Epicurean, simple living in small town rural Maine.
The direction, how you chose to live your life happens slowly. My Dad told me there are two basic groups of people. And like the soft serve ice cream, a blend flavor of the two chocolate and vanilla. There are vocation and vacation folks. The two pursue and craft their lifestyle around what they love but the source of joy is not quite the same.
Simple Living In Rural ME. The Take Away Is Different For What’s Important In Life. Basic Needs Met More Than Enough For Inner Joy.
For many, a job is a means to an end and fought tooth and nail to keep the wolf from your door.
Making ends meet is easier if your financial obligations are few. For some, the spark of creating a local business that provides a community service or produces goods is the end all. Your purpose in life is usually what you are good at and derive enjoyment from for work. If you find pleasure in your career employment labor, they say you never have to work a day in your life. Because work does not feel like toil or the love, sweat and tears is the satisfaction. You take home more than a pay check. You also enjoy the people you work with and serve in the public.
Your grit, stick with it determination and reinventing what you do to make it new and different pays dividends.
Everything we do in our Maine real estate primary job is all about the user experience. Not wasting anyone’s time. Making the delivery more efficient, far reaching for providing information on properties for sale with a taste of the local area community flavor. When you can mix business with pleasure on say a trip accomplishing more than one goal, that is win win too. Coronovirus has made all of us “cool our jets”. The Governor, the state of Maine REALTORS are directing us to stop face to face public showings for everyone’s safety sake. Appraisers in Maine have the go ahead to do only exterior inspections and don’t go in. But study images, MLS descriptions, videos if the real estate broker provides them for the public online consumption.
When you are lucky enough to live a simple small town rural Maine lifestyle. If you volunteer and provide something for work that benefits your community, that is highly satisfying. When you see many others working just as hard all together for a common goal, that is a beautiful thing. People choosing simple small town living in rural Maine are very very fortunate. The case just gets stronger when something like the coronovirus pandemic hits. Smaller but tighter Spartan like trained communities are tighter, fiercely connected for survival, for family, for purpose.
For starters let’s take the latter term. Epicurean means the pursuit of pleasure, especially in the area of the food, comfort, whatever luxuries you add to your daily existence. The simpler your life, the more you achieve pleasure and comfort. It is like you leave room for the small things that more than enough to satisfy. My mom preached moderation which sounds like a wet blanket approach to anyone that races through life full throttle and with wreck-less abandoned. But the easy does it, first things first structure and routine is boring and controlling for some. It makes life so much easier for others. Epicurus, who was he? Was his family from Vanceboro Maine? NOooooo, take the island of Greece. That’s a few time zones away from the Pine Tree state. A philosopher who knew deeply ingrained thought took a lot of energy and patience to change for the better in shuffling your life outlook priorities. (more…)
Living in a small Maine town, the grapevine news is not just gathered filtering national sources.
The latest happenings around the Maine community not covered by CNN, FOX, NPR, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC or some other big name news source. No New York Times, Washington Post. Forbes Magazine does not have lots of small rural Maine stories in their glossy pages with high end color photo spreads. Also, a small rural Maine radio station if you are lucky enough to have one is probably a “rip and read”. Something major could happen locally but it would be some time before it hits the wire service for broadcast outlets without a local news department to pick up on it. More on the history of Maine broadcasting.
Unless the local event, accident, fire or whatever news story hits the AP, UPI teletype news service, it stays dark and untouched. Or left to the weekly newspaper to tackle and break the story for its readership. We get the latest close to home news, the spin on state and national coverage from local family gatherings. From employees at work from all walks of life. Picked up with the two ears on the side of our heads from kids tapping into other circle sources. Maine has a low population. The folks that do live here are tight. Hannah oversees the Yankee Swap at the annual Christmas party out at the McGuire’s below in Linneus Maine.
The Local News Gathered At Family Events In Small Maine Towns. At Corner Grocery Convenience Stores Like Cameron’s Market In New Limerick Maine.
Commercially, it’s best if your “this just in” small Maine town news story happens in time to get covered in the latest daily broadcast.
Or especially so it can appear as big as life in the weekly edition of the black and white news print local outlet. If it does not, stay tuned. Could be many days later. Or not at all or as an after thought in skimpy coverage down the road. No one likes old news that’s like moldy bread.
The timing of the news living in small Maine towns is critical.
How many other competing stories are out there to tackle impacts what you do get splashed across the front page or in the broadcast lead in news gathering. This all seriously impacts what does or doesn’t get covered. Making it feast or famine for lots or just a little to report on in small rural towns in Maine. The editorial and small rural Maine news gathering staffs on the print side of things especially suffering steady shrinkage.
The army of often only one or two reporters do the best they can covering their beat.
Always coaxing to come on over to the cyber side presentation where you scroll and tap, swipe, double click. To break the habit of open wide, spreading the newspaper wide to scan the columns and turn the pages. Media outlets are consolidating and working hard to get us to make the leap to digital formats of the news delivery pixels. But that’s where the “local militia journalist” become the cub reporters to fill in the community news gaps. Everyone has a cell phone camera. Can hunt and peck and they do shoot “the you are there” pictures and video with copy hammered out with two thumbs or a pop out stylus. As they roam around all the small rural Maine locations, the community itself, at large shares the “news” they see first hand in their travels. Neat huh?
The term is accurate. There really are “slow news days” when not so much is shaking locally when living in small Maine towns.
That’s when journalists revisit old news articles for an update. Dig harder to create the copy the other end of the conversation can enjoy and find useful. Or tap into the human interest angle from the guy and gal on the street. To hand them a mike, quote them for a printed sound bite. Dragging them into the spotlight to learn what they think. Weighing in on an opinion poll on one or a variety of topics of interest to the audience. We all want to know what others think and learn from their perspective.
Maine. Vast, Insulated From The World. Smaller But A Tight, Close Population. 11 People Per Square Mile In Northern ME. 44 Per Mile In The Southern Sections.
No one can update you better than someone you have known for years and who is living Maine small town local.
Someone you trust and full of the same local area pride. What’s new delivered in a special, personal way with local expressions and a mix of humor. Maybe a tad of fiction. Or part of what the person relays is what they thought they heard Bubba say. But lots of people were talking, my hearing is not what it used to be comes into play. Factors causing the what you thought you heard getting blender mixed and twisted in the information. The stuff you hear and repeat like it is gospel gets exposure. Like Paul Revere hollering while he gallops through the streets close to home. Raw, real, unpolished, but out there and not kept a secret.
Sharing information that resonates all around you in your daily travels happens more in small rural Maine towns.
