Work ethic, where’s it come from and what feeds or hurts the drive to be anything but lazy.
The fire in the belly fuel to go above and beyond. How do you create and maintain that productive work ethic laboring spirit that just won’t quit? I don’t know about you, but during my childhood raised on a Maine farm, the parents did a stellar job. Creating a desire to work hard and do a good job at the family home, school, out in the work force, in your community.
They worked long hours and we knew no different but did not feel picked on. It made us resourceful, independent, sometimes glad to be done a job like picking field rocks. But we did it. Other kids in small Maine towns did too.
You’ve all heard the story about anyone from Maine applying for a job out of state was hired instantly. It’s no secret about Maine’s work ethic.
Learning How To Work, Enjoying Labor, Sticking With It. Work Ethic Is Developed, A Muscle To Tone.
Daily, my three older brothers and I witnessed Mom and Dad working hard daily on the Maine farm.
Both parents grew up on dairy farms where everyone in the large families works vital roles. When you are around hard workers, you are taught the importance of carrying your part of the load.
How to save steps to do the work of two. You don’t want to be labeled “lazy”. You don’t just work, you want to be the best at the labor.
Standing around watching someone working their guts out is not fun or comfortable. The pitch in and help out gene activates when you grow up in rural Maine. Where money is tight and frugality is a survival sport, As you got older in a Maine household where your parents owned and ran a Mom and Pop business, the list of duties increased right along with the new skills added to your resume.
When your Mom or Dad praise you for doing a good job, completing the task well it makes you beam.
Causing pride and to feel worthwhile appreciated is a warm sunshine feeling. When told we can count on you Sonny. To realize you and your brothers, all the kids in this Maine household are a vital part of the family. Where I need you and vice versa and everyone works together. All the cylinders firing in order, on the same page for the common skills to get the job done. Before moving on to the next items on the lengthy chore list. Don’t waste the daylight.
Work ethic, local farmers in my area hired kids to pick potatoes in the fall, to put up loads to ship down the road over the winter.
Not everyone was lucky enough to grow up on a Maine farm. But that did not mean jobs to earn money were not in abundance in our small rural area of the Pine Tree state. My Dad swore that kids did a better job handling the potatoes than mechanized harvesters. He raised 250 acres of golden spuds. All the crop hand harvested with four baskets in a barrel. Then pickers adding their ticket number in the groove slot on the top.
Eight row crop harvesters cover a lot of acreage quickly but leave boat loads of potatoes behind of all sizes. The rough handling damages the soft skin with cuts and bruises. That impacts the value in storage and out on the market later on. The produce buyer pays less for lower quality potatoes.
But back to today, work ethic, how is it viewed in society? What is happening to it as a highly sought after commodity when hiring your work force? There are cracks in the give it all your got in the work place. (more…)
Homesteading, finding a property in Maine the easy-does-it sensible way.
This blog post will take it slow and spell out one methodical approach to homesteading in Maine. The desire to create from scratch or buy an existing homestead in Maine stems from lots of acreage with low to the ground price tags hanging off them.
What’s for sale in Maine that is ideal homesteading property is always a smaller cost than what most people are used to seeing where they hang their hat now out of state. The real estate buyer is pleasantly surprised when they search the current listing
No Pretty Reason, No Matter What Season To Homestead In Maine.
inventory of any property for sale in Maine. Which leads to the why is that so answer.
The distance away from high population markets is great which means what you do end up buying is surrounded by wide open space and fewer people to mess it up.
Smaller is better for a sane pace, to enjoy life not race through it. The need for heavy duty zoning, the HOA’s trade in for CSA’s. High traffic and crime are all missing in a small Maine town. And in city settings, large acreages just don’t exist. Got any forty acre lots? Nope. Go fish. Head to Maine for that and simpler living.
So the where to homestead, farmstead all starts with a simple dream, then picking a state like rural Maine.
Then the best region in that state for a location that is affordable. One area that’s not likely to change much or at all to force another rip up the stakes, pack it up and on the road again. For the gotta move again over the next ten or more years. You can only and should only have to do this moving upheaval only so many times in your life. Make it Maine for good once you have all the information needed and questions answered that help you decide if this is the place to homestead.
