Tag: Maine
Wealth and fine housing along Midcoast Maine
So much of what you see driving along is picture-perfect New England, reminding me of Cape Cod, if you’ve ever been there. Or maybe looked at a coffee-table photography book or colorful regional wall calendar.
As admirable as I find it, the landscape also stirs up a tinge of depression when I consider all the wealth this represents along the Seacoast well up into Maine these days. No home in neighboring Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for example sells for under a million, no matter how modest. And then there’s all the new construction, too. Even a half-million for a new condo in what looks to me more like fancy tenements. What a leap from the $13,000 waterfront home one friend bought there 35 years ago!
Moreover, as I think about all of the poverty and decay in much of Maine up my own way, I’m stuck wondering:
Who can afford this?
Just what’s their secret to living?
The Pine Tree State was a shipbuilding mecca
You wouldn’t believe how many incredible seagoing vessels were built in the Pine Tree State. Maybe it’s because we have thousands of miles of coastline and tons of trees.
Just consider:
- The first ship built in Maine was at the failing Popham colony in the winter of 1607-1608. Where did they even get the sails? Yet the pinnace, the Virginia of Sagadhoc, was not only the first ocean-going ship built by English in the New World, but it returned to Jamestown the following year.
- In colonial days, the tallest, straightest trees were set aside as King’s Pines, reserved for the masts of the Royal Navy. Conflicts with the French kept many of them from being harvested before the American Revolution.
- From the 1830s to 1890s, Maine built more ships than any other state. More than 20,000 ships were launched from Maine shores, many from impromptu shipyards built along tidal rivers.
- Bath, with more than 22 shipyards at one time, was arguably the center of action. The town isn’t far from the former Popham colony, where the first ship had been built.
- During the Civil War, Confederate cruisers captured more than 100 Maine-built or Maine-owned vessels. Coastal forts built during the war included Gorges at Portland, Popham at Phippsburg, and Knox near Bucksport.
- In 1862 the screw sloop-of-war U.S.S. Kearsarge built at Kittery sank the C.S.S. Alabama in a crucial naval battle.
- Maine accounted for 70 percent of the ships, barks, and barkentines built in the U.S. between 1870 and 1899. On the East Coast it also could claim to have built half of the three-mast schooners, 71 percent of the four-mast schooners, 95 percent of the five-mast schooners, and 90 percent of the six-mast schooners. I’m guessing a lot of those tall, straight pines could still be found.
- At one time, tiny Shackford Cove here in Eastport had four boatyards. And nearby Pembroke was also prolific.
- The shift to steel vessels largely decimated the yards building wooden ships, which capitalized on the state’s deep forests. Unlike most of the state, the shipyards at Bath, Kittery, South Portland, Woolwich, and East Boothbay successfully converted to metal at the end of the 1800s.
- Today the state has an estimated 200 boatbuilding firms, most of the small and working with composites like fiberglass, laminated wood, and resin-based composites.
Looking for direction?
Could be political, too, or even aspirational.
It’s not all about food or forestry, either
As long as we’re at the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, let me mention a few presentations today that go beyond the solid fare of food, forestry, livestock, fleece and fiber.
For instance, a home funeral demo is followed by discussions on green cemeteries and community death care teams for those interested in alternatives to costly funeral traditions. There’s also a blacksmithing demo and a hands-on assembly of a ¼ scale timber barn. Chicken first aid could be amusing, as could the basic of breeding your own pigs.
Of special interest to me are the two contradances, a traditional shape-note sing (hope I remembered to pack my Sacred Harp hymnal) alas at the same time as an Indigenous storytelling session, and three Maine legends appearing together: folksinger Noel Paul Stookey, comedian Tim Sample, and guitarist David Mallett.
I’ve sung in the choir behind Stookey twice and can say he’s an amazing person and musician.
Here’s a taste of what’s on tap
Many of the presentations at the annual Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, focus on healthy garden and kitchen practices.
