Page Farm & Home Museum Offers Downeast History Tour Sept. 15
Contact: Patty Henner, 581-4115, George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The UMaine Page Farm and Home Museum’s annual fall field trip will explore Downeast Maine on Sept. 15, with visits by motor coach to the University of Maine’s Blueberry Hill Farm research station in Jonesboro and Burnham Tavern Museum, the site of the first naval battle of the American Revolution.
The tour also will stop for lunch at Helen’s Restaurant on the tidal Machias River in Machias, designated recently by Life magazine as having the finest blueberry pies in the nation.
The tour bus leaves the Page Farm and Home Museum on the Orono campus at 8 a.m. and will return about 4:30 p.m., according to Patricia Henner, museum director. A fee of $18 covers transportation, museum fees and snacks en route.
The tour is part of the Page Farm and Home Museum’s tour program. Twice a year, the museum organized trips to different parts of Maine to learn about history and agriculture.
“We’re very excited about this Downeast tour,” Henner says. “We think we’ve picked out two relevant and historically significant places for this year’s field trip.”
Participants will get a tour of Blueberry Hill Farm, the university’s 60-acre blueberry research farm and an explanation of related research focusing on disease, weed and insect control, pollination and honey bees, plant growth and nutrition, produce development and quality, breeding and mechanization and harvesting.
The Tap Room in the Burnham Tavern, built in 1770 in the center of Machias, was the gathering place for townspeople in 1775, when they decided to attack and capture the British war ship Margaretta anchored in the harbor. Plans to arrest the ship’s commander in church, however, went awry as the commander, having a window seat in church, spotted the villagers, armed with farm implements and a few muskets, approaching. The commander escaped through a window to get back to his ship, which ultimately was chased down and captured in what was the first battle of the Revolutionary War. The tavern museum, which also served as a hospital in the aftermath of the battle, is designated as a National Historic Site by the U.S. Department of the Interior and remains one of the 21 homes in the nation with the most significance to the American Revolution.
The motor coach from Cyr Bus Tours is fully equipped with comfortable seating and restroom facilities, Henner notes. It has room for 46 people. Reservations are requested by Sept. 9 and registration cutoff date is Sept. 12.
The tour will take place rain or shine as the majority of the activities will be indoors, Henner says. The itinerary also includes a stop for coffee at the Hungry Bear Cafe in Cherryfield, the wild blueberry capital of the world, Henner says.
Please call the Page Farm and Home Museum at 581-4100 for reservations or information.