Easter in Maine, growing up our family attended church services, received something for spring dress clothes along with the Sunday noon ham, green bean casserole, the squash, potato, and ambrosia fruit salad.
Gelatin salads of all type were popular but I never took a shining to the suspended carrots in the jiggly Easter dinner selection. Yeast rolls of the cinnamon variety and breads of all types. Relishes, asparagus, broccoli, turnip, carrots, corn, peas and those pearled onions.
Rafting Down Whitewater In Maine. How Many Times On Which River In Maine? Heavy Spring Rains, Snow Load Run Offs Create The Watery Fast Ride Through The Woods.
Fresh baked pies made from the fruits picked and frozen and packed away in the large chest freezer last summer and fall located and thawed.
Carefully placed just so in the homemade crust pie shells. With an artistic covering folded and tucked around the pie plates edges. Then with neat chevron patterned air holes added just so to decorate the top covering before the sliding the dessert creation into the oven to cook to perfection.
Puddings, squares and topped with whipped cream or ice cream completed the formal dining room feast for our Maine family. Lots of chairs, more than one table and extended family members pulling up close to what was on the Easter dinner menu. Food was very much part of the Easter memories.
Nowadays, going out to eat at local restaurant seems to be popular. Instead of the time spent in the kitchen creating the Easter holiday spread.
Tulips In Quebec City Are Colorful! Lots Of Open Parks To Sit And Reflect. Maine Is Next Door, Borders The Province Of Quebec.
What is served up earns a tip from someone not home with their feet up. Missing out on the Easter holiday time to relax munching on the treats left overnight. The ones hidden cleverly by the long eared, whiskered one with strong back legs carrying a very large basket.
Jelly beans, chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks, a new book. A gift of Sunday best clothing outfit just for the occasion.
Potted tulips, an Easter lily or daffodil. Easter basket green straw lined the festive woven containers. All that was left behind by the generous bunny who took a page out of the Santa book spoke of spring that was starting up all around us in rural Maine.
Before the sea of sameness and broadcast automation recordings from far away tickling our ears. The local radio stations were live and local. Servicing the air waves of small local towns lucky enough to have one by giving clues on where the crowds of kids with baskets or sacks should head to find hidden tin foil wrapped chocolate eggs, ones that looked like a robin would lay and speckled too.
Spring Means Maine Water Water Water Of All Types Everywhere. That’s One Big Attraction And Answer To What’s To Do In Maine!
Candied carrots. Jelly filled or foam pumped up chicks and the traditional chocolate bunnies you felt guilty about ruining by removing their heads and ears by chomping down with your quick guillotine use of your front teeth.
Those town wide Easter egg hunts were made easier with clues broadcast that needed group deciphering. As the station crew stayed a few steps ahead planting the loot of candy, prizes, brightly colored treats that kept a dentist in business. It was trick or treating without the steps and the doorbell and done in broad daylight not darkness of night. Like a posse in search of sugar free for the taking if you stepped lively.
At Easter, the Saturday before the holiday, I remember my dad taking the four kids on back a farm truck loaded with empty cedar stave potato barrels. To Cary Mill’s and the Holmes house to purchase and transport live bunnies.
The frisky rabbits placed in the snug rows of barrels for safe transport on the under two mile trip back to the Maine farm.
We always took a short cut across the farm owned by brothers Uncle Carl and Donald Hagan over a private field road that easily cut traveling time in half. I remember the bunnies being released on our large rolling lawn and them hopping in circles. Soft, cute, quiet and with twitching noses and whiskers. Not making a noise but creating a trail of perfect round er… “by products”.
Come To Maine, See A Moose, Pat The Bunny, Meet The People, See The Sights.
Then they were gone. Not placed on the dining room table. We never ate rabbit. Although World wide it is a popular dish to feast on when the meal time bell rings loudly. I’m not sure if they hopped to it to go AWOL or MIA by simply high tail it quick like a bunny.
