Not just the seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter in Maine.
Don’t forget mud season. The joys of hitting potholes and coming up on a stretch of frost heaves on a Maine roadway during mud season.
Spring Must Be Close. The Pot Holes As Big As Your Car Prove It As Frost Leaves The Frozen Ground.
Mud season in Maine has its own special distinction.
Described as the 5th season in Maine to some, driving in the Pine Tree State during mud season can be treacherous.
And exaggeration to squeeze out the humor describing mud season happens online and in your small-town daily exchange of pleasantries.
Talking about the weather, running smelts and maple tree sap, frost heaves and potholes during mud season.
How long Maine’s mud season last depends on a few variables.
The size of yearly winter snow loads, the thaw and freeze temperature cycle, the spring snow melt off volume.
Jack Frost Is Pretty Crafty. If You Leave The Maine Lake Hammock Out To Decorate.
When snow melts and the access water seeps under a Maine road then freezes, you have frost heaves.
Maine roadways expand upward from frozen ice expansion. The natural speed bumps can literally launch a car if an unsuspecting motorist does not adjust their speed.
During mud season, pooling water from melting snowbanks along Maine highways when “hit” by passing traffic literally pounds the asphalt pavement to pieces.
That constant pounding action from each passing motorist causes roadways dirt or pavement to disintegrate and open up divots.
Those cavities fill with the same melting snow run off water. Then cycle from freeze, expand, freeze some more. To increase the size of the mud season pothole.
Or more pleasantly referred to as a “pavement deficiency” that come in all sizes and mysterious depths.
Some “pavement deficiencies” can cause serious damage to your vehicle.
Roadway Pavement Hazards In Maine, Pot Holes. Here’s One Example To Avoid Hitting With Your Car Tire.
Mainers share stories about potholes they know about that can swallow up a car whole.
A true native Mainer knows take it easy. They remember where the new crop of frost heaves and potholes spring up as mud season blooms.
Who benefits from mud season and the frost heaves, potholes in Maine?
Front end alignment specialists, the businesses selling and repairing damaged shocks, springs, tires and rims. Or the ones operating tow and ramp trucks that transport crippled cars taken out of action by frost heaves and potholes to the body repair shop.
Native Mainers have experience with pot holes, frost heaves and mud season driving.
Someone that’s never driven in Maine winter snow or been up to their axles in mud during spring thaw is an unsuspecting target.
Big heavy snowplow trucks keep the Maine roadways open and safe. But the constant sliding scraping of metal plows takes it toll. Breaking away the pavement to create sink holes that fill like a freezer ice tray with water.
Artistry Thanks To Mother Nature. What You See On A Walk In Maine. It’s Not Always Open Water Or Ice. There Is An In Between Season Besides The Normal Standard Set Of Four.
How do you drive defensively and navigate around the mud season road hazards? Don’t speed up to see how big a splash you can create at that next kiddie size pool of highway water.
It could be bottomless all the way to China. Or six week deep that when hit will jar out a few of your tooth fillings from the impact.
Broken shocks and springs, bent rims and flat tires are all casualties of a Maine winter trying to change the slide to spring.
Mud season is the transition tug of war that Maine motorists know all too well from years of driving practice.
Most Maine local highway transportation departments do a good job of pounding a stake in the road shoulder. Alerting you with a bight highly visible orange “frost heave” sign of what’s ahead.
Pure White, All Natural Not Man Made Snow. Maine Winter Is Coming, Locals Are Excited. Same Thing In Mud Season
If you are new to Maine, moving here full time and have little to no experience with mud season, take note. The transition from winter snow to spring flowers is not a snap your fingers quick season transition.
What’s a yes ma’am on a Maine roadway?
I heard the term to represent a smaller single or series of lifts of the pavement. Caused by mud season frost action, yes ma-ams are a kinder, gentler highway experience. Unless you are going way over the speed limit, all four tires are not catapulted skyward.
Yes Ma’am, like a small no thank you helping of frost heave. Think a small series of whopper junior moguls when downhill snow skiing. To shock absorb, slalom back and forth, side to side, up and down over them to get to the bottom base lodge for another fun run.
How long does mud season last in Maine?
Spring Means High Fast Water, Canoe Races In Maine.
It depends most on how much snow accumulation happened the past winter.
I have seen mud season drag on and a tug of war between winter and spring. Or other years a ten day period and bang.
It’s spring without a lot of fanfare or drying, thawing out happening.
