The 162nd annual Northern Maine Fair has capped off the beginning of the end of summer, in an annual agriculture fair that continues to emphasize its farming roots.
Among many other summer fairs, festivals and events around region and state, the Northern Maine Fair was expected to draw as many as 25,000 people through its nine days.
“Our desire is to create an atmosphere where people from our surrounding communities can experience agriculture, share in fun events, create memories, and start a family tradition,” said Jessica Winslow, vice president of the Northern Maine Fair Association,
Along with a large livestock display, carnival rides and many other events was an agricultural hall village representing Aroostook County businesses and a farmers’ market display from local farmers, as well as hosting daily cooking competitions.
Nearby was the agricultural heritage exhibit, with equipment, tools and artifacts of the region’s farming evolution, some going back more than a century.
One of the oldest on display was a horse-drawn grain combine from the late 1800s later converted for use by a tractor. The combine was originally from Canada, but was acquired by the late farmer Arsene LaPlante of Van Buren, who worked with a similar horse-pulled combine on his father’s farm in the 1920s and ‘30s.
Charles Currier, a retiree and former farmer from Mapleton who helps organize the exhibit, also supplies a range of equipment from his family’s farming past, including a seed potato cutter that he used when he was farming with his mom in the 1950s, a one-row digger that spanned both horse and engines and a potato harvester from the 1980s, when the Curriers stopped potato farming.
“My father farmed with horses right up until he died in 1950,” Currier said. “All he ever did with a tractor was plow, harrow the ground and plant. Everything else he did with horses.”
Along with the Curriers, Winslows and other families who’ve been active in the Northern Maine Fair and agricultural groups like 4-H, the event has also been attracting newcomers like Randy and Irene Sutton, Presque Isle residents originally from Massachusetts who help run parts of the animal display, including the baby goat petting zoo filled with some of their herd.
The Suttons raise about 40 goats for milk, butter and cheese for themselves, and brought many of them to the fair for onlookers and families to pet and observe.
“My aunt owned a goat dairy in New Hampshire and I used to go there and work during the summers since I was 12,” and the fair is now is a way for them to share their passion for goats and other farm animals, said Randy Sutton.
