UNITY, Maine — Cooking over fire. Building a yurt. Rooftop beekeeping.
The Common Ground Country Fair, held Sept. 25-27, is much more than a celebration of all things organic. Run by Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, the fair, which attracts 60,000 people to Unity every autumn, transports a distracted society back to earth.
Homesteading skills employed by European settlers in the 17th century and practiced today by urban and so-called rurbanistas are front and center. These folk arts, many considered traditional Maine skills such as blacksmithing, go hand in hand with farming and are honored all weekend.
“There is no such thing as the rugged individual,” Anu Dudley, the fair’s folk arts coordinator, said. “We have to depend on the community and help one another.”
To demonstrate that bond, experts with an array of primitive skills share all weekend. Demonstrations, such as the traditional underground simmer of bean hole beans, are emblematic of the fair, which began in 1977.
The downhome delicacy, derived from “lumber camps in the winter, where you had to feed lots of extremely hungry lumberjacks,” said Dudley, is an early slow food.
“You use the ground for the oven. A bean hole is dug 3 or 4 feet deep and is lined with stones.” Next a fire is built, and a pot of parboiled beans are buried alive. They cook for 24 hours, and “you get a fantastic pot of beans.” Three times during the fair the public will have the opportunity to try pork or vegetable beans culled piping hot from the earth.
“It’s a great place to learn,” Michael Douglas, director of adult programs at Maine Primitive Skills School and central to the fair’s folk art offerings, said. “Every time I go, it’s like … the first time I went.”
Amid the 700 talks and demos, education abounds.
Douglas will be leading medicinal walks on the fairgrounds to empower people to heal themselves through nature.
“On the plant walks we see trees and shrubs used through the seasons for food and medicine,” Douglas said.
The walks help people better understand their backyards, which vegetation attracts deer and mosquitos and how what you plant impacts the environment.
He will teach people to make hunting bows out of trees as well as tracking and awareness skills. Throughout these workshops and presentations, Douglas seeks to inspire a “caretaker attitude,” fostering a “symbiotic relationship with the landscape.”
Hunter-gatherer and nomadic skills have been honed throughout humanity. At the fair, they collide with the modern world.
“There is nothing better for self-reliance than to be able to look at what is already growing and know what it can be used for and when it can be harvested,” Douglas said.
In the same vein, yurt maker Ken Gagnon of New Hampshire will raise a yurt and share tips on creating your own mobile dwelling. Gagnon, a homesteader who lived in a yurt for years, considers these rustic retreats the ultimate DIY project.
The round tents with a lattice wall held by cables were designed by Mongolians for a different climate and different way of life. Yet they can handle New England winters.
Building one is not as complicated as one thinks.
“I’m trying to convince people that yurts are something they can totally do.”
Making one is conducive to “small, unskilled hands,” Gagnon said, and is “rewarding and meaningful.
“My hope is to go to the fair and put myself out of business,” he said. “I would like people to make their own yurts.”
Amid the 700 talks and demos, education abounds.
“There is something here for everyone,” fair director April Boucher said. “Some are here for Maine crafts, some for food. They plan their year well in advance.”
Amid the flurry of activity, homesteading skills are increasingly more sought after. That makes sense to Dudley, a homesteader who lives off the grid. The second wave of back-to-the-landers — children of baby boomers who moved to Maine in the ’60s and ’70s — are of age and picking up where their parents left off.
“If we don’t have these skills, how do we take care of ourselves?” said Dudley, who considers folk arts “all of those skills that people relied and depending on to make life more comfortable and fun.”
Making furniture and clothing and preserving food are crucial — but so is letting loose. Enter folk music, clogging and contra dancing, happening all weekend.
“Back then, people had to make their own fun. There were roaming musicians, who made their own entertainment,” Dudley said.
Although today’s digital entertainment is less tactile and more atomizing, learning from the past suddenly sounds refreshingly new.
“Folk arts is the foundation of a sustainable lifestyle,” Dudley said. “It provides spiritual and emotional support.”
And it provides connection, be it over a perfect pumpkin, rambunctious rooster or a kicking folk ditty spread out on 50 acres.
“In today’s world we’ve become so disconnected,” Boucher said. “People find many ways to connect here over conversation. People chime in at livestock exhibitions and give back knowledge.”
The message in the fair’s 39 years has not change: “We are all in this together,” she said. “There is a sense of belonging. People come through the gates, and we are so happy because they are part of our future.”
The Common Ground Country Fair takes place Friday, Sept. 25, through Sunday, Sept. 27. Gates open at 9 a.m. each day. Vendors are open until 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $10 for adults in advance and $15 at the door. For more information, visit mofga.org.
