Butter-making family program

Meet the Holsteins at the Pineland Farms dairy barn and learn how to churn their milk into butter, just as people did in the old days. This family education program, to be held on Thursday, Nov. 19, from 10-11:30 a.m., is open to all ages. Purchase tickets for $5 per person at The Market and Welcome Center, 15 Farm View Drive, New Gloucester. For more information, call 650-3031 or email education@pinelandfarms.org.

Shop at the Shaker Store or online

The Shaker Museum, founded in 1931, marked the close of its 84th season on Oct. 12. Visitors are being thanked for their patronage in partaking of tours, programs, demonstrations and special events throughout the season at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village.

The Shaker Store, 707 Shaker Road, New Gloucester, with a full line of gifts, crafts, herbs, yarn, homemade pickles, relish and jelly, and much more, will remain open on Saturdays, 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., through Saturday, Dec. 5, which denotes the date of the annual Shaker Christmas Fair.

New to the Shakers’ website is an online store of their herbs and tea at www.maineshakers.com. Since 1799, the Sabbathday Lake Shakers have cultivated, packaged and distributed to the public an important selection of sweet herbs and medicinal herbal teas. Following that same early tradition, now they offer a selection of gourmet culinary herbs, herbal blends, spices, herbal teas, and culinary waters that represent their long and continuing heritage. Their herbs are grown in gardens more than 200 years old, dried in a facility built in 1845, and packaged in tin canisters just like those used by their forebears throughout the 1800s.

Special Town Meeting

The town of New Gloucester will be holding a special Town Meeting on Monday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m., at the AmVets Post 6 Hall located at 1095 Lewiston Road.

Voters will be asked to consider three warrant articles. Two of the articles involve the town’s ongoing efforts to revitalize the Upper Village area. One article is a resolution asking citizens to support efforts to promote a village orientation in the Upper Village by implementing strategies consistent with a master planning effort. The second article seeks to amend the zoning in the Upper Village to promote a viable village center there.

A third article asks citizens if they’d like to move the day and time of future annual Town Meetings from Monday evenings to Saturday mornings.

Copies of all warrant articles are available at the town office front desk and on the town website at www.newgloucester.com. Copies of the proposed zoning amendments are available on the Planning Department page on the town’s website and at the town office front desk. For more information, contact the New Gloucester Planning Office at 926-4126, ext. 4.

Case of the missing podium

The wooden table top podium emblazoned with the New Gloucester town seal on the front has been missing for several months. It is thought to have been built by the late Roy Lowe, who served as moderator at New Gloucester town meetings for 25 years. If you know of the podium’s whereabouts, please return it or call the town office at 926-4126, ext. 1.

Town facilities’ holiday schedule

The New Gloucester Public Library will be closing at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 25. All town facilities will be closed on Thursday, Nov. 26, to celebrate Thanksgiving. Only the transfer station will be open Friday, Nov. 27, and its hours are 9 a.m.-2 p.m. On Saturday, Nov. 28, the public library will be open from 9 a.m.-noon, and the transfer station will be open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Trolley talk

The next meeting of the New Gloucester Historical Society will feature Phil Morse of Maine’s own Seashore Trolley Museum who will speak about the trolley named Narcissus that used to travel right through New Gloucester as part of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. The meeting will be held on Thursday, Nov. 19, 7 p.m., at the New Gloucester Meetinghouse, next to the Town Hall on Route 231. The talk is free of charge, and complimentary refreshments will be available.

Dressed in a pumpkin outfit on Halloween, 15-week-old Claire Drown is held by her mother and grandmother, Marissa and Peggy Stewart of Gray, at the New Gloucester Fire and Rescue Department’s hunters breakfast. Christina Owens and George Carman staff the buffet line. Carman is a safety officer with the department.