When Aroostook NWR was a Secret Air Base

Saturday morning, I took an early bike ride along the auto tour and found the tour ended up at the secret Air Base for Surface to Air Missiles. While the base is not part of the refuge, the nuclear storage facility is and the gates are open one one can go in and explore.  Some of the doors are off the missile silos, so I even checked inside.

Map of Loring Air Force Base as it is today

Map of the nucular storage area

One of the bunkered buildings

A long view on the Nuclear Storage Facility

Now the area is for meadow dwelling birds, including upland sandpipers
 - but this here is a song sparrow

The road not taken - THEN I found it went to moose and eagle observing area 

Another building

Some of the bomb bunkers

The spider webs were glowing in the early light

Bomb bunkers

Loved the bluebird house on the front

I've never seen this type of light- they lined the bunkers

Another closed-up building

Then I took some roads off the loop road that is part of the driving tour, and eventually ran out of roads. So my bike and I tried to cut another road or trail, rather unsuccessfully. I was stubborn enough to drag my bike through brush, some of it chest high, for over a quarter of a mile.  Finally I had to go back the way I'd come. I ended up doing almost fourteen miles, about two of it on foot pushing the bike. But it was a beautiful trip.

After I ate a late breakfast I went to visit the nature center and chat with a local volunteer who was managing it. She told me that Lake Loring was just down the road I did not travel.  And it is prime moose country.  I hoped to visit it before I leave here by mid Sunday morning, to head to Baxter State Park, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

Sunday was dark and rainy, so I abandoned plans to explore more and just hung out and got my stuff into the car between showers. Something told me to check to be sure I had my tent.  Sure enough, I had my winter clothes bag instead of my tent bag. So Sunday consisted of driving seven hours to retrieve it, before going to Baxter.  Currently I'm recuperating from yesterday's. hike.  

A Visit to Aroostook NWR

One of the refuges managed with Moosehorn NWR is almost three  hours of driving away in northern Maine, in Aroostook County. I was under the control of my milkweed and was forced to stay in Moosehorn instead of getting to spend four days at Aroostook NWR earlier this summer.

So, after my marathon planting of milkweed was over,  my boss let me come up and stay in a volunteer trailer. I came up Friday in a fog most of the way, which finally turned into beautiful clouds as I reached Aroostook county.  I think most of its economics is based on forestry and potatoes. There were potato stands along the road - and the road was full of logging trucks - as well as potato fields waiting to be harvested and fields full of workers packing the potatoes into boxes for shipment.

I never found the name of this river, but it made for a view I had to stop for

Loved the pop of these building against the still dark clouds

Not sure what this shrub was - but it smelled terrific and the honey bees
and bumblebees were going crazy over it

The light was making fantastic paintings as the southeastern skies cleared

The light and the textures were amazing - the dark green from the lower left is a potato field

Sunflowers added happy notes

More beautiful lands and sky

This is part of why the three hour trip lasted five hours

Another light painting of a fabulous landscape

By the time I had moved my food and other items from the car to the trailer, it felt like hammock time.  So I strung my hammock and read and dozed until the day turned to late afternoon.  Then I went on a hike.

The trail at Aroostook starts off like this before dividing into three trails

I found one shrub already turning red

I loved the reflection of the clouds on one of the ponds

This was one of the beautiful view through the woods - had to use my low- light setting to capture it

Shelf mushrooms that caught in a beam of light

Sky loveliness doubled

The most beautiful mushroom I found

 On the way back to the Nature Center, I noticed a huge field with what looked like a spectacular sunset in the making. I walked towards the sun and soon found myself on a huge runway.  I had found Loring Air Force Base, formerly very important to the cold war. It apparently was huge, in its time and had civilians and military living on it. It also had a secret nuclear storage area.

I took this picture early and late - this is the late version

The sky just stayed fantastic while it continuously changed

Some of the Loring Air Force buildings against the sky

 Before I got much past the runways and parking lots, I was tired enough to head back to the trailer.  I enjoyed a lovely meal of my own hubbard squash, sliced and sauteed to a golden brown, and sliced heirloom tomatoes before falling into bed.  I've had another exciting experience since then - it will have to wait for my next post. 

Now I need to buy a shower curtain so I can get one bath in before heading to Baxter State Park, which doesn't have any water unless you swim in it. 

Finally... The Milkweed Project is Done

A good part of my summer has been spent growing milkweed and then getting it in the ground. Since it was a project done mostly by me, I did a lot of it before and after doing work with the staff, sometimes making for long days.

I told you the about the fun part - getting the milkweed started here.  But I spent most of August, after my little vacation, planting milkweed. Steve, the assistant manager, tilled a strip of land all around the hill the headquarters sits on,  and about midway up.  I think it is about 150 yards or so and about two yards across. I had to get out the grass, sometimes chopping it out of the area, before digging holes and planting the milkweed.  I planted it a little below ground level so it was in its own little pond or surrounded by a moat. 

We had our planting day after I had about a dozen flats planted and only a few staffers and resident volunteers showed up. We got eleven flats planted that day. Then later I got another volunteer who came and helped me a few days. I think we planted about 5 flats those days and I had a lot more fun. But most of the time it was just me, crawling around in knee pads using a little hand cultivator to dig the holes. I set Labor Day as the last day I would plant, since the plants need to harden off and get deeper roots to enable them to live through the winter. 

