As a little kid and still today the hole of a donut is my favorite part.
How can a hole be real? The hand made circle of dough that gets collected from the center of home made donuts. The kind I remember my mom creating to be ready and waiting for us to try after a hard day of the three “R”‘s. As my three older brothers and I climbed off school bus #13 and walked from the end of long, maple lined driveway growing up on a Maine farm. Into the kitchen where we smiled as the nose hit smell of fresh baking donuts greeted us with a welcome home treat.
Holy Donut Has Three Portland Maine Area Outlets! Making Natural Local Sourced Delicacies To Munch A Bunch. Bought By The Dozen, Not Bet You Can Eat Only One Fashion.
Those donut holes and large round rings them came from parked on a wooden cutting board. Hoisted high as fresh shaped donut dough to tilt, slide, swim and sizzle into the boiling grease. Fried food using natural ingredients made with love by your mom. Fresh, hot, and some rolled in sugar when they hop out of the fryolator hot tub bath. To park in rows on the wire rack to cool as the sweet coating different than glaze bonds. Sugar dusted chocolate donut holes are my personal favorite. Not all the jazzed up cake type drizzled and too busy to just enjoy the solo of whatever flavor you get treated to at the moment.
And wait a minute … is it doughnut or donut? The difference for what you call the round circle of food everyone likes to nibble.
Maine has some unique landmark donut makers and they don’t all peddle them under a franchise brand mega watt neon lighted sign.
Nothing goes better with your fresh morning coffee, fresh squeezed juice, whatever you use to wash it down than a brand new young donut to munch on while you plan your day. The time when you converse with your mate, your collegues, whoever about whatever is on today’s agenda plan of attack. Or to sample when you catch up on local grapevine news not covered by or of much interest to the wire services. When picking up a white bakery bag of fresh made goodies at the well known eatery in your small Maine community.
Franchise donuts from Dunkin’ and Timmy Ho Ho Horten’s are fine and dandy. Sorry, in Maine the world does not run on Tim or Dunkin’. Who wants donuts and which kind? The hands shoot skyward. Local if you have them please. Home made not the kind machined in rows and rows like soldiers marching to battle. Drive window quick for on the go is great when traveling outside Maine but the here you go Nascar squeal and peel out and easy has its place. But the one of a kind local experience getting a donut, the kind about as close as you can to say your mom or grandmother’s takes it to a whole new level. These donuts or doughnuts are not even in the same league ball park. The recall of an earlier pleasant childhood memory moment is triggered when you can replicate the event right? Especially when you consider the hands that rolled the dough and cut the donuts one by one are not longer on Earth to perform the loving task. Hand made beats machined precise.
More Like Cake Than Plain Flavored Donuts. Holy Donut In The Portland Area Used Maine Potatoes, Natural Not Artificial Ingredients.
The Holy Donut in the Portland area has a unique story. Lifting from their our story page, it is no wonder the four at a time donut making in a home kitchen by a daughter with help from her Dad exploded into the eighty employees, three locations, over two million served delicacies in just three short years. The power of a simple donut bought in the dinner bucket design box with the handles and four color design.
Using mashed Maine potatoes to weave into the recipe mix, colors from natural ingredients not red die number three or blue dye number 40. That’s part of the magic that makes the local donut roll stronger longer than the mass produced all the same kind.
Wells Beach Maine has Congdon’s Donuts that locals and tourists alike share the same daily addiction.
It’s not just seafood, whoppie and blueberry pies that gets the rave reviews. And it is not only the donut itself that causes the excitement. The local enterprise that creates and sells the donut and other pastry and baked items is part of the experience.
Dealing with a local business that usually is one of a kind unique to one area of Maine gives you a good feeling. When you ask for a dozen and with a smile, with the local chatter in the background from diners drifting in and out, from workers joking around that you get to know more intimately the more trips you walk through the door.
Folks In Southern Aroostook County Are Spoiled With Home Made Sadie’s Bakery Donuts, Cookies, Breads. Each Day One Flavor Kepts Folk Moving Ahead, Getting It TCB Done.
It is satisfying to shop local and know the home made this morning item was not loaded with preservatives, not wrapped in cellophane and mass produced many days or weeks or eve months ago. And the local donut served up with a smile from the donut shop owner or a member of their family that made them from scratch. That really loves their job, the people and the chance to serve you.
Locally to where I hunt and peck, Sadie’s Bakery has been creating donuts along with other baked goods since 1948.
