Apples and Pears, oh my! ..... roads cleaned up .... reconnecting

This Week in Lincolnville: Pressing Cider

....remembering a lost way of life
Mon, 10/15/2018 - 5:15pm

    Ice covered the windshield Sunday morning, the first frost of the fall. Back in the day, when everything was normal, that frost would come around Common Ground Fair week-end. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise Sunday, but it did.

    Time to pick the grapes the grandchildren have been swiping for weeks, sour, green things, even though the youngest kept insisting they were turning purple. “See, they’re ready!” he’d announce decisively, eating one to prove his point.

    “Wait for the first frost,” I’d insist, “they’ll be sweeter.”

    The grapes are still out there, but the boys did scramble into the russet apple tree and shake down the meager crop. We added them to the Golden Delicious and pears we’d harvested at a friend’s farm earlier in the week, six laundry baskets full and took them to Lincolnville’s own cider mill – Sewall Orchard.

    Have you been to Sewall’s at the end of Masalin road, overlooking much of Lincolnville? Bob Sewall planted the trees that have become Maine’s oldest operating organic orchard some thirty years ago with the encouragement and under the guidance of his Finnish neighbor, Viljo Masalin.

    By the way, the story of how the Masalin family came to settle on the high farm on the side of Levensellar Mountain is told in my book, Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine, a saga of immigrant determination and tragedy, that eventually found the family settled on their own land. (That book is available at the Library, at Western Auto, the Lincolnville General Store, Beyond the Sea, and Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs). You can read the story of Sewall Orchard and how Bob created it in a recent Downeast Magazine article.

    CALENDAR 

    TUESDAY, Oct. 16

    Book Group, 6 p.m., Library


    WEDNESDAY, Oct. 17

    LCS Cross Country championships, 3:45 p.m., Troy Howard Middle School, Belfast

    Watercolor Journaling, 4-6 p.m., Library


    THURSDAY, Oct. 18

    Soup Café, Noon-1 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

    LIA meets, 5:30 p.m. potluck, LIA Building, 33 Beach Road


    FRIDAY, Oct. 19

    Movie Night at LCS, 6 p.m., Walsh Common


    SATURDAY, Oct. 20

    Indoor Flea Market, 8 a.m.-1p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road


    EVERY WEEK

    AA meetings, Tuesdays & Fridays at 12:15 p.m., Wednesdays & Sundays at 6 p.m., United Christian Church

    Lincolnville Community Library, open Tuesdays 4-7, Wednesdays, 2-7, Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m.-noon. For information call 706-3896.

    Soup Café, every Thursday, noon—1p.m., Community Building, Sponsored by United Christian Church. Free, though donations to the Community Building are appreciated

    Schoolhouse Museum open by appointment, 789-5984.

    Bayshore Baptist Church, Sunday School for all ages, 9:30 a.m., Worship Service at 11 a.m., Atlantic Highway

    United Christian Church, Worship Service 9:30 a.m., Children’s Church during service, 18 Searsmont Road

    Bob and his wife, Mia Mantello have cobbled together a life and a livelihood on Bob’s apples and one off-the-farm job (Mia’s). Custom pressing, that is, bringing in your own apples is done by appointment. Go to their website for specific instructions on doing this. In addition to custom pressing, Sewall’s has organic cider vinegar for sale, and cider by the gallon through their Cider Club.

    Apple trees. This remnant, these artifacts from our agricultural past, grow everywhere in our town. I count at least ten on my morning walk from Sleepy Hollow to Maplewood Cemetery, some growing along the roadside, a few planted intentionally and tended. Most are wild, bird or deer or bear-planted, seeds that came in the animals’ poop. Raccoons, skunks, certainly coyotes eat the apples that drop in the fall.

    Walk almost anywhere in Lincolnville and you’re crossing a pasture where flocks of sheep once grazed or a hayfield, its rocks carried to the perimeter, to facilitate the scythe or horse-drawn mower. Never mind that you’re walking through thickets of pine and hardwoods or even deep and dark mossy forest. A hundred years ago these were open fields; the little roads that wind back from the main ones – Beach, Camden, Belfast, Searsmont, Youngtown Roads – were dotted here and there with houses and barns, dooryards where chickens scratched and women hung the laundry.

    The cellars and wells men dug by hand and lined with rocks are now nearly buried in vegetation and a century of fallen leaves. Discarded and forgotten tools – ax heads, horseshoes, oxen shoes, hoes, scythe blades, wagon wheel rims ­–lie among the rocks of a barn cellar. None of us in this town live far from such a site.

    The farms were still here in the 70s and 80s when many of us moved here. They were certainly here for those who grew up in the 50s and 60s; Jackie Watts often spoke of the broiler houses, and how kids would work through the night putting the birds into crates and sent up to Belfast. Feathers, and sometimes escaped chickens, lined the route of the trucks carrying those crates to the processing plants.

    Grain trucks delivering to the broiler houses, the tanker truck picking up milk from the dairy farms every day or two were familiar sights. Then one by one the farms went out. In 1983 the government bought out many of the dairy farmers due, I imagine, to a surplus of milk. A photo of Ken Calderwood walking along the row of cows in his barn, reaching out to touch one, bidding them good-bye, says it all. Fields that once held grazing heifers were empty, and eventually the fences fell apart or were removed. The barns looked closed up, unused.