News gets passed on and on in the small Maine community circles. Give me the local you know and trust for free sharing of the news. Nothing missed in the translation or relay. Not delivered from a talking head with an agenda and an obscene salary. Who has an artificial smile with perfect teeth but does not even know where the small rural town is in way up there in Maine. (more…)
Rural Maine and the day to day when you live here adjusting to conorovirus.
Over the weekend, checked in with one brother living in Vancouver Washington because Seattle has been in the news a lot with the cornorovirus buzz. Or maybe the areas you pick up your ears on and think about are only because you have loved ones in that location. My brother told me where he lives is four hours from Seattle. The way he described the day to day with cornovirus is not so different than here in Maine.
Brother Brian ordered out food from the brother in laws restaurant a few miles away Saturday night. The Washington state place that is closed for indoor dining like our local eateries but doing a brisk take out business. The to-go food enjoyed in the parking lot with other diners 8 feet or more away. My hometown had York’s Dairy Bar that operated the same way summers. You put your lights on for service. Given a wooden popsicle stick with a number on it. The ordered food car hop delivered to your open window where a tray gets hung. The vinegar on your home made fries. Enjoy your burgers, fried clams, those onion rings made with pancake batter all from the comfort of your car.
Having More Than Enough And Grateful. Living Simple Is What Maine Is All About Yesterday And Today.
No doubt all of us would like to have family all around us at times like this with coronovirus’s impacting on our lives.
Have one out of four children living in the same Maine home town. Face timing the first grand daughter is a comfort. Watching her climb stairs crawling and becoming more steady on her feet walking. Last night’s call during supper and with her eating a wholesome organic food meal while saying “Poppa Poppa”. Turning her head to look at the door to the farmhouse expecting I will be coming in to visit.
One of my two daughters in the Boston Massachusetts area are in the nightly habit of going out on her open porch.
She and her husband sing with the neighborhood. Her husband plays the guitar as warmer weather approaches. There is laughter, crying, sharing. The piano in the home will be put to good use. Across the street is a couple where the wife is an OB-GYN nurse, a few houses to the left you find a neighborhood doctor. All comforting when a new baby is expected next month and talk of shortages of masks, coronovirus potentially tying up health care facilities is part of the media buzz. As industries retool to build much needed ventilators, masks, gloves.
It reminds me of my Dad the WWII Army Air Force B-24 tail gunner.
He told me the auto industry shifted gears from cars to war airplanes. Cranking out with Rosie the Riveter’s help a B-17 and B-24 every fifty minutes. Using our time in Northern Maine to the most effectiveness keeps your mind off worry or despair. Keep moving in the right direction and know you are doing all you can to be resourceful and health conscious at the same time.
Your thoughts and prayers, what you think about are people.
The ones you know and love that are expecting or had a child recently. The elderly with medical conditions you know in your own community. What can you do to help is where the bulk of the mental, physical and spiritual energies go along with living the best you can. But each day is one to begin with what can I do that helps my area and ripples out from there. It is not something we start doing when a coronovirus arrives on the scene. In small rural Maine, worrying and caring for the needs of others is what we do non-stop to conquer and survive hardships collectively. (more…)
The points of interest, things to do in Maine when something like a coronovirus happens.
We are lucky to live in Maine where maintaining personal space is easy. Six feet from others and preparing to increase the distance if needed is not so hard. Neighbors, what neighbors? When you live on a dead end road, when you do not see the next house. It’s like yours and also out of sight, surrounded by field acreage and mixed woods. Staying safely spaced is not thought about until a virus hits. And you consider what it would be like dealing with precaution measures if you did not live in rural Maine. If instead it was a high rise apartment buildings with shared heating and air exchange system. Or one of 300 other carbon copy houses cookie cut out of a subdivision with a neat sounding name.
We all have the same don’t touch your face, clean surfaces, turn your cough and smother it in your elbow procedures to follow in Maine.
No matter where we are on planet Earth. It’s all about doing your part. Buying time in the race for multiple vaccines to stop it in it’s virus tracks. And at the same time belt tighten to weather it out like a Maine winter storm with too much snow and how low does she go temperatures. Reelin’ and dealin’ with economic problems is nothing new living in Maine. Adjusting to up, down, sideways road curves in life’s bumpy pot hole riddled road.
The Map, The Numbers, The Coronovirus Covid-19 Statistics For The World.
Our gratitude to live in small rural Maine does not make us less vigilante to do our part to avoid the spread or contracting the covid-19 virus.
Sure your heighten awareness about how virus germs are spread is vital information. You teach the same laboratory biology science lesson to your kids for real World application from the texbook. More in your head thinking about grabbing door knobs, shopping cart handles and using your elbow to touch. Or nodding, waving not shaking hands habit adopted in greetings. No more kissing both cheeks in an embrace like lots of cultures. All that gets an overhaul living in small town Maine as we avoid unnecessary travel. Sporting events took a major hit. So did dance classes, anything putting you or your child in a large group or losing the ability to stay less than six feet distant.
But being away from lots of population sheer number concentration helps us Mainers.
School Education, Sporting Events, Dance Classes Put On Hold In Maine. Everything Moved Back To Home Base To Batten Down The Hatches And Hunker Down.
Not dealing with hording fist fighters for toilet paper, foodstuffs at shopping centers still causes us to stop and reflect though.
To really think when you have families in those urban areas, how it must be. Just how their day to day changes more drastically. What they have for a set of worries is food for thought. And to consider elderly, those with medical conditions to get them help. To reach out and let them know the community cares for those with age out of kindness and for perspective. Much can be learned in the repeated past cycles we hear about helping older, seasoned community members. You doing your part? You in that group receding or blue hair segment now or hope to live long enough to make it to the Golden Years?
Just getting around, avoiding mass transit and being jumpy every time your hear a sneeze or cough.
We can walk not have to ride mass transit in most small town Maine locations. Ask someone shut in if you can get them what they need and check in. In all of our lives, none of us really knows how the coronovirus will affect us yet. My real job is listings, selling property listings will take it into consideration. I did a regular installment Maine real estate market report post on another blogging channel this weekend. Pointing out how the numbers look, with the disclaimer these healthy real estate market figures do not reflect the coronovirus news event effect. Being a realist, not an alarmist and knowing it takes patience to learn that part of the coronovirus aftermath.
Take A Break From Close Contact Sports, All Those Spectators In The Stands Or Huddled Together At ME School Fields.
Practical approaches to difficult life situations is what Mainers are taught and see put into action daily.
