This conceptual drawing shows the proposed Belgrade Village Green at the intersection of West Road and Route 27 (Augusta Road/Main Street) at the south end of Belgrade Lakes Village. Looking from the picnic area, one sees a low, semicircular rock wall and a gazebo. West Road is in the background. More…
These archival articles are presented “as is.” Except for minor corrections or clarifications, most have not been updated since they appeared in print. Thus, some details may be out of date, and some hyperlinks may no longer work.
The Gift of a Park
by Esther J. Perne
Peaceful, well-planned, and perfect for public use and enjoyment! The proposed gift of the Belgrade Village Green to the Friends of Belgrade Lakes Village provides a unique dimension to the program of downtown enhancement that the Friends have been developing over the past three years.
With its location between West Road and Route 27 at the southern end of the Village, the Green will complement the popular Peninsula Park at the Village’s northern approach as well as assure pedestrians access to open, preserved space.
"We’re thrilled with it. It’s going to make a wonderful gateway to the Village. It’s going to tie everything together," states lifetime resident and a spokesperson for the Friends, Carol Johnson. "The design is in keeping with the Village."
One of nine volunteers who have met weekly and worked tirelessly to seek improvements to the Village’s sidewalks and lighting in conjunction with the state road project planned for the Village next summer, Carol states that the Friends were approached with the Belgrade Village Green donation about three months ago and although it has to go before the voters, response has been unanimously positive.
A view from the memorial ring in the northeast corner of the park, showing the picnic area; the low, semicircular wall; the gazebo; and the intersection of West Road and Route 27.
"We owe a huge thank you to the donors for their generosity," she says, referring to residents Lynn and Phyllis Mattson who are giving the land as well as the construction to come as their thank you to the community.
Although the construction designs are still in preliminary sketches, highlights of the Belgrade Village Green include a gazebo, a sitting wall, picnic tables, a handicapped accessible walkway, a water station for dogs and the preservation of the town Christmas tree.
Just add visitors, residents, children, dogs, picnics, conversation, music, romping and playing and the park is complete.
WHAT oil embargo you ask? Well, for those who don’t remember or were too young to know, let me provide a quick basic history lesson. The following paragraph is public information supplied by the Office of the Historian of the United States of America.
During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) imposed an embargo against the United States. This was done in retaliation for the United State’s decision to resupply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. The onset of the embargo in October 1973 contributed to an upward spiral in oil prices with global implications. Barrel oil prices doubled and then quadrupled, sending gas prices at the pump skyrocketing.
This is when the people in Belgrade and every other town and city in America became seriously affected. Lines at the gas pumps were very long in high population areas; heating oil prices became untenable for many; and many other products that required oil for production (most all) became much more expensive.
In November President Nixon’s White House team began Project Independence. This included the Strategic Petrol Reserve program, which called for the stockpiling of a much larger reserve of oil, a reduction in the speed limit to a maximum of 55 miles per hour, and later under President Ford, economy standards in the production of cars and trucks.
Americans with the skills and resources began to do what they could to become more independent both at the commercial and personal levels. One of the undertakings that was done in our little town of Belgrade was going back to burning wood for winter heat.
Twenty and thirty years prior, many people had taken out the wood stoves and enjoyed cheap and easy oil. For instance, when I first bought heating oil in 1971, the price was 17¢ per gallon, 16¢ if you paid the driver.
During the embargo, heating oil prices increased severalfold as did gasoline prices. New chimneys were being built all over town and other old ones being relined. Wood fired boilers for home heat and domestic hot water were being invented by large companies and do-it-your-selfers in home workshops. Wood splitters became commonplace. Solar was talked about, experimented with and installed in some areas, as well as warm air collection, storage and retrieval systems.
Some of the homegrown heating systems were quite effective, but on occasion they were a folly. Just to throw some humor into this story I want to share a quick story of a personal experience when things went awry during a cold winter night in my house.
My neighbor Bill Pulsifer and I had co-built a nice wood splitter that we were both using to split somewhere around 10 cords of wood each. We were both tinkering with our heating systems, oil-fired baseboard hot water, to incorporate a wood stove or boiler to at least supplement the oil use. We both ultimately ended up with wood boilers tied into the heat loops, but before that we built a copper coil out of fittings and fit it inside my wood stove on the main floor. We kept a wood fire there 90% of the time and a continuous circulator running to circulate the water throughout the house.
