Patrons of Husbandry – a website dedicated to the Granges located in Maine
Jonesboro Grange is recently featured on WABI-TV5. Watch the story online!
and don’t forget their Easter Basket Festival March 22-24, 2024!
By Walter Boomsma,
MSG Communications Director
207 343-1842
Communication Shorts are brief (short) but important items posted for your information and use. Send us your ideas and thoughts!
Get it here! Remember, the past few Bulletins are available for downloading and printing on the Program Books and Information Page. We also occasionally accept “guest posts” on topics of interest to Grangers. See the guidelines!
Have you placed your bids yet? (There’s a copy of Exploring Traditions available and it benefits a good cause!)
This isn’t going to be a quick fix! In the meantime, I’ve instituted a manual workaround and will be creating regular emails to subscribers. These won’t be daily and will be based on posting activity. Communication will not stop! It may be a little slower, though. Thanks for your patience.
The traditional resources (proclamation, sample press release, posters, etc.) are now available on the National Grange Website.
Check out the new Deering Grange Website! It’s great that another Grange now has an Internet presence.
Is it time for some spring cleaning? Can your hall and grounds become a community effort? Is there a local garden club that might help with landscaping?
“I find my greatest freedom on the farm. I can be a bad farmer or a lazy farmer and it’s my own business.”
Robert Frost
The world wants to hear about it! Fill out the simple I Love the Grange Form… it only takes a couple of minutes! Thanks to all who have shared so far!
“FOMO” is a Fear Of Missing Out. One strongly recommended treatment is to subscribe to the Maine State Grange Website. We’ll send you a daily summary whenever news and columns are posted, and we won’t share your email address with anyone!
Articles in this edition include:
Click the button below to read and/or subscribe to the Patrons Chain!
Note that all recent issues are available on the National Grange Website. Occasionally, a weekly issue isn’t sent, so the fact that one hasn’t been posted on the MSG website doesn’t necessarily mean we skipped it! You can double-check using the link (Read the Current Issue) above. Effective 2024, we will only maintain one year of issues on the MSG website.
By Brenda Dyer, MSG Community Service/FHH Director
(207) 608-9193
March is when Spring officially starts. We are on Daylight Savings Time, and the days have more daylight. Many have started seedlings for themselves, neighbors, or a community plant sale. Craft fairs are starting to spring up. EVERYONE is Irish for one day. The opportunities for community service are endless.
There are many services that will overlap with other Grange committees. Please make sure to include these in your report ( ie. The CWA committee may make a quilt to be used for a community service event.) This should be reported in the Community Service report under the event and the CWA report.
I am receiving some Coupons for the Coups for Troops. Keep sending them! Thank you Valley Grange and Lakeside Grange.
Family Health and Hearing
March Women’s History Month
17th ST. Patrick’s Day
30th National Doctor’s Day
April Grange Month
Maine State Grange is 150 years old as well as several Subordinate Granges.
Have an open meeting and invite the community to learn about the Grange. CELEBRATE!
Follow the National Grange Theme. Make sure to take pictures.
If you email me, please text me to let me know so it won’t go to spam and/or get deleted. Thank you. Happy Spring!
Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.
Two years ago I resigned myself to the reality that, despite my best intentions, I would just never get to the task of improving an overgrown two and a half acres on the farm, the “Hidden Field”. I had cleared and rocked it 15 years earlier, but never improved its fertility so that it would produce good grass. I looked away for a second and it grew trees.
I had to come up with a plan that put me down in the Hidden Field every day because, as the adage goes, “A farmer’s feet are the best fertilizer.” The first step was to level the alder patch.
A friend of ours had just started a land-clearing business with a machine that literally shreds trees and incorporates them back into the soil. It is a beast of a machine that exists only for tree death. After he finished his work, and I was still ruminating potential uses for the new clearing, it grew nasty woody shrubs. Time for action.
With Benjamin’s return to the farm from college last spring, uses for that piece of land started to become more possible, so… I called in the hogs.
We have now rotated hogs over about half of that ground. They match my friend’s machine in disruptive power, but also fertilize and produce pork on the side. How clever am I?
Coming into this “winter,” I had to choose whether to leave the hogs on that patch or move them closer to the barn. Getting feed and water to them 1/3 mile away and across our main field could prove difficult in the shoulder seasons. I thought I’d order up two different weather scenarios in order to cover my bases. Old-fashioned Maine winter with frozen ground for easy transport of food and water OR mild, dry winter for less easy, but not all that messy, transport.
