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Working Together: The Maine Harvest Basket and Potato Barrel
| Article
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20619 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
2,906 Words |
| Author
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Gordon Hammond
In 1975, Long Island native Gordon Hammond left an advertising
career in Boston and New York to move to Maine. Today, he is
an advertising consultant and copublisher of Echoes, a
regional magazine of northern Maine culture. A related
article, "Harvest Recess: Maine's Potato Culture Faces the
Future," by Kathryn J. Olmstead, appeared in the October 1991
issue of THE WORLD & I (pp. 626-39) |
In America Today, many of us worry that we are not pulling together for the common good; we yearn for values that are associated with times in history when our country seemed more unified. We recall what life once was like in city neighborhoods, in the communities of the countryside, in the closeness of the family. Some say that cultural diversity is at the root of our problems and that unless we can be alike, act alike, think alike, we cannot have common national goals. This suggests that unity depends on cultural sameness.
Our history belies that idea. When America was a nation of regions, some very isolated, and communities often were culturally unique, values were not something that needed explaining. Each community had rules that were essential to survival, to success, to prosperity. When the time came to meet a common threat (even if that threat was from the baseball club in the next town downriver), the trained response was there because "unity" was instinctive.
One such region, the northernmost corner of the United States in the state of Maine, is the county of Aroostook. It is a place known historically for growing potatoes and tall timber, and a place where, not long ago, towns were isolated from one another during the long winter months and community pride became a kind of nationalism. And yet, as different as communities and sections of this vast county might have been, there was a common thread, a unifying theme that tied all together: independence, durability, and pride in having been able to turn a rugged wilderness and a hostile climate into what eventually came to be known as the Garden of Maine.
This 6,600-square-mile region with 4 million acres of timber and 100,000 acres of cropland is home to many cultures. Two of them, the Micmac and the European-American farmer, joined a century ago to create a unique and picturesque harvest technique that remains strong in the consciousness of all those it has touched. The Aroostook harvest, in all its visual glory-its rosy sunsets and blazing autumn colors, its endless, undulating earthen furrows and tree-lined borders, its rich browns and clear sky blues--is represented by two simple tools: the Aroostook potato barrel and the Micmac ash-splint basket.
Taming the North Woods
When pioneers in the mid-1800s broke the pattern and turned north instead of west, navigating rivers into the teeth of a thick and impenetrable forest that came out of snow and ice only for a short period,
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