Heading for the woods and back to freedom as they knew it. Or maybe at night a sly fox would make them a rabbit dinner when the sly one felt like easy pickings. Just did not feel like the same ole same ole chicken dinner or whatever the UPS truck hit on the way over from the package delivery storage warehouse that day.
Or maybe the Easter rabbits hopped back to the Holmes house where we had purchased them for resale. Like homing pigeons with built in GPS following their noses.
All I know is they disappeared and it was not the family German Shepherd or St Bernard responsible for the bunny’s demise.
High water levels from melting snow turned thoughts from hockey ice skating and down hill skiing or sliding to canoe races happen at Easter time in Maine. The local dairy bar pens and the ice cream window is sliding up to ask for your order. “Talk to me” the teenager inside and stooped over asks with pencil and small pad of paper. What will the ice cream treat you should not be ordering a large serving of be today? What looks good to you?
Walking To Church On Easter. The Black Horse Horse Buggies, The Walkers And Amish Bikers Hard To See At Dusk At Night In Maine.
Little league tryouts and who’s selected for which team. The race to get the right size uniforms washed and ironed and delivered or new ones ordered with fresh numbers and team logo. And the baseball fields groomed and in shape after the ravages of winter reshaped them. The soap box derby race in Houlton is the state race and June 15th this year and not far away as we burn through the days on the April calendar. The White House Easter egg roll has a Maine connection too.
Kids digging out bikes, wearing rubber rain boots searching for irrestiable mud puddles.
Everyone out for walks and the April showers helping wash off the street sanding material. Whatever the snow plow placed on lawns riding on melting snow banks desperately need to be shoveled and raked. So fresh green live grass can pop up in unison. Just like the bulbed flowers around the foundation and in rocked gardens, the tree tips too have started to do when it is Easter in Maine. Happy Easter!
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.
It’s pure and natural and four season beautiful. But somethings are the same no matter where you hang your hat. Minding my own business and the phone in Maine rings. We get those interruptions too. Ever get a call where someone promises you this phone interview should not take long? They act like you are getting an important call you expected. Just a few simple questions and you are free to go. The whoever think tank public opinion pollster they work for on the other end on the signal is never sufficiently identified.
Because both sides of the hurried conversation just want to get it over with quickly.
You because you had other task plans that were interrupted by taking the phone call. The voice from the other end because maybe they get compensated the higher the number per completed interview. And extra points heaped on like the ice cream cherry on top. If they can sway and skew the results in the direction of whoever is funding this rate the following one to five or chose from the following two sides of the coin positions on some trending hot topic.
Working Together, Making Maine Great. It Takes Accurate Information About What’s It Like In Maine To Attract People To Move, Relocate Here.
You know the drill when the telephone is ringing and gotcha, you picked up.
Now what? When neither question options to select from really completely nails it on how do you really feel on this, this and one more question choice. You wonder where are they going with this line of questions? Who wants to know and how are they going to use the poll results?
The interview when it goes on too long can become a had enough situation.
Just get through the questions and you’re not even sure what they are asking after the slur of words as patience wears thin. How much longer? My life is on hold and I’m wasting daylight. That’s the way anyone living or growing up on a Maine farm reacts to costly delays when chores are waiting. Because the simple couple of questions in the poll is not the case. Too many parts to the all important poll questions that just keep coming your way. Had an interviewer doing the poll say “now we move into the part of the survey where we ask you blah blah…” ?
I thought we WERE close to the end and it was going to be like you tell the kids “quick like a bunny”. Whew, I’m off the hook soon. Trying to help the telemarketer pollster. But realizing with a bad taste developing in my mouth. That there is a pattern to the what is being asked and how it is being phrased in the progression of need your opinion inquiries.
The questions try to build a case for some kind of public opinion poll result position for whoever funded this exercise.