We will do more than survive and make a sport, a survival game out of it. When it snows an inch or two and a metropolitan area stops dead in its tracks. We think “amateurs”. But it is really lack of the right equipment, no flake experience, too many dang people. That’s the problem in population centers handling any crisis man made or from Mother Nature. David and Goliath different atmosphere to work with to avoid panic and get the best results. Smaller is better in mobilization or house arrest voluntary shut down protocol compliance. We are prepared for this kind of challenge and together will find the best way to get through it like other struggles.
It will take another month and more to pass and further time to study the coronovirus numbers based on real time, not water cooler predictions. To weigh in on how it affects real estate, transportation, tourism, health care, small mom and pop businesses in Maine.
But Mainers are tough, resilient and used to hardship and adversity. All increases our faith and the gung ho, fire in our belly passion to make the most of whatever life affords you. We head to our private places to unplug and refresh without sharing them with wall to wall tourists. We will be just fine staying at home. We are the lucky ones who live in Maine. Don’t have to travel long distances to access all she offers for fresh air, clean water, pure and natural surroundings.
What To Do, Being Responsible And Pro-active With Cornovirus COVID 19
You and I will do our part to prevent the spread and rein in our travel circles to thwart the coronovirus attack on our way of life.
The local haunts will suffer but understand your absence and why. Staying close to home to keep the fires going, making our life more confined and disciplined is nothing new. When the economy is not robust, if spending money is tight or non-existent, we quickly find ways to amuse and entertain. You can not help but think of Maine’s Amish settlements. How without lots of modern day conveniences, they don’t bother any one and get along just fine.
The kids are respectful, reading books and pitching in around the farms or whatever Amish enterprise. The stay at home out of school will not be wasted.
Everything you learn in life is not on the teacher’s shoulders. Time for kids to learn how to change car oil or a flat tire. To deep clean the house along with other members. To be kind, helpful and pick up more than just what they create for a mess or only the area they call their bedroom. Learning about economizing, conserving preparing for the long haul and seeing how local communities tackle the problem brings it all home. Kids will face challenges in life and the set backs and their reaction to them shows what you are made up inside.
The struggles and change of routine work around the house helps polish and improve to make kids adaptable for more puzzles presented to them in life. Respect for others and their opinions that may differ from their own. Not expecting to always be entertained or the need to make sure everyone around you should know you are pretty bored. Balancing a check book, washing windows, learning how to sew. Being a bit of an entry level carpenter scraping paint, removing and replacing a rotten board for refinishing. Mowing the lawn, shoveling snow. It is not up to others to make your life rosy. If you day, month, year, life does not turn out the way you hoped, don’t blame your parents or teachers and say “it’s not my fault”. Deal with it and look for the best solutions digging in and working hard not falling down and staying there by refusing to take ownership of your role. This virus is all about doing your job to protect yourself and others from its spread.
The coronovirus does put a hold on personal freedoms.
It causes tightened up sanitation measures, working on the areas of your life that fortify and raise your flu resistance. The even more exercise outdoors piled on, staying fully hydrated, curling up with a good book. Or puttering on hobbies is just pouring more coal on the bulk of our activities anyway. Listening to music, making the same soothes the soul and relaxes. Writing, painting, creating art or useful craft items. Cutting, stacking next year’s wood supply always a default to fill the time in a worthwhile way. In Maine, knowing how to entertain and make the most of what you have that is always way more than enough. That spirit will continue virus or not through thick or thin, feast or famine. We need to tackle cancer, heart disease, obesity and other health issues with the same urgency of coronovirus news has caused. If you consider yourself a faithful person, this is your cue to test that conviction or profession with prayer and reflection to fortify from inside out. Help others to do the same and gain strength in the process.
Helping others in the small rural areas, especially the elderly is not so hard or different in Maine, with or without the buzzing coronovirus news reports.
Much of the lend a hand knee jerk is second nature and why we chose to live in Maine rather than some place else on the globe. The local grocery stores opening up an hour early or later to help elderly shoppers make the rounds slowly. Without fear of being in the way, exposed to virus germs they can not afford meet along with power shoppers, etc. Slow it down. Get the seniors what they need one component of how Maine is working around the coronovirus and it’s after effects.
The healthier simple lifestyle not bank rolled by mountains of debt or crazy spending adopted growing up here where money is removed from the equation.
The focus on live and local in small town Maine, not online watching what everyone else is doing and thinking we are missing out on today. Providing plenty of room for adding all pure and natural endeavors in four season Maine. Again, not to brag but so lucky, very grateful and humbled to live in Maine. Farm raising makes you independent, a survivor to make hay while the sun shines and take frugal to a whole new level to stay on the patch of family dirt. Passing it on in as good or hopefully better shape than you received the acreage.
Being self sufficient and resourceful living on less I think just adds to the feeling of gratitude. Easy does it living within your means, aware of others and it is not about you attitude. More local hands on deck to round up quickly. To make a difference, for the connection aid for others in your small home town. It all may allow rural country Mainers to not fully feel the effects of a coronovirus the same way as our struggling city cousins. We are wired simple by choice and that is how our life rocks and rolls in Maine.
Like a harsh winter, poor economy, recovering from a medical operation or accident, we in Maine just adapt and adopt to whatever the occasion warrants.
And using a what we have which is more than enough positive attitude. To rise above and beyond to find something to be happy about in our look back rationalization. We will do more than just get through the coronovirus ramp up and containment. And I bet some in the audience are thinking this rural setting might be just the ticket for them at this stage of life too.
Our Maine local schools are working around the clock with teachers and administrators to learn from home.
For students to keep the education process rolling in new ways. Also to get needed nutrition to students who depend on it when school is in session. Bag back for kids loaded with food goes home with the help of bus drivers delivery them. When school is out in Maine for two weeks and more, providing food along with the reading, writing, arithmetic is critical too. Not everyone has an Internet connection in Maine rural areas or the money to bring it into their homes. How to continue education without Internet or computers at their home takes working together and being creative by local school boards.
No Maine Large Crowds These Days, Coronovirus Means Less Worry But Still Being Vigilante To Protect You, Others. Schools Cancelled, Large Groups Busted Up.
Those in contact with the outside World are hard to corral when they roamed before we all fully understood the seriousness of the coronovirus.
But now we know, the media have thrown so much information good and flawed at us to digest right? When you live on a Maine farm, raise your own food, heat with wood and pretty much stay busy with the agriculture and being your own construction handyman, equipment mechanic, you and your family spends the bulk of your time at home.