Sometimes The “Tilt” Warning Comes On, “Service Rafter Soon” Light Glows.
Heavy snow over a Maine winter fuels the mud season. Because the snow accumulations have to be dealt with and all that melting to water volume needs to go somewhere.
That winter snow melting run off with spring like temperatures is what fuels our Maine spring canoe races.
More higher water volume, faster currents to cover the rocks is what speeds up the yearly celebration. When you dig out, dust off and paddle a Maine canoe and kayak in one of Maine’s many spring river race.
Welcome to Maine where we squeeze out the most outdoor recreation fun from every season. Even the one dubbed mud season in Maine.
Jim And Howard Debate Best Organic Farming Practices And Network. I Learned A Lot About Why My Farm Apple Orchard Is Meh And How To Revive Organically.
The Farmer to Farmer conference kicked off with a farm tour of North Spore Mushroom facility.
Sorry, no photos allowed at the 25,000 square foot facility that provides spawn to dozens of farms around the county. Saw the labs, steamers, all the stages of creating mushroom substrate and learned much about the health benefits.
After learning about mushrooms we walked over to a meet and greet hospitality social at Allagash Brewing.
Networking is critical to make organic farming sustainable and viable.
Social, Hospitality To Kick Off MOFGA Farmer To Farmer Session At Allagash Brewing.
Meg my life partner invited me to tag along to Maine’s largest city and beef up my organic farming knowledge at this year’s MOFGA Farmer To Farmer Conference.
Her organic farming experience all started in 1996 from a small humble produce veggie stand. Nature’s Circle Farm, based in New Limerick Maine grew to an over 400 acre full time Maine organic farm spread.
Meg, her Dad and crew raise, store, ship fresh market organic produce. Nature’s Circle Farms also selling over 20 varieties of Maine organic seed potato stock from their Aroostook County fields.
Organic Meals, Locally Sourced Maine Food. Nothing Beats Farm To Table Dining, Networking With Big, Small And In Between Passionate Maine Organic Farmers!
The MOFGA conference happened during the super bowl and watching the Patriots lose on the big screen did not damper the enthusiasm of organic produces.
When you own and are totally invested in a small organic family farm in Maine, time spent fretting about who won or lost a sporting event is not the end of the World.
Learning From Other Organic Producers About What Works, What Does Not. Critical To Sustainability On A Small Maine Organic Farm Operation.
Your family, chores around the Maine organic farm to keep it vibrant and sustainable suddenly more important.
The conference jam packed with worthwhile education sessions on everything from where to get grant moneys, new markets for your produce, how to deal best with the pesky Colorado potato beetle and more.
Black Garlic, It’s Popular. Ever Tried It? Howard Explains How It Is Produced And Distributed By The High Meadows Farm Truck.
A half acre organic farm and expansion to an acre may sound small potatoes.
But rich well nurtured farm soil can produce thousands of pounds of organic food with careful year round prep work. It’s not just creating a big crop and develop markets to sell it. Soil health, protecting the river or waterfront you border is key to eliminate erosion. Appreciation and protection of nature is always a concern of every Maine organic farmer or gardener. Farmer to farmer meetings help keep the dream a reality around Maine.
NRCS, The Natural Resource Soil And Water Conservation Service, Farm Services, MOFGA, Others All Work To Support The Maine Organic Producer.
No Farmer, No Food.
I have read about food insecurity and that up to a third of the food produced does not get consumed.
In Maine, when you think about all the school cafeterias, the colleges, prisons, the big consumers of shipped in produce, you have to wonder. Why can’t we funnel Maine organic locally sourced wholesome food to these food stream consumers?
The need for a processor to peel the squash, to cube it and fresh freeze to be ready to quick and easy prepare it is part of what’s missing.
Community freezers, coordination with legislators, and a grass roots passion to help stop wasting food and help the small Maine farmer at the same time is key.
Shout it out. make some noise.
Let’s clean up the plate and not scrape it into the garbage stream.
Support locally produce Maine agricultural products.
Local Farmers Markets, Community CSA’s Producing Locally Grown Food.
Where you shop, do you get the impression local matters and the suggestion area farmers are able to peddle their crops at the Piggly Wiggly?
Do they really or are some of the grocery store posters and propaganda on their websites from long ago and faded?
Not a grow it and we will give you shelf space to get it placed from the farm to the family table practiced for local shoppers where you stock up on groceries?
