MEET OUR FARMERS

DR. WAYNE MILLER

After 28 years as a nationally recognized expert in pre-natal diagnosis, Dr. Wayne Miller now runs Blue Stream Hatchery, one of the Cape's few finfish farms. What went into this decision? It involved both the complications of practicing medicine today and the elemental lure of trout.

A fly-fisherman since his teens, Wayne got really into the sport while in medical school at Columbia. He went up to the Catskills and learned from the experts who were fishing and tying flies there, like Harry Darbee and Walt Dette. During his career he would take fishing vacations in Alaska, Montana and Colorado.

A native Chicagoan, after attending the University of Michigan and medical school, he had decided to go into genetics research. However his internship at Presbyterian Hospital in New York introduced him to the clinical side of the field, and he found he preferred working with patients. By the time he retired at age 52, his Lexington, MA practice was the largest on the East Coast.

But by the end of the '90's, he felt medicine was too much about paperwork, logistics, and insurance company decision-making. "My patients were already under tremendous stress worrying about the health of their baby, and now they also had to worry about whether they could get the needed referral so insurance would pay for testing. With ultrasound, amniocentesis, lab work, and counseling, the office procedure was $900 (at Brigham it would be $2,000). If we saw anyone without a referral, we just wouldn't get paid. Practicing medicine almost left a bad taste in your mouth."

Still, he has kept his license, and hasn't ruled out going back in some capacity some day. Currently, he volunteers by heading the Genetics Task Force for the state's Department of Public Health and chairing Barnstable County's Board of Health.
While still in practice, Wayne saw his current property in "Yankee Magazine" in 1988 and bought it two years later. "I loved the house, and figured I'd also have my own trout pond to fish from," he says. An acquaintance, familiar with the fin fish business, got the farm up and running. Initially, Wayne just came down from his home in Concord on weekends, getting help during the week from a succession of Barnstable firefighters, whom he met through a Cape patient's husband.
Now, he runs the nine acre property full-time, has a 21' foot fishing boat, a 10-pot lobster license, a 3000 square foot greenhouse, and a nearly four acre flower and vegetable garden.

He raises brook, brown and rainbow trout, largely for fishing derbies and pond-stocking, rather than for retail consumption. "In terms of raising trout to eat, we just can't compete with Idaho," he explains. "They provide 24 million trout in a year -- I grow maybe 8-10,000. Their cost is 60 cents a pound, mine is $2."

The farm is environmentally friendly, he explains, with the water coming out of it as clean as the water coming in."Trout are very persnickety about the clarity of the water. In fact, we work with environmental testing agencies, because trout are like the 'canary in the coal mine' in terms of water quality. There's very little solid waste and there are traps for the excrement. "There's daily work in feeding the fish and cleaning the screens," he says. "You have to always check the screens carefully, too, because otters can work on one little corner and get in."

It takes three years for a trout to go from fry to fingerling to adult. He says that his medical training has helped here, because he knows how to do things scientifically and can evaluate the fish's health. And he continues to work every day with his wife, Barbara, who was the genetic counselor in his practice. "We're used to being together 24/7," Wayne says. One thing the Millers love is to cook their own fresh caught trout and eat it with fresh grown vegetables. "We switch off being chef and sous-chef."

Although he admits he sometimes misses his medical practice, in looking at his move to fish farmer, Wayne says: "I've gone from being hermetically-sealed in an office building to being outside 365 days a year. That's the biggest bonus."