So points of interests, things to do in Maine when you thought this blog post was about suggestions to start collecting lighthouse visits. Knowing you want to see a Maine moose, eat a whoopie pie, try a slice of native blueberry pie, put on a bib to eat a boiler lobster or steam clam feed. Slice into a Maine potato to add the butter and maybe a few other ingredients. You come to Maine for the wide open space, friendly but fewer number of people with or without cornovirus new alert background buzz.
Hiking Mt Katahdin, hitting the trails and visits to popular coastal beaches or Maine sporting events, musical events, school activities, church services, etc that may be curtailed for a spell.
Hold that thought on go carts, Santa’s Village and public pools and going out to eat, large crowd music venues, whale watching. Make your World staying close to home or in it until we get a handle on coronovirus containment developments. When things settle down and the coast is clear to move around less restricted in larger travel circles. We take care of our basic needs and enjoy the work involved in just that as a labor of love. Grateful for how good we have it and knowing not everyone does due to where they now live today.
Instead, for now, what you do up to camp in Maine is private and secluded. More one on one or by your lonesome. Small if exposed to any size groups the order of the day. Away from people where you worry less and learn to enjoy your space more. Maybe working the land to grow food you know where it came from and heating with the wood from your own property that’s a renewable resource. Not being an alarmist, but life spent for the summer at an unorganized township in Maine like St Croix Lake camp up in Aroostook County. Like the Lawlors and my cousin Randy and his wife Barb do every year. Happy living off grid in the remote location Maine is famous for and no longer a secret to many doing their online homework.
Waving at the freight train engineer a couple times a week hauling wood forest timber products down the clickity clack tracks.
Who leans out and smiles knowing he is about the only person you see hiding out in the deep, vast North Maine woods St Croix Lake location. Maybe the inland fisheries and wildlife guy or gal with the badge, the sidearm and a pick up or snow sled, maybe a four wheel tools by to say hey. Nature’s wildlife, the sound of weather, a crackling wood fire, a lake lapping out front not just the mournful train whistle approaching the one road siding crossing is what you hear. Who’s turn to deal in our cribbage board game and what did you peg for points from that last hand you lucky buzzard? Get the deck ready and shuffled while I whip up clean and place in the rack to dry these dirty dinner dishes Marguerite.
More Wildlife Than People To Read The Local Small Town Newspaper In Maine.
Surviving on less at another off the beaten path cabin in Harvey siding or laboring on a small Maine farm might be just your new setting. Many bought land in Maine over the years for just that “what if” scenario easier to sleep at night. Without the tossing and turning worry. The property acreage a safety net, an insurance policy if you will to bee line to if life in a population center got a little too crazy. If you lived in a city and all heck broke loose, do you know where you would head following the blue evacuation dots to high tail up to Maine.
Most of the land in Maine bought for cheap vacation recreation, maybe future retirement. Using owner financing terms to fit their budget to buy the Maine land. Now owned free and clear and put to another use than hunting, fishing, snow sledding or hiking for fun. Could you live off the land in Maine, be off grid and live pretty much self sufficiently? Think you have the skill set if put to the test or could rise to the occasion?
We are vocation not just vacation people and can not take enjoy our recreation until caught up on our Maine work load.
In Maine it does not feel like being on house arrest because home is where your heart is. We don’t need retail therapy at the mall or to be social butterflies running the roads. Mainers are content and enjoy their own company. Being alone is not scary but sacred when you need to process events and hear yourself think. Your life is around you and lived in the moment not out of step and some place else. This coronovirus makes you do some serious thinking about the direction your life is heading.
Oh sure, people love Maine for the rocky coastline and maritime history.
I have posted on the expensive tourist traps that is often all the out of state visitor gets to sample. But go up into the belly of interior Maine deeper. Maine is a place to sample the outdoor traditions year round and the paths into those areas are less traveled. You could start over, change it up or retire easily in Maine if the timing is right and you are prepared financially, emotional, spiritually.
The small Maine communities are small but there is nothing larger or stronger than the hearts of the local volunteers.
They doggedly take on much and preserve to pass down these shared Maine family and community traditions. Our rural nature, the vast size of Maine and sparse population insulates us. Some think isolates to a degree. But when is that a good thing? Depends on where you are in life, what you have gone through and how you survived. Ask that very personal question to the person you see in the mirror brushing your teeth looking back each day for the answer.
Small towns, their schools, churches, businesses can mobilize quickly when ordered to stay close to home in Maine.
Waiting For Ice, For The Snow After That Signalling Maine Winter Arrived And Is Leaving A Few Months Later.
It happens every time the economy tanks. We still practice and pass on common sense to the next generation. The hand washing precautions, avoiding large groups protocol, how you meet and greet just means rein it in a little tighter. But we already live independently and not fueled by lots of cash. Are not dependent on others and make an adventure of being house bound or if weather increases and the power goes out. All taken in stride without being shook up or getting light headed with fear. We are all in this together and the individuals part of the solution.
On a small or large scale Maine country farm, the lifestyle includes lots of tasks that keep us pretty busy and out of trouble. Occupied with cutting, processing next year’s home heating wood and maintenance of out buildings, the homestead and tending fields and animals fills much of our daylight hours.
The locals and tourists alike want to be out on the trails that open up the Great North Woods and places like Mt Katahdin at Baxter State Park. Or to bike the fifty miles or more of trails around Acadia National Park in the Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island area of Maine. To get out on the waterfront for early morning fishing in a boat or wetting the line in waders out in a Maine river or stream. But what’s important during an outbreak of say the cornovirus means first things first to protect yourself, your family, the community that is near and dear.
Farm stands for field to table fresh, museums that showcase the agriculture and lumbering heritage are popular points of interests.
So are home cooked service club suppers that often are fund raisers and silent auctions for some local in need that hit a low point in life. But the best things to do in Maine depend on you combined with the weather in the season at hand. One thing is for certain. No matter what time of year you visit Maine or when are lucky enough to live here full or part time as a native, much of the our time is spent outdoors. The fresh air, not being house bound by four walls and itching to get outside to walk, bike, hike, ski, swim is a strong desire in Maine.
Simple living makes it free and easier in many ways in Maine.
No crowds, no gangs, no crime and space. Lots of wide open space to explore and to return to those favorite places people from Maine and away flock to all their life. Once you discover your own special place to get centered, for exercise and enjoyment, that location is added to the can’t wait to return or continue where you left off.
Living simple in Maine also takes the need for lots of money to keep things humming. Independent, resourceful Mainers know how to do more than just survive. To maintain a quality of life, if it is to be, it is up to me is one skill developed at an early age. Attitude, not being lazy, pitching in to make it better than it was or to maintain something good in a small Maine community. Everyone has a role, all are ambassadors to their own small Maine town and traditions.