How old you are, how healthy, the size of the budget, the timing in starting a homestead are all factors. Have kids in high school that are a couple years from graduation? The buying the homestead in Maine property dream may happen now for
Keeping An Eye On Your Homestead Animals. Raising Your Food Makes It Hard To Let Go Of Your “Pets” On The Homestead Spread.
just land. No existing buildings, and where you are going to one by one create them is on the mental drawing board. Secure the property in Maine but stay where you are out of state. Because you have loose end and are not quite ready. Keep saving, reading those seed catalogs and studying the marketing process if you plan to sell more than your raise and consume yourself.
The time ticking by over the next couple years waiting for a high school graduation march around the gym or auditorium may mean using the homesteading land location for just a vacation property use. To dream about what you are really going to do with the Maine land that is put on hold. Until the day when you devote all your time and attention to this location in Maine where you already own land. Slowly putting the transition into gear. Easing out the clutch to move in low to begin the transition from wearing a corporate tie and you’re pretty much pinned to the wall by an office desk.
Selling the home you now own to create the nest egg of money for the improvements on your Maine land could eat up some time too.
Real estate markets go up and down like stock values. When you are flexible and not in a hurry good things happen naturally. Get your land, know where you are going but keep the when loose. Elderly parents that need you close can come with you or be another reason why the move to Maine is going to be a delayed one/ All of us juggle responsibilities to consider right?
Okay, the land you buy, what to look for to create the best homestead location in Maine. Farming of some small scale is
Another Generation Of Farmers In Maine. Remember, No Farmer, No Food!
part of the homesteading to be self sufficient. How far you take it means power or not from utility lines? Year round road or no thank you. You will be taking on the chore of keeping that last property on a dead end discontinued Maine road open and maintained year round.
Like people soils are different is the motto of one local site evaluator named Bill Hersey of Caribou Maine. Study the area USDA soil maps for the best Maine land and hire a soil tester to lay out where the septic, what type of sewerage disposal you are going to set up on the property. Composting toilet, out house, gray water disposal field for the kitchen sink and laundry or the thousand gallon cement septic tank will go here, the leach field over there.
The drilled well if a usable water source is not already in place is going to be located where and who is going to punch that hole in the ground for you?
The slow cooked approach to homesteading in Maine means nothing is rushed and mistakes are not made from the hurry scurry.
Is the land in tree growth, is there shore land zoning to consider in how you develop the Maine property? More on tree growth, how that save on your real estate taxes works in the Pine Tree state. Those
The best homesteading, setting up a farmstead exercise is done without a bank too. You have savings, you sold a property, you set up owner financing on the Maine land and what do you know. It’s been five years or whatever mortgage period, the land part of this life changing experience is now free and clear. More on how owner financing Maine land works.
Had a couple from Florida come up this weekend who was smitten with an online Southern Aroostook County property listing new to the market.
Soil Amendments, The Living Off The Land Means Giving Back, Not Taking Away The Mineral Elements!
For the last month, lots of phone calls and emails back and forth to talk about their homesteading in Maine dream. The land they are considering just under sixty acres in size and in a remote location. The road into it this winter not plowed so high ho high ho in we go. Have used our snow sled to show and sell a place called Crow Hill in Linneus Maine. But this time it was easier to just travel down to the spot where the road is no longer plowed. And dressed warmly to hoof it in on an existing packed down snowmobile trail.
Snow shoes or cross country skis have been used before but a sled trail already packed down made the walk in a beautiful one due to new fresh dusting of sparkling snow and blue skies, bright sunshine. We were able to talk back and forth as we went in and out to the property. The one that already has an insulated cabin with a wood stove, a small tool shed and open cleared land with mixed wooded sections. This land also surveyed so where everything lies is not a mystery for perimeter boundary lines.
What is your property to homestead, what is not is clear as a bell with the plat map and pins, compass bearings and the metes and bounds description. And it was crank your head around. What do you see? Scenery, pasture fields, wood stands but no people around this large piece of land to homestead. Which is what this couple liked best. Winter is an excellent time to scope out the surroundings in Maine. You can see more without the leaves. And hey, no black flies and fewer land buyers to compete for whatever you find interesting to pursue.
Homesteading, what else to prepare for beside gleaning all the local information possible online and from boots on the ground community information gathering from the locals?
Homeschooling or public education? What you do raise for food, is it going to be grown in the ground or raised on the hoof? This latest homesteading buyer wants goats, chickens but is not going to be like Noah with two or more of everything you might see in a Maine barnyard setting.