Is there a strong current grocer to local Maine farmer connection underway?
Maine Is Farming, Lots Of Woods, Rich But Simple All Natural Living.
There should be and speak up for fresher, cheaper, locally sourced Maine farm food that is not trucked in from many time zones away.
Pulled locally and not from out west or out of the country.
Let where you push the wire cart with the squeaky wheel know you noticed and ask them why local growers are replaced with far away from who knows where producers.
Support local Maine farmers, organic and conventional or everyone misses out from the farm to table nutritious habit at family meal time.
Here’s one farm property that was just listed in Northern Maine with 36.5 manageable acres.
Horse around, have critters and crops. Could you do it? Serving up what you grow and bartering with other local producers for what you don’t. It’s a lot of work and you have to be healthy. Starting out it helps to have savings, a nest egg.
Or someone holds down a real job to tame and flatten the peaks and valleys when operating a small Maine family farm.
Maine real estate is my real job but growing up on a farm and owning one is a passion too. Thank you for sticking around, reading until the very end. I appreciate you out in the blogging audience and here for suggestions on blog posts you want to see all about Maine.
Ready to start 2026 with plans for a healthier, happy life? New year, new plan, new set of variables to work around for most folks.
Maine, Read Read Read All About It. Thank you for following our Me In Maine blog in 2025.
You are not alone and Maine is in the top ten places people want to vacation, to make the big move and relocate to this New England state.
Why Maine? The attraction is less people, more unspoiled natural surroundings and common sense still works in Maine.
Raising a family in Maine is attractive to many. Or starting a small business here and building it up slow but sure.
To some day leave to your kids or sell off and do some traveling in and out of state.
Retirement in Maine or just having a second home away from the southern heat.
All prime motivation factors for why Maine gets all the hoopla attention there says.
I hope the variety of blog posts help keep you coming back for more. Please reach out and let us know stories, videos, whatever you want us to cover stories on. It’s everything Maine at the Me In Maine blog.
Here’s a few suggestions on blog posts to tap and enjoy.
Roads, Across Water Trails That Freeze Over. Over 23,000 Miles Of Snowmobile Trails In Maine.
Wildlife, water, woods and do you see bald eagles in Maine?
You experience it all when you spend time in Maine.
If you were living here, you would be already home right? On a short weekend trip or a week’s vacation, you get a taste of living in the state of Maine. But nothing like living here for a stretch of months or all year long.
No Two Maine Lake Sunsets The Same. Cause You’re Not. They Hit You Differently.
Like on a Maine lake, bald eagles.
Here’s one from this morning’s coffee as the pink, blue shades of sunlight appear around the waterfront.
Usually Up In The Tall Pine On The Point, But Not Today. Needed A Drink. Bald Eagle On A Maine Lake.
You have to be quick, before gotta go happens. Bald eagle heads away and not because of being startled.
Bald Eagle Taking Off On Drews Lake.
The lake in Maine offers a change of seasons perspective too. Like the ice over so we can have winter fun on the Maine lake. The tug of war between Old Man Winter and Mother Nature is a strong one.
Winter in Maine changes the habits of the bald eagle too… swooping down from the big lone point pine for a fish differ is hard. When your Maine lake has a sheet of ice for a lid that can only be opened with a Jiffy Ice auger and limited to five hole traps.
Maine lakes are very peaceful as the ice freezes over to prepare for different ways to enjoy them.
Make way for ice fishing, pond hockey and skating, cross country skiing and snowmobiling. Do you own a set of snowshoes to tramp out to the ice shacks that pop up when the Maine game warden announces the lake thickness is enough to be safe?
This morning circles of ice form with the spin like a potter’s wheel on Drews Lake.
Been at the lake longer this year and seeing lots that goes unnoticed other years.
Ice Thin Sheets Appear Out Front The Maine Lake Home. Ice Forming In Unique Ways. See The Ice Circle Forming?
Glad you are following our Me In Maine blog and images.
When you are parked on a lake in Maine full time, lots more eye candy is generated.
We toss in a few videos like this scene of a pair of Maine lake otters early one morning.
The photos of Maine lake life doing the heavy lifting today.
Mist, Color, The Temperatures Change On A Maine Lake.
Living on a Maine lake, the experience is not just summer BBQ’s and let’s take a dip, go water skiing.
Dig in, learn more and sample another helping of Vacationland, living on a Maine lake year round.