I got mixed results with my order and got a mild and wet, wet winter. Not the ideal that I ordered up. Getting a truck to them has become tricky, and has churned more soil than I like. I’m afraid that working that two and a half acres has now become slightly more. I’ll have to clean up my mess come warmer weather. My cleverness thwarted, at least there’s still bacon.
Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously permitted us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.
Complete subordination might have been the goal in an industrial setting. But now, it’s dangerous, expensive and inefficent. Because people close to the work know exactly what needs to be done.
Someone who is enrolled in the journey doesn’t have to be told exactly what to do. Instead, given the goals, the tools and the culture, they will figure it out.
Seth Godin, The Opposite of Insubordination
I can’t be the only person who wonders about the term “Subordinate Granges.” Seth Godin raises the point that subordination had value during the Industrial Revolution, but the Grange, with its Subordinate Granges, was founded before then.
At some point, the Grange was seen as a “grassroots movement.” That implies growth and movement from a local area and seems inconsistent with the local Grange being “subordinate.”
Are your mental wheels turning yet?
There’s a notable shift in language, identifying “Community Granges” rather than “Subordinate.” That seems more consistent with the alleged “grassroots” nature of the Grange. Of course, we could debate to what extent word changes change the actual nature of things. For example, does adopting the term “president” change the role and character of the “master?”
From an organizational design perspective, the Grange seems to have developed a bit of a conundrum. Is the local Grange a grassroots organization, or is it subordinate to higher levels?
I know; the easy answer is “It depends.” It’s also probably the correct answer. But is it the best answer?
Seth’s observation, “The opposite of insubordination is now enrollment,” may offer a clue. As a retired organization design and development consultant, I practiced through an era when “employee empowerment” was more than a fad. It was an attempt to create engagement and encourage employee loyalty. I remember working with one organization that actually had a job title called “Extra.” (They also had an attendance problem–they hired and scheduled these extras as part of their solution.) One of my recommendations was to drop that job title and create a “Gold Team” of cross-trained employees. Would you rather be an extra or a member of the Gold Team? Did I mention that to become a member of the Gold Team, you had to maintain a good attendance record?
I “get” the original structure of the Grange- its grassroots nature encouraged enrollment and engagement. An umbrella was necessary for it to be effective at state and national levels, and that is still true to a large extent. But when we start looking around for the active, relevant, growing local Granges they are locally focused. One might even say they are insubordinate.
Note that Seth’s observation, by implication, compares the industrial setting with today’s society. During the Industrial Revolution, fitting in was more than important—it was essential. We’ve gone from standing in line to punch a time clock to wanting flex time and the ability to work remotely.
We could have an interesting discussion about society’s journey.
If I’m involved in that discussion, I’ll probably refer to Robert Frost. In 1954, he defined freedom as “Being easy in your harness.” He wasn’t just referring to horses.
The notion of freedom does not mean the absence of constraint. Becoming an insubordinate Grange could mean “being easy in your harness.”
Any degree or ritual quotations are from the forty-sixth edition of the 2013 Subordinate Grange Manual or the most recent edition of the Pomona Grange Manual. The views and opinions expressed in “Exploring Traditions” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official doctrine and policy of the Grange. Information about the book “Exploring Traditions—Celebrating the Grange Way of Life” can be found at http://abbotvillagepress.com, on Mr. Boomsma’s Amazon Author Page, or by contacting the author.
By Rick Grotton,
Membership Committee Director
207 582-5915
April is Grange Month, and many Granges are busy with events scheduled during this time. Do you have any members who have not seen the four degrees or need to take them? If you do, then you are in luck! Below are the scheduled dates when the Community (Subordinate) Grange degrees will be performed. Please inform your new members and encourage them to attend one of these sessions. I haven’t been to a degree day in a while, so I am looking forward to them.
April 14 at North Scarboro Grange, 74 County Rd., Scarborough. Contact Mike Griffin, Master, for information and to let him know how many will be coming. The meeting starts at 1:00 p.m.
April 21 at State Grange HQ, 146 State Street, Augusta. Contact Maynard Chapman, Chief Deputy, for information and to let him know how many will be coming. The meeting starts at 1:00 p.m.
Please refer to the website at mainestategrange.org to find out what other Granges are doing. The site has a ton of information pertinent to all members, so please visit and subscribe.
