- From the County to the coast rural traditions being kept alive all across the state.

The cultural traditions of people of both Swedish and Acadian descent, are being passed on and preserved in Northern Maine.

Memories of farm life are being captured for future generations through an ambitious oral history project in Orono, and knowledge of herbs and their uses is blossoming at Avena Botanicals in Rockport, where traditional remedies have taken root.

All coming right up on RFD Maine, please stay with us.

- Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from Rural Development, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(upbeat folk music) - Most every day, we encounter something or someone that reminds us of our past or where we've come from.

The past is all around us as we live in the present day.

William Faulkner said, "The past is never dead, It's not even past."

We see it in familiar landscapes, buildings, photographs and favorite objects that we just like having around in our homes.

Hi, I'm Sandy Phippen, your host for the best of RFD Maine, a series that's going to expose you to some wonderful stories of Maine, rural life, people, farms, communities, like this setting right here.

This reminds me so much of my grandmother's kitchen on her saltwater farm Hancock, Maine.

I tried to preserve some of those memories in a book that I wrote called "People Trying to be Good."

There's a story called "The Saltwater Farm" in here.

And a lot of the things I experienced growing up as a kid on the Maine coast are going to be in this segment on oral history, told by these women from Maine.

They're wonderful stories, so we hope you enjoy them - Because I was a girl and my father had wanted a boy that meant that I spent more time outside than I did doing things in the house.

I learned how to cook, you know, but I spent a great deal of time with my father in the bond doing chores and doing hay in the summertime, and I thoroughly enjoyed that I think I preferred it.

- Our generation is the last generation to consider electricity, our refrigerator, our bathroom with running water as a luxury.

And I think that puts it in focus.

- The older women were so pleased to be able to share this.

They said, I didn't think anybody cared.

And that really was very sad.

Many of them feel this is the first time their efforts have been, have been recognized.

And they're very pleased about this.

They did work hard.

- Mother's day would start out.

Breakfast was you had three square meals a day.

It wasn't just this skimp stuff.

You had bacon and eggs, you had hot biscuits which she made every day practically of their life.

- You washed your clothes, your white clothing, you had to put him in that water and let them boil then you have taken them out, put them back in the wash tub and you wash them all over again rinse them, and hang them out.

- She always made her own butter.

Churn, Churn, Churn.

- Yeah, I think in the long run my mother worked longer and harder than my father.

- This typifies what a lot of women felt about themselves until we began talking to them and it's called, "I don't work."

I don't work she said, I'm a housewife.

What did I do today?

I fed the pigs and chickens gathered eggs, made beds, swept, dusted got three meals for six and cleared the after mess.

I picked a quart of raspberries and made some jam.

Whenever a hay load came to the bar and I led the horse that lifted forks of hay into the loft.

Of course, she smiled, I had the help of three little farmers.

No, I don't work.

- My father always used to say I saved him money because the one hired man and some of that.

And I think that made me feel good.

- They all have a love of preserving this lore of wanting young people today to know how life was on the farm and if nobody tells it this will just die out with these women and so they're all very eager to talk about it.

- We loved to go on our bare feet and everybody did, and in fact it was cheaper because you didn't have as many shoes to balm.

And if you stuck a nail in your foot everybody would just get a piece of salt pork put it on and wrap it up in a white cloth.

And the way you'd go - A lot of the time you were self-sufficient just the family could do what needed to be done.

- It is interesting to think back at that time, especially my, my grandmother's attitudes dresses should be to the ankle, hair should be long, All underwear should come below the knees and the corset should be tight.

- They have wonderful memories These women I talked to.

I can remember the smallest details.

We're not slowing down long enough to listen to our older people and perhaps we're not asking the right questions.

- I think if we don't listen to the stories that are within people's memory now they will be lost and history should be kept alive.

I mean, history is really people's stories.

Isn't it?

History is not succession of dates and wars, it shouldn't be, it should be the people and how they've lived.

- During the depression, we were poor, but so was everybody else and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

No, I wouldn't.

- I'm reminded of a wonderful quote from Flannery.

O'Connor, the great American writer, who herself grew up on a small farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.

I use this quote in one of my books as a guiding theme, she said, "to know oneself is to know one's region.

