Rural Maine and the day to day when you live here adjusting to conorovirus.
Over the weekend, checked in with one brother living in Vancouver Washington because Seattle has been in the news a lot with the cornorovirus buzz. Or maybe the areas you pick up your ears on and think about are only because you have loved ones in that location. My brother told me where he lives is four hours from Seattle. The way he described the day to day with cornovirus is not so different than here in Maine.
Brother Brian ordered out food from the brother in laws restaurant a few miles away Saturday night. The Washington state place that is closed for indoor dining like our local eateries but doing a brisk take out business. The to-go food enjoyed in the parking lot with other diners 8 feet or more away. My hometown had York’s Dairy Bar that operated the same way summers. You put your lights on for service. Given a wooden popsicle stick with a number on it. The ordered food car hop delivered to your open window where a tray gets hung. The vinegar on your home made fries. Enjoy your burgers, fried clams, those onion rings made with pancake batter all from the comfort of your car.
Having More Than Enough And Grateful. Living Simple Is What Maine Is All About Yesterday And Today.
No doubt all of us would like to have family all around us at times like this with coronovirus’s impacting on our lives.
Have one out of four children living in the same Maine home town. Face timing the first grand daughter is a comfort. Watching her climb stairs crawling and becoming more steady on her feet walking. Last night’s call during supper and with her eating a wholesome organic food meal while saying “Poppa Poppa”. Turning her head to look at the door to the farmhouse expecting I will be coming in to visit.
One of my two daughters in the Boston Massachusetts area are in the nightly habit of going out on her open porch.
She and her husband sing with the neighborhood. Her husband plays the guitar as warmer weather approaches. There is laughter, crying, sharing. The piano in the home will be put to good use. Across the street is a couple where the wife is an OB-GYN nurse, a few houses to the left you find a neighborhood doctor. All comforting when a new baby is expected next month and talk of shortages of masks, coronovirus potentially tying up health care facilities is part of the media buzz. As industries retool to build much needed ventilators, masks, gloves.
It reminds me of my Dad the WWII Army Air Force B-24 tail gunner.
He told me the auto industry shifted gears from cars to war airplanes. Cranking out with Rosie the Riveter’s help a B-17 and B-24 every fifty minutes. Using our time in Northern Maine to the most effectiveness keeps your mind off worry or despair. Keep moving in the right direction and know you are doing all you can to be resourceful and health conscious at the same time.
Your thoughts and prayers, what you think about are people.
The ones you know and love that are expecting or had a child recently. The elderly with medical conditions you know in your own community. What can you do to help is where the bulk of the mental, physical and spiritual energies go along with living the best you can. But each day is one to begin with what can I do that helps my area and ripples out from there. It is not something we start doing when a coronovirus arrives on the scene. In small rural Maine, worrying and caring for the needs of others is what we do non-stop to conquer and survive hardships collectively. (more…)
Halloween, trick or treating, door to door canvassing for candy.
Trick Or Treat! Small Maine Town Fun October 31st.
The goblins low to the ground, most eye level with the heaping bowls of sweets and treats. The high caloric ammo stocked up and ready to distribute in handfuls. To the motley crew of pan handlers.
Holding wide open loot bags or reflective buckets for the candy bars, gum, licorice, sweet and sour the home owner is dishing out this Halloween. If you holler loud enough in unison for all to hear and with plenty of enthusiasm the chant “trick or treat”. You get a tasty treat!
In your area of Maine or whatever your GPS planet coordinates are, is October 31st still a big deal?
As a kid was it a tradition not to be missed and looked forward to with excitement? Gathering your young friends, sisters, brothers and cousins to tramp a new or familiar neighborhood. Did you partake in the climbing up on lighted porches decorated in spider webs, orange pumpkins, the sounds of eerie music, high wind, howling and clanging chains?
Often, whoever answered the front door decked out and making an effort to play along. Wearing a pointed black hat or warlock cape or whatever creative garb. To show the kiddies they too were under the same zombie or witchcraft spell where candy is the currency? But no clown outfits this year please. The once friendly Ronald McDonald or Bozo clown persona is missing thanks to the clown’s with anger issues and not so slap happy easy going these days on the silver screen.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.