Homesteading, It Means Working On Buildings, Tending The Crops, Watering – Graining – Haying The Animals. Living Off The Land In Maine!
If the access in and out is too big for one person to tackle in the winter, how are you getting in and out? In retirement you want to make your life easier not harder. The timing of this homestead move to Maine is different for everyone. A young couple full of hope and ideas may be low on money but thinking of raising their kids here. Another later in life couple with grown kids could be thinking part time homesteading. Where a few months of the year are spent as snowbirds in the Sunny South. Pass the suntan lotion please. If you have critters, who is going to milk Bessie the cow, collect the eggs, make sure the pasture fences are strong and all the animals get hayed, grained, watered? Or to call the Vet when needed.
Lots to consider homesteading in Maine. No pesticide sprays? Joining the Maine Organic Farm And Garden group (MOFGA) is a good idea and hitting the agricultural state fairs around Maine will help develop the knowledge base. So you know what you are doing because you have compared notes with others who are planning the same lifestyle and in the learning stage. Or are veterans and don’t mind talking about it to share their triumphs and set back lessons.
Just got back from plowing snow and helping son check the heat inside a storage facility for root crops. Everything stored in bins and sold in truck loads to consumers out of state. The organic farm In Maine, Nature’s Circle he works for in New Limerick also rents out a family farm that has rich fertile soil that produces grade A produce. If your homesteading involves more than growing your own food, raising your beef and dairy producers, you may need to have storage facilities to load out over the winter months.
The scale of your homesteading is up to you and your family size, the thickness of your wallet or heft of the purse your carry. You may want goats like these couple do and they have experience with them from earlier farming experiences. The lifestyle is important to communities catering to golfers and the off grid or however unplugged you go is up to your idea of what this homestead spread in Maine looks like in your head.
There is no better way to raise a kid than on a family farm in Maine.
The skills developed with fixing machinery, being a scientist studying what soil amendments are needed and in what degree… it is all invaluable. The best part of living off the land is the self sufficiency, the independence and fresh air year round working on the farmstead. Crop failure, wildlife eating your profit and if your health takes a dip are all make the risks real. But you quickly figure out what is important in life. You realize you are only here a short time and this old Earth will keep turning once you and I are long gone.
How crunchy, how granola depends on your to dial in. Some folks with the homestead, the family farm have a ticket. They might be a trust fund baby. They could have an income source that takes some of the stick, a lot of the risk out of the agriculture equation. You as a homesteader will be doing as much of everything as possible to hold down expenses. But the reward from standing back and realizing what you created with your bare hands, lots of patience and careful planning makes it all worthwhile. There is much to learn scratching the dirt, preparing the soil, planting the seeds and picking the new crop of rocks that come up every spring on a Maine farm homestead. Maine, where you dream in color.
No one should go hungry and in Maine so many volunteers make sure the local population does not.
Local Maine farmers gladly welcome gleaning the fields and hand off the kitchen grade food to lend a hand to what’s put on the table. Children from families that are struggling get back packs for kids delivered by school bus. Reduced hot lunch programs for breakfast and lunch are available.
No Matter What The Weather, Like The Postman, Delivery Of Meals On Wheels Happens In Maine.
And seniors, the shut ins get meals on wheels. Many of them are Veterans who served and deserve good hot nutrition.
As a volunteer delivering meals on wheel lunches you meet the lady with the walker and southern drawl from Texas. Knocking on her door to deliver the meals on wheels pick of the day offering to pop in the oven or microwave, she flashes a smile as large as the lone star state logo on her apartment door entrance door mat. She is glad to see Meg who like clockwork shows up with the container of filled with what’s for lunch today.
Always cheerful despite being house bound, enduring her share of aches and pains and loss of mobility.
The meals on wheels delivery person is this widows contact to the outside world. Especially when a Maine winter shoves its way into the calendar pages hanging in her apartment unit kitchen. The days locked up at home can slow to a crawl and seem to never end. When you can hop in your car at the drop of a hat it is easy to forget what it would be like for those who can not run the roads.
Gassing Up To Deliver Meals On Wheels. (Ding Ding)
On to the next stop, reaching into the insulated black zippered square box with the shoulder strap. The couple out in the country on a dead end road knows she is coming before the tap tap on the back door at the top of the wheelchair ramp. Before being passed the meal of the day or opening the freezer compartment to tuck it away for tomorrow.