It's also to know the world.

And it's also paradoxically a form of exile from that world.

To know oneself is above all to know what one lacks."

I think that explains in part why I, and many people of my generation had to leave Maine to find ourselves and to look back at our native state.

Maine of course is many places, it's many Maines It's really very diverse.

There was something like 63 foreign languages spoken around the state.

And one of these towns you may know about from the works of Rebecca Cummings who wrote "Turnip Pie".

The town is New Sweden.

Let's go to new Sweden.

(folk music) - When we started school, all my sisters and brothers and several other families here in town, there was no one that could speak a word of English.

Thank goodness we had a school teacher that could speak English and Swedish.

- When I grew up, my parents spoke Swedish basically when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about.

- My grandparents spoke Swedish and we always answered them in English, but we understood what they said.

We use it only for a cat so they put the cat out in Swedish.

- (Swedish Language) - The cat knew who he was after a while he'd hide when it's time to go out.

There are a lot of little expressions.

- (Swedish Language) That means stubborn.

- The limit, I remember is (Swedish Language) and that is "Away is fine, but Home is best" - I can't think of any place I'd rather live though That includes Florida and other places in Penn.

- Oh Florida is terrible.

- Don't ask him to get going on Florida.

- [Interviewer] Are young people speaking Swedish?

- No, and it's really sad.

I didn't even teach my own two daughters Swedish.

I tried, but I didn't take the time.

- [Interviewer] How come you didn't?

- I don't know.

Really, really sad.

- My children didn't speak any Swedish, and I know a few words and it's not enough for them to preserve the language.

It doesn't happen with my generation, it's not going to happen with my kids.

- Some of the things that you've heard about us are true.

We are stubborn.

Once we commit ourselves to something, once we have an opinion on something, we usually stick to it.

- Well, I don't know about nowadays, but years ago they always said that people from New Sweden paid their bills.

- Everybody loves food.

Swedish people love to cook.

They love to eat.

- Oh, it's not that much.

we get some meatballs, potato salad, we got some tuna fish, white tuna fish that came from Cape Cod that my nephew had caught Swedish Spritz, I've get some of that, and I got a coffee bread.

We enjoy it, we can visit back and forth and have our coffee and just go to any house and see it's a coffee party so on.

And we do.

- I learned the traditional dances in my grandfather's kitchen, and we danced all the time.

He fiddled and we danced and it was just the most wonderful thing.

I definitely wouldn't that the community is dying.

There are enough people who have an interest in what has been established, I think to continue it, you know.

Young people who will start taking a more active role in the preparation and in the carrying out of these different activities, because the older folks have done their time now, and it's time for them to groom the younger ones to start taking over.

- From the Swedish, we go to the French, and especially a very important part of Maine, a very special part of Maine called the St. John river Valley and the Acadian culture and language where they are having quite a bit of success preserving that culture from one generation to now (happy folk music) - Its colorful.

When you travel what do you look for?

You look something unique, you look for something different and when you come to the Valley you find people speaking half French and half English.

And we're all talking with our hands.

Here's one word that you don't find anywhere else.

(French language) - Who is a person that chats a lot like I'm doing (French language) means to continuous talk.

- They call it a (French Language) it's the joy of life up here and we really, we really experience it on a daily basis.

I've been here my whole life I like many youth in this area I started speaking French before I spoke English, French is my first language.

- Sometimes the words may be all English but when I hear a young fellow say "he went by there him" that's French.

(folk music) - It seems to me that having a root or an anchor in life that says this is the way we came and this is the way we live to me, that has a profound meeting - For a long time of course we were isolated and when the world started coming in to the St John Valley we were considered a little peculiar and sometimes referred to as illiterate or uneducated.

World War I, a little bit we were exposed.

Our boys were, and they came back, but World War II really made them see there was another world out there.

- And as they go out they may leave the older people the impression that they do not value the traditional things.

However, if you are patient enough and as they go into other cultures, this memory of what it was that they, they had sort of comes back.

- A good French Acadian family had a priest, a brother or a Nun.

And (French Language) meaning you had gained you're Heaven by giving one of your children to God.

But I'm not going to have any (French Language).

But as long as my children are happy - What my vision of this culture is today I'm able to transmit to my grandkids and that, you know they take the same appreciation into the future.