I grew up about a mile and half from town out in the country. Having mom and dad drop me off with my older brothers on the corner of Highland Avenue and Washburn Streets was a Halloween ritual. Combing forces to battle our sweet tooth addictions, the six cousins who lived in the yellow apartment house would combine and off we go. Systematically with pillow cases combing the streets. On the prowl for neighborhoods with plenty of lights on and avoiding the ones where everything in the house was pitch black and dark.
Halloween Trick Or Treating Is Big In Small Maine Towns!
As a little kid, I was amazed at the generosity. Of total strangers to me for the most part who took the time. To decorate, to purchase the candy or better yet make the
home made sweets hot out of their kitchen oven. To show you the light is on for a reason. We’ve got candy, even better treats than the other residents on the street beat.
The home owner in my small Maine town enjoying the orange, black, purple and green holiday as much as the munchkins marauding the neighborhood.
The excitement of all age monsters, cowboys, princesses, ninjas, ghosts and other forms of the living dead with cuts and serious disfigurements adding to the hysteria on Old Hallows eve. The door to door hit and run like a town wide magazine campaign. Or the Swan’s guy with the deep dish pizzas and five gallon tubs of ice cream, other treats delivered on a weekly, not just once a year basis. The mail carrier has to make the same neighborhood run but on a daily basis.
Halloween, full moons, graveyards, the threat of dastardly deeds happening if the home owner does not deliver on something good to eat.
Kids disguised to protect their real identities. Knocking loudly to holler the “trick or treat”? dentists ten to one warn to “easy does it”
on the sugar intake. The one holiday to be extra thorough in brushing after carefully flossing as you sample the haul next day?
What is your favorite Halloween treat?
For me it is peanut clustered Paydays, peanut butter and chocolate Reese cups. Anything but Sahara dry popcorn balls and no thanks to the apples. Not for fear of razor blades in my small friendly rural Maine town.
The other treats that warm the usually chilly door to door are fresh squeezed hot cider and the rolled out hand cut fresh baked donuts.
The kind that just hopped out of the grease bath to drip dry on the kitchen rack. The home owners that offer those want you to come in to the light of the living room. To take off the mask, put down your loot. To reveal your true identity
and figure out are you so and so’s kid? Sometimes you learned they were somehow related to your mom and dad or Uncle Bob, Aunt Janice. Family reunion time happens.
During a series of open houses a few weekends back in Boston to help daughter number one find a home to buy, one neighbor we purposely struck up a conversation with made an observation.
The neighborhood in Jamaica Plains MA said you can tell a lot about a neighborhood by whether or not they participate in Halloween.
If more often than not, there are decorations, dummies in porch chairs and signs Halloween is observed here, then that shows you involvement. Fun people who take the time, make the investment to make sure kids remember October 31st. They stick around and have the lights on, the candy bowl by the front door fully charged to hand out no matter how many kids storm their place this Halloween.
Last year on Halloween there was snow on the ground.
The white stuff that usually holds off until at least Thanksgiving week that improves your changes of banging a deer showed up early. October 23rd, 2018 there was a blanket of white stuff delivered that caught most by surprise. That did their fall leaf raking and burning the following spring instead of back in the customary fall. I remember a couple Halloweens where winter snow was present but we still trick or treated.
The Lights Are On, That Means Halloween Candy!
Today, in areas of high urban crime, where folks don’t hobnob or really know who lives two doors down in neighborhoods, trick or treating is threatened. Less homes per block are taking part. Plus kids are trucked to events, to larger gatherings inside for fun and games and bobbling for candied apples. Maybe it is helicopter or lawnmower parents that same mileage and can wrap it up quicker.
Halloween is a time where motorists need to have sharp eyes and to drive slowly or not at all down dark streets.
Where sugar buzzed ghosts and goblin monsters can dart out in front of you in th mad dash to door number 2,3,4 and beyond. I am excited about Halloween and setting up shop on Sterritt Street this year. With the old times munching on pizzas and manning the front door candy bowl. While I dress up, round up the kids and
The white stuff that usually holds off until at least Thanksgiving week that improves your changes of banging a deer showed up early. October 23rd, 2018 there was a blanket of white stuff delivered that caught most by surprise. That did their fall leaf raking and burning the following spring instead of back in the customary fall. I remember a couple Halloweens where winter snow was present but we still trick or treated.
