Happily, we had beautiful warm weather for the Common Ground Fair this year (last year it was pouring rain). We carpooled up with some great friends and enjoyed the good vibes and fun activities the fair had to offer.
Robbie and I got separated in the children's area for the first hour. He went around with Meo and worked on some crafts. Link and I hammered, played in a big bin of rice, jumped off the haystack a few times, painted, and paper mached the trash tree.
Link would have been content to just sit and play all day I think.
Link also grabbed a homemade drum and joined a band for a little while.
Then we grabbed lunch and dedicated an hour to sit and watch my very favorite part of the fair; the sheepdog demonstrations.
One cool thing about this year's demonstration was they brought along their 13 week old puppy to try working with the sheep for the first time. Her instincts were amazing! It was so cool to watch.
The boys and I love getting to pat the dogs after their session.
After that the boys already were starting to get sleepy. We wandered around looking at some of the things for sale. Thankfully FEDCO was there and I was able to buy all the bulbs I had in my cart on their website but accidentally missed the deadline for. We also got some honey and beeswax candles (a pumpkin, turkey, and evergreen tree) that we will light for our opening circle in the morning.
This weekend we made it to the Common Ground Fair. It is a fair I have been wanting to go to for years, and we have never made it. This year I made a big deal of fitting it in and waking up super early to get there. Not only did we get there right when it opened Sunday morning, we missed all traffic, and remembered everything we needed...except for Link's shoes (not my fault). Fortunately, it was the kind of place Link could navigate barefoot safely and be carried when needed.
Why did I want to go to the Common Ground Fair so badly when there are tons of other fairs all season long? Well the Common Ground Fair is put on by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) and thus is a display and celebration of a lot of things our family values:
Organic food
Eating local food
Supporting local businesses
Celebrating community
Recognizing local talent
Treating animals with respect
Teaching respect for the earth
Permaculture (humans living in harmony with nature)
Green energy
We had heard that it was a great fair, but we didn't really know what to expect. I suppose we thought it would be a lot like the Fryeburg Fair. But we were presently surprised to find that it was not like any fair we had ever gone to but how we always wished every fair would be.
We started our day by sledding. Apparently sliding down this hill on old pieces of cardboard is a big thing at the fair...and Meo loved it. I think he would have just stayed there all day.
There was a fantastic Children's Area where a lot of the children specific activities took place. There was a never-ending supply of arts and crafts, live music, puppet shows, hay to jump into, a tent for nursing mamas, a trail through the woods, and much more. We loved it there.
Our first mission though was to see if we could find some shoes for Link. We failed in that but it was fun to look around at all the talented vendors while drinking warm apple cider. We did find Meo a cool hand-printed tractor shirt. As you can see in the photo below, instead of having trash cans everywhere, they had compost stations where you could compost your left over food and recycle your cups/plates/etc.
The first official event we went to was a Music Together "class". As Meo and Link have been taking Music Together classes their whole lives, it was something familiar to them that helped them to feel comfortable and really let loose. They loved dancing around and making music with the other kids.
In the children's area, the had a bunch of boards laid out with pre-placed nails and plentiful hammers. Meo thought this was awesome and quickly became an expert at hammering nails down into the board. The sound of pounding nails was a constant background hum in the children's area which I thought was fun.
I did not trust Link wielding adult sized hammers however, so he enjoyed some fun time painting.
Next we joined into a pollinator parade. Tons of children and parents got dressed up in costumes, grabbed signs and noise makers and paraded around the fairground. Link was a daisy and Meo was a dragonfly and we had a great time!
We went to a sled dog demonstration which was informative. I had never seen an actual sled with dogs hooked up before. It would be fun to try one day.
There was a really cool puppet show about a coyote pup finding her song. The women on the right playing guitar wrote the play and all the songs, and it was a very sweet story. Link was asleep on my back at this point but Meo enjoyed the story.
Next we had lunch by the sliding hill. All of the food vendors served food from local farms and listed every single ingredient and where it came from. We decided to have pizza which was cooked in a stone oven right there at the fair. It was delicious! Meo wolfed down a piece but was more interested in getting in some more sled time.
My favorite event of the day was watching the sheep herding dogs. They had a pack of boarder collies trained to herd animals and demonstrating by herding sheep, goats, and runner ducks to various point in a field. It is a safe and humane was of moving grazing animals on a farm, and it was amazing to watch. It made me wish I had a dog more than ever (not that I plan on herding animals but because dogs are just so awesome).
We were able to watch a blacksmith demonstration in which they made a knife and some nails.
We very briefly met up with some of our good friends at the Organic Valley dairy tent where Meo and Osa played a game and we sampled some hot chocolate made with the local organic pasture raised milk we use at home and sweetened with maple syrup...yum!
Then we went over to the livestock area to see some of the animals. There was oxen pulling little loads of firewood, competitions for people riding draft horses bareback, and more. I loved seeing the angora rabbits, and Meo loved seeing the chicks.
We ended the day by stopping back into the children's area for some hay jumping and last minute diaper change/nursing session.
We bought coffee for the drive home which came from a local roaster and sweetened with maple sugar and organic valley cream. We liked it so much we bought a bag to brought home. We also got some more honey because we were almost out and a pure beeswax candle (all locally made of course) to light for the boys when we do our opening circle everyday. They love it.
When we got home two hours later we were spoiled by a visit from Grandma and Grandpa! They bought us dinner so we didn't have to cook and the boys had fun playing with them and showing them there favorite Monster Truck video.
I am so glad that we went to the Common Ground Fair, it will certainly be a new family tradition. It has such a wonderful atmosphere full of a kind and compassionate community, and was just one of the best days out we've ever had.
