17th century Maine meets reality TV

MACHIASPORT – A made-for-TV experiment designed to simulate history on a secluded Down East cove was wrapping up last week.

The wannabe Colonists had grown weary of living in dirt-floored dwellings without plumbing and subsisting on meals often made from just a handful of ingredients.

About two-dozen people had taken part since late spring.

Their mission: to bring to life a 17th century European settlement on Indian land for a public television series, “Colonial House,” that is expected to be shown next spring.

“I have never worked so hard in my life,” said Dave Verdecia, a firefighter from California who lived in the settlement with his wife, Debbie, and their three children.

Set in the early 1600s, “Colonial House” is the latest installment in the reality TV show trend that includes series such as “Survivor,” “The Bachelor” and “Fear Factor.” PBS has run the popular “reality” history shows “Warrior Challenge” about gladiators, and “The Frontier House,” about three homesteading families in Montana.

“The Frontier House” was the highest-rated series on public TV in the past five years.

The Maine volunteers’ immersion into 1628 Pilgrim-era America, known at times as Acadia to French explorers and Virginia to English settlers, lasted four months.

The Old World community grew on a tract of about 300 acres in a cluster of five houses, sheltering families and individuals assigned to various levels of the period’s social hierarchy.

“It hasn’t always been pretty,” said Don Wood, a carpenter from New York who acted as the settlement’s work foreman and took charge of the group’s small boat known as a shallop.

The land used for the colony is owned by the Passamaquoddy Tribe and sits on the perimeter of Maine’s productive blueberry region about 60 miles up the coast from Ellsworth.

A cool, wet summer kept the settlement frequently shrouded in clouds.

Settlement residents became accustomed to persistent dampness in their wool and linen clothing – one of any number of hardships inherent in their four-century leap backward.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily more work,” said Debbie Verdecia, displaying fresh laundry still far from clean, “it’s just so difficult.”

Growing food wasn’t easy – “The gardens have had modest success, I guess we might say,” said Don Heinz, a professor in religious studies from California who served as the community’s lay preacher and governor – and fishing was pretty much of a bust. Livestock – pigs, goats and chickens – were precious.

Still, few out-of-time concessions were made to comfort. Insect repellent was one, toothbrushes another.

As on-site production was wrapping up last week, some Washington County residents accustomed to seasonal infestations of black flies and tourists shrugged when asked for their impressions during the weeks the show-in-making was virtually sealed off.

“Their attitude was that they wanted to conduct the project in a way that there wouldn’t be a lot of contact with the town,” said Selectman Doug Campbell. “So we’ve just left them alone.”

That’s just what Thirteen/WNET New York had been hoping for.

But Maine’s time-tested tolerance for summer people hasn’t always masked the amusement taken in the strange ways of big-city visitors.

“Like trying to grow corn,” said neighbor Jay Wilkinson. “They took a blueberry field on the coast in a fog bank. Stuff like that sort of makes you wonder.”

Maine Marine Resources Commissioner George Lapointe said that in setting up the settlement the producers “had some expectations” that proved hard to fulfill in “a spot that’s got very active 21st-century reality.”

Topics of discussions included access to shellfish harvesting and the regular presence of local lobstermen, as well as general “good neighbor issues,” he said.

“There are issues of people earning their living and rights of free passage on the water. … In the end there was no special treatment given to them,” Lapointe said.

“They’re really not noisy,” Wilkinson said from his tree farm next door. “One way or the other, it hasn’t really disrupted much except me.”

If the production struck him as a little naive and eccentric, he said, “Well, they’re New Yorkers. What do you expect?”