LITTLETON – There is an old adage that proclaims, “A house is made of brick and stone. A home is made of love alone.”

In this town, that home made of love is the Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum on Route 1, which in the past year has expanded significantly into one of Aroostook County’s greatest links to its past and one of its most significant preservation sites for the future.

“This past year has been amazing for us,” Karen Donato, museum volunteer and member of the display committee, said recently. “Monetary donations have increased and so has the number of visitors, and we have only $35,000 left to pay off our $50,000 mortgage.”

The museum, which relies on the loan, membership fees, fund-raisers and private donations for its operating budget, has had an estimated 1,500 visitors since it first opened in August 2002.The museum is housed within the former Littleton Elementary School, which closed under the strain of budget cuts in 2000. The building was unoccupied until 2002, when residents voted to turn it into a museum.

What they created just keeps growing.

“It’s amazing, what we have accomplished here,” said Barry Campbell, museum treasurer and lifelong farmer, as he glanced around at the artifacts, “and all of it has been done by the hands of volunteers.”

Volunteers are the heart of this nonprofit organization, many of whom are former students at the school who can still remember which teacher taught in each classroom. They have come from locations throughout Maine and New England, and work daily to assist in the continual expansion of the museum.

During a recent visit, a man from Carmel, about 130 miles away, had driven to the museum to help catalog and shelve books, working for three hours. The museum has more than 100 members, but volunteers, whose time is not officially tracked, come and go consistently.

“We’re currently working to turn this old classroom into a model potato house,” Donato said, pointing out the weathered potato barrels and baskets in a room perfumed by the fresh spruce paneling on the walls. “We’re also working to turn two other rooms into an old-fashioned farm home, with a milking room and an antique-style kitchen.”

The initial contents of the museum were donated by Cedric Shaw, a lifelong farmer now in his 80s. He saved most of the equipment that he used during his 35 years in farming, and, in 1988, Shaw and his wife, Emily, began displaying the collection in their barn.

When Littleton voters approved the museum, the family donated all that they had accumulated.

Today the artifacts, ranging from items as small as perfume bottles to as large as antique horse-drawn plows, spread farther than the eye can see.

Piles of books, their pages dog-eared and yellowed, covered tables in the newly created library, waiting to be cataloged by volunteers.

“The volunteers here are phenomenal,” said volunteer Ralph Longstaff, a Littleton resident for much of his life. Now living in Hodgdon, he drives up to the museum as often as he can to help out. “I even came back to help after I broke my ankle. I just can’t help myself.”

The only room remaining untouched in the museum is the gymnasium, which is rented out for parties, wedding receptions and public suppers.

This, along with an increase in membership, private donations and fund-raisers, has helped the museum expand. Officials continue to accept donations and are booking events for the coming months.

“The generosity of these people has been overwhelming,” Donato said. “There is going to be a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary here in the near future, and they don’t want any gifts. Instead, they want people to make donations to the museum.”

Campbell praises the people who helped in the initial phase of the museum and those who continue to contribute.

“We couldn’t have done it without them,” Campbell said.

“You know,” Donato said, glancing at an expansive wall of antique hand tools, “people can’t believe what we have done here in such a short time. And not one of these people has ever been paid.

“This museum has been created from the heart.”

The Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. every first and third Saturday of the month or by appointment. Call 538-9300 or 538-4100 or e-mail: info@oldplow.org for more information.