Peggy the old black family dog with graying around her mouth gets animated and signals we have company.
Looking for her green tennis ball while the lunch containers are distributed. Just in case the meals on wheels delivery person might then take time to play toss and retrieve. Her master is confined to a bright red scooter chair with the motor. His wife busy taking care of him but also nursing her own long list of ailments caused by plain and simple accumulated years. And being a round the clock care giver. Contributing to her meal schedule helps lighten her load tremendously. One meal a day is someone else’s responsibility by someone other than me, myself and I in Northern Maine.
They all agree, the food is excellent. I’ve tried one that was left over and no one home to put it in a freezer. The ones in our area from the Aroostook Agency on Aging and all home made tasty. Nothing like the tinfoil hungry man or Swanson TV dinners I sampled in college. Great variety, grateful recipients and a friendship forms between the lunch or breakfast meal provider and receiver. Home bound individuals in Maine who can not get out to attend a facility prepared lunch at a senior center and who have difficulty preparing one appreciate meals on wheels.
Meals on wheels is more than helping avoid hunger than millions of American fear.
It helps with reducing the isolation and belief no one cares. Sadly 8 out of 10 senior citizens suffer from food insecurity. They don’t receive the home delivered food they need. Twenty five percent of the elderly citizens live alone. The meals on wheels program helps keep a home owner in their house as they struggle to make ends meet. More statistics on Maine’s meals for wheels program.
Mainers Volunteer, The Village Meets The Needs Collectively. From The Cradle To Senior Citizen Shut In.
It’s not one size fits all either. The meals on wheels selection work around dietary restrictions. Get heart friendly, diabetic sensitive, vegetarian, gluten free and lower sodium lunch time selections. Take a peek at all that is offered for Maine made meals on wheels lunches.
Are you retired, do you have some time each week to volunteer and give back to your local community? Breaking the cutest, most delicious small loaves of home made bread and sharing meals delivered by you to the home of someone needing them is a unique highly rewarding experience.
To partner up with the meals on wheels program, you only need a valid Maine driver’s license, background check, a reliable vehicle. Volunteers can be paid 42 cents per mile for reimbursement, but volunteers in southern Aroostook County where I live have not asked to be compensated.
It’s more than just delivering a meal, you are checking in on a friend and neighbor.
Maybe the only person besides Bob Barker, whatever talk show host or soap opera star that meals on wheels receiver may see all day long. Meals are delivered one day a week, with five meals presented to each participant. Volunteers are also needed to make phone calls to the many seniors. For more information, tap out the number sequence 1-800-439-1789. More FAQ meals on wheels program details. And if you are in the Portland area, click here.
More drivers are needed and they have the meals to deliver. If more go between connections can be made to link up the delivery person with the hungry lunch receiver.
State of Maine agricultural fairs, there are twenty five last count that start the end of June and run until October.
The number of local community members working year round on Maine fairs is staggering. Pitch in, find areas you can add something to is a common pursuit of many small town local Maine community members. Here is more on Maine state fairs. And for dates and times of fairs around Maine, visit this schedule link.
Maine Four Season Recreation. See Maine On An ATV ITS Trail Ride, On A Snow Sled, Hoofing And Hiking It.
Why are Maine state agricultural fairs so much fun?
Because they are family orient, there is something for everyone. From 4H exhibits from photography to cooking and the ability to walk through the stables to visit with goats, chickens, cows, and to attend horse shows, truck and tractor pulls, the list of why fairs in Maine are attractive is a long one. I relish a foot long Italian sausage with the fried green and red peppers, the grilled onions in a fresh bread roll. Walking through the Midway if the state fair is lucky enough to have rides and game exhibits, you feel like a kid again. And you realize how important, how special this fair is when you consider the rides through a pair of eight, ten, twelve year old eyes. The Ferris wheel to look over all that
Midnight Madness In Houlton Maine, Aroostook County Seat Or Shiretown.
gets set up quickly by the carnies and the locals who join forces for a state fair.
Once fireworks were legalized in Maine, it seems the ground and sky shows took on a new level of excitement.
More competition, more options all out in the open for the consumer and communities alike. The fireworks cost came down as the legality improved to remove the black market sales and to regulate the sky shows and ground displays for safety sake. What it is about a state fair that makes you come back year after year? Proud to be an American and 4th of July displays hit a patriotic nerve? Or hands on displays of simple living or reminders of why you live in Maine rubbing shoulders with your fellow man part of it?