    Our modern world of cement basements, insulated, dry-walled rooms, double-paned windows sits atop and alongside that older world where risk was real. Unlike ours where we’re led to believe that our homes are under constant assault from intruders, from terrorists, from people who don’t look like us. A dug well could carry typhoid, a fall and a broken bone could lead to death. “We had more lightning then,” the old people told me. The scary things weren’t strangers, but nature herself.

    Neighbor married neighbor, and if there was some kinship involved, no one seemed too concerned. No Facebook or Messaging or email, just paper and pen, postcards and letters, diaries and journals. Plenty of time to think over your words, to tear up a too hasty rebuke or thoughtless comment.

    What a different world we find ourselves in today!


    Town Office

     The September 24 meeting of the Lincolnville Board of Appeals that was cancelled has now been rescheduled for October 25, 2018.  The appeal concerns a property on Marriners Drive.

    David Kinney did some research into the Fire Department, circa 1965 after seeing the photo posted on the LBB last week and the lead photo on this article:

    “According to the Town Report Bertrand Eugley was the Chief and  ‘The Beach truck had 6 calls, 1 out of town.  The Center truck had 25 calls, five were out of town.’ 

    “In 1965 the Town appropriated $500 for the LVFD and the majority of their funds came from fundraising activities including but not limited to the Firemen’s Ball ($672.49) and a Birthday Calendar ($503.77).  Perhaps the birthday calendar was a forerunner to the Community Calendar that the Historical Society recently gave up producing?” Yes, that’s the same calendar. Several people expressed dismay that it’s being discontinued, but orders keep going down until it no longer makes sense as a fund-raiser. If another organization wants to pick it up contact me ragrugs@midcoast.com or Connie Parker, 789-5984.
    Recognize anyone in the photo? Let me know, please.


    Road Clean-up

    Some 25 people came out last Friday and Saturday to pick up trash along our roads under the auspices of Midcoast Waste Watch and Lincolnville Community Library. Equipped with safety vests, gloves, picker-uppers, and bags they walked up and down the roads in Lincolnville filling the bags with litter. A great effort which hopefully will be repeated in the spring after the winter’s roadside trash is revealed!


    School

    Once again eighth graders were selling pumpkins this past Saturday at the Beach as part of their class trip fund-raising.

    It’s movie night at LCS, Friday, Oct. 19, 6 p.m. Bring your pillow and sleeping bag!


    Library

    Librarian Elizabeth Eudy writes: “The Book Group meets Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. to discuss “Warlight” by Michael Ondaatje (author of "The English Patient").  London, after the blitz, 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister are left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth and his eclectic acquaintances.  The apparent abandonment by their parents affects the two differently and it is through Nathaniel’s point of view that we are introduced to the characters and to the circumstances of their abandonment.   Please join us!  Book Group meets once each month.  The selection for our November 13 meeting is Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”.  Start reading!

    “Watercolor Journaling meets Wednesday, Oct. 17, 4-6 p.m. Bring your own supplies. Come to paint and write in your individual journals - your thoughts, your diary, your garden layout, a trip, an adventure, a rainy day - record it in watercolors!  A wonderful and active group, newcomers are welcomed.  This is not an instructional class, but participants will share their progress before quiet time to work on the journals. The group meets every first and third Wednesday. 


    Lincolnville Improvement Association 

    The last meeting of the season, Thursday, Oct. 18 will feature William Leavenworth, a maritime environmental historian, speaking on the Penobscot Bay Ecosystem.
    Jane Hardy writes: “He has recently been doing research at the Penobscot Marine Museum on the health of the Maine coastal fisheries over time. Come hear what he has to tell us about this important and timely subject. The LIA meetings always begin at 5:30 with good conversation and a potluck supper. Please bring a dish to share; drinks will be provided. Friends and neighbors are always welcome. We look forward to seeing you there.”


    Center Indoor Flea Market

    The season’s final LINCOLNVILLE CENTER INDOOR FLEA MARKET will be held this Saturday, Oct. 20 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Community Building located at 18 Searsmont Road, Rt 173, in Lincolnville Center with a full house of vendors selling antiques, handcrafts, household goods, and curiosities. Refreshments include home baked goods and breakfast casseroles. Sponsored by the United Christian Church.


    Condolences

    Sympathy to the family and friends of Karen Ballou, who passed away last week.


    Re-connecting with an Old Classmate

    A woman I knew as a girl back in the Chicago suburb where we grew up, recently wrote:

    “Mutual longing for a single classmate who lived in Kenilworth and became a gardener in the North. I live in NW Vermont and also had a farm with horses and organic garden while raising my two sons …..our sons and their families [now] live on the old pastures that supported horses, sheep, beef, pigs and numerous small fowl.

    “When aching joints curtailed our riding business we had 28 horses. I rode 5-6 hours daily. They were easy to sell to past horse campers or trail riding customers leaving 8-10 aging faithfuls to live where they worked and played until they died. Today there are only dogs, a cat and 11 graves of old equine friends. Memories of all as the phantom herd cavort in the night sky.”