Flowers On Maine Farms. Some Tended, Many Come Up On Their Own.
I grew up on a Maine farm and the flowers around the 7 buildings pop up like clockwork.
My Dad orchestrated the field planting. My Mom wrangled the flower beds around the farmstead.
Years ago, bought the same family farm in Maine from my three older brothers. The rich fertile Maine farm dirt getss tilled, planted and cultivated tended with crops of organic produce of all kinds. There are sheep in the fenced pasture behind the second storage barn on the Maine farm. The chicken house had egg laying operations producing way way more than any family could possible consume.
You have to protect the chickens and ducks from predators like a fox. The fox has a family that likes chicken or duck dinners.
Mom and Dad are gone and relieved from the Maine family farm chores.
The farm field fields need yearly managing by others but Mom’s flower beds pop up right on schedule each year. While mowing the large farm lawns one early evening this past week, I noticed Mom’s and Mother Nature’s tag team handiwork.
This is pair of images of one flower bed closer to the road at the set of farm buildings that are set back off US RT 2, Houlton Maine.
Flowers On A Maine Farm Pop Up On Auto Pilot, On Their Own. See The Old Hand Pump Water Well Painted White?Careful Mowing Grass Around The Maine Farm Flower Beds! My Mom On Her Knees Planting And Tending Those Beds Is A Fond Memory.
The simple, fragile beauty of flowers hit me as I carefully mowed around the many Maine farm beds.
Mom had many and enjoyed the beauty the Maine farm flower beds produced. I miss and appreciate my Mom in many ways but realize the flowers returning year after year is a comfort reminder of her handiwork. I can see her being industrious and on her needs planting, weeding, tending the farm flower beds. Looking back, knowing the hectic schedule of farming in Maine year round, I wonder how she made time for her flower beds.
On her knees, digging and transplanting in the Maine farm dirt.
That is one recurring strong memory of many about my hardworking and loving Mom. Both Mom and Dad grew up on Maine farms and instilled in all four boys the love and beauty of the soil’s bounty.
Get On Your Knees, Smell The Flowers, Digging In The Dirt. My Flower Bed At Drews Lake Reminds Me Of My Mom.
Do you have a garden?
How green is your thumb? Would you like to own a Maine farm? A small scale truck garden with a roadside stand to peddle the produce is a wonderful thing. Locally sourced, farm to table home grown produce and a relationship with your local grower is key to good health. Yours and everyone in the community that trades with you.
At the local Maine farmer’s market, lots of your “sales” are bartering this for that with other local community agriculture vendors.
Where your food came from, what it was not sprayed with this growing seasons.
How the local Maine foodstuffs were raised from seed to final harvest to served up on your family meal time table.
Family Farm Owned, Enjoyed By Me In Maine Author Andrew Mooers. Potatoes, Grains, Strawberries, Roadside Stand Veggies, Even Sugar Beets Grown.
When you reduce it all down, what you eat and in what quantities matters most to your health right?
How your food is prepared. It all determines your focus on you and your family’s personal health. Too much salt, sugar, fat. Not good. Easy does it. I am glad I was raised on a family farm in Maine and my four children learned valuable lessons from the raised around the career / lifestyle choice.
Watch another farmer’s market in Maine video for inspiration.
Please support local Maine agriculture.
Consider scratching, tilling, planting, tending, fertilizing, watering and harvesting local produce on a Maine farm. Even wild flowers like lupine grace the Earth on the Maine landscape.
Maine Wildflowers. The Natural Beauty Of What’s Around Us Enjoyed Daily!
Watch a video of a small Maine farm for sale in Aroostook County.
Off to bush hog the farm pasture sections around the crop fields and along the roadways that define the boundaries.
The practice around the 4th of July is something my Dad would appreciate me doing to carry on the tradition. Keeping the Maine farm ship shape and presentable. Pride in your farm fields, keeping buildings in top repair. But also fragile, fragrant flowers on the Maine farm. It’s all part of the managing a farm property in Maine.
He and his wife think parked next to a Maine lake and watching the seasons change is direction he wants for quality of life. And in the course of sharing information on where he would like to build a waterfront retirement home on a small Maine lake property acreage, we started childhood flashback experiences.
He had roots in Calais, Downeast Maine and his family rounded up the kids and relocated north.
Downeast Coastal Lobster Boats In Maine.
His Dad worked on the border at a custom’s brokerage house business.
His friends called him Ace. I remember his mom working at Day’s Jewelry Store where I bought black and white Poloroid film in expensive packages of only eight exposures each. Small town living in Maine is like that. You don’t just know the person but everything, anything about his or her family connections. In small Maine towns, you bump into each other often several times a day.
Attending St Mary’s catholic school in Houlton ME until high school and said he was a cold lunch bagger.
Some in his Water Street school enjoyed hot lunch. Delivered via bus, created each day at Lambert School, the old high school brick building next to Central.
One day snowballs pummeled at a school lunch bus seemed entertaining for he and a group of his friends.