Food, fun, fair rides, games, horse shows, farm animal and tractor exhibits all add to living in Maine.
Animals, People Of Maine Get Along Just Fine. Because It’s Not Crowded. We Need Each Other.
The Maine state fairs often have a theme and beside local and national music acts, the state of Maine gets in on the action. Take for example the Common Ground Fair… there are hands on demonstrations for living off the land. Better living with farm to the table food that you know was never gassed or sprayed with who knows what to push production. New ways to live better, healthier, to squeeze more joy, to increase awareness of improved living options.
The Common Ground Fair is in September in Maine. You are what you eat, your lifestyle is up to you. Your kids are watching and learning from the example you set for them to 5, 6, 7, 8. Plus you always get a neat t-shirt, something in the take away from a state of Maine fair experience stays with you.
Or you work a component of it to make the experience extra special for others. Holding down a tent location or working behind the scenes in a state of Maine agricultural fair exhibit. It is all about others and sharing what you and I have learned. Comparing notes, helping improve others life by sharing, caring and making an effort for your fellow man. That’s what it’s all about. Hey. (Said, sand, recited to the tune of Hokey Pokie.)
Would You Take Driver’s Education From This Demolition Derby Driver?
Antique car shows, everything from souped up lawnmowers to race to demolition derby crash up car competitions. Maine state fairs offer more than beano or bingo, fair food vendors and carnival rides. Buying a raffle ticket on a worthwhile local cause. Little Miss or Mr Fire Cracker competitions. Local talent, there is lots in a Maine small community.
If a small Maine town is still able to be a state fair venue, it is a sign of strong local volunteers that work tirelessly year after year to sustain and improve the event.
Liability insurance if a big expense. We live in a time where some people sue for a living, for revenge and there are fewer and fewer honest mistakes or good Samaritan acts.
The local Maine weather can wreak havoc with the best laid plans on the fair brochure line up. Lots of planning, plenty of seed money goes into the line items for a state of Maine fair venue schedule.
State fairs of Maine, is it the dough boys with white confectionery sugar or cinnamon dusting?
The Carnival Food, Fun, Games, Rides. Did You Get Your Fill This 4th Of July In Maine?
Is the horse show, the animal exhibits, the fireworks, the carnival midway rides and games that make you return to see what you are missing? Our local Rotary Club used to man the gates into the state fair. You did your shift, met lots of local folks coming through the gates and it was like old home week with your relatives that were in the mix of people heading in to the state fair. Here is a video of one local Maine state fairs, usually the first on the list. The eager beaver in Maine in my home town of Houlton, the oldest town in Aroostook County.
I am spoiled because I live in Maine. I am a local, a native and have access to all the wonder that happens year round, season after season up here in the northern most New England state wedged up against Atlantic Canada and Quebec. This summer and early fall I pledge to visit some of the state fairs in Maine I have missed and to report back to the readership. To post a blog post or video clip and some imagery to showcase what you are missing faithful Me In Maine blog post readers. To display what happens at each of the unique state fairs, the agricultural presentations that dot the state of Maine. That put each vibrant community and area of one of the sixteen counties of Maine on the map. Maine is the way life should be.
Today one American farmer feeds 165 people. Our country has a cheap food policy and the grower, whoever raises your food gets about 16 cents from every dollar spent on whatever a farm produces. Roughly 2% of our national population are farmers, ranchers. Like many things, bigger happened to squeeze out the family farm way of life.
Maine Is Real, Peaceful, Not Crowded. One Of The Lowest Crime States.
Consolidation, volume production because the food prices do not keep pace with inflation, and the higher cost of farming made the lifestyle not so economically attractive. Most would agree the work ethic learned on a farm is a valuable lesson. But few are so positive that breaking even is considered a good year and just being excited to get to farm again come spring just won’t cut it.
So if eight out of ten people live in the city, if small rural populations are shrinking, what causes the longing for living off grid, for starting a small farm?
Ask yourself if you live in an urban center what you don’t like about your lifestyle. Too much commuting or time wasted trying to get from “A” to “B”. Fear of personal safety because the nightly news has some pretty gruesome stuff flashed before the audience tuning in to learn “that’s the way it is” for another day. Noise, high cost of housing, fast paced living that robs personal satisfaction and just lacking the freedom to be your own boss.