The Lights Are On, That Means Halloween Candy!
Today, in areas of high urban crime, where folks don’t hobnob or really know who lives two doors down in neighborhoods, trick or treating is threatened. Less homes per block are taking part. Plus kids are trucked to events, to larger gatherings inside for fun and games and bobbling for candied apples. Maybe it is helicopter or lawnmower parents that same mileage and can wrap it up quicker.
Halloween is a time where motorists need to have sharp eyes and to drive slowly or not at all down dark streets.
Where sugar buzzed ghosts and goblin monsters can dart out in front of you in the mad dash to door number 2,3,4 and beyond. I am excited about Halloween and setting up shop on Sterritt Street this year. With the old times munching on pizzas and manning the front door candy bowl. While I dress up, round up the kids and
other adults who share the same excitement of the trick or treating ritual. The expressions of new little trick or treaters especially is rich and rewarding. They look around and get caught up in the night’s excitement. They quickly catch on to the harvest of candy treats.
The best trick or treating candy was from home owners who had the little bags with the witch riding side saddle on the broom and the full moon in the background.
Inside there were lots of carefully assembled delicacies. One time while taking my own four kids out on Halloween, one resident had forgotten it was the big day the end of October. He took the kids down the hall to the kitchen pantry and each came out with a can of vegetables.
The More The Merrier Trick Or Treating In Small Maine Towns!
Heavy cans for a little kid to lug along the candy land. To continue getting inline and running across yards on the crazy train route to connect the lights that up ahead. And not what the kids expected but he did not want them going away with nothing to show for the trick or treating adventure.
He might have been into the firewater sauce a little too. Sleeping it off when the kids arrived despite the front porch light not on. But it was all good and the exchange made. Then quickly on to the next home to collect the stuff to
sort and trade with their friends. When they take off their Halloween masks and traces of left over face make up tomorrow.
The Maine homeowner or apartment tenant who invests in the candy, risks their life hoisting the bigger than life spider up onto the side of the building.
They dress up. They are primed and ready and invested in the Halloween trick or treating. Weather could impact the hand out of goodies. Less customers. The local church or downtown events could slice off some of the foot traffic door belling ringing too.
I googled “Halloween trick or treating in America still popular?” and this is a link that came up in the search.
And also this Halloween post on best cities to drag the kids to trick or treating. But is there an age limit for trick or treating? How big a kid is too old to do his best to capture a sugar high from total strangers? I love being in the background and keeping the herd of kids
out roaming the neighborhoods together. To make sure they don’t dart out in front of cars or get too far ahead of the little ones in tow. I am excited about this year’s Halloween and know it is because of the generosity of those that made my childhood October 31st eve memorable.
In small towns you pitch in and contribute and maybe Halloween that is safe in a small rural Maine town keeps the haunting spirit alive.
I know today noon there is a local Rotary Auction meeting to attend to prepare for the radio/television/Internet event held for over 50 years the week of Thanksgiving. Tonight at 6pm, the Northern Maine Soap Box Derby committee meets to further hammer out details for the 25th down hill race to be held June 20th, 2020.
Small towns in Maine.
Dressing Up, Playing A Character In Halloween Parties, It’s Not Just A Kid Event. Me In Maine Blogger Andy And Meg Ham It Up.
The locals volunteer and maybe that spirit spills into the desire to decorate, to purchase lots of candy and to spend a couple hours and get over 500 trick or treaters.
Not because if you don’t, for fear of the trick part of the three word demand hollered on your lighted front porch.
Egging a house, wet toilet paper or vandalism to your Pumpkin Man or mock graveyard out front just does not happen.
The best trick or treating neighborhoods in my small Maine town are where four or more in a row property owners join forces. To make a Halloween Beetle Juice theme park of sorts.
Those attract carloads or trick or treaters that get more than candy dropped in their sack. Caskets with
live bodies and snakes, spiders and other things that go bump in the night.