The longevity helps create the mystic, the generation crossing habit of enjoying a locally made small pleasure like a fresh donut or two. Life’s greatest pleasures are the small joys that everyone can enjoy and the communion of meeting at a local eatery to help yourself to a coffee and whatever the flavor of the day offered this morning is satisfying. Or to pick up a bag or box for others to enjoy that had no idea the were coming their way. Watch a video of one owner of Sadie’s Bakery to see Tim, Sharon and a grandfather getting up day after day because it is time to make the donuts. Check out the old Maine potato barrel filled with flour and hear about what one flavor made the day for so many in the oldest town in Aroostook County.
Canadian donuts also roll in from neighboring New Brunswick Canada in the Maritimes under the brand Mrs. Dunsters. And in the Old Town Maine area, Labree’s Donuts. Like Sadies Bakery, 1948 was the same year Labree’s Donuts starting showing up at snack time. What local donut does it best to fit your pie hole? What do you reach for when the need is for a donut or doughnut in Maine?
Early cars, trucks, vehicles that you remember in your life.
Like the family pet that grows up in your home, makes all the holiday picture appearances in the cherished photo album. The vehicles parked in the old black and white images with long gone family members posing in their younger selves. Those old cars carry fond memory attachments that hit you the same way as an oldie goldie spun on the local early Maine radio station.
Old DeSoto Car I Remember Parked In The Yard Next Door As A Very Little Kid.
The earliest cars in your memories, what are they as you look back?
My earliest images are from a neighbor on Franklin Avenue, the Blacks who had a red with white DeSoto. DeSoto was a division of Chrysler, produced over 2 million cars from 1929 to 1960 when the brand was dropped.
DeSoto was named after the explorer, the European credited with crossing the Mississippi first and introduced to compete with lower cost car market. It was created to provide a mid car class market option for auto buyers that could not afford the higher priced Chrysler line.
Ralph Black spit polished and maintained everything he owned.
He had a crew cut, loved to garden, enjoyed pink peppermints. Was a fan of dulse which is seaweed that tastes a little like bacon but way way healthier for you. Trained as an accountant, book keeper, no one took the job more seriously. Ralph was a company man. He and his wife were Canadians who moved over to Houlton Maine from New Brunswick and became US citizens.
Ralph worked at Almon H Fogg Hardware as a book keeper. Served in World War 1 and came home carrying shrapnel in his back from that conflict. Marj worked at Cary Library and did not drive. Walked everywhere with me and my brothers when Ralph had the car at work. I was his God child and when old enough to pedal my bike into town I mowed his lawn. The job inherited from my older brother Brian. His Excello lawn mower was a reel type maintained to the hilt. Had to trim with a silent hand pushed mower and clippers. I inherited the job from my next oldest brother Brian. I am the youngest of four boys.
This video shows one of the vintage grass clippers from the 1950’s.
Ralph’s was all blue green colored and had a lever to engage with pulleys to add the power to the wheels. Wooden rollers behind the sharpened reels helps spread out the grass clippings. No rotary scalping happens with the reel type mowers. Every fall Ralph would load the mower in the trunk and take to a fellow up the street who would service it to be ready for the following spring. The green ranch on 5 Franklin Avenue in Houlton Maine sat on a large lot with hillsides to struggle with plenty on the west side. As a little guy riding his banana bike into town from the country weekly. This was a serious mission for the five dollars and cold soda received to clip the grass for the Black’s who were fair but particular.
1966 Corvair Parked Next Door To Me Growing Up. Pushed By Air Cooled Motors In The Truck Like The VW.
Ralph and his wife Marjorie graduated from the 1955 DeSoto to the beige 1966 Corvair, the rear engine vehicle Ralph Nadar helped get off the road.
Corvair was a Chevy product made from 1960 to 1969. Reggie Walton in Littleton collected Corvairs of all types.
Spiders, the pick up and van versions of all years of this rear engine air cooled Chevy product. The TV series Bewitched also had a view Corvairs in their episodes if I remember correctly what I watched with the rabbit ears. Reggie lost his life in Florida bring back trailers to resell. He was a mover and a shaker on the local small town Maine scene for sure.
The next car owned by the Blacks was a 1966 Pontiac Tempest.
Not the coveted GTO but powered with a six cylinder instead of the big V8 gas hog 389 cubic inch or bigger under the hood of muscle cars of the time. I have seen these Tempest made into a GTO clone. Wished I had the Black’s cars so carefully maintained and pampered that Ralph and Marjorie purchased. Having no kids of their own helped the wear and tear too. There was none. Waxed weekly, the vinyl floors oiled and preserved. The inside of the trunk, under the hood all like when it rolled off the car factory assembly line.
Read more about early cars, even a tractor that I remember growing up in a small town in Maine.
Blogs about early trucks has made the Me In Maine blog post collection too in case you missed it. What early vehicles, bikes, trucks do you remember growing up?