But being a farmer, living off the land is no picnic.
Work around the clock, hard labor and set backs due to the weather, poor markets or your own personal health. Physical labor helps you get in shape, sleep better nights when you shut off the lamp on the nightstand. But worry about staying on that family farm can cause nightmares. Farming can be a lot like gambling when you blow on the dice and hope for snake eyes or whatever is needed to come out on top to win the wager. More on living off grid.
Day Is Done, Cue The Stars, Crickets, Mister Moon.
Living off grid… is power that expensive or is the idea of not being plugged into a utility for juice part of the independence? Is burning a renewable natural resource like wood from your own land, cut and gathered and split, stacked to heat your home part of the attraction? To get away on dependency on foreign oil or natural gas? We’ve blogged about heating your Maine home with wood before and know the merits of being a son of a birch. Could you build your own cabin to live off the land?
Is living off grid a bit of a knee jerk over reaction to the pressure cooker of city living?
Is the romance of working the land, building your own home, the out buildings to go around the farmstead like a drug? Something to dream about to help fulfill the empty spot in a life that is lived but not rich or rewarding or natural. Being resourceful, learning new skills that have been untapped because you specialize in one and only one thing. And hire out pretty much everything else that depends on the credit card or write a check.
Simpler living means removing the money needed to keep it complicated. When it is a personal choice to step back, buy the Maine land and plan you cutting ties with the city to make the leap to work the dirt is not as scary because it is self inflicted. When the Great Depression caused drought, a dust bowl where nothing grew and the locals packed up to move away with little hope in their sails, the need to create a living besides farming meant industrial jobs, learning a trade besides the managing acreage.
How much land do you need to start a Maine farm?
Once fertile acre of Caribou loan will grow 32,000 pounds of food. That’s a square just shy of 208′ x 208′ and Maine land is cheap. Small rural Maine is the 4th lowest for crime statistics. Your fun is low or no cost when the outdoors with fresh air, clean water and missing the wall to wall sea of unknown faces city dwellers maneuver around daily. Would it be a shock to the system? Do you easily make the transition to small country living without much thought when it is your kids welfare that gets considered as the most important goal in your life? What’s important does change when you start a family and start to study where you can do it best for your children.
What’s Brown And White And Surrounded By Green? You See Lots Of These Among Maine Farmscapes. Start Of Living Off Grid, Starting A Farmstead?
New solar lightning, advances in batteries, LED lighting that uses less energy make living off grid more feasible. Wind generators have popped up around the landscape even here in small rural Maine. By living off grid do you mean unplowed roads and stuck way up in the woods far from town? Is there a happy medium of being on a dead end road not so far from town conveniences without all the added work of making a road, maintaining it by yourself. Neighbors are not bad but keeping them at a distance helps the fondness. Don’t fence me in was not just a Western notion. Too many people too tightly jammed together is a recipe for tension, emotions to boil over and it is all due to your personal space being invaded. Feeling you have no space of your own if you share it with every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Feeding yourself first and just keep your expenses low to the ground. Life is more enjoyable when you are not chasing the dollar to keep the wolf from your door. Feeling satisfied with personal success raising farm field to family table is also healthy for your body. In a day and age when cancer and other diseases are prevalent, you have to wonder about the toll stress, what we eat that should not be put down the gullet causes to the body we were given to care for the best we can. Do you feel you treat yourself the healthiest way possible? Or is it give me something to forget how unhappy or empty you are? That’s medicate the symptoms but not tackling the root of the problem.
Fixing up old ME farmhouses and all the buildings around the homestead.
Country living housing projects require plenty of skill, lots of home work study and boat loads of patience. Building construction on older agricultural properties are definitely labors of love. It is best if you the home owner can tackle as much of the rehab work yourself to save money and for the joy of a real estate fixer upper restoration project.
Fresh Hot Coffee, Whatever Meal Tastes Improve After Maine Farm Chores Are Done.
The older homes that were once the cornerstone of vibrant small Maine farm families present a challenge though from the two extremes.
The never had any repair places are original. But the damage caused from lack of maintenance means the repairs are more than just addressing the surface of what you can see on the inside. Deep down inside the bones of a Maine farmhouse you will can be forced to replace or repair the sills, the floor stringers, any dry rot that is hidden until you start swinging a crowbar.