You are the witness being groomed for a case by your yea or nay response. Or could be cast away and deemed as not so fun, not so useful on the hunt to find those who are. I guess if 80 to 90 percent of respondents feel a certain way, that influences where you throw your support?
Small Maine Towns Where People Are Closely Knit, Often Times Related.
Mainers are pretty practical independent thinkers. When the end is near and you can smell freedom to get on with your life the answer box checker individual asks would you mind if a reporter calls you? Somehow your answers make you a good candidate for a talking head holding a mic with the bright light to saddle up beside you. For collecting a staged, distilled thought provoking little video clip and a catchy sound bite. Because you and I seem to trust the man on the street a little more than the wisdom of the one in the elected office.
Nothing can rub a true Mainer harder the wrong way either than some of the blog posts or media interviews that try to size up the state based on a very narrow viewpoint.
One that does not represent how those who live here really feel about the Maine experience. What is it like living in Maine. The power of the pen authority you don’t know from Adan applies their own template of good, bad, ugly Maine rating as they try to size up the biggest New England state. From what they find important that it is assumed every other reader agrees with who lives here. Or assuming the reaction they would have by this tour guide trying to save everyone a little heart ache.
But the images used in the post that they not take. Because never been here or it was a whirlwind trip for a few hours, parts of a day or weekend that does not help you size up the what do you think about Maine. The copy is a quick cut and dry that sounds a lot like the shortcomings in other rural state locations they also have a strong opinion on and are not timid about sharing it.
The size it up based on not very much real information from local experiences and lacking interviews with people from Maine that could share valuable insight. Instead, judging the area from a few comment trails in a forum. Filling in with what they don’t know by broad brushing the state of Maine is an overly critical spot light like they were a life long resident.
And they miss the mark about summing up what Maine is like horribly.
But those hunt and pecked electrons hit and run damaging pieces sure do make the rounds on blog posts circuit that continue to come up in search results as gospel.
Outdoor Jaunts On Foot, In A Wagon Or Sleigh Depending On The Season. Mainers Are Outdoors All Four Seasons Touring The Gorgeous Unspoiled Countryside.
Beat the drum louder, longer and remind the reader in search of where to move, where to vacation, anything Maine to make sure your authority is in the Pine Tree state and actually lives here. So they know what they are talking about from first hand grass roots experience. not repeating a myth and acting like an authority when they don’t have much boots on the ground. The landscape changes and gets reinvented so historical perspective helps the explanations you read about when someone is looking for the lay of the land first hand information to base their opinion on Maine.
What’s it like living in Maine and can we hear from those in the Vacationland region in the answers?
What is really important, what matters most for everyone does not come up with the same pat answers. Responses to FAQ about Maine. That shows someone has filled you with a lot of bull or you just need more accurate information to base your decision to move to Maine, to vacation here. Come see for yourself, do your own thinking, draw your own conclusions on Maine.
Points to remember about living here in Maine….
It’s more than quaint sea salt air and rock bound coastal harbor towns with a collection of lighthouses. Maine offers more than a moose sighting and a lobster roll and that concludes the check list of what you come for and then quickly leave. Back over the big arched green iron bridge on the southern end connecting it to the rest of New England and points unknown. Maine is rolling farms, virgin wood forests, wildlife of all types. It is hardworking families, mom and pop small businesses, Maine is small town grateful people. Maine is unspoiled and not over commercialized, the fourth lowest crime state. You don’t experience traffic or waiting around in Maine living. It is low cost real estate, uncomplicated simple living and more hands on DIY. Neighbors helping each other.
Keep your card in your wallet and save the yearly membership dues for roadside assistance. You won’t need triple A to jump start your dead car battery. Just put up the hood and watch five people put on the four way flashers and join forces to give you a hand. To stay with you until a solution to the problem is figured out like you have known them for years. You can trust the down to Earth Mainer who is upbeat and positive and who shy away from whining, complaint or snarky. Because you are wasting daylight, you are not squeezing out of life what is most important that you kid’s pick up and apply to their outlook to pass on to their young ones. What’s it like living in Maine?
