Nothing To Paint, Rot Out, Maine Stone Steps Made To Last.
Maine has a new stash of rocks each year that row crop farmers know all too well.
Picked many a rock and carted them to the woods or to make a property boundary line bigger. More defined. Frost pushes up stones that need removal to keep from jamming, breaking farm machinery used in planting, cultivating, harvest of Maine crops. Lots of other “rocks” in Maine, stones that can be used to make something pleasing to the eye. Used for a finger, fastened to both ears or hung around a neck for display. Like Maine tourmaline.
But stone walls that are hand stacked rip rap, rubble from quarries or recycled from old cellar hole foundations are pleasing to the eye too.
The big granite squares you see on the way up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park are heavy but if man handled in to place could make a neat outdoor fireplace I have been thinking. The one I have outside a Maine waterfront property is way over due for demolition and replacement for nightly fires lakeside on the Maine waterfront.
The really neat thing about Maine granite, hand laid slate slabs stacked and patterned is it lasts.
Long long after you and I are gone. Six feet under and have left the Earth. And the older you get, the fun and games of replacing becomes old in repairs and renovations. Not just because of expense but we grow to like the surroundings pretty much the way they are with subtle updates, improvement. Comfortable in our space in the place called Maine.
Maine Baked Beans, Not Just For Saturday Night Anymore.
My Aunt Molly lived most of the forty years at the Maine farm with Uncle Fred.
And in the recent Maine farm sale, digging out, finding treasures happens. My cousin Joan, one of the twins, Uncle’s Bud’s daughter was nice enough to rescue a bag of solider beans.
Packed in two pound plastic bags with Christmas like red and green and the Prem Pak brand (for Premium Packaging), the soldier beans shiny white with dark maroon markings.
Part of me thinks whoa, one more bean supper with the original beans from the farm. Maybe ones I graded in high school with my friends. Around the Willy Lynds machine shop conveyor with the hopper. The one filled to the brim, near overflowing with out of the field beans on one end of the belt. A galvanized clean new garbage can on the other collected the graded beans. And an eight track playing Three Dog Night’s “Momma Told Me Not To Come” or “One Is The Loneliest Number” in the background to help production.
But another part of me says, preserve the Maine farm bean bag. Like being smarter than Jack with his bag of beans that he got in a trade for the family milk cow. The contents as long as water, moisture is kept far away will be fine. Or maybe the two pounds of Maine grown dry beans should be planted. To produce more. Like peas Dad had in a hanging display container that he said contained peas from King Tut’s tomb. Yikes. Those are some kind of old. Much more dated than the Maine farm solider beans grown in Aroostook County.
Regardless, rounding up the ingredients for a batch of Maine home made beans.
Because the family shared many a bean supper around the Maine farm dinner table. And there is something missing with the can of B and M beans, Bush’s or other brands. That need the can open whirling. The contents to be warmed up not cooked bean hole bean style. Soaked over Friday night for the all day long Saturday night special spread. The one with brown bread, home made potato salad, banana and mayonnaise cabbage salad and red dye number three hot dog snappers.
After the twenty four year long Maine potato farm stint, the beef cattle Durham years, the shift to soldier, pea, jacob’s cattle and yellow eye beans was the last hoorah in producing food from the land for my Dad and Mom. But now have two sons that bring up the subject of growing something on that Maine family farm. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know what happens to the two pound bag of antique Maine farm soldier beans.
Time To Eat Canadian Food Product… Like Catelli Macaroni.
When you live in Maine, there’s lots of outdoor natural fun to be had right in state.
But the lure of crossing the Vacationland border into Canada, whether Quebec on the west, New Brunswick or the Atlantic provinces on the east. Both create a strong tug of the heart.
Dad’s mom Bessie was 100 percent Canadian.
A nurse, a Burtt from Burtt’s Corner. As a kid growing up, trips to winter carnival in Quebec City and staying at the Hotel Frontenac still create strong family vacation memories. Winter Canival sliding down frozen ice luge like carved, steep hill side paths on a toboggan. Ice skating, eating French cuisine and wondering as a small kid what the folks around me in Quebec were actually saying. Two boys brought up as knee high to a grasshoppers through the ranks of Canadian border town minor hockey add to the familiar, comfortable feeling. Because of the in and out of a slew of Canadian ice arenas. That all that poutine consumption can cause.
This past weekend, headed east to Fredericton new Brunswick. To walk the heart of the city, sample some local dining fare, wander around one huge mall. And tour a legislative 1880 Victorian brick building that happened to be open for a boy scout convention underway at the same time as the tour. All these years living in Maine and just figuring out the Fredericton is the provincial seat, not St John was a surprise.
Watching lots of Canadian television programming growing up because two of the four off air signals were maple leaf branded.
