Blog

Maine Potatoes, Let’s Talk About Spuds

Maine potatoes, I grew up on a spud farm.

Did I eat a lot of rice growing up you ask? (Smiling) Ah no. The Maine potato was king for the entire country back in the 1940’s. Maine grew more potatoes than any other state in the nation. Aroostook County soil is ideally suited for raising spuds with grain and other ground cover crops put into the growing rotation. Be kind to your soil and the production yield increases while the soil lost to erosion is kept to a minimum.

Preparing The Farm Field Soil To Plant The Potatoes, Whatever Other Seed Or Transplant Needs To Be Place Carefully Into The Dirt Hill Rows.

What kind of Maine potatoes are find the eye, cut into seed to put back into the ground for another crop has changed with the appetite shift of the consumer.

Our family table enjoyed home grown farm raised baked potatoes on many nights to go with the meatloaf, pork chops, steak or baked chicken, whatever was on today’s meal time menu. Baked potatoes, a sliced open hot and steamy Burbank Russet scooped out to add a pad of melting butter to what you mash with your fork hard to beat. But think about all the other ways to enjoy your Maine potato.

The shift from table stock potatoes into specialty brands was the only source of agricultural viability available.

My Dad was president of the Maine Potato Council and we heard lots of table time discussions about the need to get away from monoculture farming. When you put your er… all your eggs in one big potato basket, it’s like betting the farm on only one lucky horse to win, place, show in the farming trifecta.

Today about a quarter of the Maine potatoes raised ear marked for seed use for the eastern seaboard growers.

A little under half of what’s left get sliced, diced and readied to hop in the fryolator or to ride on the large flat tin pan slide into the oven to bake and come out when the bell or buzzer announces “DINNNERRRrrrrrr” time boys and girls.

Wash your hands, Jimmy pour the milk or water please and thank you. Let’s count our blessings. Give praise to for the cook that prepared this wonderful farm to table spread. Susan, it was your turn to set the table tonight. So Jimmy and Rod can wash and stack the dishes. While the younger ones help clear the table.

The appetite is always good and the food never disappoints when you are hungry. When you earned that hunger. The Maine fresh air, wind, sun and rain or snow all help give a person valuable perspective. A constant appreciation for what’s really important in life. We keep the needs small, the list short living on a family farm in Maine.

Let’s check in with a Northern Maine potato farming video.

Nearly a quarter of the spuds raised in Maine are headed the end of their life in dark, protective potato chip bags.

That leaves only about ten percent of the Maine potatoes grown and harvested for use as fresh use in homes, served up in restaurants, for other raw product purposes. Value added, already peeled and prepared, mostly cooked and just needing a rip open the box, pull it out of the refrigerator or freezer. For the finish warming it up in the oven or quick like a bunny pop into the microwave meal time ritual. Fast food for busy lives has over taken the more satisfying slow cooked, take your time and unwind after a hectic but productive day.

Early Mornings. Already Worked 40 Or More Hours By Tuesday Noon. That’s Maine Potato Farming. Never Stops. Runs Around The Clock On Family Farms.

The COVID19 pandemic has shaken the meal time razzle dazzle.

More people rediscovering the joy of home cooked meals that are creative, revisited from old family recipe traditions. Do you have copies of relatives known for their potato or other kinds of dishes? You know the killer recipes that everyone in the family wants them to whip up and bring to family reunions, the end of life after the funeral celebration of life exercise.

Farming Maine potatoes, anything involving crops or agriculture with live animals is a big gamble.

Maine potato farming. The weather is your biggest unknown to do your best to prepare for all that can go wrong. The markets can open or dry up with the same 180 degree reversal. Potatoes are not like dry beans that you can hold onto and peddle the next year. Like strawberries, blueberries unless frozen, go bad like cut flowers that dry out and fade away in the table top vase.

Old Farm Tractors. The Tried And Tested But Without All The High Tech Gadgets. These Are My Favorites. All The Tractors Hooked To Different Farm Attachments.

Boiled, scalloped, twice bake potatoes just a couple meal time variations to keep it anything but same old baked potato.

Each variety shines in new ways for however you approach meal time with the star attraction the Maine potato. Chowders, crock pots and shepherd pies can be in the eenie meenie miney moe along with whipped, the mix with cabbage, the rest of the New England boiled dinner creation. Corn chowder is about as simple but tasty meal time entree to consider and your potato cubes swimming around it the stove top pot just do the heavy lifting in the medley marination of flavors. More Maine potato recipe ideas. https://www.mainepotatoes.com/recipes/

With folks rediscovering the comfort of home during the COVID19 adjustment to control the spread and protect your family and community, cooking from scratch is gaining popularity.

