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Harvest Recess: Maine's Potato Culture Faces the Future
| Article
# : |
19610 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
4,062 Words |
| Author
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Kathryn J. Olmstead
Kathryn J. Olmstead, a native of Battle Creek, Michigan, moved
to Aroostook County, Maine, in 1974, where she restored an
abandoned farmhouse in Westmanland (pop. 52). She currently
teaches journalism at the University of Maine at Orono and
copublishes a quarterly magazine about Aroostook called Echoes. |
Images of Maine usually include rocky coasts and rugged fishermen. Yet there is another, less-familiar Maine, surrounded on three sides by Canada and possessing a character and culture all its own. Known in the state as the County, northern Maine is a region called Aroostook, the largest county east of the Mississippi River.
Aroostook County is to Maine as Maine is to the rest of the United States: remote, vast, a little strange, sparsely populated, fiercely independent. Mysterious to many residents of southern Maine, who seem proud to say they have never been there, Aroostook retains rural traditions, values, and qualities of life that have vanished in many parts of North America.
But Aroostook County is at a crossroads. The unique culture of this northeast corner of Maine is rooted in the cultivation and harvest of the potato, and attitudes toward agriculture are changing. The effects of this change on the culture of Aroostook are expressed in an ongoing controversy over proposals to discontinue the annual harvest recess in Aroostook County schools.
Maine is the only state in which schools close during harvest so students can help farmers get the potato crop out of the ground before it freezes. In a practice started in the late 1940s, schools begin in August for three weeks, then close for three weeks (longer if weather slows harvest), from mid-September into October. As harvest nears, anticipation builds. Autumn is a time of tension and excitement in Aroostook. Everyone shares the farmer's experience, including the urgency in harvesting the highly perishable crop and getting it into storage or off to market during that narrow interval between its maturity and winter weather.
Yet as labor laws, farm mechanization, alternative employment opportunities, and a decline in the number of small farms reduce the demand for harvest workers, many school systems are questioning the need to interrupt schedules for harvest break. The debate over student participation in the annual potato harvest addresses not just labor, but also the value of the harvest experience as a cultural event for the individuals involved and for the region as a whole.
A day in the field
Lucinda Johnson Hebert, a native and resident of Caribou, clearly remembers dragging herself out of bed in the pitch darkness at 5:00 A.M. to be ready when the farmer arrived for her and
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