Beamed in to the antennae on the Maine farm house roof. I somehow missed this point of where all the laws were made, modified or repealed. Do remember Hockey Night In Canada, The Friendly Giant, Mr Dress Up, Time For Juniors with Jeanie Woods amateur talent telecasts. And the CBC version of local and national news. The weather in metric. All the Catelli macaroni commercials, other products you could not buy on this side of the border when pushing, filling a grocery shopping cart.
When you live in a small Maine border town, the food stores and hardware outlets have a little of everything.
As you enter a huge Emerald City feeling Sobey’s Canadian grocery store the abundance, wide selection of grocery items amaze. Eye open a shopper not used to the quantity of foodstuff offerings. Pastries and cheeses, fondue sauces, broths and lots of European feeling items to stock the food pantry with vaguely familiar names attached to them from experiencing past Canadian television broadcasts. A fuzzy deja vu feeling can return that had been dormant, tucked away inside. Created back as a brown eyed small boy sitting spread eagle in front of a television set during dark winter hours in a Maine farm house growing up.
Snow Skiing In New Brunswick Canada Video.
Maine, Canadian Provinces included for no extra charge with the experience of your visit here to the Pine Tree State.
Plowing Snow, Mainers Have Years Of Experience With Moving The White Stuff.
Getting ready for a Maine winter…because growing up can remember snow so high you could reach up, actually if crazy enough touch the wires along roads.
Snow, fluffy white stuff came steadily. It was that high. Had to be kept up with, not neglected. But we know how to deal with snow in Maine. Have the equipment, experience and less traffic to work around to move it. And not interrupt the day to day living in Maine.
With global warming and a tendency to be snow less Maine winters, a drought for the stuff needed to build a neighborhood fort out behind the family home has happened. Play with it in many other ways. So the winter snow handling preparation has lessened. Snow fences, like the slats of vertical wood and wire you see on sand dunes to help with beach erosion used to pop up around the countryside. To hold the drifting snow back from spilling into the roadway.
Staked, placed, put up along Maine highways prone for white out, drifting and poor visibility. In November before the ground frost deepened. And the mercury dropped, temperature dipped, state road / highway crews would uncoil the snow fencing. Roll it back up in the spring and toss it on the back of state of Maine highway crew trucks to head back to the warehouse garages.
Placing craft paper, canvass and then laying tree boughs around the Maine home foundation a ritual too.
To insulate, bank the Maine home for a warmer, toasty winter. Stocking the shelves in the cellar root pantry for canning, preserves to tap into over the winter. Sometimes along with filling up the wood shed, the cellar with cut and split logs made to just fit the heater stove, furnace. Sealing out the northwest winds, chinking the cracks, slots to help make heating the Maine home easier. To prevent a passage way for field mice hoping for a winter warm cushy Maine home with some food to nibble on over the holidays and into next spring.
Sometimes long roads, rows of cleared snow, paths running parallel along the Maine highways would be bulldozer installed.
To fill with snow as a container for shifting, blowing snow. Instead of the snowflakes doing the same fill up, foot upon foot accumulation on highways. That some winters were given round the clock attention to keep open, plowed, sanded. Pushed, winged back for better visibility coming out of Maine home driveways. How to plow a driveway after a Maine winter snowstorm video. Maine state road crews clearing the winter snow for traveling to and from work, for commerce, and emergency personnel put in some long, difficult hours with poor visibility, not a lot of sleep.
Maine Winter Snowstorm, Plowing Video
Maine winters, a time to snow sled, downhill ski, skate inside and out along with ice fishing. Snowshoeing or just holing up in front of a hot, blazing, crackling fireplace after being outdoor for work or a recreational workout in the white stuff. Maine has no bad seasons, you just have bad clothes or make poor choices if you are cold, wet, shivering and wonder why.
Maine Balsam Firs, Wreaths Are Popular Around The World.
Tipping, not for pleasant, quick service at a Maine restaurant or the pushing over a cow in the farm yard late at night. Not the free or paid for advice kind either.
Tipping for Maine Christmas wreaths.
Not just Maine Christmas trees being wrapped and stacked and shipped south for the holidays. Up to three million fir and pine holiday circles, wreaths are created in Maine each year. The tipping season begins the first of November and runs until the second week of December before the big red guy in velvet and fluffy white shows up on the roof top with the boisterous unpredictable flying deer.
Up to five pounds of tips, the ends of tree boughs are needed to craft a Maine Christmas wreath to welcome in the holidays. Hanging festively on doors around the country. Some wreaths plain jane. Others decked out with gold, silver bells, red, green and other color bows, doo dads.
A bill of sale for the tips used in Christmas wreath production is needed from the Maine land owner. The owner of the land in Maine where the trees are trimmed, groomed, gleaned of material needed to fashion the fragrant green circles shipped round the globe. Permits are needed for transportation of wreaths, the materials to make them too.
The migrant workers that fashion the wreaths and are paid for piece work production, are fresh off the apple orchards, potato fields and blueberry barrens.