All fun and games until a sister wearing a habit learned about the activity. Hauling in the crew, using a thick wooden paddle with individual helpings of discipline. Designed to make sure the activity did not occur again.
Early Maine Potato Farm Machinery At Local Littleton ME Museum
Hands extended to receive the one by one down the line punishment.
Remember the spare the rod, spoil the child adage. The punishment dished out down the line leaving no snow ball throwing hand left out from the cure. My friend’s mother reminded him at home he and his crew got just what they deserved. Kids had a lot more responsibilities at school, at home and working to earn their keep.
We moved on to Maine fall harvest picking potato experiences, making your own spending money.
Kenny’s first day was almost his last picking potatoes.
The field boss on the Maine farm had assigned him an end section in the potato field. All by himself at the end of the row.
If you have never picked barrels of newly dug potatoes laid out in two rows by a mechanical digger pulled by a Maine farm tractor, you wonder what’s the big whoop?
Early Maine Farm Life At The Homestead, Surrounded With All The Wooded And Pasture Field Land To Scratch Out A Living.
An end section extends and contracts with the surrounding tree line defining the Maine land potato field shape.
Not only do you get behind as your potato picking field section grows larger. But you get discouraged with fewer potatoes and wrestling to find them under large dirt clods where they are hidden.
It truly is one potato, two potato pick ’em up and put them in the woven basket and your barrel production suffers greatly with an end row section.
It takes four big heaping baskets made of brown ash and dumped in a plywood or cedar stave wooded potato barrel for the 25, 60 cents or whatever unit payment. Mark that barrel with your ticket number for the daily count back in the farmer’s house kitchen tally.
Agriculture, Farm Food Grown Close To Home, Locally Sourced Is The Best Tasting.
If your end section shrinks row by row of unearthed potatoes to pick, low barrel count for you that day in the hot harvest fall sun or rain, maybe spitting snow.
Kenny had enough and slipped away, hiding in the woods to avoid detection on this way walking home.
Potato picking was not for me he surmised. The was a potato field MIA loose, sound the air raid alarm. His Dad got wind of the news, found him, put him in a car, delivering him back to the field with a stern warning. Don’t do it again.
Small Town Public Suppers! Great Meal, Friendly Servers, Good Causes. Win, Win, Win!
The beauty of potato picking besides making your own money to manage as a kid, no one leaves the field until everyone is picked up is a valuable lesson.
We are all in this together to clean up before we can go home. The money you make in the potato field used to buy your fall school clothes. Kids helped shoulder some of the household expenses and learned to shop wisely, develop spending impulse control. To take care of whatever they “earned” with their own money a potato barrel at a time.
Meet Neighbors, New Friends, See Family Members. Local Public Suppers That Kind Of Experience.
No one is abandoned and left behind alone in the Maine potato field.
No rows and rows behind discouragement howling at the moon for anyone on the potato picking crew.
Pick ’em clean. Helping the local Maine potato farmer get the crop out experience was part of growing up in Aroostook County.
Hard Work With The Right Tools Is The Most Productive, Rewarding In Small Town Living In Maine.
I think small town living in Maine makes your connection with others in it much stronger for lots of reasons.
One, knowing a person in your class or neighborhood growing up provides a wealth of experiences. We are more connected, have spent more time together through out life so we know each other better.
Second, working on local community events whether coaching a youth hockey team or raising money for a Rotary project just helps strengthen the connection. When you have personal experiences with someone, you understand them better. They accept you too. Each know where the other is coming from, their strengths and weaknesses and why or how they react to anything.
The many Maine small town experiences through out life help the community.
Oh sure, there can be differences and personality clashes. But first hand personal knowledge of all the skills and talents in a small Maine town can be a beautiful thing. Like a team that pulls together and knows what has to happen for success before the buzzer sounds.
Makes for a better working relationship, the quality of life too because nothing is surface or unknown about the others in your small Maine town.
The small town community members understand each other deeply because there are not strangers. Accepting, needing, proud of where we live. Knowing we all have an important role in creating and sustaining the small Maine town living experience.
Simple Survival And Quality Of Living In A Small Maine Town.
My advice for folks relocating to Maine, is get involved.
From day one and never let off the throttle. Be productive rather than petty. No time for personality attacks and everything about pitching in and combining talents.
And for locals to realize all these new fresh ideas from folks who did live somewhere else can be weaved into what we could do to help the small Maine town prosper.
Realize there are community members who have full, rich experiences and will adopt you as one of their own. But not so much if you bitch and complain and find fault constantly. Easy does it as we all get to know each other and divvy up who does what and when.
Outdoors, Do It Yourself More Independent! That’s Living In Small Towns In Maine!
Brand new to the area transplants need to know the lay of the land and for locals to show them the ropes. To explain traditions and the history lessons they missed.
Volunteering is what small Maine town living is all about.. has to be.
No money to hire it done and what would be the fun in that?
Sure there is room for improvement and change is inevitable in a small Maine town. But easy does it on the “back home we always did it this way, that way”. It can get tedious and make locals wonder then why did you leave?