Help others and add your talents to make things better than they were.
Meet Your Neighbor In Maine. Shy, Quiet, Usually Four Legged.
Mainers contribute, make themselves useful and don’t feel entitled, are anything but lazy. You will be rescued if ever stranded on the highways of Maine. You too will help others broke down to figure out solutions so they don’t stay that way. Small Maine towns are like that.
We don’t rely so heavily on money to fuel the experience. Mainers are more into using their imaginations, snow shoeing across the white blanketed farm field or through a woods trail. We have it all from clean air, fresh water, a sky loaded with stars overhead and no light pollution.
You will like all pure natural Maine for what she does offer and the even longer list of what you don’t enjoy where you live now in an urban setting. The best of both worlds is to live in small town Maine but plan a trip to a population center to sample and return to simple low cost living for the bulk of your day to day lifestyle pursuits.
The Internet lets folks roam freely and telecommute remotely to online jobs that once kept them limited and tethered to an expensive city locations.
Whether starting a family, retiring after a long career, opening up a business enterprise or just on vacation, you could not do better than Maine. The Canadian provincial connection just adds to the sizzle for a truly International bonus “two nation vacation”.
What’s it like living in Maine?
When you read up on Maine, go deeper than the only been to Portland ME or other coastal town contributors. Or avoid those who have never set foot in Maine nor have any personal experiences to draw from to make it an accurate representation of this great state with all the space, where you can entertain yourself so completely without using a credit card for the artificial retail therapy temporary fix. Here are some community videos of Maine to add to the homework assignment as you glean and surf the net.
Maine is not wall to wall people on top of each other fighting to get you out of their face and space.
Has the nearest city to where you live now outside of the state of Maine started the sprawl in your direction? Is your small town changing in how it used to be back when you enjoyed the community? Maybe it is time to consider where and when you are going to have to face the facts. To relocate to Maine, the way life should be. How much information on Maine do you have and where do you get it? This blog on what’s it like living in Maine tries to shed some light on the topic from a local that grew up here and loves the state!
To someone with no Maine winter snow experience, there are mixed emotions.
The reaction to the snow flakes in the weather forecast hits folks in many different ways. If you are not prepared for winter like most things in life, you get dragged into the experience. Rather than excited about a shift to a new Maine season that changes the look and feel of everything in Maine when the white wash happens.
Maine Winters, Life Does Not Stop But Changes It Up. Still Outside But Dressed And Prepared For It.
Jack Frost adds a new dimension to the place called Maine in winter.
Variation on a Vacationland theme seasoned with snow makes it more black and white simple. It keeps it interesting, new and different. The what we do for fun changes up big time as the temperature numbers shrink. Water skis swapped for cross country and down hill boards. The wardrobe gets layers added and legs, sleeves combined in what we wear to avoid hibernation. To enjoy the long wait until spring has sprung.
Cabin fever is a real ailment that must be avoided. The right outdoor equipment, the correct clothing is the sure fire fix for “stuck inside” boredom. Books and board games, knitting and cross wood puzzles can only help so much in a Maine winter.
Maine winters offer solitude, peacefulness, crisp air, blue skies with white powder and crystal sparkle enhancement.
The hunker down secure feeling inside your home as the winter winds howl around the exterior means you prepared for the season now playing. As you retreat inside with warm food prepared slowly from a quick trip down the stairs to the root cellar. Where the fruits of your canning and preserve efforts… the bounty of your garden, gleaning the Maine farm fields awaits.
For when chores in the farm barn are done and the animals are grained, hayed, watered for the night. You feel contentment, caught up and ready for earned relaxation. The focus shifts to the positive ions radiating from a hot stove or fireplace blaze as the outside landscape gets a thicker, continuous blanket layer of pure white everywhere.