The Monster Mash playing lowly in the background.
Someone screams when scared, jumped, startled two houses back or three forward from where you are. Then laughter is heard around the neighborhood in the ghastly front yard show played over and over all night long. To add to the Halloween trick or treat candy collecting harvest of sugar.
The amusement hooked to pulley with wires that dance up and down to make a young trick or treater wonder how do they do that? To think maybe this yard is haunted…nahhhhhh. On second thought, they are just pulling your leg, another gag. You see one of the adults grin who is having just as much fun as the trick or treaters traipsing across the series of joined back yard eerily lit displays.
Pass me another kit-cat bar would you Zeke? Someone gave you Smarties… a treat from over home in Canada, a relative. And I got to ask, when you eat your Smarties (the maple leaf version of M&M’s chocolate candies) do you eat the red ones last?
Where you are a jack of all trades and a major DIY kinda person.
Kids learn those kind of skills from their parents, grandparents too which is a good thing. And you hear plenty of stories while working together on projects. Had one to share from a local handyman that has a sore hip and announcing that he may not be able to get to the camp project as planned.
Lined Up And Ready To Scream “Trick Or Treat”!
We got talking about black bears, tramping the woods back when he was a Maine guide. I guess it was because I knew he had previously told me the skill saw would be buzzing and work progressing when he was caught up after hunting season. He hopes to be able to do some trapping and says he is not much of a hunter for deer and bear now.
When he ran a sporting goods store on the Ludlow Road in Houlton Maine, Brown’s Trading Post he says a man came in who had hit a black bear.
Needed to use the phone. George asked is it dead, thinking we better put it out of its misery if it is. The man said no, it was dead before he hit it. Say what? Evidently, someone staying at John Fraser’s bear hunting enterprise for out of staters had got their prize black bear. But it fell off the pickup truck and that is what was road kill that was already dead. The police came, ticket written, the hunters found and charged with failure to secure their load.
So this year what is your Halloween costume?
Not everyone is after the Halloween trick or treating candy. It’s a time for parties. To dress up in a costume and play a part, to be a character. My girlfriend is a painted frame of art work. I am Bob Ross the painter from PBS show “The Joy Of Painting. Should be a fun night with lots of good food sampled early and later with trick or treating for a wide age of pumpkin pail pan handlers.
Soap Box Derby in Houlton Maine, the Aroostook County race venue held it’s big June race last Saturday. The State of Maine Soap Box Derby race is in Houlton each year.
This Is “Derby Hill” Where Maine State Soap Box Derby Local, State And Rally Races Are Run.
The success with the derby racing program is tied very much to the course used to host it. If a small town or city street is used for a derby program, the logistics to using that hill are huge. The manpower needed to set up, maintain, tear down and tuck away the equipment needed for a local soap box derby race drains the resources.
At one time Maine has five soap box derby race venues to give boys and girls the opportunity to downhill race.
The locations for Maine derby racing were many and spread around the state in Houlton, Bangor/Brewer, South Portland, Rumford and Camden.
Houlton is now the lone remaining site for the Maine race used to produce winning derby car drivers to represent the state in Akron Ohio’s All American Race centers on just one major factor.
Trophies For Top Eight Places In Stock, Super Stock Racing. But Also The Spirit Award, Best Teched Car And More Awarded In The Houlton Maine Soap Box Derby Annual Local Race!
The small Northern Maine community in Aroostook County raised funds, drew up the plans for an engineer hill for rally and local derby races. “Derby Hill” has lights, safety guard rails, a garage at the top for storage that make for time and labor efficient set up and tear down operations.
When less time, smaller amounts of yearly funding is channeled into the derby race course, more effort can be poured into other vital areas of the event. The workers putting on the derby race don’t suffer from burn out and drop by the wayside from exhaustion and dwindling numbers.
“Derby Hill” is also used by area children during the winter for sliding on the snow. Even fireworks have been staged off the area called “Topside” during 4th of July celebrations. Spring and fall soap box derby rally races in addition to the annual local run down the hill happens at “Derby Hill”.