By Roberta Meserve, MSG Ag Director
(207) 998-3857
The committee met in Augusta in February to make plans and discuss details on upcoming activities and events. We will meet in May to choose this year’s scholarship recipients.
Speaking of scholarships, there’s still time to apply for our Ag Scholarship (due April 23). Keep encouraging high school seniors to send in their applications. This will give us lots of candidates to choose from.
The National Lecturer has some contests related to agriculture. They are the Sarden Design contest and the Weather Watcher contest. Both are open to all ages and have various categories. Check the Lecturer’s Dept. program for more details.
Want a way to get some potential members to visit your Grange and to embrace one of the joys of spring? Consider hosting a plant sale or swap. You could include veggie seedlings, bulbs, house plants, even seeds. Invite your local garden club or other local plant enthusiasts.
I’ve started my first seeds (in the house), couldn’t wait any longer to play in the dirt. Enjoy the early spring!
By Walter Boomsma
207 343-1842
Communications Director
“Bad noise crowds out good signal.”
Seth Godin
I left the Seth Godin Quote from last month because, to a large extent, we’ll be continuing the theme of “Communications Hygiene” with some recent accomplishments and ongoing efforts.
I’ve finally completed the review of Subordinate/Pomona Websites, Facebook Pages, and Groups. This annual review aims to ensure we are putting our best face forward and abiding by Grange Policy. It is not one of the most fun things I do, but it is one of the more important.
Overall, the results were positive, but there were a few issues. One website simply wasn’t working. One Facebook Group contained almost entirely spam posts promoting at least questionable work-at-home schemes. I have attempted to contact those Granges with an “FYI” email. In a few cases, I deemed removing the link from the MSG website necessary.
As a reminder, whenever an online presence is created, at least two people should be capable of accessing it and committed to maintaining it. This is especially true of social media pages and groups.
Also, as a reminder, if your Grange does have a social media presence, you should still submit your news and information to the MSG website. Once it’s posted there (usually within 24 hours of receipt), sharing it on social media is easy. The buttons at the bottom of every post make it just a matter of a few mouse clicks or screen taps.
You are undoubtedly aware of the increased applications of AI (artificial intelligence). Part of keeping our best face forward has always been grammar-checking, spell-checking, and minor line editing. We’ve been relying on AI for help with this for some time and will continue to do so. You may find it reassuring that I sometimes win arguments with the AI.
I bet I could make your eyes glaze over if I went into detail about our subscription issue. I will continue to maintain the list and send occasional lists of posted items, but it may be a while before we can automate it again. Stay tuned!
In anticipation of needing to make significant changes to get the subscription feature back online, I continue to purge old information from the site. We’re down below 1,000 posts–at one time, there were over 4,000! As a general rule (there will be some exceptions), information will be limited to the last two years. The data shows that older information is rarely viewed, and a streamlined site will be more efficient and much easier to manage. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.
► FACT: During the first weeks of March, our “scholarship information” page has moved to the third position as “most viewed.” It’s that time of year!
Here we go again, with another warning! Yesterday, I received an email that looked like it was from a Granger I know. “She” asked if I shopped at Amazon. It didn’t sound like her, but I replied that I do.
This morning I received a reply:
Glad! I’ve been trying to purchase a $150 Amazon E-Gift card by email, but it says they are having issues charging my card. I contacted my bank and they told me it would take a couple of days to get it sorted. I intend to buy it for my Friend of mine who is diagnosed with stage 4 mesothelioma cancer, It’s her birthday today. Can you purchase it from your end for me, I am just trying to put a smile on her face in this trying times. I’ll send you a check regarding the refund later. Here is her email (XXXXXX@comcast.net )and have it ordered From Me. Please and the message space, write Happy birthday Dear Kathie, Stay strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Eph. 6:10, Let me know once you order it and send me the confirmation once it’s done.
Both emails I received come from an email address that I identify as the Granger’s. The style of writing and the number of errors, particularly in the second email, aroused my suspicion. While I don’t know this Granger extremely well, from previous email correspondence, this is not at all like her. The other red flag is the urgency. If this were legitimate, I’d expect a phone call–not an email.
I will call the Granger at a more reasonable hour. In the interim, if you receive a similar email, you might consider doing the same. It’s likely that someone has hacked her email account. She did hold a state office in the past, and it’s likely that the person sending these emails has access to her contact list.
This is not my favorite part of being Communications Director. Unfortunately, the digital world is complex and filled with hazards. Don’t be discouraged. Just be careful.