Maine Winter Weather… It Creates White Dustings, Crystals To Sparkle The Maine Countryside.
Snow hides the scars of the landscape in a forestry wood cutting operation. Makes your backyard items disappear.
It helps you forget you did not get the fallen leaves of orange, red, yellow and brown raked or mulched up in the lawn surrounding your Maine home. Erased from view. Winter gives you a feeling of satisfaction when your wood supply is bigger than you will ever need. And the left over seasoned wood cut to fit your stove or furnace natural fuel of a renewable resource will be spill over and be welcome to use the next heating season.
When you don’t live in Maine, have not made a snow man of wet sticky winter white stuff.
If you have never driven a snow sled on a groomed trail or swish swished down a white mountain top with the chair lift rides back to the summit for do it again. Ice fishing in some pretty elaborate lake shanties is one way to spend a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Just check the depth of the sheet of ice as the water turns from liquid to solid. As you clear a patch to make a perfect place for a spirited pond hockey game or to ice skate in a winter landscape. Where everything that was full of color and lush and green is suddenly dominated by mostly white. But touched up here and there with some green, brown, gray and the skies of blue. You notice the change in the color scheme most hoofing it through a tree plantation on snow shoes alone. When the conversation you have are inside and pondered at a peaceful pace.
Maine Highways, Streets Are Kept Snow Free. We Know How To Handle Winter.
It is easy to feel the worst and think how dangerous old man winter weather would be to driving, to staying warm and on and on.
If you let those fears snow ball. Mainers don’t live in terror of winter, they embrace it. Sure we are careful to scrape and salt the walkways because no one wants a broken hip repaired with a big pin and a long recovery with a metal walker. To swipe a patch to see out of on all the windows of what we drive. We leave a little earlier on trips and errands around town, to get the kids to school if they are not seated in the long yellow bus. We watch the current weather forecast out of one corner of an eye to stay prepared from what is predicted to happen tonight, tomorrow and beyond.
Where I live, a national weather service reporting facility in Caribou gives me very clear expectations about how things will look in the hours and days ahead. Being on the Canadian border too allows tapping into other broadcast signals of another valuable source of weather information. And there’s always the farmer’s almanac predictions along with the conversations you hear in small Maine towns that point out how high or low the busy bees put their nest this year. Or other signs in Mother Nature’s world about what this or that means that occurs in the outdoors around us for what to expect weather clues.
Yesterday I felt the rush of a little kid’s reaction to the new white fluffy snow.
Snow Makes The Apples Left Hanging That Did Not Drop Look Even More Succulent. Maine In Winter Is Beautiful Not Stark, Not Bland. If You Look Harder, Closer.
As I ventured down around East Grand Lake, the northern tip of Washington County where it meets Maine’s Washington and Penobscot, there was lots of new stark, bleached white snow dusting. Tall fir and pine trees loaded and bending, drooping with white snow dropped from the skies overnight was impressive. Clean, pure, natural. Maine.
After every snow storm, especially when it is brand new, where no sign of man but lots of wildlife tracks are the only interruption to the white total overhaul of the winter landscape.
Those times of feeling the winter wonderment flood back into the brain to remind all Mainers of the excitement to what it feels like to get outdoors happens. A kid again. Rigged up with ski pants, a winter coat, mittens your grandmother knit along with the scarf wrapped around your neck. You slipped on your boots and exiting the home in search of friends, shovels, sleds, skates. To dig the tunnels, build the forts. Slide like running and surfing on a stretch of ice lubricated even more by the new snow that only polishes it even more slippery slick.
Or reaching up to gently pull away a long shard of ice hanging off a dripping roof eave. Thick on the top and pencil tip sharp and pointed on the bottom. The sounds of winter are the whisk whisk friction sound of a child walking all bundled up in their snow suit. The site of seeing them sampling an ice shard stuck to their wood mittens or coat cuff as they dream, gaze and everything stand sill in deep thought.
