In 1978, Cynthia Thayer heard “wonderful” stories about an “amazing” fair a friend had attended in Litchfield.
It sounded appealing to Thayer, a back-to-the-lander growing vegetables with horse power at Darthia Farm in Gouldsboro with her husband, Bill. So they packed up ponies and spinning wheels and headed to the second Common Ground Country Fair, where they taught others their skills and camped out with friends in an old, musty army tent.
Decades later, Thayer will return again to the fair like she has every year since, this time for the 50th annual event.
“It was really a time where you would see friends that you hadn’t seen since the last year,” she said. “People trying to do what we were doing, trying to make it as homesteaders.”
The fair, which began as a harvest festival and fundraiser for numerous organizations, could have lost momentum over the years and come to a halt as other community-planned events in Maine have done, such as the American Folk Festival in Bangor and the Acadia Night Sky Festival on MDI. But this one has steadily grown into arguably the landmark event of Maine’s evolving local food movements and a major fundraiser for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, routinely bringing in about a quarter of a million dollars in revenue, the organization said in 2023.
Longtime participants and organizers attribute its success to a focus on education, community and bottom-up planning that’s responsive to change, combined with enduring interest in local agriculture and hands-on skills in Maine — plus, perhaps, some serendipity.
MOFGA sponsored the first fair in 1977 as a fundraiser at the Litchfield fairgrounds with 23 other individuals and organizations, the Bangor Daily News reported at the time, and promised to set the event apart from other fairs through its demonstrations and workshops.
Highlights from the original program sound familiar: farm equipment designed for use by small farms on display, and exhibitors teaching composting, sheep shearing and using solar energy in place of fossil fuels. Live music and special speakers were planned, the BDN reported, aiming to combine the best of traditional fairs with “new age” technology and lifestyle to provide something for everyone.
Photos of the first fair were evidence of “a rebirth of interest in Maine agriculture,” BDN captions said, representing “a revival of youthful enthusiasm by a whole new generation for traditional ways of life.”
The next year saw more than 200 exhibitors, almost all of them local. Their idea was to get away from the entertainment-focused events agricultural fairs had become and focus on tradition, the paper reported.
“It’s people doing things, rather than machines,” participant and past president Mort Mather said.
The growing event moved to the Windsor Fairgrounds in 1981 and, since 1998, has been hosted at MOFGA’s current headquarters in Unity.
Matthew Strong of Ellsworth didn’t get to see much of the first fair, busy as he was at the egg roll stand he started with his brother to make some extra cash. But he remembered a good-natured crowd: People volunteered to help cook and offered their produce from the exhibition hall when the stand ran out of vegetables.
By the time the fair moved to Windsor, Strong was on the organization’s board, though at the time the event was a somewhat independent entity raising funds for MOFGA. He’s helped to organize it in various capacities for decades and now focuses on managing volunteer communications with more than 100 two-way radios.
“You get a really diverse group of people socially, politically and everything, and yet everyone gets along,” he said.
The organization has also added guidelines for food and vendors to be focused on organic, Maine-made products from or for small farms, changes that he views as evolving to more fully reflect the association’s mission. Guidelines come from the large volunteer steering committee that primarily runs the fair, he said, rather than the organization’s board.
Strong described it as a bottom-up organization from the beginning that values its grassroots spirit.
“It really is all about education, so people that are interested in organic farming come and learn about every aspect you can imagine,” he said.
Attendance at the three-day event has exceeded 60,000 people in recent years, drawing more visitors from outside the state and even internationally as its reputation has grown.
In Strong’s personal view, it has reached capacity and has become self-limiting in size; some don’t return because the fair’s too busy for them, while new visitors are drawn each year.
Almost 3,000 people now volunteer for the three-day, almost-700-event fair, and planning happens year-round, current director April Boucher said. She believes the variety of events, educational opportunities and a welcoming community make it a growing tradition.
But since the early years, some have lamented how the fair has grown from its earthy roots and attracted crowds beyond active homesteaders.
“The fair has changed in that it’s absolutely enormous now,” said Thayer, the Gouldsboro farmer.
She misses the old days somewhat, with its loose organization and carousing after dark, she said. But everything evolves, Thayer said, and she feels the organization’s changes have been positive.
MOFGA had individual county chapters back in the ’70s where farmers saw each other regularly, according to Thayer, but the fair was different — a rare break from farm work to catch up with others who were trying to live off the land.
“At the fair, we kind of left our troubles and our problems and our things we had to do on a daily basis [behind] because there we were, at the fair,” she said.
Strong and Thayer both affectionately described their continuing peer groups from early fairs as “aging hippies,” and view that demographic as a strong contingent still. But the fair is now a multigenerational event, with grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of original participants returning every September.
People know it now as a place they can go to learn anything they need to, Thayer said.
Attendees still approach her to say she taught them how to spin yarn 40 years ago, and she continues to see people who want to do useful work, learn to take care of themselves and grow their own food without being dependent on larger systems — much like the back-to-the-landers.
“I think all people are yearning to do things with their hands, and I think the fair has encouraged [that] over the years,” she said. “I think the human race needs that ability and that sense of being able to make something, and actually do something that’s useful, and I think that’s a big part [for] the fairgoers.”
Increasing self-reliance was a foundational ideal for back-to-the-landers like Strong and Thayer, who both see the fair as a successful legacy of that movement. To Strong, the fair’s growth also reflects evolving food-related social movements and interests in Maine, particularly food sovereignty in recent years.
Back-to-the-landers who stayed and built successful lives here were generally those who became involved in their new communities, Thayer said; she recalled a similar thread of community involvement at fairs.
“I’ve come to realize that change is really important and it’s the way it changes that makes the difference,” she said.
