UNITY, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — Thousands of Maine people will be heading to Unity this weekend for the annual Common Ground Country Fair. What began 40 years ago as a celebration for Maine’s “back to the land” movement has grown to become a major event that last year drew 60,000 visitors.
The Common Ground Fair calls itself “a celebration of rural life," and that includes everything from growing vegetables to training sheep dogs to spinning wool.
The fair attracts people from all over Maine to see exhibits and demonstrations, hear the music and the activist speeches, and sample the food. Leaders of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which puts on the fair, said they think Common Ground has helped to grow the local food movement that has become so popular in Maine and other parts of the Northeast.
“This movement — the good food movement organic food movement — has been taking off the last 20 years," said MOFGA executive director Ted Quaday. "It’s really beginning to wake people up around the country to the value of knowing who’s producing your food, how it’s being produced and where it's being produced,"
He said the movement continues to grow, and that the desire for locally grown food “isn’t going away."
For long-time volunteers at the fair, and veteran organic farmers like Cynthia and Bill Thayer of Gouldsboro, the popularity of locally grown and organic food is welcome after decades of work.
“It's mainstream,” Cindy said. “You go into any Hannaford grocery store and there’s an organic section. We have a farm stand and we get a lot of business, people coming up and they want to buy organic food for various reasons.”
Over the years, Common Ground has also promoted recycling and renewable energy, both of which are now commonplace in Maine.
“I think we have won the argument,” Quaday said.
The fair continues through Sunday in Unity.