Reading by Henry Beston biographer at Chimney Farm

Tue, 08/23/2016 - 9:30am

Gulf of Maine Books and Midcoast Conservancy invite you to join them on Saturday, Sept. 3, from 5 to 7 p.m., to meet the author of “Orion on the Dunes,” a biography of Henry Beston by Daniel Payne. Publisher David Godine will also be on hand as share insight into Beston’s life and his writing of “The Outermost House.” The event will be held at Chimney Farm, 617 East Neck Road, in Nobleboro, where Midcoast Conservancy conserves almost 1,000 feet of shoreline which helps protect the water quality on Damariscotta Lake.

The group will tour Chimney Farm which was the Maine home of authors Henry Beston, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and their daughter, poet Kate Beston Barnes. It is now the home of Beth Leonard and Gary Lawless, owners of Gulf of Maine Bookstore. There will be a brief talk and reading by Daniel Payne, as well as a walk to the family cemetery, the protected shoreline and the writer’s shack. The writers’ shack at Chimney Farm has been restored by the Nobleboro Historical Society, and the fields, shoreline, and cemetery (where all three writers are buried) are protected by conservation easements through the Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association, which is now a part of Midcoast Conservancy.

Chimney Farm was featured as the center of several of Beston’s books, including “Northern Farm,” “Herbs and the Earth,” and “Chimney Farm Bedtime Stories.”

For more information, call Gulf of Maine Books at 729-5083, or Midcoast Conservancy at 389-5150.