Maine Farm Days marked its 50-year celebration on Misty Meadows Farm in Clinton, a working dairy farm with 700 milking cows owned by John and Belinda Stoughton and Thomas and Kimberly Wright. The two-day event began Wednesday and continues on Thursday with a variety of exhibits that display the operations carried out on the farm, the technology needed to do it, and the fun and food a well-run farm brings with it.

New this year is a demonstration of robotic milking technology. The DeLaval system is equipped with vision to attach a milker to a cow’s teats, a system that cleans and milks the cow, and mobile controls. While the cow in the milking stall may not be real, the process it demonstrates is real high tech.

Along with the practical knowledge provided by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and other agencies, the corn maze, the milking contest and the whoopie pie and blueberry pie contests are all part of what Farm Days has to offer.