Hard Honest Work, No One Lazy! Expecting Setbacks In Rural Maine.
Something in the where you lived before location exchange before the move to Maine must have made it worth it.
But sharing and comparing what works and why or why not is important in brainstorming. Remind yourself of those reasons you moved to Maine. All this four season drop dead gorgeous beauty.
Maine is smaller sparse spread out populations, vast unspoiled terrain.
Working Outdoors In The Fields. Amish Farmers Produce Quality Local Food.
You daily travel much smaller local circles really getting to know others living in the village size population. Maine is over 450 small towns, plantations and only a handful of cities.
The vegetable garden seed catalog arrives in your mailbox.
Thinking spring planting and what goes where in the rich fertile garden soil at your home? Anyone who plants a vegetable, fruit or flower garden in Maine knows the joy of beginning again. Plop down on your knees working the dirt, preparing it for the rows of seeds or transplants. Half the fun of a garden is knowing where what you eat came from and what it was not sprayed with at meal time.
Lots Of Full Time New Agriculture Producers Springing Up With Amish Farms.
Giving away the extra bounty of the backyard or side lot vegetable garden seed catalog in Maine is pleasurable too.
Older friends and neighbors around you enjoy those beef stake Earthy tasty tomatoes. Nothing hot house or shipped in from who knows where and gassed with substances to enhance the look. It seems the appearance is more important to the taste for many.
A Peek Of The Blogger’s Homestead Where Sheep Graze On A Fall Afternoon I Northern Maine’s Aroostook County.
Lots of people just don’t know what a tomato fresh out of your garden tastes like sliced, diced, raw.
Sadly, many think cooking involves a microwave with a minute timer and revolving glass plate inside. Good food takes patience. Beginning with the buying your catalog garden seeds, raising the food from scratch and weeks, months of tending for the bounty.
Stirring the slowly simmering large pot on the kitchen stove as cut onions, peppers, mushrooms from your vegetable garden slide into the home made mixture.
That food preparation with nothing from the grocery store fills your house with the smell of home cooked, not store bought. Reminding you of family members who taught everyone the tried and tested recipes to pass down to the next generation.
Kids Helping Area Maine Farmers. Learning Work Ethic, Responsibility.
The catalogs for garden seeds, you don’t have to wait until they all arrive by the postal service.
Internet connections mean head to the cyber store or many Mainers buy their peat pots early. Getting their seeds and onion bulbs from the local grain and feed store. Many a Maine home have glass sun porches turned into garden nurseries. Getting the jump on the growing season inside out of the wind and colder temperatures. Before being planted in the garden that may still be frozen or drying out, warming up to prepare for the new crop. Vegetable garden seed catalog, are they rolling into your mailbox?
Laying out the grid work of what goes where and why.
Often what is in this section of the garden is early harvest and makes way for the later, longer growing season plants to move into the vacated space. Out in the morning sunshine, celebrating spring and saying good riddance to the passing of old man winter. Beginning again, starting fresh and anew. The older you get, the faster the Earth spins and the seasons change. Have you noticed that?
Learning Early, Young Farmers Get Dirt In Their Veins When Very Young.
In rural Maine, what not to plant does not just include just watermelon or other fruit better suited for southern climate gardens.
There is so much Maine farm field food free for the gleaning without even asking if you block out an hour or two. To visit a fall harvest farm field to pick the potatoes of all sizes left behind in the mad dash of a mechanized harvester. Those harvesters don’t do as good a job as the hand picking crews that taught kids work ethic and put some jingle in their pockets.
Growing something and peddling it in an open air farmers market in Maine is a great childhood experience.
But gleaning field tip number one for Maine farm fields.
Shortly after the field crew leaves the field, move in. Don’t wait. Because if you do the exposed potatoes will turn green from the overhead afternoon hot sun. Or the dip in temperatures tonight to below freezing will damage the produce. Not allowing it to last as long in your basement root cellar.
On a Maine farm I own, gleaning for perfectly good potatoes, turnips, rutabaga, squash and red, golden beets is encouraged.
And free for the asking because it is a shame that a third of the food produced in this World is wasted, never served up and dished out onto meal time plates. In Maine, the potato capital, don’t bother cutting up the seed for Caribou russet, Kennebec or Yukon Gold yellows, Purple Majesties, Red Marias or Russian banana fingerlings.
Picking Maine Potatoes, My Entry Level Job That Taught Me So Much.
Ever tried German Butterball potatoes? Not all potato are the same. It’s goes way beyond, much further than just how you cook or prepare them.
Vessey’s Seeds, Fedco, Johnny’s, there are all good outlets for what you need to plant your Maine vegetable garden seed catalog.
How has your experience good, bad or meh been with any garden seed outlet?
The revolving steel display packed racks often have duds. Not the highest seed germination rate. Precision planting means don’t waste areas of your garden with too large a spacing of seeds. Or empty spots that nothing grows and wastes the effort put into creating the fertile seed bed to plant, feed, weed, water, harvest.
In Maine, lots of Amish farm settlements mean you can inexpensive get your tomato and pepper plants cheaply from up the road.