The Houlton Maine race started with a small group of local parents traveling to Camden to witness a local 1995 derby event. MBNA, the big credit card company was looking for a worthwhile family friendly event to sponsor. The plastic card with the magnetic strip giant allocated twenty thousand dollars to hire derby racing officials from New Hampshire to show the Maine race cities how to put on the event.
Trial Run For Brand New Soap Box Derby Racers! Held Friday Before The Big Local Derby Race.
Like grass fire when it is dry and conditions are right with wind blowing in the right direction, soap box derby racing in Maine took off. In fact, after the Houlton Maine derby race in 1996, the next five annual installments of the downhill event were the largest in the country.
Lining Up The Heat Sheet ith The Pair Of Derby Racers.
The Northern Maine Soap Box Derby race with two hundred cars meant sixty six local volunteers stepped up to pull off the event. Money from sponsors, funding for cars, everything needed from event t-shirts to trophies, from food to car parts had to be raised. Derby car racers from over two hours away in Maine would venture to the Houlton venue to compete.
In Akron Ohio when the largest race city award was presented at the All American downhill event, it would be asked over and over. How big is your city, is Houlton Maine to field up to two hundred soap box derby car racers? Just a tad over 6000 population for an answer made the person asking the question scratch their head in disbelief.
Matt Conley, 2019 Super Stock Soap Box Derby Racer Heading To Akron Ohio To Nationally Compete In The All American Race!
How could that small a Maine community field that large a field of derby car racers? The answer is you don’t know the size of the heart and passion of a home town proud parent or sponsor or derby race volunteer. More on Maine Soap Box Derby racing in Houlton, the county seat for Aroostook.
Megan Peters, Heading To Akron in July 2019 To Race In The All American Soap Box Derby National Race In Akron Ohio!
Videos of this year, past races below to show what this soap box derby racing program is all about.
The planning and execution of events in rural communities of Maine. In small Maine towns, everything is home grown not store bought. You work the event not just pay your price of admission and sit down to enjoy the show and then look for your car to go home.
The state of Maine soap box derby race is held in Houlton ME and this year’s running is June 16th, 2018.
June 2nd the derby crew held a tech day and hands on session for new drivers and their support team. The trail runs, the yearly state of Maine soap box derby race, any spring or fall rallies are held on Derby Hill at Community Park. Families looking to gain experience and points for their derby racers flock to the Maine rallies for spirited competition. Some rally races are held under the lights too!
Soap Box Derby Racing! On Tech Day, New Racers Learn How To Set Their Cars Up, To Take A Few Trail Runs Down Derby Hill!
The Derby Hill is a specially built over 800′ paved two lane course with guardrails, a garage topside in case of rain and designed for an electronic eye timer at the bottom run out.
This soap box derby race course is 8 to 17 years of age drivers who build a kit car and want to compete.
The winner of heats from brackets outlining who races who advances up the pairings to determine who will represent the local and our state in the big World Series of racing out at Derby Downs. The site for the All American Soap Box Derby started by in 1934 in Akron Ohio.
Here are some past videos for soap box derby racing to show how each year the weather, the size of he field, everything is a little big different.
It is a lot of fun, every racer shakes hands after each heat to keep it a good sportsmanship lesson. Kids learn about the mechanics of the derby race car and there is nothing I am told like “The Thrill Of The Hill!”
Like to race or know of someone that should be in this neat derby program?
The Houlton Maine soap box derby program started back in 1996 and is still going strong! It was the largest race city in the country five years running! And having our own engineered hill helps the derby keep from burning out the support team that is getting older!
Questions? Here to help! Reach out and will do my best as a past director of the race and with a few trips out to Akron under our family belt to be able to share the experience and tips. Get in, stay low, hang on and we have a green light up on topside. That means if drivers are ready, the launch lets the gate open up and the cars to roll with the help of gravity. Gravity, running the quickest line to the bottom, weights, alignment, a lot more goes into who wins the derby heat in soap box derby racing.
Maine homes are more often than not surrounded by big lawns
If you have company from across the pond, this fact is one of the first observations someone from say London or Paris noticed. Back where they hail from, something that big for a wrapper of land surrounding a home is tilled up and farmed. Something besides blades of grass kept crew cut short is what the generous helpings of land are used for… it is tilled or something with four legs grazes on the grass, clover, whatever else good looks good to eat if you are a farm animal.
