On the Road Again to Maine

I have escaped Florida's heat to celebrate the 4th of July in Yankee country.  It is nice to be back in Maine.  I love this very foreign land.  I love the people and its traditions.  I like the way  that old co-exists with new.  I like how everything has a patina of age and value. Very little is wasted here.  People are short with words but long on friendship and its meaning.  Enjoy some images of the 4th of July Parade in Freeport.  I have come again to join friends at their farm and share in some of this great country.  There were no marching bands or uniformed ensembles, but there were lots of kids and old-timers and everyone in between with dogs, tractors and other animals enjoying the music of the day.

This is LL Bean country.  This vehicle is symbolic of the shoe that made the company and is so vital to surviving the wet seasons around here.

Of course a trip to Maine is a trip to lobster paradise.  Day's is a purveyor or lobsters and all the other seafood that makes this region a bacchanalian experience.  With lobster prices down to $4.69 a pound people and a bumper crop of lobsters you wonder about  the days when servants refused to eat lobster more than three times a week.  In case this sounds weird think of lowly servants were forced to eat lobster three times a week because it was so cheap and plentiful.  There was a revolt and laws were written to stop the abuse.

Besides lobster there are mountains of crab and clams which share in popularity to lobsters and have several festivals dedicated to them.  Yarmouth's Clam festival is celebrated July 19-21 this year.  If you are wondering what to do, consider that Rockland has its Lobster Festival July 31 - August 4.  You might just find a reason to visit.

Clam buckets awaiting customers

This is the land of organic before it became fashionable.  People put in their order for milk, eggs or pigs from their neighbor farmers and a lot of these transactions take place  using the honor system.  You go and pick up your jug of raw milk that is on the schedule for pick up on any given day and you leave the money in a box if no one is there to take care of you.  I grew up in cities where people don't have this sense of trust and I feel amazed how wonderful it is to have this alternate way of dealing with people.  

People up here know that in spite of the wonderful warm and sunny summer weather we are having now will soon pass and it will be time to survive another winter.  So there is always the planning for the next season and these woodpiles attest to the truth that winter is long and right around the corner.

But for now, the grass is long, the farms are splendid and Dalmatians from Florida can run down a farm road chasing frogs that strayed a little far from the Walden Pond.  Happy Gardening.