Tempest, A Pontiac You Could Clone Into The GTO. The One I Remember Had A Six Not Eight Cylinder Motor Under the Big Hood.
When they age you don’t want to let go of them. Some of us see those old vehicles as people that get old. You want to re-purpose them and bring them back to their original factory glory. Like older folks that carry a lot of wisdom to share, these old vehicles have a spirit, can transport you back to an early time in history.
Ever long for an abandoned car seen in your travels?
Thought about bringing it back to life? It’s expensive and using your heart not your head. But heartstrings pulled on need attention to in the short life on Earth right? Can’t always be practical.
Like old songs, the smells of meals your grandmother whipped up, anything that hits the senses can evoke strong memories of happy times earlier in your life.
If I was going to go out and buy an old car it would probably be a big one from the late 1950’s. The fins, the space ship design reflected America at the time they rolled off the assembly line. How about a Square Bird… a 1958 through 1960 Thunderbird please for me. Tooling around a small Maine town behind the wheel of an old car ride experience. Ralph and Marjorie Black never had one of those old cars to dream about restoring but what they did have creates fond memories.
Today one American farmer feeds 165 people. Our country has a cheap food policy and the grower, whoever raises your food gets about 16 cents from every dollar spent on whatever a farm produces. Roughly 2% of our national population are farmers, ranchers. Like many things, bigger happened to squeeze out the family farm way of life.
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Consolidation, volume production because the food prices do not keep pace with inflation, and the higher cost of farming made the lifestyle not so economically attractive. Most would agree the work ethic learned on a farm is a valuable lesson. But few are so positive that breaking even is considered a good year and just being excited to get to farm again come spring just won’t cut it.
So if eight out of ten people live in the city, if small rural populations are shrinking, what causes the longing for living off grid, for starting a small farm?
Ask yourself if you live in an urban center what you don’t like about your lifestyle. Too much commuting or time wasted trying to get from “A” to “B”. Fear of personal safety because the nightly news has some pretty gruesome stuff flashed before the audience tuning in to learn “that’s the way it is” for another day. Noise, high cost of housing, fast paced living that robs personal satisfaction and just lacking the freedom to be your own boss.
But being a farmer, living off the land is no picnic.
Work around the clock, hard labor and set backs due to the weather, poor markets or your own personal health. Physical labor helps you get in shape, sleep better nights when you shut off the lamp on the nightstand. But worry about staying on that family farm can cause nightmares. Farming can be a lot like gambling when you blow on the dice and hope for snake eyes or whatever is needed to come out on top to win the wager. More on living off grid.
Day Is Done, Cue The Stars, Crickets, Mister Moon.
Living off grid… is power that expensive or is the idea of not being plugged into a utility for juice part of the independence? Is burning a renewable natural resource like wood from your own land, cut and gathered and split, stacked to heat your home part of the attraction? To get away on dependency on foreign oil or natural gas? We’ve blogged about heating your Maine home with wood before and know the merits of being a son of a birch. Could you build your own cabin to live off the land?
Is living off grid a bit of a knee jerk over reaction to the pressure cooker of city living?
Is the romance of working the land, building your own home, the out buildings to go around the farmstead like a drug? Something to dream about to help fulfill the empty spot in a life that is lived but not rich or rewarding or natural. Being resourceful, learning new skills that have been untapped because you specialize in one and only one thing. And hire out pretty much everything else that depends on the credit card or write a check.
Simpler living means removing the money needed to keep it complicated. When it is a personal choice to step back, buy the Maine land and plan you cutting ties with the city to make the leap to work the dirt is not as scary because it is self inflicted. When the Great Depression caused drought, a dust bowl where nothing grew and the locals packed up to move away with little hope in their sails, the need to create a living besides farming meant industrial jobs, learning a trade besides the managing acreage.
How much land do you need to start a Maine farm?
Once fertile acre of Caribou loan will grow 32,000 pounds of food. That’s a square just shy of 208′ x 208′ and Maine land is cheap. Small rural Maine is the 4th lowest for crime statistics. Your fun is low or no cost when the outdoors with fresh air, clean water and missing the wall to wall sea of unknown faces city dwellers maneuver around daily. Would it be a shock to the system? Do you easily make the transition to small country living without much thought when it is your kids welfare that gets considered as the most important goal in your life? What’s important does change when you start a family and start to study where you can do it best for your children.
What’s Brown And White And Surrounded By Green? You See Lots Of These Among Maine Farmscapes. Start Of Living Off Grid, Starting A Farmstead?