Checking the PH of the soil, adding the amendments to keep it fortified and side hill dressing to nurture your vegetable garden plants. All part of the garden prep and ongoing maintenance to increase the enjoyment and bounty of the home grown farm to table food. If you have been on the Me In Maine blog before, you no doubt have caught more than just a few posts on growing family farm food.
I get excited to scan the seed catalog pages of corn, peas, beans of all types.
New garden seed varieties that are touted as bigger, better, tastier and some that you never allocated a space to try. Egg plant, usually start with six transplant tall healthy seedlings. Then thumbing through a good book or scanning the net for ways to good them differently than last year. Radishes, leaf lettuce, scallions and shallots.
And talk about farm fresh Maine corn.
Where Your Love Lies Obvious On The Maine License Plate. Farm to Table Is Pretty Sacred.
Gotta have corn on the cob but which varieties to grow tall and offer the best variety?
When we sold garden produce on the Maine farm growing up, there were two main choices of corn.
Smaller red and green ears of white and yellow corn, called Sugar and Gold variety. Big, full yellow only kernels of corn that had size and taste when boiled up and butters, salted.
The best variety of Maine garden seed corn we found on the farm to be Early King.
Vegetable garden seed catalog. In the final analysis, the truck garden customer driving in and out of the farm give their two cents. Farm fresh vegetable sales reflected the people’s choice of what they loved most and returned over and over for more.
You may gave heard the story of the rusted Rambler and shiny Lincoln that visited the Maine farm stand.
As a nine year and growing up on a Maine farm, it was quite an experience dealing with the public. Maintaining the quality of the vegetables picked and arranged for sale. For anyone turning into the yard and looking for farm fresh vegetable produce.
We also grew lots of varieties of strawberries which need to be stored in a cool cellar and can perish quickly even with the best handling practices. Vegetable garden seeds catalog.
Thank you for following our Me In Maine blog posts.
Thought about taking life to a whole new level and dreaming of farming in Maine? The four letters “FARM” is a pretty big word. This blog post jumps into the topic how to start a farm in Maine. Reach out with questions about Maine farming.
Wide Open Unspoiled Farm Land In Maine. Want Some?
For starters, the farm up in Maine, are you thinking using the land for now on vacations?
With the plan to slowly pull away from expensive city living to trade it all in for wide open space, no locked doors, zip for traffic? Then Maine land, just land where you bring up the travel trailer RV camper and part it for low cost Maine vacations. Eventually, when everything in your life lines up correctly, you pull the trigger and build the house of your dreams. With everything you wanted that you never had in previous houses and a few items you did.
You will never go hungry on a Maine farm.
I did not eat a lot of rice growing up but we sure have a lot of home grown Maine potatoes. There are so many ways to cook and prepare a Maine potato and I know them all. On the family farm, we also grew soldier, yellow eye and Jacob’s cattle dry beans. Unlike potatoes, what you harvest one year can last into the next to sell. You just have to hope and pray it is not a wet fall when you have to harvest the dry beans.
Water is not your friend when dealing with dry rattling beans inside pods that wick the water and start to swell.
You want that process to begin when soaking beans for the Saturday night supper meal. But not out in the field when trying to have a dry harvest.
Here’s over 80 acres of Maine farm land for sale, watch the real estate video.
The three buildings you saw and heard about in this Maine farm video can be worked into an agricultural use.
The pasture farm fields are seeded down, all bush hogged and ready to go. Maine land that is totally wooded means clearing the forest, removing stumps and lots of prep work ahead. Maine farm land that is high test soil and maintained makes the lifestyle change go a lot smoother. Buying a farm in Maine is done for a lot of reason. The land investment gives the owner a piece of mind, security. It is purchased by many as an insurance policy for life. It is the next step and helps a person knowing where they are head. Slowly or quickly if things go south where they live now.
Real estate buyers also purchase farmland in Maine for multi-generational use.
So everyone in the family can have an acre or two to build a camp, home, heck put up a yurt. Gram and Gramp are on the farm up in Maine too. I had one couple who had both sets of in-laws with them when they purchased 115 acres on a river in Oakfield Maine. There was a house and the plan to slowly create more. Lots of auxiliary buildings around the Maine farm house happens. The emphasis is on the Maine farm barn, the machine shed, the chicken house, all the other pens with standing or box stalls.
Where I Grew Up, Your Me In Maine Blogger. On A Farm In Maine.
When you get the itch to start a Maine farm, when there are no buildings, the first one you construct is usually a barn, machine shed.
The emphasis is on the farm, living off the land. Making a paycheck by tilling the soil, managing the wooded sections is priority one. Or staking the pastures with fencing to contain the critters. There are many who start a farm in Maine that bank everything on the plunge into agriculture. But it helps if one person in the couple has a real job with benefits and a steady income. Or if you are retired and going small scale, micro farming, you have a “ticket”. That retirement income helps stabilize and keep the farm dream alive and well.
The big post and beam barns on Maine farms are like dinosaurs.
