Mother Shuckers Lobster Shack

My husband and I are lobster fishermen. A few years ago there was a surge of lobsters (Called a Glut) and the market price of live lobsters plummeted into very dangerously low numbers. You can catch all the lobsters in the ocean, but if they're not worth anything (and that year, they weren't worth much) then it doesn't matter how many you catch. That brings me to us. Meet the Prestons...

Chad & Nadine (that's me!) are a married young couple who live their lives as lobster fishermen off the coast of Maine. When the economy collapsed, we almost lost our home to foreclosure. Everything we owned was being sold to save our house and what little we had left was close to being taken away. I will never forget those weeks of worry. It was one of the darkest times in our lives...

At the SAME time as our house was in jeopardy, at the same time our vehicles were being sold back to dealerships to forgive a car loan, at the same time that everything we'd worked SO HARD to earn, was being taken away, I found out I was pregnant with the LOVE of my life and our perfect marriage was now completed with a beautiful being. I had our first baby 7 weeks prematurely. She was a miracle baby. I had been put on bed rest at 16 weeks of pregnancy after being diagnosed with an incompetent cervix. After years of miscarriages, I was finally blessed by God with a successful (yet dangerous) pregnancy and little Lainey was born alive and well. A mere 3 pounds 15 ounces. Her month in the NICU seemed to add more insult to injury as we had to spend lots of money (money we didn't have, I recall selling a prized ring Chad had bought me for gas money to get up to see her. We were THAT broke) traveling back and forth to visit our newborn love while she lived in an incubator for nearly a month... this little blessing was being born into a very chaotic time in our lives. I often asked God what I'd done wrong to have EVERYTHING come tumbling down around me. I always thought I'd lived my life welcoming good karma. I am always nice, never mean, and I'd give the world the shirt off my back. Why me? What had I done so wrong to have all this darkness hit us?

Dark? You can say that. It was a horrible time in our lives. Losing it all, countless banks calling us for money we didn't have, selling all we DID have. At the same time we were working so hard to save everything, something was always going wrong. That was the year Mother Shuckers was born...

I needed to make our income stronger. Our WHOLE lives are invested in the fishing industry. I needed to make better money for our catch. I wasn't about to lose any more. On a rainy summer day, after I'd cried my LAST tear and gotten quite angry at the hand life had dealt me, I threw a sign out by the road that said "Fresh Caught Live Lobsters Sold Here DAILY, if you are looking for live lobster, stop here and directly support a fisherman's family" and the community POURED support for us. Seems my karma was good after all! I've never felt so blessed in my life!

A reporter for a local newspaper caught wind of our struggle and our story and wrote an article in the paper. IN COLOR, on the front page of the Business Section! The newspaper is popular across the country to those with a piece of their heart and homes in Maine, and the sign that started as a desperate attempt to make better money for our hard-earned catch, turned into a brand new business adventure. When people heard our success story, they boomed in here by the hundreds!

The rest is history! The happy end of our story is: We saved our home, we are rebounding every year from our debts and we are working very hard to recover from that period in our lives. It's been a long hard road but we're doing it! Every day is better. Every season we grow a little stronger! Lainey is now a VERY healthy little 4 year old girl who meets and greets every customer with her Mumma every day!

WE ARE BLESSED!

Note: many people ask where our name came from, and it MAY sound like a play-on-vulgarity, but I can assure you, it is not. I was a stay-at-home mother. My INITIAL goal was to shuck clams and seafood for sale. I was indeed going to be a "Mother Shucker" I didn't realize the hoops I'd have to jump through to be a processing plant, so I decided to change my plan to just simply selling our fresh caught lobster every day, but the name stuck and stayed and is VERY popular! To those who think it's vulgarity, my response is this: If you don't use the ALTERNATE version of my business name, than my business is merely Mother Shuckers. Am I right or am I right? ;)

A personal comment: If you ever go through hard times, if you're ever faced with constant struggle, don't give up. Find your sunshine through your rain. Persistence pays off! We are not fully recovered yet and it may take many more years yet, but we will never give up! Don't you either! Tough times don't last, tough PEOPLE do!

Please don't feel sorry for us. We got ourselves into this mess and we'll get ourselves out. If you want to support us, all you have to do is buy your fresh live lobsters here! That one visit, no matter how big or small, directly supports our family and we thank you so very much! See you in the Shack!