So points of interest, things to do in Maine and how all that gets combined with the coronovirus.
This blog post topic did not deliver what you thought it would right? It is not business as usual and we interrupt this blog post programming for a special report. If you are brand new to Maine, never been here before and only had a few days to start collecting experiences what could be the plan Stan? To not waste your time in Maine but also not feel rushed and chasing a major time line to “beat the buffet” do it all. To cover all the bases and more in one hurried visit that sums up Vacationland in a matter of hours or or just a few days. The coronovirus has closed many options for safety sake. Rent a cabin and explore to discover what each facet of the jewel of Maine offers on your own or virtually as you plan for the rear visit. Google “what to do in Maine for fun” and watch the flood of recreational options spill out in your lap.
Kittery & Up To Fort Kent ME Is As Far North As You Can Go. Maine, Tall Wide Rural State. All ME Communities Are Tackling Coronovirus Spread Prevention.
Resources, time is one, money is another that can whittle and shape the list of things to do in Maine on the points of interest list.
Camping is always a default affordable and enjoyable way to spend your time in Maine. With nature surrounding you, the wildlife one by one wandering by your camp site, you never forget the smell of the woods, the sounds of the lake or river you camped near. Food cooked on an open fire. The same one used to talk about the day that was and the one approaching discussing your Maine experiences.
Maine is personal, one on one, more intimate and the connection is stronger because crowds of impersonal people are removed. You learn to entertain yourself and not follow the pack or worry about what everyone else is doing. You seek to carve out what you want to accomplish. What fulfills you is only learned spending time with yourself and away from all those people jammed shoulder to shoulder. Not bumper to bumper in population centers like other parts of the nation. You can grow, learn, relax in Maine. Where I live, work and play there are 11 people per square mile. In New Jersey that number increases to 1000 souls.
One last blog post observation.
Maine Lighthouses Are Part Of The Attraction. They Are Not Going Away As Tourism Is Limited A Tad.
Maine travel gets your one of a kind authentic experiences and wisdom to apply to your life.
Like music that is real, genuine and even with a few imperfections, it has heart. It is not machined or sounds like all the rest of the riffs and lyrics. It is not copied and over dubbed in track stacks sameness. Feeling original, one of a kind, crafted from the heart. The melody, lyrics riding on top in the sandwich all crafted with total conviction. Honest effort poured in the pencil fill notes in the music liner creation discovery.
Maine is like the person providing the hand crafted product or wholesome level of service is testifying about how much joy he or she feels because they chose to live in Maine.
That kind of song or story hits you deeply because it is made from deep inside. The words and notes arranged because the success comes from being in the same mood when put together. Writing, singing and story telling about what you know works best when it is non-fiction and heat felt shared
Small town Maine wrapped in hundreds of thousands of acres of mostly woods because Vacationland is over 90 percent timbered. Stripped of material things that are like medication to pacify the illness symptoms on a short term basis. Replaced with rich authentic one of a kind lasting ingredients. The kind that hit all five senses on firing on all cylinders and making you feel alive in Maine where all this unspoiled space is waiting for you to tap. Unplug and recharge in Maine will clear your head and help your heart.
Tapping maple syrup sap, the trips to the Maine wood lot made for not just next year’s fuel to heat your home.
The eighty acre Ludlow Maine timber stand in our family since the early 1900’s supplied way more than just firewood. The forested land not just a neat setting in the Maine outdoors for a picnic. Or to hunt for game, pick wild apples or to cast a line into the bordering fishing stream. The hardwood ridge section of woods in Aroostook County tapped yearly for maple syrup sap. Spread the word. March 21st and 22nd is Maple Syrup Weekend in Maine.
Maple Shade Trees Are Full Of Syrup Sap When Above Freezing Days, The Other Way Below Zero Nights.
When someone says the words “maple syrup” do you think of a log cabin in Vermont or a large, smiling lady with bandanna for a lid on the store label?
I was exposed to real Maine maple syrup growing up in the farmhouse with my three older brothers. First adding real pads of butter to melt and pool, then ooze down the pancake stack. Followed quickly by real Maine made maple syrup drizzled ever so thick and slowly. Gravity pulling it down the sides after lathering it up on top of the hot fluffy flap jack stacks. When you live in rural Maine, you get connected to the land. Most of your time is spent outdoors not trapped inside four walls. You work up an appetite for real Maine maple syrup.
This Maine blog post is about making Maine maple syrup.
When Maine daytime temperatures climb above 32 degrees ( 0 Celsius) then drop to below freezing overnight, it’s time to get into gear. Maple trees wanting to bud prepare for spring and the best syrup sap happens early on in the season. (WARNING. The boiling down the sap should happen outside because the considerable steam inside a home makes for sticky air conditions during the evaporation process.Unless you enjoy scrubbing interior walls of where you live, head outdoors.)
Supposedly an early Native Canadian Indian chief from New Brunswick or Nova Scotia came home after a hard day of tramping the woods hunting discovered maple syrup in a left handed way.
Look out, duck, he flung his tomahawk into a maple tree for safe keeping. The next day, a bucket by the maple tree beneath the weapon gash parking place filled with clear liquid.
Tap It In, Open Up The Faucet To Maine Maple Tree Sap. That’s The Easy Part. Boiling It Down 40 To 1 Takes Tending.
An early morning cook, the chief’s daughter put it in a pot thinking it was just water. Saved her a trip down to the stream as she began her day. She might have gotten a little distracted with her other duties that day talking, maybe over tired and dragging a bit. Maybe the boiling part of the legend lasted a tad longer than what you and I wait. When standing by the microwave listening for the bell ding for the whip up that needed heating up.
What was poured in her Dad’s cup to prepare for a strong medicinal tea a delightful red maple leaf surprise. By accident, the sap collected overnight from the Maple tree and boiled down a bit over an open fire became a popular sweetener by accident discovery. I am not sure whether my Dad ever heard that tale, but he and my mom loved making Maine made maple syrup. In particular, I remember one late winter / early spring trip to the woodlot off the end of the White Road in Ludlow Maine. No wood roads plowed and a blue 1966 Sno-Jet snowmobile our only means of transportation that day.
This trip to the Maine woodlot to prepare for maple syrup sap season, we brought food to cook over a small fire.
Anything cooked outdoors and enjoy in the Maine woods is special. And besides the hot dog lunch, we had a couple tasks ahead. Marking the maple trees that would be used for maple sap collection. The tall ones back home along the driveway to our Maine farmstead all nailed with sap taps. The giant rock maple summer shade trees contributed to the clear sugary sap supply. But the bulk of the early spring tree sap came from the more plentiful concentration of maple trees up in the Ludlow Maine woodlot.