Slowly going to their knees and dying their last waspy breath due to lack of use and maintenance. Large round bales, not the small square or rectangular ones for hay have taken over. Putting hay up in the loft of a gable or gambrel roof barn is not done so much now. Labor costs are rising and if you can see daylight through holes in the barn roof, it’s whoa. Wet hay molds. Hay cut, conditioned, baled and put into storage with moisture in it can heat up and even cause a barn fire from spontaneous combustion.
Lots Of Full Time New Agriculture Producers Springing Up With Amish Farms in Maine.
Starting a farm in Maine, it’s not all fun and glamor.
Might want to wear your old clothes. Bring an extra set of gloves. Eat a hearty farmhouse breakfast. You are dealing with the weather in Maine that is always changing and unpredictable. Those totally surviving off the Maine farm land have worked a forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Spring planting and fall harvest of crops is never ending. Everything is counting on getting the seeds into the spring time ground and harvested off the land in fall. Frost going in or out is to be avoided at all costs.
Before you farm anything on for animals or crops in your pasture fields, where is your market going to be on the farm in Maine? You invested a lot of time, money, seed, fertilizer, etc for nothing if you can’t sell what you produce. You May be super duper at growing a crop but if no one wants to buy it, that’s no fun. That won’t keep the wolf or the bill collectors from your farmhouse door. Farming in Maine rides on a business chassis.
You have to be an accountant, good at marketing, a master at cruising the farm operation looking for loose ends and an expert at cutting through red tape.
All the time and it never lets up. Farming is a jealous master unless you have a ‘ticket” and keep it a hobby amateur operation.
Local farmers market like this one below create a sales outlet as shown in this Maine community video.
Local sales in the center of a small Maine down town. Thinking small potatoes, know your buyer and they know their local farmer. But something more grand, of growing large scale in mind? Not just selling out of the the Maine farm land or your garden. So now we’re talking about raising something on the farm in Maine that will need storage? To peddle and put up for the trip to some far away food market. For beyond the traditional growing season and not just field run to sell it as fresh as it will ever be. Okay, do you want to grow slow and nice and easy? To avoid a big bank mortgage that keeps you tossing and turning awake nights?
Unfortunately there is a cheap food policy in our country.
Big Barns In Maine. They Fall To Their Knees If Not Maintained.
That is why it helps to live where the cost to do it is lower to the ground. Maine is just such a place and blessed with hi test fertile low cost farm soil. Like most small businesses, is it volume. Getting bigger, watching your costs knowing the profit is in the expenses. That’s why earlier in the blog post on how to start a farm in Maine asked you if you were talking small or jumping in hook, line and sinker.
The most home grown and do as much yourself as you can without hiring out kind of Maine farming is the most enjoyable.
Small, controllable and you are hands on involved in every aspect of the farm in Maine operations. It also makes it new and always something new needing attention. Your kids growing up on a Maine farm learn worth ethic, skills, and healthier living being outdoors. Off the device, off the couch and self absorbed. That’s not the lifestyle when there are chores to do on the Maine farm operation.
No farmer, no food and more folks are realizing how to be self sufficient, independent means learning how to feed yourself.
Thought About Starting A Farm In Maine?
I grew up on the farm in Maine above and here to help with pointers and advice. Like people, Maine farm soils are different. I just happen to know a dependable Maine real estate broker with fire in his belly about farms (blushing ten shades of red). Reach out, let’s talk, learn more about how to start a farm in Maine no matter what size or kind it is! Thank you for stopping by and learning a little more about how to start a farm in Maine.
Large families of over ten children, farm living off the land. They say the average age of an American farmer is 59 years. But with the increase in Maine micro farmers, more Amish families moving into the North Eastern sections of the country, the median age is dropping.
No Rubber Tires, Steel Wheels For These Amish Farm Squash Wagons In The Easton / Fort Fairfield Area.
It’s not easy living on a Maine farm but many hands make light work. Self sufficient, blessed with survival skills, content is the daily goal.
The local Maine Amish farm families are also some of the best patrons of the hometown libraries. Besides growing local vegetables, the Maine Amish create horse harnesses, peddle metal for your building exteriors and roofing. And small sheds and cabins, rustic furniture also are crafted in all kinds by Amish families for local retail sales.
Lots of bikes used for Amish transportation.
Not just buggies used to play the small circles around an Amish settlement. The youth travel to and from other nearby Amish settlements to visit and share news. To find a partner for continuing the Amish lifestyle in Maine. Their blinking bike lights can be hard to see. Dressing in black, with the same color applied to the carriage as dusk approaches makes motorists slow down or decide to take a different route on Maine roadways. No one wants responsibility for a poor visibility caused accident.
Amish Farms In Maine. They Pop Up In New Settlements Around Maine Each Year.
You see their horse drawn Amish carriages tied to light posts at the local Walmart.