And if we accomplish that, I think at least it's a mission that is going to be well done.

- I've inherited a strong character that's all surviving.

And if I can pass it on to my children and my grandchildren I feel I'll have accomplished my goal in life.

- Even though I grew up on the coast of Maine in a so-called saltwater far, the architecture there was similar to that even in the Saint John Valley.

The major difference probably is in the Catholic churches the big Catholic churches, which are so imposing when you when you go up North.

For some of my generation though driving around Maine, it's sad to see what's happened to a lot of the farms.

In my book I tried describing my grandfather's farm on the coast because even though it was a one family operation it was really quite large.

The cow barn was not connected to the house in this case it's to the few yards from the back of the house and beside the barn were two more outbuildings one in which my grandfather made barrels.

And that's the way it was on most Maine farms.

There were a lot of buildings that way.

And speaking of architecture, one of the members of the Acadian community, Donald Cyr is realizing his goal by not only trying to preserve the culture but the actual buildings, the church and the rectory, which you're going to see now in the next piece.

(church bells) - What happened is that there's another church three miles away, and what they did is consulted the parish because we've lost over 80% of our population Lillie Grand Isle used to have a couple of thousand people.

Now we have about 500 people.

I was renting the rectory and when it came up for sale I was able to buy it.

And, and years later, the Bishop donated the building not wanting to take it down because it's on the national register.

Our primary thing right now is to restore the building.

So that's our primary thing.

And along with that restoration comes the use of the building.

And so we're using it as a cultural center.

In my family, on my mother's side or 16 generations that's 64,000 grandparents in North America.

And so if that doesn't give you a sense of belonging I don't know what can.

There's a real sense that the area is a geographic entity with an ethnic group of common ethnic group, Acadian and Quebecois mixture And then you have that common religion, and then you have all these traditions.

Among French culture and Acadian culture and Franco American culture, the major part of the culture is people.

Yes, we have interesting architecture and there are interesting artifacts but the culture mainly rests within the people.

And it would be really nice to keep the young people here and to have the young people knowing more about their culture.

Nursing homes are our treasure houses right now, and it makes sure heartbreak to see each spring when people go into the cemetery, that another part of the culture has gone and is irretrievable.

- It's wonderful to be here in Brownie Shrump's kitchen with the herbs hanging down here at the Page Farm and Home Museum at the University of Maine.

We've been talking now about farms in Maine and the things that have been handed down from generation to generation, and one of the most important of course was home remedies, or medicines, that people had to learn to make at home because doctors weren't readily available.

I remember when I was growing up, down on the coast my grandmother prepared all kinds of different things, like she had some kind of mustard plaster she'd put on your chest for a chest cold she'd peel some potatoes and put potato skins on burns.

And she made a mixture of lemon and honey, I guess it was for cough syrup and other things that she had learned to do from her ancestors.

We're now going to take you to a place called Rockport down on the coast, where a woman who reminds me of a character from Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs" the lady who went out to the islands and was always gathering herbs for her home remedies (ringing bell) - The plants themselves have such wonderful life energy and fragrance and beauty and color and the garden, you know, at that height of summer is just a place of great glory and strength and healing for me, I think it's important for people to remember today that herbs have always been relied upon for medicinal uses around the world and still around the world.

Many, many people grow and gather the plants that live around them.

So it's nothing new.

It's something very, very old, and the World Health Organization, actually their statistics still state that about 80% of the people around the world still rely on herbs as their primary source of medicine, so we're talking about something very, very old.

I was fortunate to travel in Ecuador this winter and when I went into the marketplace there are particularly old women there with just fresh plants, selling them on the streets.

And it was a reminder to me that in more traditional base cultures people's communities still remember the use of plants.

This is a red Clover which is very common to find in fields around Maine And this is a favorite herb mine to drink in the winter as a tea.

It's helpful if you have a little bit of a bronchitis or a cold it's very soothing to the lungs and also is very high in minerals and vitamins.

This photo is of two of my probably most favorite people in all the world.

And when I was sixteen I was given my first herb book written by this woman Juliet DeBear Cleavy, who is a European herbalist.

This is when she came to visit me and stay at my home and be in the gardens.