New solar lightning, advances in batteries, LED lighting that uses less energy make living off grid more feasible. Wind generators have popped up around the landscape even here in small rural Maine. By living off grid do you mean unplowed roads and stuck way up in the woods far from town? Is there a happy medium of being on a dead end road not so far from town conveniences without all the added work of making a road, maintaining it by yourself. Neighbors are not bad but keeping them at a distance helps the fondness. Don’t fence me in was not just a Western notion. Too many people too tightly jammed together is a recipe for tension, emotions to boil over and it is all due to your personal space being invaded. Feeling you have no space of your own if you share it with every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Feeding yourself first and just keep your expenses low to the ground. Life is more enjoyable when you are not chasing the dollar to keep the wolf from your door. Feeling satisfied with personal success raising farm field to family table is also healthy for your body. In a day and age when cancer and other diseases are prevalent, you have to wonder about the toll stress, what we eat that should not be put down the gullet causes to the body we were given to care for the best we can. Do you feel you treat yourself the healthiest way possible? Or is it give me something to forget how unhappy or empty you are? That’s medicate the symptoms but not tackling the root of the problem.
Fixing up old ME farmhouses and all the buildings around the homestead.
Country living housing projects require plenty of skill, lots of home work study and boat loads of patience. Building construction on older agricultural properties are definitely labors of love. It is best if you the home owner can tackle as much of the rehab work yourself to save money and for the joy of a real estate fixer upper restoration project.
Fresh Hot Coffee, Whatever Meal Tastes Improve After Maine Farm Chores Are Done.
The older homes that were once the cornerstone of vibrant small Maine farm families present a challenge though from the two extremes.
The never had any repair places are original. But the damage caused from lack of maintenance means the repairs are more than just addressing the surface of what you can see on the inside. Deep down inside the bones of a Maine farmhouse you will can be forced to replace or repair the sills, the floor stringers, any dry rot that is hidden until you start swinging a crowbar.
The replacement materials in your re-construction of the country home that has fallen from grace sometimes means making the woodwork or hardware supporting it by hand. Because you can not just trot into a big box building supply outlet to move it from a shelf aisle into your shopping cart. Often finding another farmstead that is being torn down is a source for what you need on the construction project. Re-purposing from a salvage pile of another deceased farm home dwelling with the property owner’s permission to pick through the rubble. Or locating someone that did save the yesteryear materials that were once part of an older farmhouse that is no longer standing straight and sound. Who piled them up to store under cover for their own re-building project that lost steam or they simply had more than their needed and now want to gladly free up the storage space for other trinkets.
Referring to the historical building notes on the New England, whatever style homestead is part of learning curve in the housing restoration maneuver.
To determine what exactly is needed once the reconstruction project gets underway in good shape. Study of floor-plans, the cut away more detailed diagrams, watching videos on the repair of vintage older housing. Talking to the old time now retired tradesman that all add up to combine and help guide the rehabilitation efforts. All are essential in combination for the know how needed to tackle the many loose ends the old farmhouse can present. It is delicate finish work in the hammer and nail but also to bring the major operating systems of the country home into present day.
Coffee Early In The Morning The Old Fashion Way! Get To Maine, Relax, Breathe.
The home in rural Maine that has gone through many owners adding their own creative talents to the Walton’s type housing is in some ways even harder to bring back into line. The past owners did not work together toward the same goal. Instead of just a few areas needing immediate attention and small ongoing detailing to make it like the original structure, there can be too much lost that resembles what the place looked like back in the year it was built. The attention to detail can make the re-construction scope pretty much every single room no longer mirrors what the original builder put together from the ground up.
The fixing up old historic farmhouses in Maine is slow tedious work and often too extensive to hire out because of the hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars to fix or repair or replace what ails the homestead.
But as long as a bank mortgage underwriter is not pushing for the place to be complete before closing. And you have a partner that is equally patient in the undo, redo, make do as the house with all the land around it returns to what it originally looked like. The this old house story can have very few scary chapters and a happy ending at the end. Making it better than it was when you first started many moons ago.
The what to do first is usually like any house project triage. Selecting the repair or replace the roof or heating system ahead of the installation of a new to you old Monson and Maine slate farmhouse long sink. Or removing to replace the kitchen cabinet hardware, electrical light fixtures and switches to match the period of this particular home era it really belongs. To get it back like the Beatles sang about being where you once belonged. Buy a farm house, whatever type of property where the renovation can be done in stages.
If you are buying to hang onto the place and are invested, the repair this old home movie is a long one with sequels.
You can buy a home you can not afford if it needs work, you are your own general contractor and you go slow. And hire out when you absolutely have to and recognize you are over your head. But stay on budget and pull back, extend the time to completion when something pops up you did not anticipate but that needs immediate attention and some funding to correct.