Yikes. (Pause, keyboard goes quiet, slurp of early morning black coffee sound). Does that come off a little too vague, lofty or just leave you thinking “people don’t talk that way”?
I am sorry, starting again.
This Me In Maine blog tries very hard not to come off as a sing song tired warp record typical tourist discovery channel.
The conversation should be me seeing and thinking of just how I can help you out there in the blogging audience. Talking about what I know living in Maine.
What do you need, what can I provide starts with pondering who are you?
A big segment of you reading this blog post now have already been to Maine.
She is no stranger and you test positive. Maine has you by the heartstrings hook line and sinker. You cannot wait to visit her again.
Classic Small Maine Downtown Like Houlton Maine. The County Seat, The Craftsmanship Preserved.
I can’t wait to sample something new and different and I live here in Maine.
Always! But choosing to Maine my full time home, living here already provides a unique advantage. To share the local experience with photos, sometimes videos and always helpful links to learn more.
Peaceful, Like A Bottom Smooth And Glassy. Maine Lakes Have Different Surfaces And Change With The Weather.
Simple blog posts on a slew of topics that all distill down into pure, all-natural Maine.
Variety, the hunt for new topics, sometimes revisits to Maine venues but covering them in a different season. My bug to provide information started working as a Maine broadcast journalist.
The decision that I wanted to raise my family in Maine made me realize I did not want to leave Maine to work my way up the broadcast ladder. I did not want to cheat the four children out of the rich experience I had growing up in rural small town Maine.
So now you know and back to giving you something worthwhile to share in this Me In Maine blog post installment today.
I am still at a Maine lake home. Not sure when or if Meg and I will move back in town for the winter. Being on a Maine lake after the summer tourists headed south is so peaceful. And now enjoying the most beautiful fall foliage season I can ever remember has made us drag our feet.
In Groups, Birds Of A Feather Fly (And Float) Together Like Maine Lake Loons.
I know plenty of other people who bought a Maine lake camp and suddenly, when COVID happened, they found themselves living there too like me now.
Figuring if they had Internet, why not park it for a spell on the Maine waterfront and work online remotely. Converting their camp into a simple home. And then realizing if I can work remotely up in Maine, if I don’t have to return to the urban location expensive grind, I’m sticking around in the Pine Tree State.
Thank you COVID 19 for that life detour that turned out all for the better.
Each day living on a Maine lake, you see different wildlife walk, fly over, float by like these white helmet hooded mergansers.
Shy, Getting Ready To Fly South. Feeding On Maine Lake Fish To Bulk Up For The Flap Flap Flap Work Out.
Never saw them before and learned it is because they are shy.
Less people on the Maine lake this time of year reduces the anxiety as the bird in the duck family fish the water and prepare to migrate elsewhere for the winter.
The bald eagle in the big stately pine tree here at the lake is exciting to watch swoop down and clutch a large fish.
Then with serious effort flap his wings low to the water and struggle to get to higher ground and land with the mealtime prize.
The smaller group of year rounders living on a Maine lake are a special group. Banding together to clear private roads of tree limbs that hang over and threaten power lines in the fall. To prevent losing electricity in the winter months when ice and snow bring them down.
The Maine lake properties are accessed by private roads.
Sand and salt barrels are refreshed to be ready to spread on icy roads ahead.
Holiday parties with the local Maine lake community happen. Someone brought a guitar, everyone brought their signature covered dish tid bit.
Folks who own waterfront property used seasonally will reach out to local year rounders who make sure all is well at their vacant lake place.
Living Full Time On A Maine Lake, What’s Like? The Gray Lake Home Where I Am Blogging This Morning. The Red Camp For Kids, Company, Overflow.
You see ice fishing shacks appear on shore around a Maine lake this time of year.
Waiting for the tug across frozen lake ice when the local warden service declares it is safe.
Ice fishing, snowmobiling, cross country skiing and snow shoeing, pond hockey are ahead out front on a Maine lake.
Five Holes, Drill Them In A Jiffy With A Jiffy Or By Hand. To Ice Fish On A Maine Lake.
Plowed roads, groomed ITS snowmobile trails across the Maine lake and small shanty villages of ice shacks start popping up as the winter season unfolds.
Getting the snowplow back on the Ford pickup one the to do list this week.To maybe plow the Maine waterfront properties.
Plow three properties, maybe four this year if we hang around the Maine lake property.
Parked On The Point. Pair Of Drews Lake Homes.
