Thoughts on the Common Ground Fair held in Unity over the weekend:

- The demonstration of sheepdogs at work with sheep and geese was informative and entertaining. The owners who ran the program made it fun.

- The signage to lead motorists to the fair rated between poor and non-existent. This should be addressed.

- Booths that provided information on housing and energy were well attended. Vendors promoting wood stoves were busy.

- There were several promotions of wind power, but Your Scribe is not a fan. The cost and logistics appear to be overwhelming. And how about those many days when it is not windy?

- The fair is a celebration of food but many booths had long lines, and inefficient serving teams. Full disclosure: I arrived at 2 p.m. and was hungry.

- The building housing blue-ribbon winners for vegetables was mobbed. Who thought that growing produce was a competitive activity, except that offering prizes for outstanding examples has been a staple of fairs for decades.

- Saturday was rainy, and hurt the fair's attendance. But the parking lots were not as full, and entry and exit were painless (if you could find the place).

- The fair hosted booths promoting environmental concerns in Maine. But it also had proponents of a pure Utah and a clean Alaska.

- Left-wingers had the opportunity to buy numerous stickers and buttons. One slogan that appeared popular: "Visualize impeachment."

- The Fair honors farmers but farming is a tough, exhausting business, if author and back-to-the-earth adherent E.B. White was a judge. In addition to suggesting (in 1940) that it was almost impossible to make a profit, he wrote that working a farm in "20 percent producing and 80 percent mending."

- The spinning and weaving booths were fascinating. And the colorful yarns were spectacular.

- I wish I had bought some apples.

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