The saw horses in one room where the lath and plaster is being removed to hang new sheet rock after insulation, electrical and plumbing lines are put into the wall cavities. The peeling back multiple floor layers of old linoleum to get back down to hopefully a solid sub-floor or hardwood/softwood finish level. You don’t know what you are going to find the deeper you go into the many projects that spring up in the fix and repair of the old farmhouse you signed on for when the deed to the land under it was recorded in local registry of deeds.
Houlton Maine, Shiretown of Aroostook County. The Early Years. More Farmers Growing Potato Spuds, More Lumberman Sawing The Timber Logs!
Study of online imagery from others who embarked on the same repair your farm residence journey just prior to you can be encouraging.
The before and after images on any housing rehab can scare even the homeowner holding the camera to snap the shots and reviewing them in the progress album. Once you get started, there is no turning back. And when you run out of money or the projects to repair are large ones, the timetable to completion can be pushed ahead many months or even years on the calendar hanging in the old farm style renovated home kitchen.
The original acreage can be part of the missing puzzle piece when you decide to pick a farmstead residence real estate mission to accept if you dare. Too many times the land around the home was sold off by the widow of the last farmer on record to own the place. A neighboring agricultural grower that rented the land makes the purchase of land, no buildings to absorb the fields, pastures and woodlots into their down the road operation.
Buying back land from one or multiple land owners around your investment can be costly or require waiting until the timing improves. Strongly held and currently cultivated farm land does not get sold off but remains cut off from the original spread it use to surround on the family farm in Maine. Fewer but larger farm operations in Maine are the trend but my state does show promise in reversing the trend. More than four times the national average of micro farmers are showing up in the US census information from the last Q & A done on the local population. No farmer, no food is a sobering thought no?
Other things to prepare for that you might not have thought about in the housing repair exercise? Pet smells, the kind you may not remove and definitely are not going to gloss over with some sweet masking replacement odor. Perfectly good walls, floors and other building components can be marred deeply by animals inside a the home that should have been out in the farmyard or in the barn, machine shed, whatever building circles the main dwelling.
Farm Fresh Locally Sourced Food From Maine. Get Healthy Inside And Out In Maine Vacationing In Maine. Ever Thought Of Owning A Maine Farmhouse, Lots Of Land!
The best smell is none. Although the fragrance of flower beds, the smell of a woodshed, a summer kitchen where root cellar shelves create a winter draw grocery at meal time is not to be discouraged or can not be replaced. Burlap in a granary, leather in the tack room and saddle soap. Or disinfectant used to keep clean the milk parlor on an old Maine dairy farm with all the cattle stanchions and box / standing stalls for the smaller animals.
Making sour into a mixture of sweet works with chicken at the local Chinese restaurant. But lighting a candle or baking oven brownies won’t even begin to mask terrible pungent odors that linger in old neglected country homes of Maine.
The nose knows and your sense of smell is the strong of the five we all possess they say. Once the construction projects complete, it is time to move on to the finishing touch that does involve more than what you can see. The sounds of the wind chime on the front open porch, the colorful pinwheel that works in tandem with Mr Scarecrow out in the garden to discourage predatory gleaning. The crackling wood fire in the old Clarion or Home Comfort or whatever brand kitchen cook stove. A grandfather clock ticking in the front parlor. This is part of the lifestyle of country living in your old Maine farm property.
Pantry cabinets that need refinishing, finding original style or genuine imitation door knobs and Christan doors, trim to match the rest of the rooms in the old home out in the Maine countryside. Double wood storm windows with felt and numbered to help know which opening they go to in the fall get ready to a Maine winter ritual. All part of the bring it back to the way it was in the re-construction time machine that you pilot.
Outdoors, That’s Where People Hang Out In Maine. More Land, Lots Of Wildlife, Less People, No Crime, No Pollution. Want Some Of ME?
A working farm of your own or a gentlemen operation where the fertile fields and pastures are leased out to someone else with the headaches and backaches.
Of watching the weather and hoping for a profitable market to peddle what is grown or raised. You watch others till, plant, cultivate and hoe leading into the fall harvest. For the winter storage and slowly selling off what the good old Earth provided with seed, water, fertilizer, lots of sweat and toil.
The old farm house DIY renovation with a little hired out help along the way can mean putting the rear apartment for the grandparents back into the layout. Or adding a home office so the out of state farm buyer who appreciates the open space and fresh air around it more than a native. So he or she or both can bring their old job online with them and telecommute.
Ever thought of repairing an old Maine farmhouse and be honest. Have you ever caught yourself looking at the Maine farm tractor and machinery section of Uncle Henry’s or on Craig list? I am guilty as charged and am lucky to own the family farm In New England I grew up on. That my Dad and mom purchased from a great uncle who’s first name I use for a middle one. That along with my Great
The Maine Barn Sitting Back On Its Haunches. Leaning, Straining And Recently Went Down Completely Like 52 Pick Up.
