Chellie Pingree

Summer’s finale: a labor day odyssey on North Haven Island and Casco Bay Dinner Cruise

September 7, 2025 / / Baking & Desserts, Discoveries, Mains, Restaurants, Starters, Travel

By all accounts it was a booming summer season in Maine with the state’s restaurants, hotels, waterways, mountains and coastal plains chock-a-block with the lolling tourist brigade. I chose to end the summer’s calendar season over Labor Day weekend in the peaceful hamlets of North Haven Island where this coastal idyll didn’t escape the summer crowds basking in perfect weather.

Clockwise, Brown’s Coal Wharf, Ames point, picking corn at Foggy Meadows Farm, Main Street

Pulpit Harbor was crammed with boaters, both local and summer residents. The little village of North Haven was a bustle, too. Of course all things being relative, you could still hear a pin drop as the typical quiet of island life prevailed beautifully, with pristine weather-a balmy humidity-free 75 degrees.

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The bounty of a fine barn supper takes place at the inimitable Turner Farm on North Haven

July 10, 2025 / / Restaurants, Travel

The food world is under siege with trendiness. Fried chicken has become an artisanal super-star. The rarest tomato, the sustainable fish fillet, the rigors of omikase and Asian panache-even pizza are elevated to otherworldly stardom. Canned food is left in the dust unless you can it yourself at a farm table in the middle of your highfalutin country kitchen. Then there’s the whole wide world of farm-to-table as though it were something really novel when in fact it’s how the world used to eat simply and well: food from the field—unprocessed, unadulterated, fair and fresh.

At table at Turner Farm supper

Then there’s the barn supper, a hot ticket nowadays where we pay up well over $100 per person for a famous chef who’s taken off his gloves and toque to get down and dirty with “real” food sent simply to the table in a setting that looks tailor made for a Ralph Lauren ad.

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North Haven’s Turner Farm: the ultimate salt-water growing fields and meadows

July 7, 2025 / / Discoveries, Travel

On 300 acres of sprawling meadow and woods cascading down to the water’s edge, Turner Farm is the mainstay for produce, beef, pork and cheese of exquisite quality from the tender nurturing by the farm’s growing practices. It helps to have such conservation-land-conscious keepers tending to such a farm. It had been fallow for years until owners US Representative Chellie Pingree, who has deep roots on the island, and her husband, financier Donald Sussman, revived this historic island property to all its glory.

The barn at Turner Farm

The produce finds its way into the kitchens of Nebo Lodge, owned by the Pingree-Sussmans and in high season even the local little island supermarket carries the bounty from their fields.

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