Harold "Ike" Hubbard

Ike Hubbard died in his sleep at his home in Jonesport on 3 October 2026. He was 84. According to Debbie Salisbury, his health had declined following several falls. His death was reported by the Machias Valley News Observer, the Bangor Daily News and WABI. His funeral was scheduled for 9 a.m. on Saturday 7 November 2026 at Bayview Cemetery on Mason Bay Road, followed by a celebration of life at the American Legion post in Machias.

Harold Hubbard, known to everyone as Ike, was born in 1942 and spent his early childhood in Jonesport, a fishing and blueberry town in Washington County, Maine. In those years the wild blueberry crop was still raked entirely by hand into wooden containers. When he was a teenager his family moved to southern Maine. He later served in the Army and trained and worked as an industrial and manufacturing engineer.

Growers in his hometown of Jonesport asked Hubbard to design a blueberry rake that would not break. He made his first prototype in 1987, and in 1990 he moved back from southern Maine to the historic family homestead on Mason Bay Road and opened his rake shop next to the old family home. His lighter, wider-panned, two-handled design was dubbed the "Cadillac of rakes" by the rakers who tested it, and it cut damage to berries sold fresh. Skilled workers using his rakes could harvest berries so gently that they kept their whitish bloom.

Hubbard Rake Company became the supplier of choice for hand rakers in Washington County, even as mechanical harvesters took over much of the crop from the 1980s. Hand rakes kept their place in small fields, on rough ground and for the fresh market, and Hubbard kept inventing with input from rakers, eventually offering rakes from 12-tooth miniatures to 35-foot spans. The company also made rakes for cranberries, huckleberries, highbush blueberries, elderberries and herbs, and tooth-based garden tools such as broadforks and weeding claws for Johnny's Selected Seeds, which described the tools he helped develop as part of a small scale farming revolution. One late creation was a specialty rake used by researchers to collect lizards.

He deliberately stayed away from mechanical harvesting. "They came up to me and asked me if I could make a better rake for them, and I didn't say no," he told WABI in 2026, adding that he never wanted to make anything that put someone out of a job.

On 29 June 2026 a fire of unknown cause destroyed his wooden workshop and two vehicles. He had been unable to insure the building because he welded inside it. Losses included about $80,000 of machinery, some of it built by Hubbard himself, and about $8,000 in finished orders. He vowed to rebuild, and at the time of his death a new foundation had been poured and a local builder was leading construction of a new shop. He was also working on a hand-pushed flame weeder made from a repurposed grill and a walk-behind rake on wheels.

Hubbard lived and worked at the family homestead on Mason Bay Road in Jonesport. Debbie Salisbury, who worked with him for decades and handled his office work, described him as a veteran, a brilliant craftsman, an inventor and a welder, with a true Maine work ethic and a wicked sharp sense of humour. In his final year he was in and out of hospital, but he kept returning to the shop. "That's my life," he said after the fire.

For almost four decades Hubbard's rakes harvested a large share of Maine's hand raked wild blueberry crop and found users across the country. Debbie Salisbury and her husband, Ken, had been training to take over Hubbard Rake Company, and he wanted them to continue it, though its future depended on the probate of his estate. "For 40 years, the rakes and farm tools he created have served Maine farmers. We hope that tradition continues," the fundraiser update announcing his death said.