Aunt Hettie a world war one nurse made a good living on the patch of dirt. Investing wisely the spoils of the toil with a Bangor Maine stock broker named Banks. It was her pension check though from serving as a Florence Nightingale on medical cases all over creation in and out of Vacationland that put in the running water bathroom plumbing. Into the farm in Maine located up here in the Crown of Maine that had a two holer out in the north end shed. Up here in Houlton, the oldest town in Aroostook County dubbed “The Shiretown” where the glacier gave us an edge blessing growers with Caribou loam soil to play in with the horse than tractor dragging longer and longer lengths of machinery.
Country properties are a special kind of Maine real estate offering.
Looking out when you do up the supper dishes and watching another setting sun at dusk. Sipping lemonade or slurping hot coffee on the open or glassed porch at the rural property with no neighbor in sight. That’s off the main drag and where road noise is missing from too much traffic that city dwellers get tone deaf to with the constant exposure.
Read up on the topic and learn this is how they did it on this style of property in this particular period of time. If you hanker making it original again or as close as your wallet or available spare time will permit.
Sailing a boat in Maine capturing the prevailing winds using one or a series of multi shaped and sized sails.
It’s one more method to travel using the waterways of Vacationland. But when someone mentions Maine, sailing. Just two words. What pops into your gray matter behind your eyes, between your ears? Expensive? Elite? A US President or a movie star with huge yachts no one uses but parked like landscape candy ready ad waiting in front of palatial Maine oceanfront estates?
Or no thank you. Just no interest in hoisting the canvas sail, messing with learning rope knots and lowering the keel centerboard. Because your version of boating is the 14 foot aluminum craft kind. With a can of worms, a thermos of hot coffee or cooler of cold barley pop. The electric trolling motor hung off the back doing its back and forth plying the water. Parked next to the 8 horsepower Mercury or Johnson boat motor that pushes you around inland fresh water lakes with more determination. Maybe out into salt water bays and inlets for deep sea fishing for something beyond brook trout and land locked salmon or bass fish. The boat and assorted hardware and safety gear application designed for Maine fishing. Or larger powered boats or personal watercraft jet skis for tubing, for water skiing round and round a Maine lake.
No Man, Woman Is An Island. But For A Time Just Makes Sense. Ever Sailed In A Boat?
SSssshhhhhh. Listen. Hear that? It’s quiet and you can hear yourself think. Back to the blog post topic and staying on task with today’s hunt and peck exercise. That often is to learn along with the reader about a subject that I am not so knowledgeable about from first hand experiences. Exploring the fun in sailing a sloop with whatever size beam or required amount of water draft. Climb aboard and help me figure out what a roller furling is on the oversized dodger.
Growing up I had a friend Mark McNutt who’s Dad loved boats of all kinds. Tri hull fiberglass pontoon boats that were faster than the typical aluminum ones. Rubber rafts with motors. Paddle boats modified with roof awnings and a four horsepower motor. And O’Day sailing boats. (Just read in researching this Maine blog posts O’Day Boats went out of business in 1989). All used on a Maine lake, not the ocean playground marine setting. The sail boater taught the basics of how to harness the wind in a small waterfront contained setting.
In Uncle Henry’s buy sell swap guide you see lots of small day sailing boats… like a laser or Hobie Cat sail boat. Simple, basic but the way to start out to see if sailing a boat is for you.
Laser sunfish sail boats are the simple one or two person entry level boats to hoist the sail and begin the addiction.
You can buy these small sail boats for little money and kids have fun learning the joy of tapping the breeze to propel the boat. I have seen them offered for free or for a token $400 and that includes the boat, the gear, the trailer to haul it home to your place. But would you use it or dump it in ten years from being tired of looking at it in your space like the last sail boat owner?
Float Your Boat To Maine. Get Here Anyway You Have Available. Cutler Maine Pictured, Downeast.
How to get proficient at jibing and tacking are two basics tasks with say your Hobie cat sailboat to master first when you are a beginner sailor. But if you are doing it with other crew mates especially, the boat locations have to be learned. Port side is the left. Starboard is on the right. The front of the boat is the bow. The rear end is the aft. You learn that quickly on a cruise ship to get around and have your sea leg bearings.
Everyone has to be using the same sail boating terminology to avoid confusion.
Learning the parts of the boat locations makes the instructions on sailing easier to follow. Plus you get a taste of sea life, being the boat captain and a bit of pirate all rolled up into one experience as a land lubber matey.