Things To Do For Fun In Maine During The Winter. Strap On A Piece Of Bear Paws.
And at the end of the day come back to the warmth of a home kitchen with pink cheeks, a relaxed feeling to remove the layers that protected you outside. To sample something hot out of the oven or cooling on the rack just bake homemade using an old family tested tradition recipe.
Closer to the magic of Christmas, the sugar cookies with colored icing and sprinkles in the shape of bells, trees or stars. Helping your Mom roll, cut the dough and decorate was more fun when the restlessness of being inside was released with the exercise outdoors. After you come in from where you can see your breath, your wet mittens steaming. Where the fresh air tastes like winter green or spearmint fresh, cool, tasty.
Mainers Are Trained How To Tame The Snow Of A Maine Winter. We Put Snow In It’s Place And Life Goes On Without Missing A Beat Or Shedding A Tear Of Lament. Thank You Maine DOT Highway Crews For What You Do To Clear, Salt, Patrol Our Extensive Network Of Roads.
Wet outerwear when you do retreat inside hung up on a wooden rack to dry in front of a wood heater. To have it ready for the next trip outside to hear the crunch crunch crunch of snow under your winter boots with the felt liner inserts.
Dry and warm trumps wet, cold and heavy any day of the week in any Maine weather. Interior Maine winters are dry humidity and not damp unless you are along the coast. It’s like Arizona vs Florida for humidity and dryness. And the Eskimos are right about 50 kinds of snow. And what happens to snow when it is left to harden or crystalize.
A Maine winter is hot chocolate, bonfire outside, long underwear. It’s holiday lights of all colors. It’s angles on tree tops, larger ones made by kids on their backs staring up. Using their legs and arms like ping ball machine levers to leave shapes in the powdery snow. Maine winters are crust layers over loose snow made from melting action like a meringue sealer.
Winter is the smell of pine, fir, holly and mistletoe. Of fudge, pies, holiday turkey, whipped potatoes, green bean casseroles. The smell of soups and chowders. Of Christmas movie reruns of Rudolph or old black and white traditional flicks. The sounds of Christmas carols. Reminders of lost loved ones spiked by the memories of winter growing up in Maine. Winter means egg nog, cuddling, pulling the covers up and over your ears. Winter can be dogs and cats in sweaters walking their owners. Or is it the other way around in Maine?
Winter in Maine is snow on trees that release with a puff of dust. It is a time of candy canes, making New Year’s promises, to prepare for spring’s re-birth. It’s Christmas, Santa, a new born baby in a manger. Winter is no mosquitoes, heated car seats, turtle neck sweaters. It’s school snow days. It’s messed up hair days and scratchy heads under wool hats.
Maine Is Snow Sled, Snowmobile Heaven. Ride The Trails That Connect The Small Towns Easily On Your Ski Doo, Polaris, Yamaha, Arctic Cat Or Older Machine. Maybe A Snow Jet, Skiroule, Moto-Ski Or Maybe A Rupp, Kawasaki, Ski Whiz Or John Deer.
Maine winter means grilled cheese or tuna or chicken sandwiches and steaming hot tomato soup in a bowl or a mug. It’s thermoses of piping hot coffee served up outside during a work break. It’s a hot tub to soak your bones, the same ones warmed up another way next to the wood cook stove.
Winter is big bowls of hot spicy chili or cold micro brew at a Maine ski lodge. It’s playing cribbage at a snow sledding cabin just off the trails. Where your cell phone signal is sketchy. But you enjoy the break, the real freedom from mobile devices. Winter is taking a card of a giving tree and then setting off to find a toy or something warm for clothing for the age on the card of the child you do not know.
Life does not stop for winter.
But you change inside to adapt to the weather change. Winter keeps it new and different just like the habits of spring, summer, fall in Maine offer different experiences of the same places. Weather changes everything in a good way to keep boredom from happening of the same ole same ole meh. There are lots of things to do for fun in Maine during the winter.