And she's here in the photograph with Helen Nearing who was also a very, very close friend of mine.

I do feel like I'm carrying on a tradition that's very old that women have done forever it seems on the planet and I'm, and I'm carrying it on in a way that both Julia and Helen have really taught me to walk gently and softly upon the earth and to give respect and thanks for what I'm gathering and for the remedies that we're making and to do it with great joy.

We're harvesting feverfew And this is an herb it's not native to the United States that comes to us from Europe.

It's very easy to cultivate in your gardens, Very easy to start from seed, It will reseed abundantly in your garden and it's the leaves and the flowers, both that you want.

It has a very bitter smell and a very unusual smell I think if you taste the leaf, it's very bitter tasting.

It's primary use is for migraine headaches.

I'll put that right in here.

Oh, this is going to be so exciting.

Gene's going to be delighted.

And then we'll pick catnip in one basket and let's hit this one in another.

Once we're finished harvesting these will be taken back to the place where we process them and they'll be ground up in an alcohol water-based mix, which is called a tincture.

So Gene this feverfew looks fabulous, - It does, I saw, it's lovely - Good harvest that we've had.

And then they'll sit for two to four weeks in this liquid form and what the different percentages of alcohol and water extract out the medicinal properties of the chemical constituents of plants, so every plant is made up of a number of different chemical constituents.

- This is lemon balm, and it's going to be an easy one I can tell to press out.

Some of them are really messy.

- We all really concentrate on what we're doing.

There's a great supportiveness but what we're doing is really important because we're making medicine for people and it's a big responsibility And I think we will really take that seriously.

- There are no chemicals used here.

It's all done with things that enhance the soil and and enrich the plants in a very healthy way.

I do think that that people would be wise to really if they, if they're not educated they don't really have an idea much about herbs to Start reading about them, you know, doing a little investigation because they're they're definitely valuable.

- These are comfrey leaves.

This is one of the herbs that we use in our healing salve for helps to heal little cuts and skin rashes, things like that.

And then this rack here, this is blessed thistle and this is a very, very bitter tasting herb often you just, when we're harvesting it we can taste bitter in our mouths without even touching our fingers to our mouth.

And this actually is a wonderful to put into a tea for nursing mothers to promote good, healthy milk.

That's all blessed.

So this tray here, this is almost dry.

These are the beautiful orange and yellow flowers which also we put into our salve with the comfrey, Villa has a long history of use for helping to prevent scarring and being very it's very antiseptic so it helps to heal different kinds of little cuts and wounds and things like that.

Just recently, I had the opportunity to go out to gather a particular herb on some of the islands down East and about 10 women came with me and three of the women actually are medical doctors and one of them was jumping back into the boat and badly sprained her ankle it swelled up immediately.

And I had some arnica homeopathic pills with me which I gave to her and we came back to the mainland I gathered some comfrey root that was in my friend's garden and I blended it up in the blender so it became a very juicy kind of succulent plant matter.

And I applied it right topically right onto her swollen ankle and within minutes, the swelling began to decrease at her pain lessened immediately and she was absolutely amazed.

So it was a wonderful experience of watching an herb respond so quickly in a first aid situation and bring somebody relief.

Well, you know, we don't diagnose and prescribe medicine we're really offering remedies for first aid situations and for helping to strengthen someone's body or to help prevent a particular situation from occurring.

I think that's really my hope is that we're going to see all the different worlds the healing modalities be able to work together so that everybody really benefits and that people aren't scared of one another, but can really teach each other and work together so that everybody is helped.

- It's great to see how many people all over Maine are dedicated to working together, to preserve our culture our traditions, our languages, and our common way of life.

This is Sandy, and I hope that you enjoyed this program and will be with us for the next edition of The Best of RFD Maine.

- Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from Rural Development, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

- Be sure to visit the best of RFD Maine on Maine Public Television's homepage on the World Wide Web.

- The best of RFD Maine was taped on location at the Page Farm and Home Museum at the University of Maine.

(folk music) - If we don't listen to the stories that are within people's memory now they will be lost and history should be kept alive.

I mean, history is really people's stories isn't it?

History is not a succession of dates and Wars, or it shouldn't be it should be the people and how they've lived.