Chief Salty Strategist

Heidi Feldman

Part geek, major foodie and part farmer Heidi left tech and co-founded Down Island Farm to produce ground crops and Martha's Vineyard Sea Salt.

Heidi and Curt are passionate about living local including reviving the tradition of making sea salt on Martha’s Vineyard. She draws inspiration from her entrepreneurial father, her mom Joan, and two sisters -

and from Curtis, the the love of her life .

Under-the-Radar Mastermind

Curtis Friedman

Curt & Heidi grew up 20 minutes apart yet a world away, he on a family farm and Heidi in the 'burbs, all in CT.

Lucky for MV Sea Salt, Curt's studies evolved from art to architect and then he honed in on carpentry as his art form; Curt is a master carpenter. Can you say farm & sea salt infrastructure?

Curt is part owner of South Mountain Company, the island's sole employee-owned premier energy, design and build firm.

Curt designed and built the bespoke sea salt solar evaporator as well as the salt water collection process. His latest project is renovating the Down Island Farm homestead to include a dedicated sea salt headquarters space and co-designing a solar evaporator expansion project.

With Heidi as taster, Curtis developed MV Sea Salt’s Oak Smoked. If it weren’t for Curtis, the world would not know about the joys of MV Smoked Oak Sea Salt on peanut butter.

MV Sea Salt is a Raw Salt

“Raw” means the Atlantic Ocean from which the salt is derived is not artificially dried by being boiled nor heated to more the 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the solar drying process.

Contains Zero Yucky Stuff

MV Sea Salt is never, ever amended with anti-caking* or drying agents, bleach or fluoride. Yuck to those.

Wild Atlantic Ocean water is filtered at 50 microns to remove sand, shells, small sea creatures before being set out in large, covered ponds to dry. The resulting sea salt is packaged as Premium or blended with herbs or spices or smoked over Oak.

What Trace Minerals are in MV Sea Salt?

MV Sea Salt has been tested for trace mineral content and surprisingly, although it shouldn’t really be surprising, the results have varied depending on the season. We surmise the differences have to do with migrating sea life and the flow of the ocean. The latest findings are these.

  • Chloride 60.5 % (wb)
  • Copper ND mg/100g
  • Iron 0.6 mg/100g
  • Magnesium 2570 mg/100g
  • Phosphorous 1.5 mg/100g
  • Potassium 828 mg/100g
  • Selenium 6.9 mg/10
  • Zinc ND mg/100

Why Salt is Good For You reading

Is MV Sea Salt Organic?

To the question, “Is Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt Certified Organic?”, the answer. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) classifies sea salt as a mineral, not a food. The USDA does not author "organic" standards for minerals.

Recipe for Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt:

Start with one small farm on the beautiful little island of Martha’s Vineyard in the town of Vineyard Haven 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.
    It was love at first sight.

    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.

    In 1993, Heidi and Curtis married in Boston but celebrated with a January on the island honeymoon – yes, January – on the Vineyard.
    They found the island off-season even more beautiful.

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

    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 and affordable 9.63 acres in Vineyard Haven. Two years later, established Down Island Farm. They had dreams of growing produce, but what soil existed was atop 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 Oaks

  • 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 pests inundated the Oak trees thus putting an end to the ‘shroom dream.

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

    A light bulb went off in Heidi’s head.

    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.

    Heidi smiled.

    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.

    It takes a lot of energy, salt water, sunshine and elbow grease to produce Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt, but that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

     ~ Heidi and Curt
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