Page Farm and Home Museum to Unveil Haying in Maine Exhibit
Contact: Patty Henner, (207) 581-4100; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The UMaine Page Farm and Home Museum will open a new gallery and an exhibit on haying in Maine on Saturday, June 3 at 2 p.m.
“It’s Haying Time – Haying in Maine, 1865-1940” focuses on the daily details and tools of the small farm hay industry that was a way of life for the patchwork of homestead farms that surrounded traditional town or village centers, says museum Director Patricia Henner.
The public and UMaine alumni are invited to the opening reception celebrating the first exhibit in the Helena M. Jensen Gallery of the Winston E. Pullen Carriage House, adjacent to the farm and home museum’s main building. Refreshments, including “Switchel” — a beverage of molasses, water, vinegar and seasoned with ginger — that farmers often drank with lunch during the hay season, will be served during the reception.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Maine farmers operated under the concept of competency, not complete self-sufficiency, says Henner. Bartering among neighbors played an important role in sustaining daily life. This interdependency of nearby farms facilitated cooperation between farmers and their families during the hectic haying time, as well as at barn raisings and harvests.
As farm animals’ main source of feed, hay was an extremely important crop, and whole families and neighbors helped with the harvest.
During the summer haying season, farmers took their “nooning” — or midday dinner — with them to the fields. Lunch often included a jug of refreshing Switchel to wash the meal down. Although switchel was usually straight, some people were known to spike it with hard cider or even brandy, which farmers used to say “got the hay in the barn in half the time,” Henner says.
The exhibit is the first to be held in the new Pullen carriage house. The first-floor gallery is named for Helena Jensen, a UMaine alum living in Portland and a long time benefactor of the Page Farm and Home Museum. She provided the donation in 2003 that allowed the museum to complete the interior of the Pullen carriage house in 2004.
Jensen also was a classmate of Winston Pullen, a former associate dean of what is now the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture at UMaine. Pullen was an original proponent in the 1970s of creating a museum dedicated to rural Maine agricultural life and was responsible for having the museum’s current home, a 1833 university barn, moved to its present location. In addition to securing the barn, Pullen helped raise funds and collect artifacts for the museum’s displays
Today, the Page Farm and Home Museum hosts a large collection of farm implements and household items from rural Maine for the period 1865 to 1940.
There is no cost for the haying exhibit opening or other farm and home museum exhibits. The museum (207-581-4100) is located just south of the Maine Center for the Arts and behind Hitchner and Nutting halls.