Welcome to our new executive director,
rachel spatz bidstrup
Letter from the Director – Winter 2021
Today I sit and ponder, gazing out at the oxen milling about their snowy yard. Christina Rosetti’s 1872 poem In the Bleak Midwinter turns over in my mind. The opening stanza so encapsulates these Maine winters:
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Long ago and today are interwoven here at Norlands and, as I step into the role of Executive Director, I’m struck by a profound sense of this intersection of time and place. Here we find ourselves looking toward an unknown future while operating in a present that leaves us wondering. But wonder is a powerful force. It opens our minds and hearts for examination and tempts us into exploration. I am truly honored to become a part of the Norlands and as I explore the past, examine the present and look towards the future, I take heart in knowing that out there under all that snow on snow on snow are seeds. Those seeds are waiting until the future brings forth the time when new life and growth can begin again. I have placed our Norlands seed order for this year. I look forward to restoring period flora and fauna to the grounds. Come Spring when the seeds that I tend now burst forth from the soil, I hope that so too will a sense of new life at Norlands. A new era when we all may begin to gather again, explore, examine and enjoy this wonderful, enchanting place.
Be well.
Take good care.
We shall meet soon.
Sincerely,
Rachel Spatz Bidstrup
Executive Director
Today I sit and ponder, gazing out at the oxen milling about their snowy yard. Christina Rosetti’s 1872 poem In the Bleak Midwinter turns over in my mind. The opening stanza so encapsulates these Maine winters:
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Long ago and today are interwoven here at Norlands and, as I step into the role of Executive Director, I’m struck by a profound sense of this intersection of time and place. Here we find ourselves looking toward an unknown future while operating in a present that leaves us wondering. But wonder is a powerful force. It opens our minds and hearts for examination and tempts us into exploration. I am truly honored to become a part of the Norlands and as I explore the past, examine the present and look towards the future, I take heart in knowing that out there under all that snow on snow on snow are seeds. Those seeds are waiting until the future brings forth the time when new life and growth can begin again. I have placed our Norlands seed order for this year. I look forward to restoring period flora and fauna to the grounds. Come Spring when the seeds that I tend now burst forth from the soil, I hope that so too will a sense of new life at Norlands. A new era when we all may begin to gather again, explore, examine and enjoy this wonderful, enchanting place.
Be well.
Take good care.
We shall meet soon.
Sincerely,
Rachel Spatz Bidstrup
Executive Director
The 2021 Ice Harvest has been cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions and concerns for our visitors, volunteers and staff.
Join us for Maine Maple Sunday on March 28. Check for updates as we get closer.
New dates for the Rally for Norlands - OCTOBER 9 & 10.
Tours - We are closed to tours for the season.
WHERE HISTORY COMES TO LIFE!
Journey into the past and experience life on a Maine farm in the 1800s. The Norlands is a multifaceted living history museum and working farm where costumed interpreters portray real people who lived in the Norlands’ neighborhood in the 1800s. Learn about the past by experiencing the everyday activities on an 1870 farm, such as cooking, the wash, feeding and tending farm animals, going to school in the one-room schoolhouse – and have fun doing it! Whether assisting in the daily and seasonal farming and housework or simply touring the magnificent Washburn family mansion, you are immersed in the social, political and educational activities of the 19th century. The 400-acre property includes a stately Victorian country mansion with farmer’s cottage, a gothic-style granite library, a Universalist meetinghouse, a one-room schoolhouse, and an expanse of picturesque working farmland. The Norlands is Maine’s oldest living history center and on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Norlands is the ancestral home of the Washburns
The Norlands is the ancestral home of the Washburns, one of the great political and industrious families of the 19th century. Of the ten children born to Israel and Martha Washburn, seven sons rose to serve as governors, congressmen, a United States senator, Secretary of State, foreign ministers, a Civil War general, and a Navy captain.
As industrialists, the brothers' achievements included founding of the Washburn-Crosby Gold Medal Flour Company, invention of a typewriter, and serving as president of a railroad. No other American family has produced an equivalent level of political and business leadership in a single generation than that of the Washburns from Livermore, Maine.
The past is not merely preserved and remembered at Norlands. It is brought to life as we re-create the activities, re-learn the skills, and re-connect with the attitudes and values of 19th-century rural Maine.
Where did the Norlands get its name? One cold winter day in 1869, Charles Ames Washburn thought that a line from a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson aptly described the howling winds that swept across the fields. The name stuck, and remains to this day.
As industrialists, the brothers' achievements included founding of the Washburn-Crosby Gold Medal Flour Company, invention of a typewriter, and serving as president of a railroad. No other American family has produced an equivalent level of political and business leadership in a single generation than that of the Washburns from Livermore, Maine.
The past is not merely preserved and remembered at Norlands. It is brought to life as we re-create the activities, re-learn the skills, and re-connect with the attitudes and values of 19th-century rural Maine.
Where did the Norlands get its name? One cold winter day in 1869, Charles Ames Washburn thought that a line from a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson aptly described the howling winds that swept across the fields. The name stuck, and remains to this day.
|
"When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow,
And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow" From: THE BALLAD OF ORIANA by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) |