LEWISTON – “Made in Maine,” the signature original production of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, will begin its 18th season at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27.

Lou McNally – who last year won his third Emmy as outstanding host of a local series for his work on “Made in Maine” – is back as the program’s host, introducing public television viewers to the people, places and businesses that make Maine unique.

“This show could go on for a hundred years, and we’d still never get to tell all the stories that we’d like to,” said McNally.

The real theme of the show, which spotlights businesses, people and products, is the “remarkable and seemingly endless capacity for innovation that people in every corner of Maine seem to possess,” he added.

The first show in the new series is called “Organic Maine,” for which McNally and the MPBN crew visited the Common Ground Country Fair, a popular annual event that celebrates rural living.

Other segments of the show profile Two Loons Farm, an organic dairy and grain farm in Vassalboro, and Webb Family Farm in Pittston, where three generations of the Webb family grow organic wheat, spelt and oats with the help of a stable of Belgian workhorses. The last segment looks at Grandy Oats in Brownfield, which uses locally grown grains and all-Maine ingredients in its products while at the same time directing some of its labor and profits toward socially responsible causes.

Information about each of the new season’s first five episodes of “Made in Maine” can be found online at www.mpbn.net/madeinmaine.

Copy the Story Link