Here’s the folly:
One cold February night during a wet snow storm, the wires went down and we lost power. While we were sound asleep the circulator stopped, and our theory that the water would still circulate some was apparently not correct. The pressure increased in the wood-heated coil to a point of pushing apart a silver soldered copper elbow joint and water quickly flooded the stove.
The water and ashes pushed the stove door open and when the power came back on, the boiler called for water and the water pump came on. For some period of time, probably 2 hours or more, ash-tainted water flooded the floor. Waking at 5 a.m. to a cold house, I quickly discovered the disaster of 4 inches of water in the dining and kitchen rooms with water leaking out under the entrance door and freezing on the outside step.
After some emergency re-plumbing of the broken heat loop and two days or so of cleanup, we bit the bullet and asked Paul Hanna to bring and install a New York wood boiler. This, of course, was not humorous at the time, but if anything is to be gained for any of us in such situations, it’s that being humbled from time to time is probably good medicine in life! Chalk it up to STUFF HAPPENS and move on!
In March 1974, the embargo was officially ended. This was negotiated with and by many entities with an agenda, but specifically it was tied to a peace process between the Arabs and Israelis that had enough merit to win the day. Whether or not what individuals at the town level did made any difference in the outcome is difficult to say. Surely it showed a creative and willing populace who will find a way to pare down costs and keep warm within a budget when the going gets tough. This time we are not taking out the wood stoves!
Gil Whitehead (fifth from left, back row) with Kroka Semester teammates.
by Pete Kallin
This was an abbreviated week for me. My wife and I took a long weekend to visit our kids in MA and NH, which was a lot of fun but we sat in enough traffic to remind us how lucky we are to live in Maine.
I got back in time to head to Rangeley for a day, where I spent a few hours fly-fishing the Kennebago River in the rain and then served as the opening night campfire speaker for the Junior Maine Guides' 80th annual encampment. The JMG Program was established by the Maine Legislature in 1937 and is a joint initiative of Maine’s Department of Inland Fish and Wildlife and Maine Summer Camps. The program is designed to foster rewarding, enjoyable and healthy outdoor living experiences for youth ages 9 – 18, who attend summer camp at one of the roughly twenty camps throughout Maine that host programs, including Camp Runoia on Great Pond. Its progressive curriculum of 15+ skill sets is aimed at not only teaching campers to be self-reliant but to cultivate their respect for the environment.
Each summer, roughly seventy-five 16to 18-year old JMG candidates who are striving for certification come to the annual week-long encampment to demonstrate their master of various physical and cognitive outdoor skills to roughly 20 JMG counselors and testers. Shelter and fireplace building, outdoor cooking, axemanship and canoeing are examples of some of the physical skills, and things like first aid, tree identification, environmental concerns/regulations, map reading/orienting and identifying points on the map of Maine are examples of some of the cognitive skills. It was a lot of fun to be involved with so many young people who were "fired up" about the outdoors and learning the skills that will enable them to thrive in the outdoors for the rest of their lives.
Another great program that provides a life-changing experience for young people is Kroka Expeditions based in Marlow, NH. From January to June, Gil Whitehad, of Belgrade’s Winterberry Farm, and a student at Maine Academy of Natural Sciences at Goodwill Hinckley, participated in Kroka’s "Winter Dreams" semester. The students learned outdoor skills, built a lot of their own equipment, and then spent a month skiing across the Gaspe Peninsula and camping in the Chic-Choc Mountains, ran the Clyde River in white water canoes, spent two weeks rowing 200 KM down Lake Champlain, and then biked 170 km back to Marlow, NH. They took academic classes, kept a journal, and BLOG along the way, graduating in early June. Gil’s older sister, Kenya, now a student at the College of the Atlantic, participated in a similar program a couple of years ago.
Three generations of the Brackett/Johnson family from Connecticut and New York enjoy a kayaking excursion on Long Pond.
Meanwhile, back in the Belgrades, I foraged mushrooms, picked berries, did some hiking, and got in a little fishing. At one point, I caught a roughly three-pound bass on my fly rod on a shoal about 100 yards off of the Village Inn docks on Long Pond. It took about 10-15 minutes to land the fish and three generations of the extended Brackett/Johnson family, who were kayaking by stopped to watch the action. They were renting a cabin in the village for a week and having a great time forging lifetime memories.
Take advantage of the rest of the summer and get out on the lakes or hike or bike in the hills. And take a kid along. You will be creating memories that will last.
Kennebec County remains a county full of farms. We have fewer dairy farms than we used to, but just about the same number of cows being milked. We have some of the largest dairy farms in Maine. And in the Clinton area, the "Dairy Capitol of Maine", they will be hosting Maine Farm Days. This year, it is on Wednesday and Thursday, August 23 and 24.