The Temperatures Go Up And Town. The Tug Of War Between Maine Seasons Of Winter And Spring Creates Maple Syrup Sap.
Before climbing back on the 13 horsepower snow sled for the easier return trip on an established sled trail, my Dad and I hammered in the hooks for the wood lot sap pails. Our next trip would be to hang the actual collecting buckets after installing each sap spout. Many tap spouts have built in grooves to hold the bucket for sap collection.
Both my parents growing up enjoyed the same yearly pastime of collecting maple syrup sap.
Maple sap gathering is educational to the whole family. Learning about why sap happens, how it is a life force of the trees that bud and begin again each spring. Then to boil down to create the all natural sugary syrup to use in the household cooking took practice.
My mom was a Benn from the road on the hill with the same name in Hodgdon Maine. She knew how to handle her candy thermometer and was no stranger to work on a Maine dairy farm. Mom, Mary Louise was next to the youngest of eleven children. Her farm family’s sugar shack operation was most impressive. The sugar shack shed with the big vat and separate open wall wood shed evaporator area worked like a charm. The big fire combustion box underneath the syrup evaporator used to boil down the collected maple syrup sap located hidden in the maple tree grove wooded section to the northwest of her family home.
My Dad dreamed of building a cabin up in the Ludlow woodlot big enough to invite in locals to enjoy a sugar shack home made pancake breakfast.
Dad thought young kids should be taught the yearly tradition in early spring, late winter of maple syrup production. An ideal way to fill your lungs with fresh air and shake off the cobwebs of stuck inside winter living. The sugar shack not to make money but more for the shared experience. Mainers are connected to the land they own and enjoy. Passing on the same take care of this natural resource attitude to the next generation.
It Costs More, But Maine Maple Syrup Is Pure And Natural. Not Loaded With Fructose, Additives, Preservatives.
He researched the gravity collection lines needed to replace the cumbersome bucket brigade to round up the gallons of maple tree sap too.
With a forty to one boil down ratio of what you collect and end up with to create the valuable amber gold Maine maple syrup, a tremendous amount of sap is required. And besides the large raw sap volume to meet the demand once folks who try Maine maple syrup become addicted, there is a science to making the stuff. More at this Maine maple syrup producing link.
Maine Ploes, Nothing Tastes Better On Them Than Home Made Butter, Maine Maple Syrup.
There are still tall stacks of rough sawn lumber from the same woodlot hidden away in a farm machine shed where I grew up in Maine. Stacked to dry and waiting, stuck in time. Milled for the
Sweet Is Not Just Maine Maple Syrup Enjoyed Growing Up In Maine. Local Farm Apples, Blueberries, Potatoes, Much More Harvested, Canned, Preserved. Seafood Like Lobsters And Clams From The Coast Of Maine A Local Delicacy Too!
purpose of the large cabin complete with generous seating and the attached open side wall evaporator room. There were lots of irons in the fire and time to tend them all ran out with Dad’s passing in his early eighties. He was a dreamer with an active mind that worked overtime. Mom was the governor, the voice of reason and moderation lever. She is what grounded him back down to Earth for the many plans that did come about so well and those that just never got off the drawing board.
Maine Maple Syrup weekend is March 21st and 22nd this year.
Healthwise, how does maple syrup do when toe to toe up against Maine honey or blueberries? Our bodies need natural vitamins, antioxidants, minerals and what about this trio to supply them? Here’s the low down on the real McCoy pure not watered down with fillers on the three Maine agricultural products.
First, our blog post spotlight star, Maine maple syrup takes the cake walk.
Open the back stage curtain and escort in our first natural treat contestant. The cost for the real deal big jug of Maine maple syrup is expensive. But if you tackle the collect and boil down on your own, maple syrup production becomes a second nature tradition. The time to bottle real maple syrup can become a fun Maine family annual event. Reaching for your own home grown maple syrup stored up in the cupboard or down in the root cellar just improves the taste. Nothing in life that comes easy satisfies quite the same.
Cabin Fever, The Local Animals In Maine Sense Somethings Up. Spring Is Coming.
The maple tree sap boiled for too short a time means watery, weak, not so thick syrup happens. The under cooked 200 to 230 degree sap not left on to boil long enough also more prone to spoil. If over boiled, the sap turn syrup becomes crystallized in storage and you miss your mark for the just right consistency.
It’s not just maple syrup resting and waiting in the bottle from the pantry top shelf to tip up and pour when summoned.
Over ice cream, added to snow to make kids smile. That’s part of it too. Maple syrup candy, my aunt Helen could make delicious treats with the stuff unlike any store bought variety. A dash in your coffee, added to your cooking provides something memorable and very special. Most of us would make a batch of maple syrup at a time. Like we have a couple big feeds of fiddle heads or new potatoes and fresh peas.
The bigger maple syrup producers have large evaporator pans working round the clock.
With new sap coming in one end, the syrup being drawn off the other in a continuous process. Maple syrup making connects you to the Maine land. It gets you outside and causes you to be aware of your surroundings. To reflect on another year has passed and what did you learn to apply to the next one.Watch a maple syrup making video to become more familiar with the process involved making it by a visit to a sugar shack.
Practice makes perfect and follow the lead of an old timer works best in how to make maple syrup from scratch. Get your paraphernalia to collect, to boil down from spout taps to thermometers and filters together. Watch and learn and apply no matter how large or small your syrup making operation becomes. The maple trees you tap should be ten to twelve inches in diameter. I always thought the old driveway maples at the farm need the sap more than I do. The stress of aging, fighting off tree diseases, bugs, woodpeckers and loss of vigor always makes me believe it best to leave them be. Like a battle weary veteran, they’ve done their service and earned their right to not be tapped.
Find the locations to see a real live maple syrup operation in full swing in Maine.
Above Freezing Days, Below Zero Nights. Ideal For Maine Maple Syrup Sap To Run.
Visit the open house during Maine Maple Syrup weekend and the producer closest to where you live in Vacationland. The most concentrated natural sugar comes from maple syrup tapped in the spring tree budding window of tree growth. Wait too long and your final product syrup will be bitter. Not a crowd pleaser although hoppy IPA local Maine beer micro brews appeal to many. Make it a blonde or pale ale for me please. No to stout barley pops varieties.
So the weekend every year in Maine to visit a maple syrup operation where it is open house is when again?
March 21st, 22nd is Maine maple syrup weekend. The worthwhile family outing is dubbed Maine Maple Sunday. More on the list of Maine maple syrup farm producers all mapped out and part of the sweet 2020 weekend. The 4th Sunday of March in Maine is Maine Maple Syrup Weekend!
