and energy firm. His craftsmanship is the backbone of MV Sea Salt’s infrastructure — he designed and built the bespoke solar evaporator, engineered the saltwater collection system, and now leads the renovation of the Down Island Farm homestead to include a dedicated sea-salt headquarters. He’s also co-designing the next-generation evaporator expansion for climate-resilient production.

And yes — he’s also the culinary mind behind MV Sea Salt’s Oak Smoked blend. With Heidi as chief taster, Curt perfected the flavor that made peanut butter + smoked sea salt a thing people now rave about.

Simply put: without Curt, MV Sea Salt wouldn’t just look different — it wouldn’t taste the same.

Recipe for Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt:

Start with one small farm on the beautiful little island of Martha’s Vineyard then combine:

  • one tech consultant-turned-entrepreneurial farmer
  • one master carpenter raised on a farm and with a vision
    a whole lot of devotion to local, renewable resource, fresh food produced sustainably
  • proximity to the wild Atlantic Ocean
  • trace minerals
  • a fateful binge on a bag of Cape Cod® Sea Salt & Vinegar Potato chips =

the authentic taste of Martha’s Vineyard wherever you are in the world. 

Our Story

  • Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt is husband and wife team Heidi and Curtis. The couple first discovered Martha’s Vineyard, a 87.4 square-mile island off the coast of Cape Cod, through the eyes of 10 friends and then joined those friends on a vacation in Oak Bluffs the summer of 1990.

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    >> It was love at first sight. <<

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    For the next 10 years, Heidi and Curt returned with those same 10 friends in July, spending lazy vacation days beaching, clamming, cooking outrageously good food, and seeking out all that the abundant natural surroundings had to offer. Curtis had a motorcycle back then so they ventured out to the Island’s every nook and cranny.

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    In 1993, Heidi and Curtis married in Boston but celebrated with a January on the island honeymoon – yes, January – on the Vineyard.

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    >> They found the island off-season even more beautiful. <<

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    The following year, they came back to celebrate Valentine’s Day. They just could not get enough of this place.

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    In 2001, Heidi and Curtis threw caution (mostly their family and friends thought they were nuts) to the wind and moved to the Vineyard. Somehow they found an affordable 9.63 acres in Tisbury.

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    Two years later, they established Down Island Farm with dreams of growing produce, but what soil existed was all clay. That’s when they heard from other farmers why they passed on the same land. “Oh, well” they thought, “there’s got to be something we can farm from this property.” After a bunch of research, they got creative, producing edible flowers and later Shiitake mushrooms in the abundant Oak trees.

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    >> Yes, edible flowers & mushrooms. <<

  • Farming is tough work, though, and edible flowers and Shiitake can only pay so many bills. Curtis and Heidi continued on with their day jobs but dedicated significant energy to cultivating a farming existence. Just when the Shiitake mushrooms were selling well their Oak forest was inundated with three separate moth larvae invasions that devastated the tree population thus putting an end to the ‘shroom dream.

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    Undaunted, Curt and Heidi dreamed and schemed about ways that they could farm full-time – grow hops for local beer? Sugar beets or potatoes for local vodka? Each crop seemed cool but unsustainable.

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    One day, in between tech clients, Heidi sat in her car hoover-ing (her own words) a bag of Cape Cod Sea ® Salt & Vinegar potato chips for lunch.

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    >> A light bulb went off in Heidi’s head. <<

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    She turned the bag over and looked at the ingredient list. Rather than local sea salt, all that was listed was a generic “sea salt”. Heidi ran into Alley’s General Store and checked for other locally harvested sea salt on the shelf but found none.

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    >> Heidi smiled. <<

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    That night, Heidi & Curtis began a new adventure involving, science, physics, all kinds of business-y things and, yes doubt and doubters. It took three years but MV Sea Salt became a reality in 2013.

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    It takes a lot of sustainable solar energy, salt water, sunshine and elbow grease to produce Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt.

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    >>Taste is memory. <<

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    Heidi & Curt are proud to offer a deliciously briny, earth and sea friendly memory evoking experience of Martha's Vineyard.
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