Mainers are prepared and weather speeds up the getting ready process. The lake shore dock all pulled in and parked onshore.
Seadoos, kayaks, pontoon boats all put away with deck chairs and the hammock in the storage shed. Gas grill still ready to fire up and sizzle.
The sunrises and sunsets served up are different now than back in spring or summer on a Maine lake.
Maine is like a gift that you get to keep opening up. Just providing different colors, a not quite the same angle of the sun for lighting and not one constant same temperature. All your senses get a work out living up here in rural Maine.
What else happens this time of year, late fall heading into early winter on a Maine lake?
Every vehicle you meet has something orange on the occupants. Or you see the orange hat visible on the dashboard of everyone you meet on the road.
Hunting for deer, moose, black bear to stock the freezer to pull from over the winter. The winter wood supply is ready, next year’s cut in tree length and being processed to fit the particular stove used to heat your Maine home.
Can I Help You? Here To See A Maine Moose? You Are Seeing Double! Did You Shoot With A Camera Or A Gun? Have A Moose Lottery Permit This Season?
Stars, when I got up this morning you cannot miss them.
Last night when Meg and I got home to the lake, the black velvet sky was loaded with stars. Maine is a dark place said in a good not sinister way.
Maine has some of the darkest, least light or smog polluted skies known to man. I think looking up and seeing the star constellations you learned about in eight grade science just intensifies the awareness.
There’s less noise, it’s more real and up close personal and sometimes just hard to explain. Everyone gleans something different depending on what else is going on in their life to color the Maine experience.
Roads, Across Water Trails That Freeze Over. Over 23,000 Miles Of Snowmobile Trails In Maine. To Allow Stops At Ice Shack Shanties.
There’s Orion’s Belt, the Big and Little Dipper. The Seven Sisters.
Oh how lucky we are to live in Maine where nature and astronomy take turns surrounding us day and night. I think awareness of life, people, the environment all increases as the population around you decreases.
Will share more on life at the Maine lake in future blog posts. Hoping this installment helped share the what’s it like on the Maine waterfront.
Many folks are “uptah camp in Maine” for hunting season now. Lots of them end up spending Thanksgiving enjoying their turkey spread in their rural Maine woods camp.
One spud, two spuds, picking potatoes on a Northern Maine Aroostook County farm.
Was it hard for kids to head out into the early morning darkness to the Maine potato farm field? What work ethic lessons were learned for youth relied on to get the potatoes basket picked, poured into barrels, trucked from the Maine farm field for winter storage?
One Basket At A Time! Picking Maine Potatoes A Skill Learned By The Lucky Youth Growing Up In A Fall Harvest Potato Farm Field.
Have you ever picked potatoes along with your family and friends to earn money for school clothing?
The valuable list of skills and attitudes learned picking Northern Maine potatoes.
Toiling in the farm field under all kinds of weather over school harvest recess is a worthwhile entry level job. But from the outside looking in, today’s youth and parents not exposed to the fall harvest potato picking tradition, it is easy to overlook the learning experience.
So what was it like and why were area Maine youth relied on as an vital component for the fall harvest of potatoes?
My Dad and mom, northern Maine potato farmers said kids did a better job handling the potato harvest picking the crop. Less damage to the valuable farm field potato harvest crop than from fast moving mechanized machinery like harvesters caused. Better for Mother Nature too with less erosion from air harvesters harnessing kid power to pick this year’s crop.
Your family household goes to bed the night before to prepare for the early rise and shine during potato harvest.
By 5AM, you are finishing a hearty breakfast for the day ahead in the Maine potato farm field.
Picnic Food Just Tastes Better Looking At This When Munching What Gets Fished Out Of The Basket. Potato Pickers Move Field To Field In Fall Harvest Colors.
The fresh air during fall potato harvest improves the taste of your lunch, all the the snacks. What you munched on carefully packed to lug to the field.
Along with your water jug, extra warm clothes, back up pairs of fresh brown jersey work gloves.
You learned early to be careful with your lunch box, extra clothes, water jug to keep them from being run over by the barrel truck.
The Maine area potato farmer that hired you for the fall harvest will be at your address with a covered pickup soon.
Barely sunrise, rounding up and delivering the young potato pickers to the new field to dig today. Or to finish up the one from yesterday that was not completed due to sheer size, too much rain, frost or or mechanical breakdowns. You arrive in the field layered with long underwear, extra clothing layers because you can see your breath in the crisp, frosty early morning air.
