PATTEN, MAINE — One-hundred-fifty pounds of white beans topped with thick slabs of salt pork, molasses and mustard were placed in large iron pots and lowered into specially dug holes layered with hot wood coals on Friday.
The ritual was done in preparation for Patten’s annual Bean Hole Bean Dinner held the next day at the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum.
The event, always on the second Saturday in August, has been honoring the heritage of Maine’s famed river drivers who moved millions of logs downriver toward market for more than half a century, although it took a break in 2020 because of COVID-19.
Saturday was no exception as crowds lined up for plates of the traditional beans, coleslaw, biscuits, gingerbread and more.
“We’ve had at least 600 to 700 people here,” said Ron Blum, a member of the Lumbermen’s Museum board of directors, on Saturday afternoon. “It’s nice to see everyone here after the COVID hiatus.”
The dinner opened to the public at 11 a.m. and by 2 p.m. only three pots of beans remained. By 2:30 p.m., the reflector oven Bakewell Cream biscuits were just about gone.
As board members Harlan Prescott and Ricky Merrill hoisted another steaming pot of beans from the coals to carry to the serving station, several people called over, “You did a great job on the beans.”
“You really got it right.”
Proceeds from the dinner help fund the museum.
Prescott, who helped prepare the beans for cooking on Friday, said the filled pots weigh about 80 pounds each.
“Onions, molasses, salt and pepper,” said Prescott, describing the recipe, which is similar to the one camp cooks used in the 1800s for hungry river drivers.
The wood-fired beans were hearty, and Saturday’s batch was cooked to perfection, not too soft and not too hard with the sauce making them a bit like thick bean soup. And with each bite, there was a tongue tingle, seeming to come from black pepper and perhaps a secret ingredient Prescott did not mention.
Heavy iron pots boiled cups and cups of Maxwell House coffee and Maine’s own red hot dogs. As wood smoke wafted through the trees in the summer afternoon breeze, there was a promise of fall in the air.
The biscuits were lined onto the shelf of the reflector oven in front of the fire, and just like in a traditional oven, they took about 20 minutes to bake.
The event’s setting at the museum with the historic iron pots cooking over coals was reminiscent of the river drivers’ meals that fed hundreds several times a day.
According to an 1877 Lewiston Sun Journal story, four barrels of beans, half a barrel of pork, one barrel of flour, half a barrel of meal, a quarter of a barrel of sugar and five gallons of molasses were used every day at the camps.
On Saturday, members of the Borrowed Thyme band played lumberjack music that added to the overall feel of the historic event.
The band, missing their leader, Terry Levesque, on Saturday, played blues, rock and roll and old country.
Left to right, Lumberman’s Museum Board member Harlan Prescott and volunteer Ricky Merrill hoist an 80-pound iron pot filled with bean hole beans during the annual dinner. Members of the group Borrowed Thyme played lumber camp music during a Bean Hole Bean Dinner in Patten. Credit: Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli / Special to Houlton Pioneer Times
Three Maine authors were also at the bean dinner to talk about their books and sign copies.
Part of the Maine Authors Publishing cooperative, Claire Ackroyd, Laurie Apgar Chandler and Deborah A. Walder shared their knowledge of Maine colored by their own experiences in their books.
“We tell stories about Maine,” said Ackroyd who recently published her novel, Murder in the Maple Woods. “People really love to find things about Maine. It’s been an unexpected reward.”
The three women are slated to speak about their books at the Presque Isle Public Library in September.
Also at Saturday’s dinner were horse-drawn wagon rides with John and Linda Boyce and horses Champ and Cherry and blacksmithing and wood-turning demonstrations.