Kirsten chopped grass out of the last 50 feet 

Then started planting milkweed

Mike taking a breather from planting milkweed

My mentor volunteer - still pulling her trailer at 84 - was supervisor and waterer

So all I did from September 1- 5 was plant milkweed.  I finished planting the strip around headquarters,  including planting the strips between where the volunteers had planted on work day, and replanting about 30 plants that had died, then added more plants to the ditch that needed plant cover. I planted most of the swamp milkweed there in the lower or shady parts. I  added common milkweed to the high, sunny parts of it and now have milkweed growing in most of the bare places along the ditch. 

Then I spent a few hours cleaning and packing up our planting materials. Now I'm growing back the skin on my knees and sleeping in.  ( I was starting at 6:00 so I could take a midday break or work in something else.)  I'm planning to play most of the time I have left since I've been working at least part of almost every day since my vacation and have way more hours than I need to stay here through the end of the month.

I came to town in time to shop at the Farmer's market.  This month is tomato and squash month in Maine. I got several kinds of heirloom tomatoes. And my first swiss chard and cabbage - going to go home and ferment it. And we had some great music to enjoy while shopping.

The Farmer's Market is pretty small but I usually spend about $20 for fresh produce 

There are several different species of heirloom tomatoes here

These are good enough to paint 

Those are a kind of pepper there in the middle - red and yellow fruit

There are lots of jellies and relishes and baked goods

I am still enjoying the Maine maple syrup I bought the first Farmer's Market Day

I've had to resort to buying eggs here since my boss's chickens were all eaten by foxes

I am going to pack up my bees tomorrow and finish packing up the milkweed equipment.  Then I'll pack to go camping for several days at two locations. Stay tuned.

Live well and prosper dear milkweed plants.

Postcript:  in the summer of 2019, I got a message from Keith Ramos, the new Manager of Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge. He sent me a copy of the story and pictures he has posted on the refuge's facebook page.  It seems the refuge had found several monarch caterpillars on "my" milkweed. I consider this one of my biggest successes. Right up there with being so involved with planting and saving new trees at Anahuac NWR.

My boss turned in a report on the planting.  Read it here.

One of the caterpillars from returning Monarchs 

The Pembroke Farm and Horse Fair

I heard about the little fair at Pembroke, a tiny village, only about a half hour hour away and decided it might be fun to go there. I imagined buildings full of competing vegetables, pies, and crafts,  and other buildings filled with livestock. I found a list of the events and thought some of them would be interesting.

An old poster I found in the town library

So Saturday morning, I worked a few hours before cleaning up and heading off for the opening at 10:00 A.M. I'd just met a new friend who had volunteered to come help me plant milkweed. Ginnie had lived near Houston many years ago and is a very interesting person.  She invited me to come see her new house - she and her husband have just retired and plan to live in Maine, at least during the summer. So I spent about an hour enjoying looking at the few hundred years old house and hearing about its history and her plans for it.

I had to rush off because I wanted to see the skillet toss.  I was tempted to enter but didn't know the rules and was afraid of injuring my shoulder so far, I might not be able to use it until I have surgery.  But maybe in  two years, when I hope to come back.  About fifteen women competed to through the skillet as far as they could along a line, while making the skillet land as close to the line as possible. The distance away from the line was subtracted from their distance along the line. Last year the winner through the skillet forty-five feet, but the longest distance I saw was thirty-five feet.  I didn't watch the end of the competition.

One of the skillet throws

I got interested in what I thought was a apple bobbing game.  But it turned out to be a cider making operation.

The apples getting washed

Then chopped into pieces

Then the top is screwed down on the pieces to make the cider

Spinning yarn from alpaca fleece

There were several things for children to enjoy.

Rides in a carriage

Or in a train made of barrels

There was a petting zoo - this was by far the cutest animal

I had to stop for a lunch of two ears of corn-on-the-cob, picked the day before and cooked at the fair.

Ah, can anything be better than fresh supersweet corn-on-the-cob

The horse part of the fair consisted of demonstrations of pole bending and barrel racing as well as harness racing.  This was my first time to see Standardbred horses up close.  They all seem very small and dainty and look very much the same.  I went across the track to take the pictures of them so didn't find out who won each heat.

The pole bending demonstrations were mostly by young girls

The races were always of three horses 

This was during a warmup - love the footwork 

Another race view

I also waited to see the pig chase by the little kids but seem to have accidently deleted the little movie I made of it.  But the pen was wet down by two fire trucks so it was pretty messy.

Another interesting demonstration was by a border patrol dog.  He was trained to find both drugs and hidden people. His handler told us that the dog can tell that there are four people he can see in the car plus a hidden person and show where the hidden person is.

The dog shows that a person is hidden in the trunk

I had to go one morning and one afternoon to see all of this.  And the competitions on pickles, pies, crafts?  I don't think they happened.  There was a pet show that I didn't stay for and there was lots of music that I really didn't have time to go listen to, although there were several shows I would have liked to attend.  It was the simplest fair I've ever been to but was quite enjoyable.

I'm STILL planting milkweed.  I planted for four and a half hours this morning and hope to finish the last little bit of the planting around the headquarters building. Then I'll move to planting in the ditch.  I'm quitting this project on Tuesday morning. Then I'll be switching to play time for most of my time left here.