18 Aug - Ft Fairfield, Crops, Dodo's, Caribou again, Potato soup, Sally and Jasper

18 Aug
Fort Fairfield
Today we headed east from the campground across some county roads and through some small towns.  The way to see an area, other than on bicycle, is to get off the highways and see whats going on in the country.  We stopped in a little town just this side of Canada called Fort Fairfield.

Like Fort Kent, Fort Fairfield has a history and they have a block house.  It was settled in 1816 and incorporated on March 11, 1858.  Like Fort Kent, Fort Fairfield was established to help protect the area during the bloody Aroostook War.  This block house is a 1976 recreation of the original, built in 1839 and used until 1843.  It contains a museum of artifacts, but unfortunately it was all locked up, so we walked around the outside and snapped a few photos.

Fort Kent Block House

A stone from the grist mill.

Crops and Agriculture
Then we took off cross-country on a rural road and stopped to photograph a potato field.  Up here, there are potatoes for miles and miles, especially this time of the year.  They stagger the planting and therefore the harvest, and the primary harvest in in September when they let schools out and the children partake.

Rows of potato plants

The soil is extremely rocky

Miles and miles of potatos

They are harvested with a machine that looks like this.  The hopper in the center holds the rocks that are separated from the potatoes and then dumped at the end of the row.

Doreen worked on and earlier version of this machine, back in 1974.  Her job was to pick the rocks that the machine missed.  This machine still uses that principle with only two on the crew rather than several.

So further down the road and we see field after field of broccoli.  This is a new crop since we were up here.  The other big crop back in our day was sugar beets.  Apparently they are still grown up here but not nearly as much.

Broccoli ready for harvest.

The broccoli fields have a strong odor.   

The broccoli flower ready for cutting

Delicious Maine broccoli!

Migrant workers cut the flower by hand and throw it up onto the machine

 

Workers on the machine box it up 

When the boxes are full they are transferred (thrown)  to a trailer behind the machine.

The boxes are stacked high and when the trailer is full it departs and an empty one comes in behind and the process continues. The boxes of broccoli will be taken to a plant for processing, iced, and then shipped out.

 When this field is done they move onto to the next field.  The broccoli crops are staggered so they don't all ripen at the same time, otherwise there would not be enough workers to harvest and it would rot in the field.

Dodo's
The old local market remains, half way from Caribou to Loring.  We used to stop here and buy "provisions".  

I found some Moxie here.  The official drink of Maine.  Bitter flavor, very unique.

I had to have a cold one as a salute to the boys

Doreen bought a couple "Lucky Lobster Loot" scratch tickets that were not so lucky!

Back to Caribou now, a slower drive through the town we lived as newly wed's and new partents from 1974 to 1976 before we got base housing and moved to Presque Isle.  We revisited both apartment and I won't post more pictures of them since I did a day of so back.

We did cruise through downtown Caribou and we found the IGA market that Doreen dragged a toboggan to about a mile away a couple snowy days before Thanksgiving 1974.  She went there to pick up our first turkey.  I was snowed in at the site, so she made the trek on foot.

Some other nostalgic caribou photos:

The restaurant/bar Doreen worked for a short time

The Aroostook River, borders Caribou and the east.

Caribou monument downtown

The old Caribou Hotel.  Doreen's Aunt Emogene and Grandmother Roberta stayed there when they came up to visit.

An interesting vehicle modification.  Used to "blaze" a trail through the snow.

Maine hot pickled eggs. 

New potatoes ready to be bagged

Jasper Lee
Sally's ex-husband Jasper Lee and his wife Pat  came out to the campground to visit.  Sally and her husband Curtis also came out.  We had a great talk and got caught-up on where Jasper had been in his 23 year Air Force career.  I gave him one of my retirement coins and we snapped a few pictures.  Was great to see him again.

Jasper Lee and I

Jasper and Pat