Extra time freed up not running the roads and staying in your castle more makes slow cooked dishes even tastier. Working on the catch up with all the projects around the house as you drain the job jar, a person in Maine gets hungry. Savoring life often starts with slowing it down. The nose in the flowers to sample the scent and look around to see what the rest of the World is up to these days. You have lots of time to think on the back of a Maine farm field potato harvester.

Rock In The Conveyor Belt Tread Jammed Again. Where’s The Crow Bar? Trying Not To Waste Sunshine During Breakdowns.

Any true Mainer prepares and rises to the occasion whenever setbacks knock appear on your door step and you hear the knock on your door.

Maybe it’s the ever changing weather extremes or how we are raised to prepare for and expect setbacks. To not just get through them but to make them define you by actions to help out anyway you can in your small rural Maine town. Life on a farm raising potatoes, critters, other crops gives everyone valuable training for life.

The Maine potato growing up on a farm that raised them for generations is a solid staple, something comfortable for folks where I live.

The potato picking experience and worth ethic brand it leaves deep inside any one that worked in the fields or on the truck or in the spud storage house is priceless. That education and appreciation for Mother Earth and being on the potato farming chain gang with others wearing field dirt clothing over sun burnt and wind reddened skin exposure get it.

Start Them Young, Train Them Well. Potato Farm Harvest Or All The Other Seasons Are Special Times.

Pass the Maine potato please.

Yes, I do believe I will have another spud scoop helping or two. It’s awfully lonely sitting all by itself without that green bean casserole to keep it company. Pass that big bowl of cabbage and banana salad too could you Bub? Everything served country style where take what you need and come back for more until your hunger is gone from work on the Maine potato farm.

Looking out over the hillside landscape standing, bent over a potato basket or filling one by dragging it down on your knees.

The good Earth and it’s bounty creates a lasting appreciation for the simple agricultural way of life on a farm in Maine. Raw, windy, but the kids keep pushing along to help the farmer get the crop out of the ground by hand. Watch a potato picking field operation video underway in Sherman Maine.

Looking for a song to help the one potato, two or more put them in the basket then dump four of those into the empty barrel? To slide a ticket in the stave groove on the top to claim it with your number. Maine potato humming song for just that outdoor labor exercise.

Watch, listen the Tater Raisin’ Man video song.

Potatoes, lots of spuds, ate more than my fair share raised on a Maine farm growing up and over the years since childhood. How do you like your potato served up best and which varieties are what you ask for at the Piggly Wiggly or farm stand?

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA

April 23, 2020
Solitude | How To Be Alone In Maine During Coronovirus

Solitude, Maine, Coronovirus. Sheltering in place.

“Alone together”, “social distancing” all takes practice to develop the skill. Presidents, movie stars, writers, artists, families, farmers, fishermen and lumber jacks. They all selected Vacationland as a destination long before Maine even became a state in 1820. Maine’s unspoiled natural resources and remoteness considered perks. In 1878, Teddy Roosevelt got the historic spot put on the map where he daily opened the good book at Bible Point near where I live in Maine. Teddy the rough rider relished solitude mixed with a good adventure.

Making Music Won’t Be This Close In Small Maine Towns. Parades, 4th Celebrations Won’t Be Quite The Same As We Adjust To Protect Against Coronovirus Spread.

Not everyone is hand stand happy being alone or trapped in just small groups for long stretches of solitude time.

Peace and quiet. You seem to need it most when it is missing or in very short supply right? Older people eagerly seek it out more than the go go go younger generation that find the pace way too slow. Easy does it thinking and moderation? Boring to young grasshoppers. Why would you want to live life in the slow lane and do that? Many avoid alone at all costs or just never never had the opportunity to give it a whirl. The coronovirus “shelter in place” mandates started out with a no thank you helping to see how you liked it. Before “they’re HHhhhhh-here” (the coronovirus punk spiked head cells) announced by our Maine media. Like the long blond haired little girl in the early hours watching the static on the TV in her parent’s bedroom.

The coronovirus news at first like a far away asteroid that might or might not hit Earth’s surface.

Let’s wait and see if stricter measures are needed that impact our lives even deeper. Still wrapping up the end of winter weather as the news reporters provided the coronovirus play by play. We caught things out of the corner of our eyes and bits and piece with our ears. Local life as we knew it still held its distraction. We had time for the get ready, cause here she comes. Given just a taste of rein it in and stay at home as the World news story unfolded. While the country’s eyes and ears watched and listened in the dress rehearsal study on our media news channels. How to flatten the curve, head deeper into quarantine to protect others and yourself.

