Maine
Bean-hole dinner in Patten celebrates Maine’s river driving heritage
PATTEN, MAINE — One-hundred-fifty kilos of white beans topped with thick slabs of salt pork, molasses and mustard had been positioned in giant iron pots and lowered into specifically dug holes layered with scorching wooden coals on Friday.
The ritual was executed in preparation for Patten’s annual Bean Gap Bean Dinner held the following day on the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum.
The occasion, all the time on the second Saturday in August, has been honoring the heritage of Maine’s famed river drivers who moved tens of millions of logs downriver towards marketplace for greater than half a century, though it took a break in 2020 due to COVID-19.
Saturday was no exception as crowds lined up for plates of the standard beans, coleslaw, biscuits, gingerbread and extra.
“We’ve had not less than 600 to 700 individuals right here,” mentioned Ron Blum, a member of the Lumbermen’s Museum board of administrators, on Saturday afternoon. “It’s good to see everybody right here after the COVID hiatus.”
The dinner opened to the general public at 11 a.m. and by 2 p.m. solely three pots of beans remained. By 2:30 p.m., the reflector oven Bakewell Cream biscuits had been nearly gone.
As board members Harlan Prescott and Ricky Merrill hoisted one other steaming pot of beans from the coals to hold to the serving station, a number of individuals referred to as over, “You probably did a fantastic job on the beans.”
“You actually obtained it proper.”
Proceeds from the dinner assist fund the museum.
Prescott, who helped put together the beans for cooking on Friday, mentioned the stuffed pots weigh about 80 kilos every.
“Onions, molasses, salt and pepper,” mentioned Prescott, describing the recipe, which is analogous to the one camp cooks used within the 1800s for hungry river drivers.
The wood-fired beans had been hearty, and Saturday’s batch was cooked to perfection, not too smooth and never too arduous with the sauce making them a bit like thick bean soup. And with every chunk, there was a tongue tingle, seeming to return from black pepper and maybe a secret ingredient Prescott didn’t point out.
Heavy iron pots boiled cups and cups of Maxwell Home espresso and Maine’s personal purple scorching canines. As wooden smoke wafted via the bushes in the summertime afternoon breeze, there was a promise of fall within the air.
The biscuits had been lined onto the shelf of the reflector oven in entrance of the fireplace, and identical to in a conventional oven, they took about 20 minutes to bake.
The occasion’s setting on the museum with the historic iron pots cooking over coals was paying homage to the river drivers’ meals that fed tons of a number of occasions a day.
In keeping with an 1877 Lewiston Solar Journal story, 4 barrels of beans, half a barrel of pork, one barrel of flour, half a barrel of meal, 1 / 4 of a barrel of sugar and 5 gallons of molasses had been used every single day on the camps.
On Saturday, members of the Borrowed Thyme band performed lumberjack music that added to the general really feel of the historic occasion.
The band, lacking their chief, Terry Levesque, on Saturday, performed blues, rock and roll and previous nation.
Left to proper, Lumberman’s Museum Board member Harlan Prescott and volunteer Ricky Merrill hoist an 80-pound iron pot full of bean gap beans in the course of the annual dinner. Members of the group Borrowed Thyme performed lumber camp music throughout a Bean Gap Bean Dinner in Patten. Credit score: Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli / Particular to Houlton Pioneer Occasions
Three Maine authors had been additionally on the bean dinner to speak about their books and signal copies.
A part of the Maine Authors Publishing cooperative, Claire Ackroyd, Laurie Apgar Chandler and Deborah A. Walder shared their information of Maine coloured by their very own experiences of their books.
“We inform tales about Maine,” mentioned Ackroyd who just lately printed her novel, Homicide within the Maple Woods. “Folks actually love to seek out issues about Maine. It’s been an surprising reward.”
The three ladies are slated to discuss their books on the Presque Isle Public Library in September.
Additionally at Saturday’s dinner had been horse-drawn wagon rides with John and Linda Boyce and horses Champ and Cherry and blacksmithing and wood-turning demonstrations.