During farmer’s markets, the horses unhitched from their produce wagons and taken down to water by a community river. Most Maine towns sprung up around a waterfront feature that was originally used to power the grist or flour mill wheels. To ply the watery highways for transportation and moving logs and product to market. The waterway essential for sustaining life before private wells tapped the H2O beneath the ground at each private homestead. The security and survival of the early settlement in Maine depended on that river in so many ways. Still does for the Amish stepping back into time to preserve what was lost in the hustle bustle.
Red Rules The Day With This Maine Amish Homestead. One Of A Kind Built By Hand And Sweat And Patience On A Patch Of Dirt Up In Maine.
What do you notice when you visit an Amish homestead in Maine?
No one on an electronic device or face lit up by the eerie glowing screen. Industry happens with many hands making light work creating something from thin air. The Amish are present in conversations and distraction chasing down a text or returning a like or poke is not in their repertoire.
Amish Inspecting Their Crops To Prepare For Fall Harvest Time in Northern Maine.
Fields plowed using horses and harvested the same way.
Barns and other agricultural buildings noticed springing up as Amish settlements spark and grow steadily. Re-working abandoned farm machinery that was two row not eight row fancy dancy. The Amish settlements reverse the tide of less small farmers and trend to just a few larger ones.
During a farmstead visit to an Amish household, it is not uncommon to see eight, ten or even thirteen children size families around you.
Warm, friendly, curious. Some guarded but more genuinely unguarded and interested in what you have to say. I know of an Easton Maine family that is growing organic food for my girlfriend Meg’s organic farming operation. She operates the family business called Nature’s Circle. Thank you Meg for helping supply many of these photos taken from the Maine Amish farm landscapes she travels for today’s Me In Maine blog post.
Maine Amish Farm Fields Of Organic Produce For As Far As The Eye Can See.
The Amish settlements in Smyrna and East Hodgdon Maine have phones in their packing sheds.
In Easton Maine, not so much, which makes the settlements a little more removed and communication not so instantaneous.
The last trip to Easton, Fort Fairfield area, Meg treated to pumpkin pecan chocolate chip squares. I know, sounds good and one proud thirteen year old the cook. The youngest and probably most enjoyed of children as the tail end of the family grows up and eventually starts her own Amish family. Very warm and welcoming and you get lots of questions from everyone in the Amish household when you pay them a visit. Eager to learn and good listeners. Not impatient and polite as they open up their Amish homes. The Amish are very trusting, unless you give them reason not to be and that kind of news spreads fast.
The Barns, The Out Buildings Surrounding The Amish House. The Most Important Part Of The Farm Spread Are The Barns, Equipment Sheds, Stock Pens And Paddocks.
The group of Amish in Easton from Pennsylvania, the ones settling in East Hodgdon and Smyrna are a different order.
Some from Ohio, Kentucky, a few from out west. None drive, some don’t even have rubber on tires and use just wood or metal.
The dogs at the farms are even more special because they love attention but are better trained than your average pups today. The dogs have more of a working role and herd the livestock, other farm animals. You don’t hear the dogs barking.
Large Families Mean Bigger Houses, Lots Of Barns, Sheds, To Sustain The Amish Farm Lifestyle.
Children on the Maine Amish farms extremely well behaved.
They all flock around Meg when she visits to discuss farm orders and how to work around crop obstacles. Interested and happy to see a visitor and more sheltered in a good way. Lots of hands on training from building barns to making butter or cheese or how to grow vegetables.
The best farm practices to build up soil amendments. How to do carpentry all taught to every member of the family. Practical skills, work ethic, simple farm living and extremely well read. The Amish are definitely not flying by the seat of their pants or unprepared.
Big Amish Kitchen, Pretty Hardwood Floors, Lots Of Blue Accent Colors.
You get a sense of the simple values and how hospitable the well kept, hand built Maine Amish homes are run.
The Amish lifestyle in Maine. Neat as a pin, there is an order. Everything around you with a structured order to it. The homes are working farmsteads. All are in a circle, taking your coat and providing you over the top lunches and snacks. Sitting down together, all are paying attention and no one is lost somewhere on a device. The Amish are present and glad you are in their household. Happy to have you as a guest.
A Peek At The Back Of This Blogger’s Homestead. Where Sheep Graze On A Fall Afternoon In Northern Maine’s Aroostook County. Lots Of Buildings For Many Purposes.
You step back into time but sense keen awareness of what is going on around you in their hand built not modular manufactured homes.
Maintaining old order Amish living, without electricity. In Fort Fairfield, Easton there are outhouses. In East Hodgdon and Smyrna, there is indoor plumbing with generators. There are different degrees of Amish living in Maine.
Amish Farm On Ridge Road In Smyrna ME. Toiling Under The Maine Sun In The Field. Transplanting, Using Plastic To Control Weeds, To Protect The Seedling.
Not stressed out or frantic and steady she goes rules the day like a ticking metronome that keeps the beat. There is a time in every season to plant this, cultivate that and for harvest. For stacking firewood, stocking the summer kitchen or filling the root cellar. All the Amish do not want any kind of a fight. The Amish individual wants peace amongst themselves and others. Avoiding dissension, staying reasonable and tolerant and always on task to do their share of chores.