Think of the bird’s searching for food and hang up the suet, the feeds with seeds. Take your dog with you on walks. Turn out those barn dwelling cows and horses, pigs, boats and sheep. Watch them roll in the new snow. See and hear the happy kids getting exercise and pushed off the couch to make snow angles. To make perfecting hand crafted ammo for a snow ball fight.
Winter in Maine is a time of reflection, a period when your senses sharpen and everything is real.
Happy To Be Alive. To Survive The Long Slide Down A Very Steep Hill. Sliding, Playing Outside And Dressed Warm In Layers For Maine Winter Fun.
Nothing is neglected inside or outside as you keep up with the new snow storms and what they leave around our homes, that needs plowing in our roadways and streets. Understanding winter is hard for someone that only reads about it.
But visit a Maine lighthouse in winter and you will see what the temperatures can do to sharpen the experience. Or looking out over the mountainside when you are pole planted and developing a thousand yard stare. That kind of detachment and letting go is the most incredible feeling of serenity that I know when all this beauty of unspoiled Maine is displayed around us. Images of winter solitude.
Look up at the stars during winter in a Maine sky. It’s powerful stuff when no light pollution or smog happens to diminish that wonderment. See how new snow changes everything in your familiar surroundings that magically change your outlook when you live in Maine. Winter means we still go to school, have to go to work. But you will not find a more beautiful place than Maine in winter to live, work and play.
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.
Drive up US RT 1 in Aroostook County and glance to the east for something very large, red and white.
International Super Shortwave Radio Station WBCQ Goes Live Sometime This Fall With A New Curtain Broadcast Tower In Fall Of 2018!
Over toward the province of New Brunswick Canada in the distance. Take a peek out over the right hand side of the highway to see the new shortwave radio antenna dominating the landscape. With a large red and white center tube on the bottom, the wide tall antenna array in the same two color scheme on the top is hard to miss. It could be mistaken for the super structure used to attach to a modern drive in movie theatre outdoor silver screen.
WBCQ”s New Super Sized International Radio Station Broadcast Complex In Monticello ME, Aroostook County.
The International super station under construction in Monticello Maine on the Britton or East Road by WBCQ will wire the huge antennae system when completed to relay the power of a new 500 kilowatt short wave radio transmitter.
The unique curtain radio broadcast tower came over from Switzerland. The count down to throwing the switch to go on air live is expected in the fall of 2018.
The signal transmission broadcast funded by private investors aims to promote free speech. By adjusting the powerful shortwave radio signal beamed from the super station antenna, the press release I read claimed the ability to reach any country in the World when the station is operational.
Getting Ready To Go Live, WBCQ Short Wave International Super Radio Station In Aroostook County Maine Is Under Construction!
The powerful signal, the programming all interest this Maine blogger. The ability to transmit thousands of miles from the small Northern Maine town of Monticello is followed with keen interest. Had early involvement with radio broadcasting before the switch to real estate listing twisting selling. Read more about the historic WLW AM radio station that was pumping out 50 kilowatts back in 1932. WLW was more than a local radio station, broadcast at 700 on the AM dial. Check out that antenna design and size with this WLW radio broadcast tower photo collection.
The Cincinnati Ohio broadcast facility’s propagation area covered much of the United States making it a one of a kind signal power house. With it’s first of it’s kind power and antenna combination that made radio history until the plug on so much power and signal strength was pulled.
Stay tuned for more developments on this exciting broadcasting project in Northern Maine. WBCQ is the brain child of long time Maine radio broadcaster Allan Weiner. The reach of the new 500 KW transmitter broadcasting from elevated land in Northern ME to points around the globe is big news when protecting free speech. There was a transoceanic radio relay telephone station in the Houlton area used back in the 1930’s that still has evidence of it’s two mile long radio system when we list and tramp woodlots in the Southern Aroostook County area.