Ramping up to apply stricter measures here in the states as we circled the wagons. Adjusting, processing what was handled right or poorly in other concentrated hot spot areas as the coronovirus picked up steam. Reacting slowly to what we all watched play out for infection rate spread and body counts across the pond and beyond. Mainstream media and arguing politicians, a scared population all helping or hurting the new culture shaping around us.

Just how we felt on any given day about the virus news can vacillates from “we got this” to not so sure as things drag on. As solitude, alone time racking up the hours deepens. As ventilator production increased by local economies stalled. Consumer confidence dipping and the restrictive stay at home, shelter in place mandates caused take a number, have a seat. And if you don’t mind, can you wait out on the curb? No we don’t have a drive through window. Yet. (more…)

April 15, 2020
Barns In Maine

Barns in Maine, there was a time when every family farm had one or more sitting in the center of the agricultural enterprise.

One at a time and not mass produced, the original Maine barns built for farming, not wedding events. Yesteryear small growing Maine rural communities rallied together. The local farm families stepped up to take their turn. Much like our Maine Amish communities do one day a week. Thursday is community day which means everyone pack up and meet over at this week’s location to pitch in and lend a hand. All expected to step up and come together over and over like the original farm family settlers. To systematically help create each unique hand built barns in Maine. Built to last, slowly constructed one by one using many hands. To get your very own barn building appointment meant first helping several others put together their farm barns.

The Barn In Maine On A Family Farm. That Barn The Tallest, Biggest Structure With All The Others Surrounding It. Barns More Important Than Your House.

Every family member with a specific role in the barn building on the Maine farm.

Large amazing spreads of local food needed to fuel the hard working hungry builders of the farm barn. Barn raisings to piece together the post and hand hewn beam behemoths took the help of many.

The big stately working barns in Maine each secured with mortised joint dowels to create the amazing structures. Slowly constructed to serve the Maine farm families for generations.

Some barn workers in charge of finding the trees, cutting them down. Others shaping the long timbers needed for the skeleton frame of the barns in Maine. Lumber of all dimensions whittled out of whatever the team of horses twitched in from the woodlot sections of the Maine farm acreage. Still more deputized to create cedar shingles, clapboards, board and baton or whatever exterior covering to be applied to the farm barn exterior.

Scaffolding to protect the barn building workers did not remove the dangers being that high in the air performing carpentry maneuvers. You climb, you fall, you would die. That simple. I know of a local roofer who did just that from high a top a barn in Maine being shingled when a fatal accident happened. The staging plank snapped and still shudder thinking about the Maine farm barn shingle roof repair accident.

Roofing, ventilators and cupolas to bring in plenty of natural lighting and air to remove the moisture of newly mowed hayed to be stored in the barn in Maine.

Sills, rocks foundation supports to work best meant selecting a high and dry location with good soil drainage. Hemlock flooring to support the livestock, whatever to be stored in the large capacity farm barn meant another team of individuals hammered each plant in place. Finishing off the hay mow lofts, the standing and box stall pens in the inside of the Maine farm barn. Laughter, singing, hammering heard while installing windows, the weather tight trim boards.

Crafting and hanging doors on blacksmith created hinges and opening hardware another role in the barn raising.

Creating trap doors, upper openings to aid the efficiency utility of the Maine farm barn. Adding pulleys and ropes to help whatever to be stored inside the big farm barns in Maine. Dormers for ventilation and natural lighting because no power. In later years, stringing metal to connected roof top lightning rods. During approaching thunder storms, you better unplug the pasture fence charger quickly. Or you could be the lightning rod during the frantic unloading into the dry barn operation. (more…)

April 9, 2020
Epicurean | Simple Living In Small Town Rural Maine

Epicurean, simple living in small town rural Maine.

The direction, how you chose to live your life happens slowly. My Dad told me there are two basic groups of people. And like the soft serve ice cream, a blend flavor of the two chocolate and vanilla. There are vocation and vacation folks. The two pursue and craft their lifestyle around what they love but the source of joy is not quite the same.

Simple Living In Rural ME. The Take Away Is Different For What’s Important In Life. Basic Needs Met More Than Enough For Inner Joy.

For many, a job is a means to an end and fought tooth and nail to keep the wolf from your door.

Making ends meet is easier if your financial obligations are few. For some, the spark of creating a local business that provides a community service or produces goods is the end all. Your purpose in life is usually what you are good at and derive enjoyment from for work. If you find pleasure in your career employment labor, they say you never have to work a day in your life. Because work does not feel like toil or the love, sweat and tears is the satisfaction. You take home more than a pay check. You also enjoy the people you work with and serve in the public.