The two to three sections of tree tips are wound, weaved, intertwined together and fastened with a wire to secure. With an end of that wire curved into a loop to be used to hang the wreath for holiday display.
Tips for wreaths gathered before the needles “set” or the tree stops growing until the following spring will not be so full and green by Christmas. Turning brown, looking burnt, dried out. Appearing dead, lifeless more Charlie Brown Christmas tree like by the time December 25th rolls around.
Three year cutting, tipping routines work best to save the tree from loosing steam.
And not growing full, healthy. Maine is the largest producer of balsam wreaths in the United States. Millions of wreaths assembled each year. Most come from balsam fir that hail from colder parts of New England and in some sections of the Canadian Maritimes. The very fragrant Balsam fir smell reminds many of past Christmas celebrations. It’s why the Maine wreaths are by far the most popular in the country.
I know a lady who can crank out up to 200 Maine wreaths a day, for the small compensation of $2 per green, full, puffed out forest smelling rings.
Washington County in Maine is a beehive for Christmas wreath production. But like the blueberry harvest, more and more migrant workers from Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador make up Maine’s wreath-factory production crews. It is harder to find locals, natives willing to work the long hours for little pay associated with Maine Christmas tree production.
Maine, big state, unspoiled four season beauty abounds in this place called “Vacationland”.
Horror Writer, Maine\’s Stephen King Home On West Broadway, Bangor ME
Maine haunted houses, as a real estate broker in Vacationland, I would suggest they are worth more.
Especially if Bangor Maine horror writer Stephen King decided the spook inhabited home would make a good movie set. King and his wife Tabitha live in a pretty neat West Broadway Maine victorian house iron gated and off the street.
Regardless if you believe in spirits, moaning ghosts, former inhabitants with clanging chains that just won’t let go and head over to the great beyond, haunted houses happen. Because imaginations create them.
And if a Maine property has a reputation spun by a story teller, we disclose it.
And the buyer may laugh going in. But if new home owners suddenly find buyers avoid it like the plague on resale, they know, were told what to expect. That a segment of the home audience gets skiddish, squeamish. It happens with Maine haunted houses.
Some people don’t believe in God, so spooks are not going to move the needle either.
Not cause the smallest stir. Because they are in control and tough as board nails, rock solid in their convictions about how things roll around them. Believing in only what they can see. Not putting stock, having any faith in what they can not.
A John Jay, a local Hodgdon Maine native create a lot of stories about a home he used to own that he said was haunted. It started with moving into it years ago and returning from Orient Maine to the south at the end of the day to find everyone he left inside suddenly outside. In the yard and lights flickering on and off. Haunted? Maybe. Poor electrical system, most assuredly. But that is where the tales of being haunted started.
If a buyer of a Maine home loses it for lack of payment of the loan, property taxes, sour grapes happens too.
Lots Of Spooks, Might Be Halloween Haunted This Patten ME Home.
This same home was a old Farmer’s Home repossession and more stories got added to the fire John Jay started. That circulated around the local grapevine. Because the former owner of the Maine home would not cite the real reason they left… lack of payments for house loan, heat, property taxes. Nasty or even friendly divorce splits can throw a wreck into home ownership in Maine too.
Easier to say it is haunted, and vacated for that reason not because they lost it in foreclosure.
When the public sees folks, buyers, sellers, renters coming and going it adds to the haunted suspicion surrounding the Maine real estate too.
I talked to a renter of this home in Maine I’ve sold a few times over the years. He claimed he threw his winter wood supply in to the cellar helter skelter. And awoke the next day to neatly stacked rows assembled in the basement. Haunted? Maybe by Casper, the friendly, helpful ghost.
This renter went on to say he went to bed several nights with party chips on the coffee table and the next morning they were gone. I asked, do you have a dog? Yes. I had one that loved chips as much as I do. Not trying to be a doubting Thomas but…..
One buyer from Rhode Island that I shared the stories with of the home he wanted to buy being haunted was not daunted. After the sale I asked if he had experiences with anything paranormal and he said one word and smiled.
Give Me A Beat To Go Along With The Sweets. Light Shows For This Halloween Trick Or Treat Pit Stop.
Rolaids.
He could not keep them in the Hodgdon Maine home. Evidently Casper has an upset stomach. Too much acid reflex caused with his diet of whatever ghosts munch on, nibble. Besides dead bodies, young children or whatever the standard dining fare en vogue.
Haunted homes in Maine, the notoriety can increase the value just as much as it hurts the sticker price.
Depends on the Maine home buyer and how well they sleep at night. Their past experiences and if every creak, groan caused by a strong northwest, northeast gust of a northern Maine wind keeps them wide eyed and scared stiff. Looking for affordable real estate, friendly people, no traffic? Maine, neat state, a lot of story tellers spinning yarns that some swallow hook, line and sinker.
