Spirited celebrations Saints and Spirits Irish Festival becomes midcoast tradition

loading...

The poet had it wrong.

It’s not April that’s the cruelest month. In Maine anyway, it’s March that’s often cruel – gray skies that spit snow, and a brown, muddy earth from which it seems impossible for anything green to emerge.

Which makes March a great time, near the end of a long winter, to celebrate the green.

About six years ago, the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce figured this out, and began hosting what it called Frost Heave Frolic weekends. These evolved into the Saints & Spirits Irish Festival, which returns Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The event is Camden’s way of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.

Unlike some other Maine towns that rely on tourism, you won’t see boarded-up windows in Camden. And that’s part of the point of Saints & Spirits, says the Chamber’s Heather Mackey.

“We’re still here, and we’re open,” is the message the festival conveys, she says.

Fitzpatrick’s Cafe, tucked down an alley near the harbor off Bayview Street in Camden, is a popular local eatery whose owners are happy to get into the spirit of the festival. Terrence “Fitzy” Fitzpatrick is indeed Irish, his wife, Denise, says, as he hustles from the restaurant’s grill to the cooler, finishing up the lunch rush.

Fitzpatrick grew up on a potato farm near Houlton, Denise says, proof of her husband’s impeccable Irish and Down East pedigree.

Beginning Friday, Fitzpatrick’s will serve up traditional Irish fare for lunch – an Irish stew that includes corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and parsnips. The secret ingredient of the stew, Terrence reveals, is Guinness Stout.

The Fitzpatricks’ son, Brian, home on a break from the University of Maine, offers unsolicited praise for the stew. “It’s really good,” he says. This weekend, Mom and Dad say, they will teach their son to make the stew, a kind of rite of passage for the young man.

A 10-minute drive northwest of Camden’s bustling downtown, up over the ridges and into the rolling hills of Lincolnville, Andy Hazen brews beer that has many loyal quaffers in the midcoast area. Andrew’s Brewing Co.’s ales, porters and stouts are sold throughout much of the state, Hazen says. Andrew’s brews are mostly of English origin, he says. Hazen is of Scottish heritage, but both Scotland and England are close enough to Ireland when it comes to celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.

Hazen, who has been brewing for 11 years, has hosted an open house at the brewery each year in conjunction with the Saints & Spirits festival, and he’ll do it again from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. The brewery – which is essentially a one-man operation with tanks set up in the ell of the 19th century farmhouse in which Hazen and his wife live – is located on High Street off Moody Mountain Road. Hazen recommends visitors consult DeLorme’s Maine Atlas and Gazetter, or call him at 763-3305 for directions.

Last year, Hazen welcomed 75 to 100 visitors. Along with samples of his beer and some food, there will be Celtic music provided by Rockland attorney Greg Dorr, Camden writer Tess Gerritsen and others. And Dorr also has promised to bring poetry reading into the mix, an addition that Hazen admits doesn’t warm him in quite the same way that a bottle of his Hazelnut Porter does.

Hazen will be happy to explain his double-fermentation process and showoff the equipment, but he says most visitors just want to sample the beer and listen to the music.

Another place to find locally brewed beer and the spirit of Ireland this weekend is at The Waterworks Pub and Restaurant in Rockland, about seven miles south of Camden. Owner Susie Barnes says she and the staff look forward each year to their St. Patrick’s Day celebration. This year, the holiday falls on Sunday, which allows for a full day of fun.

The pub, which is on Lindsey Street – a side street that runs perpendicular to Main Street – opens at 10 a.m., when a traditional Irish breakfast is served, featuring “bangers,” which Barnes says are a kind of sausage particular to Irish cuisine.

The lunch menu includes Irish lamb stew, and burgers and mash, and such appetizing creations as potato-encrusted salmon with pratieoaten, a fried biscuit-like concoction made from dough of boiled mashed potatoes and oats.

“Leave it to the Irish to come up with all these ways to prepare potatoes,” Barnes says.

The dinner menu features Irish stew with sweet potatoes, mushrooms and goat-cheese dumplings.

Barnes boasts about the restaurant’s “incredible mustard sauce” that is drizzled on some of the entrees, but music may be what really spices up a meal at The Waterworks on Sunday. A local group, Don’t Step on Seamus, will lean heavily into traditional Celtic music, using accordion, upright bass, drums, banjo, electric bagpipes and penny whistle.

Then at about 6 p.m., a bagpipe group featuring 15 pipers will begin playing.

“It’s phenomenal,” Barnes says. “They always come marching through the door. It just goes right through to your toes. It definitely gives you goose bumps,” she adds, perhaps betraying her own Scottish roots.

Inside the circa-1930s brick pub building, the sound of 15 bagpipes is nothing short of powerful, Barnes says. Through the course of the evening, the pipers drop out one-by-one, either from fatigue or from the effects of the beer, she jokes, but the last piper standing ends the night by playing “Amazing Grace.”

Barnes says six of the eight taps at the Waterworks are devoted to Rocky Bay Brewing Co. beers, which are brewed in Rockland. They range from lager to nut-brown ale.

“They’re tasty and smooth. He’s very good at his craft,” she says of the brewer.

Back in Lincolnville, on Route 1 near the beach, The Whale’s Tooth Pub and Restaurant is also as fine a place as any to celebrate the Irish saint’s day. Owners Rob and Dorothy Newcombe also will serve corned beef and cabbage, and “Fingers Frank” Wareham, a piano and accordion player known from Rockland to Searsport for his ability to get a room full of revelers singing, will play selections from the Emerald Isle.

Dorothy says the pub is usually packed with people, most dressed in green, and the atmosphere is that of a house party.

“I love every moment of it,” she says. A native of Holland, Newcombe says Mainers have found their own special way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, unlike anywhere else she’s visited.

For those who don’t want to drive home, there are plenty of bed-and-breakfast inns that are participating in the festival. The Capt. Lindsey House Inn is a first-rate bed-and-breakfast next door to The Waterworks in Rockland; the Norumbega Inn in Camden will have one of its murder mystery weekends with an Irish wake as its theme; and The Elms in Camden also has several packages including dinner at restaurants in town. Many other inns in the area remain open as well.

For more information, see www.visitcamden.com