Common Ground Fair 2008

Common Ground Fair, held by The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardiner Association in mid-September, is an annual extravaganza of animals, food, crafts, demos, music and more. Heralded as a celebration of rural living, it features hundreds of vendors and events that range from sheepdog demos to lectures on composting, with everything in between, including "Burma -- A Time for Change," "Raising Goats 101," "International Folk Dance & Baltic Women's Choir," "Cigar Box Guitars" and "Monolithic Heated Slab Foundations." It's huge, it's three days and it's all stunning.

This year, gorgeous weather graced the fair. The only huge drawback was the traffic, which gets worse every year. We got a late start on Saturday and, after a stop for breakfast and to drop our dog off with my sister, arrived at the 3.5-mile road that leads to the fair around 1 p.m. It was a slow crawl along that road -- an hour journey from the intersection to the fair parking lot, which was so crowded we wound up squeezing into a space at the bottom of the south lot, virtually in the campground area. A pleasant stroll through a demo forest led to the fair. The vendors shut down around 6 p.m. so our plan was to leave by 5:30 p.m. to beat the crowd. Of course we dawdled on the way out and reached our car at 6:00 p.m. From there we sat for a solid hour, engine off, waiting for the cars to inch up the hill and out onto the road, about a quarter mile away. At last we began to make creeping progress. In all we wound up spending about an hour and forty-five minutes in the parking lot, because cars in the rapidly emptying parking lots kept cutting into our lane from the rows, which prevented the cars trapped in the bottom parking lot from moving at all. Eventually passengers walked up to cars in the cross rows and stood in front of them to keep them from cutting in, in order to let the trapped cars move out. Some of the drivers were none too friendly or pleased, which didn't exactly make for common ground. The drivers that got stuck included volunteers and a woman with a young baby.

Sadly, a drive that should have taken roughly three hours round-trip took six hours round-trip, with only four hours spent at the fair. Not sure what the solution is -- enforced carpooling? There was a satellite lot you could bike in from, but we had a small car with no bike rack. Just too many people wanting to partake in a great Maine event. Nonetheless, we got to eat some great food, watch sheepdogs in action, visit lots of beautiful animals, hear some amazing music and spend an afternoon in a halcyon gathering with colorful people.

More pictures can be viewed on Flickr.