PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The 163rd annual Northern Maine Fair opens this week and multiple generations of the Winslow family will be there.
“The fair has really been part of my life growing up,” said Stephanie Winslow, while knitting mittens and blankets with her grandmother Wilma to exhibit at the fair.
A University of Maine Orono sophomore studying music, Stephanie Winslow grew up in Mapleton next to her grandparents family farm, where Wilma and her husband Carl, now in their 80s, raised fresh market potatoes, dairy and beef until a fire destroyed their barn in the 1990s.
Growing up in a farm family in central Aroostook County, Stephanie joined the 4-H Club before elementary school, has a lifelong pass to the Northern Maine Fair and now volunteers with the 4-H.
“It was always fun going as a little kid and seeing the bigger kids showing their animals,” she said.
Later, as a teen, she camped out at the fair and showed her animals, including beef cattle, goats and sheep that she’s helped breed into a crossbred flock of Southdown-Romneys. She still has fond memories of playing manhunt with friends after dark.
Amanda Winslow, left, and Stephanie Winslow are ready to enter the ring at the 4-H Goat Show at the Northern Maine Fair. (Photo courtesy of Terry Sandusky)
Getting involved with the fair was a natural thing to do for Stephanie, as multiple generations of the Winslow family have had a part in the annual celebration.
“We’ve been involved in the fair ever since we were married, going on 65 years,” said Wilma Winslow, who’s worked as 4-H aide, fair leader and other roles, referring to her and husband Carl.
Wilma’s daughter Dena Winslow has seen many of those fairs, growing up on the family farm in the 1950s and ‘60s and relishing the annual tradition of the fair, which used to be held in the fall.
“It really was part of farm life. We learned how to take care of the animals and look for good animals,” Dena said. “We loved the competition and getting our animals all groomed up. But there was always great fun at night. We would hide out in the sheep pens waiting for people who were jumping the fence. Once they were through, we’d dump water on them.”
Through the years Dena has seen the Northern Maine Fair, and many other fairs. have evolved from agricultural exhibitions to celebrations of rural life and summer, blending farm heritage displays and livestock exhibits with amusement rides and junk food.
The first Northern Maine Fair in 1854 was held around the same time that families like the Winslows were setting down roots in Aroostook County. The Winslows who settled in Mapleton in the late 1850s came from central Maine by way of Massachusetts and England.
Then, as now, Aroostook County was looking for more people and the fair was partly a way to promote it.
“They were trying to get people to move to this area, and they wanted to brag a little on what a good place it was,” said Carl Winslow.
Dena, the author of several books of local history, said that there were a number of myths circulating about Aroostook County that fair promoters may have wanted to dispel. The County was not only a long way north of Maine’s most populous settlements, but also relatively young as a formal county, formed in 1839.
“There was an ‘editorial excursion,’ as they called it, that came up to the fair on the Aroostook Railroad with a bunch of different editors from papers in Maine,” Dena said. “They were trying to prove that Aroostook County was habitable. At that time, there were some stories about Aroostook County — that babies were born with hair covering their bodies and that the train had to go through snow tunnels all year round.”
The Northern Maine Fair runs from Friday, July 28 to Saturday Aug. 5. For more information visit, http://www.northernmainefairgrounds.com/