Maine Lawns Are Bigger Than Most. Cats Enjoy The Vegetation Around The Lawns To Hide Out.
What is the reason for such large lawns? Maybe it is because not so long ago, everyone lived on small family farms in Maine. We all farmed and mowing large lawns now gives us a feeling of haying once a week spring, summer, fall. Now that many of us chase the dollar working for someone else 9-5.
The rolling lawn in front, to the sides and out back of a New England farm house is pretty when it is kept free of burdocks, red brackle and small poplars that take hold quickly. Even fiddle heads show up around houses and the more moist areas around a property in Maine. If you don’t keep the land mowed weekly or at least bush hogged once a year or the land hayed.
Some of my best thinking is done riding the John Deere or Cub Cadet International garden tractor with the large mowing deck.
You can see what you did when you tuck the mower away in the barn or garage and there is a sense of accomplishment, of property pride. You notice birds in the trees, you check of the home and the countryside as you gawk around mowing. Because it is not a hard, mind bending exercise.
If No Lawn Grass, Something Other Than Brush, Burdochs Needs To Be Growing In Open Space In Maine. Like Lupines. A Pretty Weed.
Fresh mowed lawns. It is relaxing to mow, to see the rows in the sequence and all of us in Maine were taught by expert lawnmowers. It was not racing around in circles but trimmed around the trees with a hand mower or weed wacker combined with the power mower exercise. It was done right or time to do it over.
Big lawns, how large should you mow? Some folks check the watch, mow for an hour, give or take depending on how big a time pledge they want to put to keeping the grass trimmed. And when they get to that pre-determined time, that’s it. Shut off the mower, pull up the deck and be line back to the storage area until next week. Or earlier if sunshine, plenty of rain means you need to repeat the lawn mowing more than once some weeks.
Lawn mowing is contagious. You like to get the property mowed before the weekend, prior to long holiday spans. It is something your parents instilled in you as a young grass chopper in Maine.
Mowing by hand is great exercise.
Victorians In Maine Have Big Lawns Wrapped Around Them. Landscaped Grounds Add Sparkle To The Big Homes.
Up and down hill slopes. Back and forth, alternating the angles to make it new and different for the travel pattern. Instead of a treadmill at the gym, just pull the cord of a hand pushed, not self propelled model and see the wright drip off slow by sure. Working around the weather makes mowing hard when three days of rain elevated the blades longer than you would like. The clubs of dead grass clippings clog a mower, make it work Cherry, harder and look like yard hair balls.
Mainers love to mow lawns.
I have had properties for sale where sellers are out late at night applying weed and feed and in one big private competition to make sure their landscape is picture perfect. They act like it just happens on its own but deep down inside are pretty competitive with neighbors around the hood where they hang their hat.
You can use gang reel mowers behind a tractor or four wheeler to mowing large level to rolling stretches of green grass. If not grass, apple orchards are planted, wild flowers are encouraged with meadow in a can seeds broadcasts. Planting something for flowers or vegetables is always a personal choice for what grows around a home in Maine. Ornamental and fruit trees help showcase a property. We are brought up in Maine that is 91% forestested to plant trees, not cut and harvest them only. Being a good steward of Maine trees means thin them out, don’t clear cut or leave nothing to grow when the over story is removed. Hardwood ridges, so many trees to study and enjoy hiking in Maine.
Cherry, apple trees, raspberry bushes. Landscaping your lot in Maine is a delicate but rewarding process to plan out what goes and grows here or there. The attraction of birds, the sound of wind in the pine or fir needles vibrating with a low hum. Trees know the meaning of patience, time. Maples grow fast but can decay later on. I have a bunch of maples along a circular driveway that are ailing.
Cedar hedges look scrawny when you pull them out of the swamp and place the roots in burlap bags for transport and to be kept moist. But other than trimming, they are way way better than erecting large expensive fences that heave with the frost and need paint or stain or other maintenance. White birch trees are pretty and frail. Yellow birches are better for fire wood believe it or not. Beech, ash, not so many oak trees though all round out the choices you or Mother Nature will supply on open Maine land. Don’t forget the patch of rhubarb, high bush blueberries, elderberries, black berries, and herb garden to add to your flower beds, vegetable gardens on our patch of Maine dirt to enjoy.