One by one you hop out of the back of a pickup or van used to collect your fellow potato pickers for this year’s harvest.
Before heading to your “section” in the row after row of un-earthed, not dug potato field, your field boss hands you a fresh pack of tickets. You have an assigned number, usually 50 up to 100 tickets wrapped in an elastic band. A barrel of potatoes weighs 165 pounds.
Yesterday’s barrel tickets tallied the night before. How many barrels did you pick? Count the tickets you get back or the ones missing from your original stack.
Rolling Farm Fields Planted To A New Crop Of Potatoes. Next Year This Will Be Grain. See The Snow White And Yellow Plants?
It takes at least four filled to the brim and over baskets of fresh dug potatoes to fill a barrel. And to earn the right to slide one of your numbered tickets out of the pack to wedge into the groove, on the top of the barrel stave.
That ticket with your number announces to the World that you claim this full barrel for 25, 60 cents or whatever the farmer is paying you this season.
Piece work not an hourly wage. If you don’t produce, you don’t make much or anything.
Clear a spot. You put the new empty barrel on it’s side, carefully using two hands to fill it with potatoes. The ones exposed by the squeaking potato digger that back and forth passes your section over and over through out the day of outdoor labor. As you and your fellow potato pickers advance across the wide open farm field one harvested row at a time.
Pick Them Clean, Get Them All Into The Potato Basket. Do These Kids Look Abused, Picked On Out In The Maine Organic Farm Potato Field?
Your section is how long a portion of the farm field you think you can manage through out the day or until you move to a new one.
The trick to be just getting the last potato picked up and deposited in your basket before moving into the next row. Hopefully the one that was just freshly dug that only good timing and planning causes. Pick a schedule that matches the digger speed to keep caught up. Work steady.
Lessons earnred young piicking maine potatoes in th farm field!
But like life, things happen and you can find yourself getting behind in the Maine potato field.
One of the many observations taught early in the Maine potato field. To learn something that sticks with you for life.
If you took too big a potato field section, you will run out of steam and get behind.
Claim The Barrel, Potato Picking Ticket With Your Number On It.
Some potato fields are grassier than others and have sods to wrestle with to make sure you “pick them clean”.
In the Maine potato field, it is no quality spud left behind. And remember that “bruisers are losers”.
Be careful handling the potatoes.
Slowly dump the basket into the empty farm field barrels. Before placing the next empty barrel upright every other row. So the farm truck can have a lane to retrieve the full ones headed to the potato house storage. You clear any spuds under the barrel first and place it there. In a spot in your section where it a short trip to avoid wasted steps, needless lugging.
No rotten potatoes and leave the green ones or rocks in the field not dumped in the barrels please.
Don’t over fill those barrels lifted up with a boom that lands them on the platform. You don’t want the barrel hoist tong to smash or slice any spuds. Each filled potato barrel is hoisted up from the ground to the truck body using tongs.
Thrown with position to land on the top of the barrel like a lasso. Then tightened up by lifting, using electrical or hydraulically piston pump that grips the barrel tight and secure. To swing up and onto the empty stake truck.
Not the easiest job either to roll full potato barrels to the back of that truck lumbering up a side hill.
Moving those barrels like a game of Tetris, to fill the space quickly. To create a full load to bee line to the potato house.
Then to hurry back with the empties to throw off to each field section of pickers for the repeat the pick, fill, slide on a ticket barrel number filling process.
The further away from the potato house in Houlton Maine the barrel or bulk body trucks have to haul, the more apt a shortage of empties is going to happen.
Nothing hurts production like running out of barrels and trying to make good use of the down time waiting for empties. Picking the tops off the rows you get behind so you can cover your section faster when the fresh empty barrels get tossed onto your section from the truck.
Eating lunch early, doing your business in the woods for a nature call. All part of potato picking field operations. Hopefully your water jug was put in the freezer, slowly un-thawing as the day unfolds.
It Starts With Planting Potatoes In The Maine Farm Field Back In Spring. Cultivating The Hills, The Potato Rows Over The Summer, Harvesting In Fall.
Potato tops need to be removed, shaken as pickers advance across the Northern Maine farm field.
When do you eat? When the tractor pulling potato digger is turned off signally the lunch break. Or sometimes early than noon time because of tractor or digger break down.
There are digger lags hooked together to create the bed with spaces to filter out the potato field dirt.
