Little seems more American than an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror of your car, soaking up eau de old sneaker odors and the pungent aroma of a week-old piece of sandwich that fell under the front seat, only to be forgotten.

Wendy Newmeyer’s customers use her small balsam fir-filled pillows to freshen their vehicles, but they aren’t always dangling from the mirror. In fact, Newmeyer suggests just tossing the pillow in the back seat or on the dashboard, where it will get more sun and the warmth will release more scent. “A car is the perfect place to put a balsam pillow,” she says.

Newmeyer and her husband run Maine Balsam Fir from their 124-acre farm in West Paris. She has been making balsam fir products (door snakes, neck rolls, pillows) for 32 years. The products are sold in national parks, museum shops and hundreds of gift shops around the country, including the one on her farm. She also sells at the Common Ground Fair and the Fryeburg Fair. The small pillows useful as air fresheners come in three sizes, and all cost $10 or less.

The Newmeyers gather most of their balsam from trees on their own property. When they buy from other small farms, they make sure the trees have not been sprayed with any chemicals. They take the boughs off by chain saw, then trim the smaller limbs with a machete. Then they shred and dry the balsam in a special room they built, using a secret technique that helps it hold its fragrance. (Hint: Balsam should never be baked.) The drying reduces the weight of the material by half; then it is stuffed into pillows made of cotton or linen.

Newmeyer says the scent in her pillows will last at least five years, sometimes much longer. “Some people keep them around for decades and I find them in garage sales and antique stores,” she said.

Should your pillow start to lose its scent, squeeze it a little. Whatever you do, don’t put it in the microwave, Newmeyer advises – that’s a fire hazard.

What’s it like working around all that balsam – a fragrance that can transport you to the middle of the Maine woods while you’re sitting in city traffic?

“It’s actually like a natural high,” Newmeyer said. “We get a charge out of it. We walk out of the building and go to get groceries, and people walk behind us telling us how good we smell.”


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