The Wrack

Punkinfiddle is our last big event of The Busy Season and it always makes the fourth week of September feel like a the turning point  exit summer, enter fall. Frost threatens, jackets are located, the kids are ensconced once more in school.

We enjoyed a fantastic 26th crafts festival. Take a look at these stats:

• 2nd largest attendance this century (~3,500)
• most crafters ever (109)
• largest gross profit ever (maybe net profit too? we're still counting)
• oodles of member renewals, new members, and rejoining-after-many-years members
• 219 high-fiving volunteers
• 30 businesses donating goods
• 104 raffle items donated, valued at $8,324

We tried something new this year  awarding three People's Choice awards based on the number of raffle tickets entered into each donated piece's box.

Congratulations to these inaugural winners:

Over 85 people filled the Mather Auditorium a couple of weeks ago for "You, Your Food, & the Survival of the Planet" with panelists Mort Mather, John Piotti, and Representative Chellie Pingree. The panelists answered a variety of moderated questions, and then the audience had the opportunity to ask some of their own. Following are some highlights from the notes I took during this most exciting evening!

Several weeks ago, a dedicated group of volunteers set out into the milkweed fields to rescue monarch eggs and caterpillars, just before the Reserve's annual mowing. This is the third annual Monarch Rescue effort, and this year the results were sobering. After nearly three hours of searching the undersides of milkweed leaves, our team of fourteen only came up with two caterpillars (and one already empty monarch egg case). In 2010, 37 eggs and 25 caterpillars were rescued by our team, and in 2012 we rescued 90 eggs and 22 caterpillars (we didn't have a Rescue in 2011).

Scientists in the monarch's wintering grounds in Mexico documented a 59 percent decrease in butterflies last year. Loss of habitat, drought, the use of pesticides, and climate change are all thought to play a role.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/8/13:

For the past 34 years, my mother has thrown a family reunion on Labor Day weekend. Thirty to fifty of us arrive from all over the Northeast and Canada for four days of feasting, toasting, singing, dancing, even a Geezers vs. Young Bucks softball game. Its an annual weekend devoted to celebrating, shoulder to shoulder, our lifelong ties and the continuity of our families and traditions.

Meanwhile, for those who devote themselves to the monarch butterfly, there has been no celebration yet. This month, on this side of the Rockies, monarch adults from Maine to Alberta should be flying 2,500 miles back to a few square acres within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site sixty miles northwest of Mexico City, where they overwinter from October to March. They should be, but they arent.

Goal

To improve understanding of spatial and temporal patterns of migratory land bird movement in coastal and offshore regions of the northeast, in order to assess vulnerability to offshore wind development and guide responsible siting of turbines.

We're setting the stage for growing vegetables throughout our Maine winter with the installation of a hoop house alongside our existing garden. Thanks to York County Master Gardeners for constructing it as part of our joint workshop series.

This hoop house is a modified Gothic-arch high-tunnel design oriented roughly east/west and is light weight and movable (a movable greenhouse allows soil to be restored by sun, rain, and deep-rooted cover crops). Row covers of translucent fabric, such as Agribon or Remay, will be laid over a wire armature to offer an additional layer of cold weather protection.

A beautiful handmade decorative piece... or something more?

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/1/13:

More than 100 artists will converge on the Wells Reserve at Laudholm next weekend for our 26^th annual Laudholm Nature Crafts Festival. Theyre all very talented, and if you attend, I promise youll find some unique, beautiful, and affordable Christmas gifts months ahead of schedule.

But exceptional as these local New England artists are, I think their finest work meets it match up against the other nature crafts show put on by the animal kingdom on a daily basis.

The following was originally published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Thursday edition, 8/22/13:

Wendell Berry said do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. Situated at the mouths of three rivers, the Wells Reserve at Laudholm is downstream from most of York County. This summer, Ive been thinking a lot about whats upstream, particularly farms.

At first glance, Maine doesnt seem ideal for farming. Our colonial history is a litany of famines and failed harvests. We get some of the least sun of the Lower 48; our soils are the rock-filled remains of mile-high glaciers. Winters, though shorter than they used to be, still bookend a shockingly brief growing season. Why would anyone think of farming here?