On those two days, the public will be invited to visit Misty Meadows Farm, a large dairy farm which hosts Maine Farm Days Agricultural Trade Show. They grow hundreds of acres of their own feed, mostly corn, and raise many of their own replacement cows. They harvest truck loads of feed for their animals and they milk about 700 cows. Add to that the 500 head of young stock and they manage a herd of about 1,200. All of this work is on display for the public to visit during the two days of Maine Farm Days. Come and see how Misty Meadows has grown. Enjoy the Natural Resource Conservation Services wagon tour which explains the operation as you travel around the farm’s property.
In addition to the actual farm operation. Maine Farm Days will have three large tents filled with displays and people to answer questions about farming operations and display products. Workshops and demonstrations will occur throughout the day. It is seen as an opportunity for the farm to be a good neighbor and show the public where their food comes from and how that food is produced.
There will be an entire tent set up for children’s activities and displays. While that tent is primarily for kids, it always generates a great deal of adult interest!
There will be contests for whoopie pies, blueberry pies, and apple pies; a milking contest; ice cream making; demonstrations of ag harvesting methods; a giant corn maze and an entire series of workshops presented by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. It will be a full two days. Again this year they will feature a "rainfall simulator," which demonstrates potential rainfall erosion problems and how different vegetation can mitigate the impact of stormwater. The woodlot demonstration area will be moved to a different area for a different presentation.
The milking, harvesting activities and animal care will go on all day at the farm. You will be invited to wander around. It will be a big event. Thanks to the Stoughton family as they open up their farm to the public. Did you know that the milk produced at this farm produces buckets of ice cream, butter, and other milk products which you purchase in the grocery store??? Maine Farm Days will be an up-close-and-personal experience. And it will all be free to the public.
Like the rest of the State, Kennebec County has been adding farms and farmers rather than losing them. Many of the new farms are smaller. Fewer of them are dairy farms, but the mix of farming in Maine has become more and more diverse over the past ten years.
Support your local farms and farmers. Plan to visit Maine Farm Days for any part of the two days. Join us anytime from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bring your family and friends and stay as long as you want. If you are there for lunch, food will be available. Check out more information at www.mainefarmdays.com or our website, www.kcswcd.org, and select the Maine Farm Days tab.
I missed hearing John Holt Willey present recently at Belgrade Public Library, so I called him on the phone to express my appreciation of his wordsmith expressions in A Winter Apprentice. His wife Barbara answered the phone, so we had a little chat as well. "Barbara, whose smile after fifty years of these and other adventures is still my most enduring reward," he writes in the preface.
Willey tells in each chapter a boat story that will catch your imagination even if you are not a carpenter. One of our favorite places to visit on the coast is Ocean Point. We were just there last week, but I had not read that far in his book. Now, when we return, I will follow his simple directions to Van Horn and then Wall to Linekin Bay Woodworkers. It is wonderful to know that the family still is running the place.
I asked Willey on the phone about the boatworks of Joel White, E.B. White’s son. He replied that, yes, Joel’s son is still running the business since his father died. Small world of creative boat carpenters …
The "Wear Your Own Gloves" chapter explains the machine accident that happened to John’s fingers. The writing is very personal, probably because he refers to letters written at the time between people involved. The appendix quotes extensively from one such letter with photo copies of all four pages, envelope and all!
I am a visual learner, so the many photos of interior and exterior yacht carpentry assists the fine detailed job descriptions. The handwritten list of directions for six jobs is helpful to understand how each day in carpentry involves different tasks.
I had already enjoyed Robert Pirsig on C-SPAN BookTV, so it meant a lot to read quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. "By far the greatest part of his [the mechanic’s] work is careful observation and precise thinking," p. 117.
The "Doctor’s Maine Story" chapter has a laugh out loud joke on p. 38 that I simply can not retell: you have to see it for yourself to believe it!
Being an apprentice and constantly learning is repeated in many stories. I simply loved that idea of always learning while on the job. Isn’t that what makes life interesting, even after retirement?
"Just remember, a traditional Maine winter can be long, exasperating, sad, beautiful and funny in the same day." What did I just read? Finally, as a summer person, I see a little bit of WINTER through this finely written book by Belgrade author John Holt Willey.
Even though it is at Belgrade Public Library, I will buy several copies for my carpenter friends. The cover alone has all the tools of the trade surrounding a photo of Simba with John Luke, probably on the lovely yacht’s bow.