To lay out the two or more field rows into a flat shaped table of new golden or whatever color spuds to fill a basket to add to the barrel.
Blossoms On Houlton Maine Potato Farm Field.
More on picking Maine potatoes explained by someone who grew up on a farm and picked from age five and on like my three older brothers.
You start out picking.
Graduate to the farm truck or maybe a harvester work shift where you stand and pick out the rocks, the rot and debris.
So it won’t end up taking up space in the potato storage bins.
Over the winter months, the same Northern Maine farmer can use the field tested pickers to pack.
Put up potatoes trailer truck loads shipped to southern markets for distribution.
So what is the occasional cry that picking potatoes is child abuse?
It is hard for someone that never picked potatoes or missed out on the fall harvest tradition to grasp the experience.
You never did it, how could you know without spending time out in the Maine potato field?
School students spending the three to four weeks out in the Maine potato field are social, talk and laugh as they pick, move from to a new harvest section of the farm.
The Red Sox are in a pennant race that fall. Someone has a radio next to your section. It’s one for all and all for one to get those spuds out of the ground before a killing frost. Before snow or dodging rain drops that can interfere with the potato picking process. May work later tonight, or Sunday depending on how’s the weather been this fall in Maine.
Parking Near Fenway. It’s A Trick And Usually Costs A Few Coins. If The Rex Sox Make The Play Offs, Maine Potato Field Workers Tune In, Listen In To Games.
The potato pickers see the outdoor beauty of the early morning fog, the brilliant fall leave color change and fill their lungs with fresh air.
Worked muscles bending over filling potato baskets and lugging them to fill the empty barrels gets students into shape for soccer or other school sports ahead. The field dirt and dust will wash off in the tub or shower tonight when they get home. They tell Mom and Dad about the wildlife they saw out in the field today.
Heading to the small downtown of a Maine community to shop for a new winter jacket is part of the Saturday night learning experience.
Shopping with your own earned money sharpens your spending skills. And if you don’t perceive a value, you keep looking. Impulse spending control is easier to master when it’s your hard earned money. Not twenty dollar bills spit out, handed to you from the mom and dad ATM.
Locally Sourced, Farm To Table Maine Produce, Vegetables Like Potatoes. Priceless. Know Your Local Grower! Maine Is The 5th Largest Potato Producing State.
Learning how to save not just spending is money management.
But what if you never had an entry level job? Did not work for a wage and have to do a good job or you are not asked back the next Maine fall potato harvest? What’s that? Life’s not fair? Life is what you make it. Life is entry level jobs and responsibility to accepting without griping or weaseling out of it. That you have to show up and perform to be an asset not liability.
You stick with it because your family needs the money, the help buying your clothes.
You in turn take better care of clothes you purchase with your own money that is real World right?
The farmer depends on your to help his family get the crop out and into storage. Grit, determination and dealing with colder weather and days when maybe you are not handstand happy about heading to the field. But you do go and eventually less bothers you as your realize the value of this exercise.
Northern Maine Aroostook County Potato Field. A Very Valuable Work Ethic Experience. This Is One Of Your First Entry Level Manual Labor Field Experiences.
Kids that pick and work the fall Maine potato harvest look around and realize I did something worthwhile during the harvest break.
They feel good about themselves and part of something outside their home four walls and a roof. Independent, responsible and dreaming about what part of their picking check they get to spend as they see fit. What they would like to buy with their own money.
And whatever is purchased does not get broken or discarded after the newness is gone. Instead being respected, cared for and put away to protect it because they earned it. Worked too hard not to take care of whatever they bought with their own hard earned money.
Ask anyone who grew up picking Maine potatoes what they thought about the experience.
Some become farmers from the experience digging in the dirt. Remember “No farmer, no food”. You gotta eat at least three times a day.
The harvest workers are part of a proud, capable bunch and learn their value, developing their work ethic. It makes them proud to be from “The County” and that work ethic, dependability to show up and do a good days work is a rural Maine thing.
Four Or More Baskets Of Fresh Picked Maine Potatoes Fill A Barrel. The Barrel Weighs 165 Pounds. Don’t Forget Your Ticket.
Striving to do your part, to keep your potato field section picked clean and caught up and get along with the others on the potato chain gang.
You start to realize that you are not lazy, that you can stick with something that is not for pure entertainment value. Glad my kids learned from the experience of picking Maine potatoes.