There is much to do and idle time is not found in large supply.
Working hard to stay on the farm, to raise a family. To make a living from many means that keeps it interesting and varied. The weather, pests, the market for what they peddle can cause set backs that they prepare for and expect. They are ready for what is ahead and plan for it. Life is not always easy sledding and hills, dips, curves happen to test a person. To define and improve an individual.
Long Days, Healthy Appetites, Plenty Of Exercise. The Maine Amish Lifestyle Is Like That.
The role of women, in East Hodgdon and Smyrna and how they compare to Easton and Fortfield Maine.
Is there a distinction of how they are treated as a whole in the Amish order or depends on the home, the day? All women are dressed to not bring attention to themselves. But the garb stands out like a visit to King’s Landing just over the northern Maine border into Canada. Where the theme of the day is early settlers, what their struggles were as you enter their World for an afternoon or day long visit to remember. Except with the Amish in Maine settlements, it is not pretend or a re-enactment. Where they period costumes are removed and everyone hops in their Subaru or mini van, SUV to hit the Trans Canada highway to head to their modern homes.
Friendly, Riding Bikes, Always Smiling. Amish Share The Road With Mainers In All The Vacationland Counties.
Practical clothing that lasts and not trendy or the latest style and made from scratch is obvious observing the Maine Amish families. Clean, consistent, no Johnny Rebel, Jimmy Rebel or Leader of the Pack stand out as they all stick together for the greater good.
You are walking back in time with family tradition roles and children precious but seen and not heard is the rule.
Respect, maybe a little fear mixed in or consequences. Limits, better defined boundaries. Are the Amish children raised with a stronger rigorous training? More rod, less spoiling? Do kids know their limits? Or is it lack of routine, ritual, or order that causes no structure to some degree in today’s society? Discipline and not a lot of idle time. Small community schooling with the older kids helping the younger ones with a teacher or two in the settlement. Doing the same pass on what you learn as families work together collectively. No time to sit in your room and pout or live singularly when the day ahead has a long list of chores attached to it. Too many kids for one to ever be spoiled might be part of it as you pitch in and do your part in the Amish household.
Starting The Planting Early In Maine. To Get A Jump Out Of The Greenhouse For Earlier Farm Fresh Produce. It’s Always A Gamble With Maine Weather. See The Wind Generators On The Oakfield Maine Foot Hills?
Community day is Thursday at the Smyrna and Fort Fairfield, Easton too.
Work on projects in the area for the Amish community members is very important. Giving back and helping out. It has its own special day reward. Helping the elderly and learning from their success and setbacks in the lifelong process. There is always something given back, that rubs off in the doing a good deed for others.
Everyone Has A Hand In Farming On A Maine Amish Homestead. Time To Transplant, Many Hands Make Light Work In Southern Aroostook County.
In the Fort Fairfield, East Hodgdon, Smyrna Amish communities there are farmer’s markets on premise.
The Amish bring produce, baked goods into the nearby farmer’s markets community gatherings. The Pioneer Store in Smyrna Maine is full of practical devices. From wood stoves to kitchen utensils that are not flashy but work and last. Jars of old fashioned candy you don’t see at Wally World or as impulse items around the digital scanner at Circle K.
The homes in the Easton, Fort Fairfield filled with plenty of hand crafted hardwood flooring.
Lots of blue paint is used in the interiors for a commonality. Red barns and designs like Boston area housing from before 1900 very prevalent. And all built by hand and horse from scratch. Lumber cut, sawed on premise and constructed to last by many, not a few skilled carpenters. Barn raisings where this week it is your turn, next weekend mine. Jack of all trades is definitely the rule of the Amish day. That skill set runs deep and provides the satisfaction knowing that everyone with a strong back, a clean mind and daily work on your faith brings you peace and contentment. Farming is a noble profession.
Learning Early, Young Amish Farmers Get Dirt In Their Veins When Very Young. Because We All Know The Sobering Truth. No Farmer, No Food.
Hope you liked this blog post on Amish in Maine from settlements in my area of the state.
We’ve blogged about Amish farming in Maine before. Stay tuned. A lot more flowing in for another blog post center around Unity, MOFGA headquarters. That’s where many more Amish families settled to build a better life in Maine.
Agricultural state fairs in Maine, they are underway around Vacationland.
Many were scaled way back or not held at all during the pandemic. But the COVID virus is in the rear view mirror and all around the state folks are returning to traditional life. Here’s the list, the circuit of agricultural state fairs in Maine. This blog posts to showcase what happens going into an local agricultural state fair and why they are so important to the area of Maine where they happen.
What Would You Do With This Maine Farm Land Acreage? Critters Or Crops?
Maine has a deep, rich tradition roots with family agricultural farming.
The lumbering of forest tracts and timbering vast tracts is right up there too. Managing your woodlot is a big way of our life when you are 91 percent wooded too. And we won’t leave out the vital importance of the Maine fishing industry. How important harvesting what’s below the water off the coast of Maine is at meal time and for the state’s tourism.