Your grit, stick with it determination and reinventing what you do to make it new and different pays dividends.

Everything we do in our Maine real estate primary job is all about the user experience. Not wasting anyone’s time. Making the delivery more efficient, far reaching for providing information on properties for sale with a taste of the local area community flavor. When you can mix business with pleasure on say a trip accomplishing more than one goal, that is win win too. Coronovirus has made all of us “cool our jets”. The Governor, the state of Maine REALTORS are directing us to stop face to face public showings for everyone’s safety sake. Appraisers in Maine have the go ahead to do only exterior inspections and don’t go in. But study images, MLS descriptions, videos if the real estate broker provides them for the public online consumption.

When you are lucky enough to live a simple small town rural Maine lifestyle. If you volunteer and provide something for work that benefits your community, that is highly satisfying. When you see many others working just as hard all together for a common goal, that is a beautiful thing. People choosing simple small town living in rural Maine are very very fortunate. The case just gets stronger when something like the coronovirus pandemic hits. Smaller but tighter Spartan like trained communities are tighter, fiercely connected for survival, for family, for purpose.

So who was Epicurus? What does epicurean mean?

For starters let’s take the latter term. Epicurean means the pursuit of pleasure, especially in the area of the food, comfort, whatever luxuries you add to your daily existence. The simpler your life, the more you achieve pleasure and comfort. It is like you leave room for the small things that more than enough to satisfy. My mom preached moderation which sounds like a wet blanket approach to anyone that races through life full throttle and with wreck-less abandoned. But the easy does it, first things first structure and routine is boring and controlling for some. It makes life so much easier for others. Epicurus, who was he? Was his family from Vanceboro Maine? NOooooo, take the island of Greece. That’s a few time zones away from the Pine Tree state. A philosopher who knew deeply ingrained thought took a lot of energy and patience to change for the better in shuffling your life outlook priorities. (more…)

April 3, 2020
Living In Small Maine Towns | Local News Collected Off The Grapevine

Living in a small Maine town, the grapevine news is not just gathered filtering national sources.

The latest happenings around the Maine community not covered by CNN, FOX, NPR, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC or some other big name news source. No New York Times, Washington Post. Forbes Magazine does not have lots of small rural Maine stories in their glossy pages with high end color photo spreads. Also, a small rural Maine radio station if you are lucky enough to have one is probably a “rip and read”. Something major could happen locally but it would be some time before it hits the wire service for broadcast outlets without a local news department to pick up on it. More on the history of Maine broadcasting.

Unless the local event, accident, fire or whatever news story hits the AP, UPI teletype news service, it stays dark and untouched. Or left to the weekly newspaper to tackle and break the story for its readership. We get the latest close to home news, the spin on state and national coverage from local family gatherings. From employees at work from all walks of life. Picked up with the two ears on the side of our heads from kids tapping into other circle sources. Maine has a low population. The folks that do live here are tight. Hannah oversees the Yankee Swap at the annual Christmas party out at the McGuire’s below in Linneus Maine.

The Local News Gathered At Family Events In Small Maine Towns. At Corner Grocery Convenience Stores Like Cameron’s Market In New Limerick Maine.

Commercially, it’s best if your “this just in” small Maine town news story happens in time to get covered in the latest daily broadcast.

Or especially so it can appear as big as life in the weekly edition of the black and white news print local outlet. If it does not, stay tuned. Could be many days later. Or not at all or as an after thought in skimpy coverage down the road. No one likes old news that’s like moldy bread.

The timing of the news living in small Maine towns is critical.

How many other competing stories are out there to tackle impacts what you do get splashed across the front page or in the broadcast lead in news gathering. This all seriously impacts what does or doesn’t get covered. Making it feast or famine for lots or just a little to report on in small rural towns in Maine. The editorial and small rural Maine news gathering staffs on the print side of things especially suffering steady shrinkage.

The army of often only one or two reporters do the best they can covering their beat.

Always coaxing to come on over to the cyber side presentation where you scroll and tap, swipe, double click. To break the habit of open wide, spreading the newspaper wide to scan the columns and turn the pages. Media outlets are consolidating and working hard to get us to make the leap to digital formats of the news delivery pixels. But that’s where the “local militia journalist” become the cub reporters to fill in the community news gaps. Everyone has a cell phone camera. Can hunt and peck and they do shoot “the you are there” pictures and video with copy hammered out with two thumbs or a pop out stylus. As they roam around all the small rural Maine locations, the community itself, at large shares the “news” they see first hand in their travels. Neat huh?

