Meet MOFGA Volunteer Matthew Strong
Fall 2024
By Betsy Garrold
Photo credit: Matthew Strong
The words that spring to mind when you meet Matthew Strong and hear about all the various projects he has been involved with in his life are “uniquely creative.” And those words seem too modest in many ways. Strong truly is what author Cory Doctorow refers to as a "maker." After years of working in the electronic recycling business he has finally retired to his new 40x40 two-story workshop at his home in Ellsworth where he can get up every morning and spend the day "making stuff." Strong says, "I can visualize machines and then just build them." Six years ago, he built a prototype for a recycling center for lithium-ion batteries that has since been scaled up to a 250,000-square-foot factory in Missouri that recovers all the metals and plastics in batteries from EVs.
His connection with the Common Ground Country Fair goes back to the very beginning. In 1977, after a series of unfortunate events, he and his brother took $200 and started selling egg rolls at all the agricultural fairs in the state. He heard about "some little hippie gathering" in Litchfield, Maine, and they set up shop not realizing how popular their offerings would be. Strong hired people on the spot to help, and went down to the local store each night to restock ingredients. By the end of that first Fair weekend, they were taking vegetables out of the Exhibition Hall to feed the demand for egg rolls. The business grew, and Strong eventually designed and built two big trailers to house it.
Since then, Strong has served on the MOFGA board of directors; helped, with Ellis Percy and others, scout out the site in Unity for MOFGA’s headquarters; and served as food coordinator for 10 years while continuing to run his egg roll business. His legacy of yummy egg rolls is still carried on by the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church of Ellsworth.
When the Fair moved to Unity, Strong became its communications coordinator. He was also one of the traffic coordinators early on in Unity and has nothing but high praise for the cooperation he received from the local communities and the Waldo County Sherriff's Department. He says, about the way the Fair is run, "You can make your own job, it's really what I've done. Lots of the coordinators have done the same thing. You can find your niche and fill it because of the way the Fair is structured. Everyone has some special talent — they just need to find it and nurture it."
Strong has committed to making it to 50 fairs and has not missed one yet. This unique combination of creativity and commitment from volunteers like Strong is what makes the Common Ground Country Fair the event that we all know and love.
