Harvest II

    The Big E in Springfield, Mass. ended October 4th — this past weekend. As we’ve been talking about harvest the last couple of weeks, somehow one of our office conversations turned to: wouldn’t you like to go to the Big E? The resounding answer was “yes”, except from our young ladies, who wanted to know what was that?     Oh my. So yet again, we’ve razzed them about, “How can you be from The County and not know what the Big E(xposition) is?” The conversation migrated to stuffed baked potatoes, and from there, we went back to harvest memories. Have you seen the commercials on TV about coffee from New England? The following is our rendition on potatoes and harvest things: Nod your head when we lose you.
    Layers on; layers off. Dirt when you got home in every single crack and crevice you owned. Did you touch my ticket? A three barrel section (in the a.m.): whewhua, I’m going to be rich! A three barrel section (round about an hour before dark): ohhhhh noooooooooo. I’m never going to be picked up. Mud in your food, mud in your drinks, mud under your nails, mud in your teeth. You didn’t touch my ticket did you? Out of barrels again. Why did you only need to pee when the nearest woods were all the way across the field: you absolutely couldn’t be farther away.
    Ah, well, enough. Back to agriculture as not only an economy of force, but more importantly perhaps, a keeper of one of our “ways of life.”
    We talk constantly on cell phones, but the time we spend actually with other people decreases all the time. Attendance at clubs and civic groups has fallen steadily across the country for the last 30 years. Eating together as a family has fallen by almost half what it was 50 years ago. How are we going to act together to make a change, or try to keep those values and connections which make us a county, and a community worth raising our children in?
    Did you read the article by Charles Lawton in the Portland Sunday paper a few weekends ago titled “A sea of information, but no clue what it means?” A direct quote: “We seem regularly to be contradicting ourselves, and to be working at cross purposes.“ As we seek businesses from away to migrate to The County, I keep going back to, are we overlooking our two greatest resources: our agriculture-based economy, and the people? I am not saying we need to do what we’ve always done, and wait for the time machine to restore us to “The Good Old Days” (ahh, but it would include The Base again). I am saying, we can’t forget our roots, literally and figuratively.
    We need to not forget or overlook our agricultural base, the strengths of our basic environment, and the mentality from an almost unseen group of hardworking business people: our farmers. If we are to believe what we’ve been told for the last few decades, that our people — our “County Folks” — have the best work ethic, then we need to not forget those businesses without storefronts. Agriculture was one of the key things which fostered that work ethic, and made our own people a commodity we prided ourselves upon. We need to be more like the way we used to be perhaps: less dependent on our high speed connections, and our instant texting and tweeting, and more involved with our community members, our neighbors, and our own people.
    We’re sad to see the leaves fall, and we’re all shivering already. We are however, planning all the great things we’re going to do with the new potatoes, we’re still planning to get to the Big E someday in person, and we hope you enjoy harvest time as well!
    Wendy Landes, MPA, is the executive director of the Caribou Chamber of Commerce & Industry. She can be reached in person at 24 Sweden Street, Suite 101; by telephone at 498-6156 or via e-mail at wlandes@cariboumaine.net.