Hi. Maine Dairy Cows Itching To Get Turned Out, To Kick Up Their Heels, To Roll In And Eat The New Spring Field Clover.
Farming in Maine, there was a time when the state was number one in agricultural food production.
In small farming communities around the state of Maine, it was not uncommon to need the ten fingers of both hands to list them all. Up and down each country road you could recite the small family farms in Maine that worked the dirt. Those folks who carved out a living from agriculture. Feeding others, being a farmer is and always was a noble profession. Now less than two percent of individuals grow the food consumed by the masses. There was a time in Maine when ninety six percent of folks tilled the soil and worked, raised families on farmsteads. Maine is right up there with a resurgence of micro farming. The average age of the national farmer is pushing sixty years of age.
Working For Winter Clothes, That Jacket, To Help Out Family Expenses. Kids Learn Work Ethic Early On In Small Town Rural Maine.
The number of small family farm spreads dotting the countryside around Vacationland was pretty impressive.
It’s why the Grange hall was big in membership and the Future Farmer Of America chapters flourished. In Northern Maine, schools went in three weeks earlier than the rest of the state. To close for the same amount of time so students could help area farmers harvest their potato crops. Many a kid earned their winter jackets, helped out with the family needs by picking potatoes for area farmers.
Farming in Maine is such a big part of the state’s history and locals cherish the rich experiences learned by being part of area agricultural operations.
Baby beef, sheep, goat, raising chickens and egg production on a small scale and large truck gardens. They all are enjoyed as a big part of the simple lifestyle of farm to table living in rural Maine. So it is no wonder that state agricultural farm fairs are popular around Maine.
Kids chasing a piglet with the winner who lands one in the burlap bag getting to keep it. Can I Mom and Dad? He’s so cute. Oink. What’s that about you think I should call him Bacon? Hamchops? Why’s everyone laughing? 4H exhibits, baby beef, sheep being sheered for their woo. Ribbons in all colors awarded for everything from bread and butter pickles to dried flowers.
Quilting, art, photography, home cook food competitions. Raising goats, rabbits, chickens means responsibilities on a Maine farm and everyone in the family has a job. All the Maine farm family members are important parts of the agriculture operation.
Maine Farm Sheep. Beating The Heat Wearing Summer Wool On A Maine Farm.Bored, Wishing They Had Some Wire Cutters To Take A Vacation From The Pen.
Tractor and horse pulls, oxen displays, demolition derbies, vendors peddling fair food of all kinds.
Have a dough boy, sprinkled with confectioners white powdered sugar. My favorite, the Italian sausage smothered in onions, mingling with green and red peppers sauteed on the grill. Everyone hungry? Local service and church clubs have hot dog booths and burger wagons and you know the folks that take your order in small Maine towns. I’ll be on the Rotary gate to the park for a shift or two to exchange money for ticks to the state fair in my hometown this weekend. Everyone pitches in and helps make the local event home grown special.
Working Together On The Land In Maine. Amish Families Resettle In Vacationland To Strengthen Local Agriculture.
Take a number and socialize with others you see on the state fair agriculture midway while waiting for the food order preparation.
Fireworks, little miss and mister firecracker pageants when your Maine agricultural state fair happens to land around the 4th of July. Exhibits of all types, car shows, carnival rides depending on COVID restrictions or the size of your fair. And farm tractors new and old appeal to a big segment of the fair audience who worked with them growing up. Someone’s Uncle or Grandfather owned a Maine farm spread and everyone has memories haying, picking potatoes, raking blueberries, repairing fencing, haying, etc.
Barns In Maine, Some Store Bought From Sears And Roebuck. Others Hand Hewn Post And Beams Created On Site.
Have you ever been to the agricultural state fair in Maine called the Common Ground?
2021 is the 50th anniversary of the Common Ground Fair. The multi day state fairs in Maine require year round planning. Sometimes insurance to be taken out to hedge the bet because so much is riding on the gate size and event coming off without a hitch. The living off the land lifestyle of simplicity. To appreciate the basics and what is real, all natural and not store brought. The Common Ground Fair is worth the annual t-shirt, the experience so many share so freely for the skill set gleaned from the agriculture “down on the farm” lifestyle.
Big Barns In Maine. They Fall To Their Knees If Not Maintained.
The state fairs in Maine have to have a full slate of activities and events to be well rounded to appeal to all ages year after year.
Fireworks, horse harness races and shows, parades, craft exhibits, carnival rides all are part of the state fair agricultural in Maine circuits. The cooperative extensive service, 4H, Future Farmers group all come together with the Maine agriculture families to celebrate rural living.
Treats, Fair Food, What’s Your Favorite? Cotton Candy, Dough Boys Or Grilled Sausages Smothered In Onions And Peppers?
Here is the link to the Houlton State Fair website. Beef, dairy, goat, alpaca shows are listed on the events list. Tractor pulls, open stage musical event, fireworks to cap it all off on our Nation’s 4th of July celebration. If you can sneak up into “The County”, see you this weekend at the lead in Houlton State Agriculture Fair for the 26 on the circuit around Vacationland.