The replacement materials in your re-construction of the country home that has fallen from grace sometimes means making the woodwork or hardware supporting it by hand. Because you can not just trot into a big box building supply outlet to move it from a shelf aisle into your shopping cart. Often finding another farmstead that is being torn down is a source for what you need on the construction project. Re-purposing from a salvage pile of another deceased farm home dwelling with the property owner’s permission to pick through the rubble. Or locating someone that did save the yesteryear materials that were once part of an older farmhouse that is no longer standing straight and sound. Who piled them up to store under cover for their own re-building project that lost steam or they simply had more than their needed and now want to gladly free up the storage space for other trinkets.
Referring to the historical building notes on the New England, whatever style homestead is part of learning curve in the housing restoration maneuver.
To determine what exactly is needed once the reconstruction project gets underway in good shape. Study of floor-plans, the cut away more detailed diagrams, watching videos on the repair of vintage older housing. Talking to the old time now retired tradesman that all add up to combine and help guide the rehabilitation efforts. All are essential in combination for the know how needed to tackle the many loose ends the old farmhouse can present. It is delicate finish work in the hammer and nail but also to bring the major operating systems of the country home into present day.
Coffee Early In The Morning The Old Fashion Way! Get To Maine, Relax, Breathe.
The home in rural Maine that has gone through many owners adding their own creative talents to the Walton’s type housing is in some ways even harder to bring back into line. The past owners did not work together toward the same goal. Instead of just a few areas needing immediate attention and small ongoing detailing to make it like the original structure, there can be too much lost that resembles what the place looked like back in the year it was built. The attention to detail can make the re-construction scope pretty much every single room no longer mirrors what the original builder put together from the ground up.
The fixing up old historic farmhouses in Maine is slow tedious work and often too extensive to hire out because of the hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars to fix or repair or replace what ails the homestead.
But as long as a bank mortgage underwriter is not pushing for the place to be complete before closing. And you have a partner that is equally patient in the undo, redo, make do as the house with all the land around it returns to what it originally looked like. The this old house story can have very few scary chapters and a happy ending at the end. Making it better than it was when you first started many moons ago.
The what to do first is usually like any house project triage. Selecting the repair or replace the roof or heating system ahead of the installation of a new to you old Monson and Maine slate farmhouse long sink. Or removing to replace the kitchen cabinet hardware, electrical light fixtures and switches to match the period of this particular home era it really belongs. To get it back like the Beatles sang about being where you once belonged. Buy a farm house, whatever type of property where the renovation can be done in stages.
If you are buying to hang onto the place and are invested, the repair this old home movie is a long one with sequels.
You can buy a home you can not afford if it needs work, you are your own general contractor and you go slow. And hire out when you absolutely have to and recognize you are over your head. But stay on budget and pull back, extend the time to completion when something pops up you did not anticipate but that needs immediate attention and some funding to correct.
The saw horses in one room where the lath and plaster is being removed to hang new sheet rock after insulation, electrical and plumbing lines are put into the wall cavities. The peeling back multiple floor layers of old linoleum to get back down to hopefully a solid sub-floor or hardwood/softwood finish level. You don’t know what you are going to find the deeper you go into the many projects that spring up in the fix and repair of the old farmhouse you signed on for when the deed to the land under it was recorded in local registry of deeds.
Houlton Maine, Shiretown of Aroostook County. The Early Years. More Farmers Growing Potato Spuds, More Lumberman Sawing The Timber Logs!
Study of online imagery from others who embarked on the same repair your farm residence journey just prior to you can be encouraging.
The before and after images on any housing rehab can scare even the homeowner holding the camera to snap the shots and reviewing them in the progress album. Once you get started, there is no turning back. And when you run out of money or the projects to repair are large ones, the timetable to completion can be pushed ahead many months or even years on the calendar hanging in the old farm style renovated home kitchen.
The original acreage can be part of the missing puzzle piece when you decide to pick a farmstead residence real estate mission to accept if you dare. Too many times the land around the home was sold off by the widow of the last farmer on record to own the place. A neighboring agricultural grower that rented the land makes the purchase of land, no buildings to absorb the fields, pastures and woodlots into their down the road operation.
