Here, four young people demonstrate the only appropriate response to eating most of a Helen’s blueberry pie with one’s face - joy! Without question, the pie-eating contests are one of the most beloved events at the Machias Wild Blueberry Festival. Photo by RJ Heller

I wasn’t sure if my father’s giant red truck was spilling out onto Main Street early Friday morning, as I parked to assume my post at the 47th Annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival. I feared it might be too wide for parallel parking, but oh, the parking spot was perfect. Just at the bottom of Center Street, the very epicenter of blueberry festival activity. 

What to do?

Then I spotted my friend Dean McGuire, shears in hand, trimming hedges high on a wall next to Bangor Savings Bank. 

“Dean!” I shouted. “Am I hanging out too far into the road?” 

He turned and gave me the all-clear and we chatted across the street. Yes, he’d be in his traditional post helping with the Blueberry Run early Saturday morning. I’d be at the information booth all weekend. Maybe Chris and I would see him and Theresa at the Blueberry Ball on Saturday night.

From the back seat, I grabbed my purse, laptop bag, and almost delusionally optimistic basket stuffed with knitting projects and books, and hiked up Center Street, waving to branch manager Sam Whitney in the Machias Savings Bank parking lot, where he was cheerfully protecting a parking spot needed for a craft tent, then into the Centre Street Congregational Church vestry, which was humming with activity. 

Festival director Ellen Farnsworth was calmly answering questions, in the kitchen Betsy Thurston and company were churning out homemade blueberry pies. Nearby, Ken Warner was putting the finishing touches on fish fry preparations. Across the vestry, Becky Sue Davis and I waved and shouted hello as she made her way to her annual post at the festival t-shirt booth.

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Sarah Khosa from Demulani Village, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa stands at left near the festival map where she marked the pin furthest from Machias. Khosa, a retired math teacher at Qokiso High School has visited Maine three times in the last 24 years, to see her friend Georgie Kendall, right. The two met when Kendall served in the Peace Corps. Kendall is a realtor here in Washington County, and also the founder of the June Rhubarb Festival. Photo by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

From festival right-hand-woman Christina LaBrosse, I gratefully collected the necessary handouts and binders and went to sit at the information booth, the perfect perch to see all of the comings and goings at the center of the festival.   

I watched our town librarian Lee Downing drive to Machias Savings Bank’s community room, where the library was setting up its book sale, then spotted a library trustee, Randall Kindleberger, walking down the steps behind the bank, making her way across the parking lot to the same place. 

The whole scene put me in mind of Richard Scarry's Busy Busy Town, minus Lowly the Walking Worm.

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The Machias Rotary Club is always a popular and amusing element of the Center Street festival scene. Photo by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

There’s my friend Debbie Whitman selling handknits from her booth in the parking lot below the church; behind me, our version of a Busy Town mayor, town manager Bill Kitchen, and Helen’s Restaurant co-owner Julie Barker, judging the blueberry pie-eating contest together; on the hill in front of me, baker, gift shop proprietress, and florist Sandi Malagara, also the president of the Machias Bay Chamber of Commerce, keeping all the wheels turning in the Chamber lot. Overhead, the distinctive whirring of a drone crisscrossing the festival, piloted by Sandi’s husband Ryan. 

Near a portable jail on Center Street, the Rotary Club “sheriff” arrests and releases laughing inmates. Occasionally the actual Machias Police Chief drives by, or one of his officers walks through on foot, stopping to chat and hand colorful pencils out to children. 

All the festival food trucks are normal, unlike in Busy Town, where they look like actual food. No giant carrots or pickles – or blueberries – on wheels in Machias last weekend, but the food was delicious, anyway.  

It all was.

Writer/Director Gene Nichols, right, and the cast of the 2024 Blueberry Musical Comedy wave farewell at the final performance of this year’s hilarious “Jeoparody.” You can read my thank you to all involved in the festival here, and do not miss this performance by the Blueberry Musical Comedy’s Tambourine Toccatas! Like so many things at the festival, the Toccatas are a tradition that dates back to its beginning in 1976. You’ll find lots of other performances from the musical on my page here. Photo by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

Washington County by the Numbers

You may be familiar with the Harper’s Index. Here’s a Washington County Almanac spin on the format.

