We love going to agricultural fairs in the harvest season. From little ones in far-off corners of New England to the enormous Eastern States Exposition (the Big E), we like to see the animals and the giant pumpkins and the people browsing the sometimes wacky delights of the midway.

This weekend we went to the Windsor Fair, about 20 minutes east of Augusta.

Like most country fairs, the Windsor Fair has been running for over a century. It features livestock and 4-H exhibits, quilts and preserves, kids' exhibits and safety displays, and a midway full of rides and the usual peculiar foodstuffs (I did get a Corn Dog, of course, so my "fair experience" was to specification). 

This particular fair also has old tractors, harness racing, and an onsite living-history museum with re-enactors in old houses explaining what life was like in Maine in colonial times and in the 19th century. You can see some of the livestock, the tractors and the color of the midway in a few photo albums on the Foodie Pilgrim Facebook page.

One of my favorite things at the Windsor Fair was the historical cooking. Inside one of the houses was an old woodstove with some apples simmering merrily into applesauce, but more interesting to me was the Bean Hole.

Bean hole cooking was first developed by the native Americans, and then elevated into a science by logging camps that had to feed lots of hungry lumberjacks. The basic idea is to build a firepit that can hold heat, then set the beans in to cook overnight so they'll be ready for breakfast. You can still get a breakfast special of fishcakes and beans at Persy's Place in Plymouth (an in a few surrounding towns - it is a small chain).

A couple of fellows had baked the beans this way. I saw the bean hole, still hot from the cooking, and we tried the beans. They were perfectly flavorful and tender. I don't know that I can dig a bean hole in my back yard, but it's good to experience what it might have been like for a foodie lumberjack to enjoy food made with skill and quality!