The term is accurate. There really are “slow news days” when not so much is shaking locally when living in small Maine towns.

That’s when journalists revisit old news articles for an update. Dig harder to create the copy the other end of the conversation can enjoy and find useful. Or tap into the human interest angle from the guy and gal on the street. To hand them a mike, quote them for a printed sound bite. Dragging them into the spotlight to learn what they think. Weighing in on an opinion poll on one or a variety of topics of interest to the audience. We all want to know what others think and learn from their perspective.

Maine. Vast, Insulated From The World. Smaller But A Tight, Close Population. 11 People Per Square Mile In Northern ME. 44 Per Mile In The Southern Sections.

No one can update you better than someone you have known for years and who is living Maine small town local.

Someone you trust and full of the same local area pride. What’s new delivered in a special, personal way with local expressions and a mix of humor. Maybe a tad of fiction. Or part of what the person relays is what they thought they heard Bubba say. But lots of people were talking, my hearing is not what it used to be comes into play. Factors causing the what you thought you heard getting blender mixed and twisted in the information. The stuff you hear and repeat like it is gospel gets exposure. Like Paul Revere hollering while he gallops through the streets close to home. Raw, real, unpolished, but out there and not kept a secret.

Sharing information that resonates all around you in your daily travels happens more in small rural Maine towns.

News gets passed on and on in the small Maine community circles. Give me the local you know and trust for free sharing of the news. Nothing missed in the translation or relay. Not delivered from a talking head with an agenda and an obscene salary. Who has an artificial smile with perfect teeth but does not even know where the small rural town is in way up there in Maine. (more…)

March 27, 2020
Checking In With Maine Coronovirus, What Day Is It Now?

Rural Maine and the day to day when you live here adjusting to conorovirus.

Over the weekend, checked in with one brother living in Vancouver Washington because Seattle has been in the news a lot with the cornorovirus buzz. Or maybe the areas you pick up your ears on and think about are only because you have loved ones in that location. My brother told me where he lives is four hours from Seattle. The way he described the day to day with cornovirus is not so different than here in Maine.

Brother Brian ordered out food from the brother in laws restaurant a few miles away Saturday night. The Washington state place that is closed for indoor dining like our local eateries but doing a brisk take out business. The to-go food enjoyed in the parking lot with other diners 8 feet or more away. My hometown had York’s Dairy Bar that operated the same way summers. You put your lights on for service. Given a wooden popsicle stick with a number on it. The ordered food car hop delivered to your open window where a tray gets hung. The vinegar on your home made fries. Enjoy your burgers, fried clams, those onion rings made with pancake batter all from the comfort of your car.

Having More Than Enough And Grateful. Living Simple Is What Maine Is All About Yesterday And Today.

No doubt all of us would like to have family all around us at times like this with coronovirus’s impacting on our lives.

Have one out of four children living in the same Maine home town. Face timing the first grand daughter is a comfort. Watching her climb stairs crawling and becoming more steady on her feet walking. Last night’s call during supper and with her eating a wholesome organic food meal while saying “Poppa Poppa”. Turning her head to look at the door to the farmhouse expecting I will be coming in to visit.

One of my two daughters in the Boston Massachusetts area are in the nightly habit of going out on her open porch.

She and her husband sing with the neighborhood. Her husband plays the guitar as warmer weather approaches. There is laughter, crying, sharing. The piano in the home will be put to good use. Across the street is a couple where the wife is an OB-GYN nurse, a few houses to the left you find a neighborhood doctor. All comforting when a new baby is expected next month and talk of shortages of masks, coronovirus potentially tying up health care facilities is part of the media buzz. As industries retool to build much needed ventilators, masks, gloves.

It reminds me of my Dad the WWII Army Air Force B-24 tail gunner.

He told me the auto industry shifted gears from cars to war airplanes. Cranking out with Rosie the Riveter’s help a B-17 and B-24 every fifty minutes. Using our time in Northern Maine to the most effectiveness keeps your mind off worry or despair. Keep moving in the right direction and know you are doing all you can to be resourceful and health conscious at the same time.

Your thoughts and prayers, what you think about are people.

The ones you know and love that are expecting or had a child recently. The elderly with medical conditions you know in your own community. What can you do to help is where the bulk of the mental, physical and spiritual energies go along with living the best you can. But each day is one to begin with what can I do that helps my area and ripples out from there. It is not something we start doing when a coronovirus arrives on the scene. In small rural Maine, worrying and caring for the needs of others is what we do non-stop to conquer and survive hardships collectively. (more…)

March 23, 2020