The band was playing and the carnival rides were spinning on a warm, sunny afternoon at the Farmington Fair, the kind of bright September day that makes winter feel safely far off.
But the nights have been getting colder, and Krista Hinkley was worried.
"Oil prices are absolutely outrageous, and we're concerned that we're not going to even make it through the winter," she said.
Hinkley lives in Jay with her three kids, her husband, and her mother. She said they're trying to cut back where they can, chasing discounts and even eating less food.
And she's not just worried about her own family. Hinkley works as a mobile hearing aid provider and said many of her clients don't know how they're going to afford oil either.
"They're not going to make it through the winter," Hinkley said. "There's some who are on extremely low incomes. There's no way they could afford even 100 gallons, and that's really the biggest concern."
Heating oil prices in Maine hit a record high last week, at $6.02 a gallon on average. That means it'll now cost an extra $740 to fill a standard 250-gallon tank than a year ago, according to the state Department of Energy Resources.
On top of the global market turmoil triggered by the U.S. - Iran war, heating oil, which is similar to diesel, is also affected by limited refining capacity, which has taken a hit from fighting in the Middle East and in Ukraine.
"So, as a result, we're seeing very tight supplies for diesel and heating oil," Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
Wolfe said the northeast consumes 82% of the country's heating oil, meaning that the fallout from higher prices is also concentrated here, at a time when households are already stretched by more expensive gasoline.
"They now have an additional upwards of $200 a month for home heating oil. So, this is putting significant pressure on lower income families," Wolfe said.
"We're seeing about the highest demand that we have seen for assistance and for services, especially this early in the season," said Jason Parent, CEO of Avec Community Action, which administers the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, in Aroostook, Washington and Hancock Counties.
This year, he said, they're also seeing more demand from middle-income households who don't qualify for federal aid.
And even for those who do qualify, the early season demand for assistance is hard to meet, because federal funding typically isn't available until November.
"We've had some households that have been without fuel now for over a month and are just at the critical point where they're like, 'It's starting to become unbearable for us now,'" Parent said.
MaineHousing said the state does have about $4 million in federal funding left over from last year, which could help bridge some of the gap. They are urging anyone who thinks they may need help this winter to apply as soon as possible, either online through its website, or by phone, or in person at their local community action agency.
All of this is playing out weeks ahead of the midterm elections, and Democrats in Maine and across the country are laying the affordability issue at the feet of Republicans. But at the Farmington Fair, Joe Nelson, who lives in Temple, said he's seen prices go up and down under both parties.
"I mean, I'm not too happy about the gas prices being the way they are, or the oil prices. Neither one of them," Nelson said. "I was also around in '78 when Jimmy Carter was here, and everything went through the roof as well."
Nelson also pointed to the last big energy price spike under former President Joe Biden, triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when Republicans were the ones trying to harness voter anger over rising costs.
But as the national parties jockey for position in the political horserace, Stewart Wyman has just been burned by the results of an actual horserace.
"I don't think I won," Wyman said, with a laugh, after a pack of harness racers barrel across the finish line. "I had the 5 horse, which did terrible."
Wyman, who lives in Farmington and made a career in the public school system, said he's not feeling much better about his heating oil prospects.
"It's kind of scary going into the winter, knowing right now what the prices are going to be," he said. "And I'm not sure they're going to drop a whole heck of a lot in the short term."
Wyman said he's been waiting as long as possible to fill his tank. But said with nighttime temperatures starting to dip into the 30s, he's not sure how much longer he can hold out.