Have you had locally made ploys that go so well with Maine maple syrup? The Maine French Acadian ploys made with buckwheat are not flipped on the griddle or flying pan. The batter “eyes” on top catch the melted butter and real Maine maple syrup when slid on a plate for all to enjoy. Maple syrup also used as a bath for corn fritters that we enjoyed growing up in Maine.
Having more than enough to just get by takes practicing frugal living in small town Maine.
Quality of life in rural Maine communities is home made without a lot of money involved. Growing up as kids, grade school teachers passed out the thrift bank saving envelopes to fill and collect. To develop the weekly habit of saving and watching the account slowly grow.
Like A Pink Peppermint Candy? For A Treat, A Dry Throat?
Saving for a rainy day helps prepare for what lies ahead is the simple Maine way approach to life.
It creates piece of mind because you are not broke or up against it. If someone in your small Maine town does find themselves up the proverbial creek without the needed paddle to find their way out, a helping hand shows up. Lots of them come out of the local woodwork. Fund raising suppers and auctions held and community volunteers take turns showing up to help the family in need. Plowing out the winter snow from the driveway. Tonight, tomorrow, the day after that meals assigned and delivered. Making sure if you needed anything, it was supplied until you could get back on your feet what the small town Maine residents do. And then you perform the same johnny on the spot help ’em out when healthy. For comforting others between a rock and a hard place when the road of life takes a major dip.
My secretary told me a story recently about her grandfather Ralph McPherson.
He and her grandmother, her mom and sister ran a little egg business later in life. There must have been 30+ hens. Making door to door stops for special customers in town. Carting in the fresh farm eggs from Linneus to deliver product just like the milk man. The money collected tucked away so it would not be lost or to tempt someone to make it their own. Five finger discount is frowned upon and kids taught to work hard for what they have and take care of it. Plus to extend and provide the same courtesy for what belongs to others in return.
The McPherson lived next door to Helen Folsom who disliked the unlucky number thirteen. She would not stay if invited to eat and the head count was thirteen on the dot. Had to go. Nicest lady but nothing doing with anything associated with thirteen. Not sure how she felt about black cats, ladders and broken mirrors. Lots of tall hotels don’t show the thirteenth floor as what it is if you counted the stories window by window from the outside. Earl Anderson from Cary, living out on the dead end Brewer Road another likeable sort and a field hand. Flap of his ball cap flipped up, everything turned to the side. Dad’s hired hand Clay Spellman was a fixture growing up and always singing Jimmy Crack Corn song, swigging on Coke soda even thought the doctor told him being diabetic make that a no no. Years ago, in Maine every town had lots of small family farms. Now bigger is the trend or stay very small and watch your expenses to have everything under control.
Back to the McPhersons. The dollar bills and change exchanged for the farm to table fresh local egg run hidden in a tin can with a tight lid.
The re-purposed container originally held pink peppermints. Anyone from a border town in Maine knows the kind of sweet familiar candy I am referring to because some “over home” family member enjoyed and shared them freely. My Dad’s mom was 100 percent pure Canadian. The Canadian barley candy in amber and red. To me looked like pieces of stained glass showing up under the tree at Christmas in my country home. Could not buy them on this side of the border. There are lots of perks being a border town in Maine with a Canadian province. Mom and Dad would
Working Hand In Hand To Make A Living From The Maine Farm Dirt.
My brother Brian passed along a weekly summer job where I learned how to be dependable and to manage money.
I mowed lawns peddling my bike into town to make spending money from a Ralph Black, the book keeper for Fogg’s hardware and sporting goods store. Ralph and his wife Marjorie the librarian always had a candy dish filled with the Canadian pink peppermints.
Ralph also enjoyed dipping into a bank of sea dulse like it was a major league hurler with a punch of snuff. But that is a Maine blog post for another day. The Blacks built an immaculate two bedroom cape style home from scratch. The unfinished second floor stayed that way because no stork delivered any swaddled bundles of joy in pink or blue. Both Canadians that became American citizens.
The tin container with egg cash stashed inside was deposited.
Hidden some times in the freezer. Other occasions, out in the porch in an envelope up in the chest. If anyone in the family needed a little spending money, to pay a bill, the cash was available for a withdrawal on a moment’s notice. No drive through or slips to make out to access the hard earned and carefully managed rainy day funds.
Up under the Ford pick up seat, in between the fabric and springs, was another favorite hiding place.
No one aware the peppermint tin was hiding there but a select few. Ralph knew it, but not many others did not. My secretary told me when her dad was sick and not doing well, he whispered to her to come closer. To share that if anything happens to me, don’t forget.
To remember not forget.
To look up under the seat of the egg delivery truck seat to retrieve the peppermint tin can funds.
But keep it our little secret in the meantime is how he left it with his trusted family member.
Her story made me think of how people who did not have a lot of money saved and stretched what they did have.
Every Maine small town family member was taught as a young grasshopper to conserve, to save, to live below their means. Left over money to squirrel away hide in the home or better yet in a bank or credit union. We used the “corn money” from vegetable sales growing up to run the house hold expenses. When all the dollars were planted in the ground like hundred dollar bills seeded around the Maine farm acreage. You have no choice but to practice frugal living in Maine when money is low or non-existent.
Woodlots on family farms in Maine are a savings bank for heating your home and also to tap as a cookie jar resource when times were lean.
Your Heating Source For Next Winter. The One After That. Maine Woods. Precious For The Future And Personal Survival Makes You Respect It.
Many a farmer in Maine relied on the bounty of the wooded sections of their spread to carry them through especially tight, difficult farm years.
Money generated a variety of ways in the small town Maine households. Second and third jobs to fund someone going to college. To pay for the needed materials to expand the house size as the family grew and more bedrooms were needed.
Besides the extra side jobs and easy does it on household spending, money trickled into the household in other ways. By removing the need for it with big gardens. Canning food to put down into the root cellar or storage pantry to draw from over the approaching Maine winter months. Pearl one, knit two mittens, scarves, sweaters from Canadian wool yarn from the farmer’s store, Steadman’s, etc across the board or Carryall Store in my home town. Exchanging hand me downs of perfectly good clothing that’s only flaw was it no longer fit the growing child.
Money earned by kids picking potatoes in the fall generated twenty five up to sixty cents a barrel return for the harvest field labor.
Sometimes There Is Rust But The Car Or Truck In The Yard Still A Vital Park Of Maine Farm Operations.
Four baskets of spuds poured into a potato barrel meant it was time to slide on a ticket with your number for the tally at the farm that night.
