FARMINGTON — Days start at 4:30 a.m. for Rockland lobsterman Steve Reynolds.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a day when he’s heading out on his boat to fish or stocking his truck to bring fresh seafood to Farmington or Skowhegan.

But he wouldn’t change it. There’s nothing better, he said Friday in between waiting on customers buying scallops, haddock and crab cakes from the back of his truck parked at Hight Chevrolet on the Wilton Road.

Fridays and Sundays find him here when he’s not fishing. During shrimp season he was here on Wednesdays, too. He parks another three days a week in Skowhegan.

Reynolds drives an hour and a half from Rockland to sell from about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and drives back home. It’s a routine he’s kept in the lobstering off-season for the past five years. Over the summer months, he can’t fish on Sundays so he comes to sell lobsters and steamers. Several lobstermen from Rockland have a similar routine, going to other towns and parking for a day of sales.

“I’m usually here by 8 a.m.,” Reynolds said. The early start gives him time to buy the product he’ll resell and he makes it home at about 6 p.m.

Stopping to wait on customers, Reynolds said he does well. There’s a lot of people not only in Farmington but from surrounding towns in Franklin County who come to Farmington to shop.

Proving his point, Camellia Berry of Phillips pulled up to see if the shrimp are fresh or frozen and leaves with haddock. She doesn’t get to stop as often as she likes but tries to come to Farmington when Reynolds is here, she said.

Reynolds used to take his truck to Houlton and Madawaska where he’d stay overnight and sell for a couple days. 

He coached American Legion Baseball and for an area high school that brought him to games at Mt. Blue High School, he said.

When his daughter started college at the University of Maine at Farmington, he came and spent more time. He began to notice how busy it seemed to be here. That was before he realized people from all over the county came here, he said.

Sundays are the busiest day as people return home from a weekend of skiing or snowmobiling. Some come from Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire stopping as they travel back down Route 2, he said.

Friends took him out on a lobster boat years ago and he was hooked.

A lobsterman for 30 years, Reynolds said the best part is “nobody tells me what to do.”

abryant@sunjournal.com