34: The number of countries represented at this year’s Machias Wild Blueberry Festival.

5: The number of counties that border Washington County: Hancock County, Penobscot County, Aroostook County, York County, New Brunswick, Canada, and Charlotte County, New Brunswick, Canada.

8: The number of high schools located in Washington County: Calais, Woodland, Jonesport-Beals, Machias Memorial, Shead, Washington Academy, and East Grand.

1,982: The total square miles area of the state of Delaware.

2,562: The total square miles area of Washington County.

One of the books I most enjoyed reading to my own children will be featured in next Tuesday’s Story & Craft Hour at Porter Memorial Library in Machias. The library is located at 92 Court Street. More details here.

As fond of local festivals as I am, I often forget that some come after the Machias Wild Blueberry Festival, which seems like the end of the summer. But there are, and lots of other extraordinary events, too. Remember, we can sleep when it’s winter! Get thee into the community.

We’ve had a streak of lovely weather on Thursdays, and this Thursday looks great, too, so we can all plan to attend tomorrow night’s Bad Little Falls Summer Concert on Thursday, August 22nd, when Alan Cook is set to take the stage. The concerts happen in Bad Little Falls Park, Machias, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Free thanks to sponsorship from Freshie’s and RH Foster.

Before the concert, attend the Machias Community Supper at Center Street Congregational Church. It’s free, and an effort coordinated by the Washington County Food Council and so many local restaurants and stores, who donate the food. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. and the meal runs from 5 to 6 p.m. Attendees are invited to bring food containers to take home some leftovers! Here is the August 7th menu, so you can see the kind of meals they prepare.

You won’t forget the experience of doing yoga on the platform at West Branch Farms, overlooking the LIttle Kennebec. It’s an extraordinary setting. The next session, offered by Bold Coast Yoga, will take place from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 22nd, and then again on Thursday, August 29th. You can purchase tickets here. 

I believe it was last year that the Pembroke Fair at the trotting grounds became the official Washington County Fair, but please correct me if I’m wrong. Whenever it happened, we have an official county fair and it’s happening this weekend in Pembroke, August 25 and 26th. It’s a classic Maine Agricultural Fair — think Wilbur and Charlotte — and the weather looks like it will be fantastic. Details here.

On Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Eastport Arts Center, from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 25. The extraordinary life of this country’s 32nd president will be explored in a free presentation on the history made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the music he loved, on Sunday, August 25 at 2 pm, at Eastport Arts Center. The program will be brought to Eastport for this one-time-only performance by the educational services staff of Roosevelt Campobello International Park.

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Still quite a few August events to come at the Millbrige Theatre and Community Arts Center! Click on the photo above to be taken to their FB page.

Then next up on the Washington County Festival calendar is the Eastport Salmon Festival will take place Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 31 - Sept. 1 in Eastport followed by…

The Eastport Pirate Festival, always set for the weekend after Labor Day, this year from September 6-8 in Eastport. Then comes…

The Machias Fiber Festival: September 14 in East Machias. This festival is largely responsible or the fact that I could re-insulate my entire house in skeins of wool. On the same day, but in Eastport, you could attend…

Antonio Rocha with ‘The Malaga Ship: A Story of Maine and the Middle Passage: At the Eastport Arts Center from 7 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14. EAC's Stories We Tell Festival, a collaboration with Sipayik Museum and The Quoddy Tides, continues with The Malaga Ship: A Story of Maine and the Middle Passage. This is a tour de force performance by award-winning and world-renowned storyteller Antonio Rocha. 

Using his body and tenor voice, Antonio sings, narrates, and moves through this poetically toned and heart-wrenching historical story. The story is partially told from the ship's point of view.   The Malaga ship was built in Brunswick Maine in 1832 and used in the transatlantic trafficking of Africans to the Americas, specifically Brazil (Antonio's Homeland) in the 1840s.