Nautical terms of sailing, what else comes with the instructions on how to open up or use your sailboat in Maine.
Hopefully, you skipper and all the crew won’t have to use the one about abandon ship. Not sure if there is a plank to walk if the crew does decide to mutiny either. What are the keel, ketch, sloop, cutter and yawl? Parts of the sailboat vessel.
Had a real estate farm for sale owner who bought a yawl that was not in the best of shape but that the couple restored. Making their own hand sewn sails, refinishing the mahogany, updating electrical and restoring the mechanical systems to make it ship shape. Using the yatch to sail back and forth to Halifax Nova Scotia. And taking turns for the night watch. One night the boat almost hitting a floating dead whale. The name of the over 40 long yawl boat was Heart Strings. Because the owner’s sweat, tears, love for it tugged on their heart strings. They sold it to a man who knew nothing about boating but who had a fat wallet. He changed the name on the aft to “Mustang”.
Geocaches in Maine, Have You After Uncovered, Stumbled On To One? Used GPS To Find Them? Can You Read Nautical Marine Charts To Navigate A Sail Boat?
Another couple that bought a property lived on a boat full time for a couple years. It is interesting hearing about adventures many of the real estate buyers and sellers share. The boyfriend pretty mechanically inclined and buying a sail boat / house boat with a very systematic approach. They drew a circle of so many miles around their home in Boston Massachusetts. And began the search for boatyard marinas in that circle.
The mission to locate a sailboat yacht in storage for many years.
With the bill for the storage high enough for the boatyard to want to get rid of it. Or the owners of the boat suddenly elderly or widowed and wanting to dump it for little cash. Because their stash of cash was a small one requiring major league stretching to make this living on a boat dream a reality.
Beginners luck. They found the sailboat the very first call, the beginning of “let your fingers do the walking” through the boat yard search list.
They moved around like floating gypsies on their sailboat house boat.
Taking the required coast guard courses to comply with the rules of the nautical highway life on the high seas. The rules are so so different for boats under 26 feet in length. What licenses, regulations for recreational sailing are required? Well, first and foremost, navigation, nautical charts is pretty important before you raise anchor and remove the dock mooring ropes.
I remember being on a blue fish trip off South Harpswell ME and suddenly a fog wrapped around the boat like pea soup. Our skipper grew up in Ellsworth ME and had lots of experience with the ocean. Something living in Aroostook County does not prepare you for so he calmly dug out the nautical map sealed in plastic laminate. And from our current location using the compass predicted we would be hearing and then seeing a green floating buoy off the starboard side of our modest fishing boat. We did, and then glancing at the chart as he steered the outboard motor from the back corner of the boat reported we should be seeing a red buoy on the port side…. which we heard first and then watched it appear in from out of the blanket of mist.
A Mile Off The Tip Of Southport Maine Is The Cuckholds Lighthouse. Fun To Sail Boat Or Sea Kayak To On Vacation Or Long Weekend.
Our crew arrived back on the shores of Catalina Island and enjoyed a feast of fresh dug mussels steamed, dipped in Houlton Farms Dairy melted butter that was to die for delicious. Catalina Island has lots of World War Two abandoned bunker armaments that were cool to explore. Hurricane Hugo happened during our weekend camping trip to fish for the blues and in a tent, it was an adventure to remember.
Anytime I see a sailboat for sale in my travels or on craigslist or Uncle Henry’s it is dirt cheap.
Probably because the owner had their fun, it is one of many boats hanging around their property unused and neglected. Just get it off my lawn and out of my barn or garage low priced. No motor helps keep the sticker price for the third and fourth time around sail boat affordable too. If you visit Kennebunkport or the Beaches Region of Maine, like say in Wells or Moody Beach that all changes. Along with the higher priced waterfront properties, the cost of the floating toys increases in value and swankiness. Many lakes, ocean front groups have regattas and take their sailing boat races very seriously.
Spring weather in Maine, the early season signs are many.
Longer hours of sunlight and the big orange ball increasing it’s radation. Snow melting, your yard banks retreating to make driveways wider and parking easier. Waterways swelling as ice thickness thins to open up the lakes, rivers, ponds and streams for canoe races.
Ice Ice Baby. Maine Has Four Seasons. Yes, Winter Is One. Bit Nippy Today Would You Say? No Need For Sunscreen. But Spring Is In The Air.
Maple tree sap collection for the evaporators to remove the water to get to the syrup elixir you and I drizzle over the flap jack stacks. Thumbing through the garden seed catalog and dreaming about what to order, where it is going to go in the tilled patch of dirt behind your home. Spring skiing with less layers of clothing happens as spring gets closer. Potholes the size of vehicles that like frost heaves that jar your senses. No danger of falling asleep at the wheel as spring approaches in Maine.