Today’s workshops and discussions include seed saving for the home gardener, my love affair with garlic, stories of climbing fruit trees, weird and whacky wire weeders you can make, beekeeping, honey harvesting and winter preparation, cider apple tasting, growing curcubits, unusual edible plants in the landscape, three-season gardening, year-round vegetable production, building and maintaining healthy soil, green manures, heritage tomatoes, and running a “from scratch” kitchen. There’s also canning, cooking your way to health with mushrooms, health and healing with products from the hive, medicinal uses of tannins, a panel answering your questions about herbs, a solar cooking demonstration, a children’s apple pie contest, and judging of baked goods and dairy and cheese entries. Remember, that’s just one day out of the three and there are plenty of other things happening at the same time.
Among the specialties being offered by the 43 food vendors you’ll find maple fried dough, Zylabi fried dough, sausage and chicken gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, chai tea, traditional empanadas, Maine fish tacos, hummus and falafel pita sandwiches, spiced beef and lamb bowls, bialys, sourdough bruschetta, tofu fries, seaweed salad, sambusas, oysters on the half shell, eggplant and hummus sandwiches, pad Thai, Asian rice bowls, festival sweet dumplings, lamb shawarma, elote (street corn), switchel, fried shitake mushrooms, chicken tikka, aloo palak, chicken and lamb flatbreads, vegan egg rolls, and wild blueberry crisp. Maybe there’s only one way to find out what some of those are.
The lamb and oysters definitely have my attention.
For more conventional tastes, there are Italian sausages, burgers, smoothies, French fries, lemonade, cheesecake, thin crust pizza, soft pretzels, Belgian waffles, popsicles, and coffee and tea.
If that’s not enough, tomorrow includes growing rice in Maine(!) and yesterday had a future of psilocybin in Maine (21+ must have ID).
I think it’s a good example of ways America’s cuisine has expanded in the past 50 years. Back in my youth, mushrooms were an exotic item that came out of cans.
How about you?
At the Common Ground Country Fair
We’re off to a most uncommon country fair
There’s no Ferris wheel, no cotton candy, no neon lighting, no celebrity performers – for years there wasn’t even coffee, until fair-trade organic became an option – but the three-day event still draws roughly 60,000 folks to a two-lane road toward its grounds in the rolling farmland of central Maine.
For the first dozen years I lived in New Hampshire, I heard about the most recent gathering and spotted its current T-shirts at contradances and farm markets afterward, but my work schedule didn’t fit attending.
And then, newly remarried, I took some precious vacation time that gave me a first-hand experience – including the now legendary traffic jam that rivaled any big city. Once there, we encountered a number of people we already knew, even though we lived three hours away.
Another dozen years passed before we returned, from the other direction, and this year’s an encore.
It’s the Common Ground Fair, a three-day weekend affair held a few weeks after Labor Day – more or less an equinox celebration held by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, or MOFGA, the nation’s oldest and largest statewide organic organization in America.
It’s like a Whole Earth Catalog come to life. Of, if you’ve ever wondered where the hippies went, a good place to see places the movement has evolved and continues in practical ways.
Not all of it’s back-to-the-earth, either. Sustainable living, local economies, and spirituality augment the emphasis on organic agriculture and food use. There’s even a workshop on organizing a labor union.
Here’s hoping for some prime fall weather.
I’ll be missing the ship commissioning in town
It’s a big deal, I’m told, and will bring a flock of bigwigs to our tiny but fair city. We got a taste of U.S. Navy presence over July 4th, but this is more uppity.
A state-of-the-art trimaran hulled stealth vessel of war, the USS Augusta (LCS-34), will ceremonially go into service. I guess it’s like a grand opening celebration.
Since the independence-class littoral combat ship is named for the city in Maine, the second vessel to carry that distinction, the Navy wanted to uphold a tradition of performing the ritual within the state being honored.
The event’s not to be confused with the christening, which happened with a shattering champagne bottle across the bow or some equivalent in December last year in Mobile, Alabama. Nor is it to be confused with the launching, May 23 last year.
So instead of witnessing the infusion of three thousand guests to Eastport for the day, I’ll be out on the waters of Penobscot Bay, two-plus hours to our west, sailing and sleeping in the oldest active two-masted schooner. Definitely more my speed.
Given the two first-time experiences before me, I think I’ve made the right choice, not that the other was an option at the time I made my reservation.
Isn’t that so emblematic of life?
Autumn burst
