Annemarie Ahearn founded Salt Water Farm in 2009, a cooking school for home cooks on Maine’s Penobscot Bay. She began her studies at Colorado College, during which time her interest in food developed while living in Aix-en-Provence, where she studied Provincial cuisine and visited the open-air markets. Later, she apprenticed in the kitchen at Le Jardin Notre Dame in Paris. While in New York, Annemarie worked in the editorial department at Saveur Magazine and wrote a biweekly food column for The L Magazine, entitled the “Downtown Chef.” After attending the Institute of Culinary Education with a degree in both Culinary Arts and Culinary Management she worked for Dan Barber at Blue Hill Restaurant, as personal assistant to Tom Colicchio of Craft Restaurants, and as a personal chef in New York. She also worked at the Slow Food Headquarters and before opening Salt Water Farm, she taught classes at Cook and Taste, a small, recreational cooking school in Barcelona. Ahearn was also named “40 Big Food Thinkers 40 and Under” in Food & Wine, “changing the way America eats.”

In 2013, Ahearn opened Salt Water Farm Cafe & Market in Rockport Harbor, Maine, offering locally sourced fare for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and garnered acclaim in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe as well as Bon Appetit, Downeast Magazine, and Maine Magazine. Ahearn is also a contributing writer for Downeast Magazine, sharing recipes from her school and regularly teaching high school students in her community cooking skills through a program she calls “Back to Basics.”