When early spring weather is in the air.
The ribbon of roadways can become like one big rumble strip driving experience. It’s not your shock absorbers or springs or tires causing it. It is slow down, a different kind of driving experience. As in-melted ice layer elevations up and down and “pavement deficiencies” mix with lots of highway department sanding from past winter storm all combines. It creates nothing like a freshly paved perfectly smooth roadway to travel from point A to point B in this eight hour tall state of Maine. Those projects happen during summer road contraction public work projects.
Style, Comfort, Home Sweet Home Made To Last Design. Life The Way It Should Be Protected In Small Maine Towns.
Windows opened just a crack, then slid higher, cranked over wider. To exchange stale air out the innards of a Maine house. Birds return to crank up the volume of the cheerful singing as they forage for food. We miss the song birds that head south. Maine has over 400 varieties of birds that entertain us no matter what the setting in Vacationland.
Winter snow flakes create a dampen sound proofing too. That’s part of it. Your turn to deal in the cribbage board game in the ice shack go fish.
The still of winter is like what you hear as a kid inside a snow tunnel carved out in your backyard digging with neighborhood friends. Crawl in and listen. Hear it? Nothing. I know. Total silence. You hear zip nada zilch wearing your hand made mittens Grandmother pearl one knit two on to match the hat on the your head.
When you are holed up in a cave tunnel that can be widened to make it more like a room. But if you dig too far up or to the sides, you start to see daylight through the walls of snow that surround you. Sound volume picks up too as the layer removing sound is whittled away with your boots, a shovel, your mittens with all the ice shard chips dangling off them.
Voices are far away muffled or missing like insulation to blank out the outside noise. Wait. Was that Mom hollering time for supper? As the family dog visits like Lassie with gusto to lick, bark and signal yes it was. Your food is going to get cold so get inside, put your wet clothes on the drying rack by the wood cook stove and put your snow sled boots on the tray mat by the door. Not left splayed around the kitchen floor please and thank you.
Paddling For All You Are Worth, To Avoid A Dip In The Drink, Upended Mid River Or Stream. Spring Races Happen Because Of Winter Thaw Melting Run Off Making Waterways Lively.
Winter in Maine gives you a break from the pace of summer living. Slowing down from a busy fall harvest. Like turning off a noisy motor on a machine. The silence is golden. It hits you hard because such a contrast for the two ears on the sides of your head to process. You can think and gain perspective in the reflection of life in a Maine winter setting. The sound of a cracking woodstove fire or drip drip drip of a porch roof icicle splatter on a window sill. Solitude comes with a reduction of noise. But here it comes again. Spring in the Maine weather forecast. But not without a few blustery snow squalls to say don’t put away the shovel and bag of salt and sand for the walkway just yet Chummy, Mister Man.
The songs from Maine birds heard outside as we walk signal a spring season weather transition is in the making.
It happens slowly around you but here it comes right on schedule in Maine. You can lament the passing of winter because as you head up the swaying chairlift at a local ski area you realize something you enjoy is coming to an end. But opening up the moon roof hitting a drive through fast food takeout when you are getting on the I-95 highway to do a little traveling. When a early spring like day appears it turns the focus to get your head screwed on correctly. To adjust, like setting your clocks ahead to prepare for daylight saving time to match the season unfolding in Maine.
If The Boot Was From LL Bean, It Would Be Replaced Free. Not Be Leaking Right?
The animals sense it too. Cabin fever hits bad. You can smell it in the air. All the senses get tasered when fresh spring air enters your system. The black and white of winter weather starts to sprout buds and chutes of green and brown with the arrival of springtime.
All the seasons in Maine are special.
Each and everyone of us has our favorite pastimes and rituals that make us never want to leave the current Maine season and what the weather provides us for outdoor recreation. Squeezing out the goodness as we head outdoors for the fresh air, wildlife and to enjoy all this wide open space combined with the high test natural scenery happens all four seasons. Time waits for no one and we promise to do more of what we missed or just did not get enough of the next time this particular season rolls around on the calendar.
So much to like, so little time to sample it all, Maine is one natural outdoor buffet of experiences. Pick the reason, the season and get outdoors in Maine. It’s up to you. And it helps if you grew up a native that never knew living without the traditions that your family exposed you to as a young grasshopper.
What’s your favorite season in Maine? And have you been away too long? Isn’t it time to cross the bid green river bridge on the south end to the place where Maine is parked on the map? Maine is the way life should be. It is not just a story book affair but really exists. See what you are missing and explore her natural beauty. Discover her unspoiled rockbound coasts, lush forests, sandy beaches, rolling farm fields and friendly down to Earth people.