Buying back land from one or multiple land owners around your investment can be costly or require waiting until the timing improves. Strongly held and currently cultivated farm land does not get sold off but remains cut off from the original spread it use to surround on the family farm in Maine. Fewer but larger farm operations in Maine are the trend but my state does show promise in reversing the trend. More than four times the national average of micro farmers are showing up in the US census information from the last Q & A done on the local population. No farmer, no food is a sobering thought no?
Other things to prepare for that you might not have thought about in the housing repair exercise? Pet smells, the kind you may not remove and definitely are not going to gloss over with some sweet masking replacement odor. Perfectly good walls, floors and other building components can be marred deeply by animals inside a the home that should have been out in the farmyard or in the barn, machine shed, whatever building circles the main dwelling.
Farm Fresh Locally Sourced Food From Maine. Get Healthy Inside And Out In Maine Vacationing In Maine. Ever Thought Of Owning A Maine Farmhouse, Lots Of Land!
The best smell is none. Although the fragrance of flower beds, the smell of a woodshed, a summer kitchen where root cellar shelves create a winter draw grocery at meal time is not to be discouraged or can not be replaced. Burlap in a granary, leather in the tack room and saddle soap. Or disinfectant used to keep clean the milk parlor on an old Maine dairy farm with all the cattle stanchions and box / standing stalls for the smaller animals.
Making sour into a mixture of sweet works with chicken at the local Chinese restaurant. But lighting a candle or baking oven brownies won’t even begin to mask terrible pungent odors that linger in old neglected country homes of Maine.
The nose knows and your sense of smell is the strong of the five we all possess they say. Once the construction projects complete, it is time to move on to the finishing touch that does involve more than what you can see. The sounds of the wind chime on the front open porch, the colorful pinwheel that works in tandem with Mr Scarecrow out in the garden to discourage predatory gleaning. The crackling wood fire in the old Clarion or Home Comfort or whatever brand kitchen cook stove. A grandfather clock ticking in the front parlor. This is part of the lifestyle of country living in your old Maine farm property.
Pantry cabinets that need refinishing, finding original style or genuine imitation door knobs and Christan doors, trim to match the rest of the rooms in the old home out in the Maine countryside. Double wood storm windows with felt and numbered to help know which opening they go to in the fall get ready to a Maine winter ritual. All part of the bring it back to the way it was in the re-construction time machine that you pilot.
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A working farm of your own or a gentlemen operation where the fertile fields and pastures are leased out to someone else with the headaches and backaches.
Of watching the weather and hoping for a profitable market to peddle what is grown or raised. You watch others till, plant, cultivate and hoe leading into the fall harvest. For the winter storage and slowly selling off what the good old Earth provided with seed, water, fertilizer, lots of sweat and toil.
The old farm house DIY renovation with a little hired out help along the way can mean putting the rear apartment for the grandparents back into the layout. Or adding a home office so the out of state farm buyer who appreciates the open space and fresh air around it more than a native. So he or she or both can bring their old job online with them and telecommute.
Ever thought of repairing an old Maine farmhouse and be honest. Have you ever caught yourself looking at the Maine farm tractor and machinery section of Uncle Henry’s or on Craig list? I am guilty as charged and am lucky to own the family farm In New England I grew up on. That my Dad and mom purchased from a great uncle who’s first name I use for a middle one. That along with my Great
The Maine Barn Sitting Back On Its Haunches. Leaning, Straining And Recently Went Down Completely Like 52 Pick Up.
Aunt Hettie a world war one nurse made a good living on the patch of dirt. Investing wisely the spoils of the toil with a Bangor Maine stock broker named Banks. It was her pension check though from serving as a Florence Nightingale on medical cases all over creation in and out of Vacationland that put in the running water bathroom plumbing. Into the farm in Maine located up here in the Crown of Maine that had a two holer out in the north end shed. Up here in Houlton, the oldest town in Aroostook County dubbed “The Shiretown” where the glacier gave us an edge blessing growers with Caribou loam soil to play in with the horse than tractor dragging longer and longer lengths of machinery.
Country properties are a special kind of Maine real estate offering.
Looking out when you do up the supper dishes and watching another setting sun at dusk. Sipping lemonade or slurping hot coffee on the open or glassed porch at the rural property with no neighbor in sight. That’s off the main drag and where road noise is missing from too much traffic that city dwellers get tone deaf to with the constant exposure.
Read up on the topic and learn this is how they did it on this style of property in this particular period of time. If you hanker making it original again or as close as your wallet or available spare time will permit.