The farm house where newspapers were spread out over the kitchen table after the nightly meal served and the dishes washed to return to the cupboard until reached for the next session. Fine field dust, bits of potato tops too from old metal two gallon empty motor oil cans. It all made its way into the ticket collectors my mom or I dumped on kitchen table. The papers put down to contain the field debris as it poured out during the daily ticket count tabulation.
The potato picking funds the four boys, other on the potato crew earned yearly helped the frugal Maine household a lot.
By freeing up Mom and Dad buying the winter coat and fall school clothing. Each family members shopped for their own duds at J.C. Penney’s or Chain Apparel, Army Navy or other local clothes providers.
Frugal Living In Maine Started With Lessons Learned On The Maine Farm.
We kids were way way more thrifty and frugal when it was our money used to buy the school and winter outfits.
We learned the value of a dollar and if we were careful spending them, more items could be purchased. Cheap and frugal living in small town Maine are not the same thing. Frugal is being a smart business personal with your resources. Cheap is misery, Scrooge like.
Bartering for the goods or services when the money just was not available to perform them.
Rural Maine is all about exchanging the blood, sweat and tears to survive and prosper. Our fun and recreation did not always have a price tag attached either. The trip to Cary, Nickerson, Drews Lake after farm summer haying to wash up and cool off was a much look forward to treat. The Popsicle or cold drink enjoyed during farming chore coffee breaks tasted above and beyond because it was earned and deserved. The lunches packed for the trips to the potato fields or rock picking, haying or whatever chore tasted much better. Hunger always improves the taste right?
The old barn, shed or home destined to be torn down was recycled board by board.
To stack and reuse in a smaller version or stored away for another day. A board at a time retrieved to use in keeping the other still standing buildings alive. Resourceful, resilient and developing grit with determination is what living frugally developed. We were taught to make a game out of not just surviving but creating our own joy and happiness. It was not store bought and temporary but part of the wide and varied life skill set passed on from earlier generations. Conservation awareness to respect resources and respect for personal property, the family home were valuable lessons for life.
Where people stock piled what they scrimped and saved from many small sales.
The 50 50 raffle winnings from the fish and game dollar a ticket drawing proceeds tucked away inside the home. The won rifle from the sporting fish and game club. The donated hand made quilt with your name in your writing on the winning ticket drawn.
Simple Living, Stretching Dollars And Conserving To Make Ends Meet.
If you did not need the loot, it was sold to someone that did. Or donated to be an auction item for a fund raiser to benefit others struggling. Today your diamond tennis bracelet when not round a wrist to impress and in use gets wrapped up like a piece of fresh cod or haddock or rainbow brook trout fish dinner. Sealed in inner plastic then tinfoil outer layer to tucked away and hide in the back bottom corner of the freezer. Valuables in Maine are not rubies, emeralds, diamonds or sapphires. It’s 8 cords of wood all stacked, seasoned and in place ready for old man winter. It’s the next year’s wood fuel laying tree length behind your house and slowly cut up to fit your stove or furnace to stay ahead and be prepared.
Our Maine farmhouse had a heavy brown safe.
Three numbers dialed in and then you found mostly land deeds, a musty leather pouch from World War Two with metals, the last will and testament. The bottom of the barrel seconds and cull potatoes shoveled up in the bins. Hauled to the starch factory for little funds but mad money. My Dad used the starch checks to learn to fly a plane and get to solo for a license to pilot a silver bird. The real treasure in the rural Maine home though, the black and white images of family members. The often pulled out bound albums viewed often and displayed in the Maine household. On walls, night stands and dresser bureaus. The nest eggs and mad money saved in mattresses did happen. Hope there is never a fire that takes the house and savings. When a house is torn down or remodeled, you do find the valuables. Old currency like a twenty dollar gold piece or civil war, etc newspaper clippings. Writing under the wallpaper appears when removed many years or decades later that tell a tale about who lived here. Providing a glimpse into their life in Maine.
Today, valuables are hidden in safe deposit boxes.
We’ve all seen the espionage movies where lots of passports, a gun or two, stacks of large denomination multi national currency bills and passports of every color. All rifled through hurriedly by the film star on the tear. With no daylight to burn or waste. As they have to hop to it. Little time and important places to be to save the World, again. Maine is the the lowest crime state and rural areas don’t have lots of precious gems, furs or valuable artwork to protect. You want to hang onto your chain saw uptah camp, the Honda generator, snow sled and your boat motor Chummy.
The biggest target in any area part of a small rural Maine home would be the bathroom medicine cabinet.
Pain killers when you are addicted make them like a bee hive to a Maine bear with a bad sweet tooth. Sad to say, in small towns, people know who just had a hip replacement or other surgery where a med prescription followed the patient home to convalesce. Drug addiction and self medication for problems in life that depress are World wide.
Being industrious by nature helps living on less but feeling fulfilled and like you have more in rural Maine.
Outdoor nature all around us that is pure and unspoiled is a big part of the no or low cost fun. The fresh air and clean water of Maine and vast open space is a solid cure for what ails you. Boredom happens less and retirement is short lived for those without new hobbies to fill their day.
The Fun Outdoors, No Cost In Maine.
Roger Chapman, a local retiree says like many the first couple weeks of done work is fun but then this is what happens. You wake up, wander out to the garage and putter, tidy up the place. Then come in, turn on the television and watch for a little while. But not for long, snapping it off because something is missing. Let me shuttle the car dealership customers back and forth while vehicles are repaired and they are without their iron horse. Or head down country to pick up and deliver cars and trucks swapped with other dealership in exchanges. In many lots of folks who retire find out it is not paradise and return to work. Happy again because there is someone who needs them to get up in the morning to head to work and help them out.
Many retirees seek employment again to feel like they did something worthwhile today.
Bagging groceries, volunteering, something is needed to fill those forty or more hours of the week reserved for your job when retirement rolls around in Maine. You can only work on so many household projects and not everyone golfs, hunts, fishes full time when they get the gold watch and Maine job retirement party.
Restless, eager to pitch in and be busy because you have worth ethic in your Maine veins.
Many pursue a small business that does not tie them down. Like rotor tilling gardens, plowing snow, clearing porch roofs, landscaping, scraping and painting. Hanging out the handyman shingle and stating no job is too small.
The cost of living in small town Maine is low and the skill set is high. Self sufficient makes it DIY. If it is to be it is up to me. Is it like that where you live now? Thank you for following our Me In Maine blog post. Another edition in the can and that’s a wrap until the inspiration causes another one. Maine, the way life should be.