Maine has over 6000 lakes and ponds and is one reason Vacationland is a very popular destination.
But what is the difference between a Maine lake, a pond? Well it is more than size. Because lots of farm ponds have been dug out where the soil is slow to drain and springs help them stay filled with natural water.
Mountain Ash Berries Wrapped In Ice On A Maine Lake.
During the late 1960’s, 1970’s the US Soil Conservation Service helped with a 75/25% cost share with the property owner coughing up the small portion of the funding. These ponds range in size, were stocked with fish and also considered a water source for a rural country fire. During times of farming drought dryness, these ponds were tapped for moisture to help thirsty Maine crops.
A pond has an inlet, no outlet and can be spring fed like a Maine lake.
Pond are usually considered more shallow and sunlight is able to penetrate to allow vegetation to grow where lakes are often deeper and darker the further toward the bottom you go. A pond could conceivably have vegetation across the top. We have all seen the lily pads, the yellow flowers and heard the croaking frogs next to a pond.
Can you have a private lake and hog it all to yourself or just for personal family use? And what about public landings, how do those work? Here is more on open land approach to using private land for public use which is a huge component of Maine tourism. Here is extra information on park rules and public land use.
I had a Maine farm listing for sale that surrounded a nine acre lake. The owner had a nine year old daughter fighting a battle with cancer who they wanted to change the name the Gazateer Atlas and other maps had already names for a previous land owner. And to change the name to the name of their dying daughter ended up becoming a legislative fight. The news brought attention to just how big a lake has to be to no longer be termed a private one.
A great pond in Maine is considered larger than ten acres.
And I had been told any Maine lake over twenty acres has to have a public landing access for use. Now finding out where exactly that public access can be tricky. Especially if the camp owners that border the so call access strip just raise havoc and don’t want the public traipsing in and out to enjoy their waterfront resource investment.
But back to what is the difference between a Maine lake, a pond.
No Areas Prettier Than Baxter State Park! Hike, Climb Mt Katahdin, Other Peaks.
There are other distinctions that make each a horse of a different color. (Cue the song “one of these things is not like the other”. One of these things just doesn’t belong.) A Maine pond, how big does it have to be to graduate to a lake status? Some waterfront definitions say a pond has to be 5 acres or larger to be dubbed a lake. Other experts say over 8 acres, at least twenty acres.
But even when a Maine lake is called a lake.
The quality differs greatly and size does matter. A 20 acre lake is pretty challenging to water ski, to enjoy a power boat. It gets a little boring circling round and round. And if the lake is only a few feet deep, with a frog bottom muddy footing, swimming in warm water with the goop between your feet is not pleasurable.
Gravel bottom, going out gradually is preferred when folks look for a lake front property and without lots of just below hidden rocks to rip off your motor’s lower unit if you decide to take a spin. A big steep incline to slide down a hillside to get to the waterfront is not a popular attraction for most folks, even the most athletic in the audience.
Maine Lake Loons, Many Other Birds Too On The Waterfront!
As we all get older or when elder members of our family visit a lake or pond setting in Maine, everyone worries about how to get the going shore party back to camp. A reverse zip line, a winch with a motor to haul the camper back up the hill sounds like someone could get hurt as they get dragged brutally across the hilly terrain landscape.
A large lake can cause the northwest winds to pick up speed and cause more than a comfortable breeze to keep your property bug free. Black flies would have to be on steroids to handle the jet stream to tap in to a fresh camper vein of O2 positive or AB negative.
A small sheltered Maine pond is not so wild and safer when a storm picks up just because getting to shore is an easier, shorter task. The waves are not white caps. Landing a private float plane on a dinky pond could test your aviation skills or end up making you front page and again mentioned in the obituary of the same Maine newspaper in the venue where the fatal accident takes place.
Herons On Maine Lakes. They Show Up To Entertain The Happy Campers.
View if any or of what. The power lines or wind generators sharing the big screen of the waterfront setting in your lap are not what more lake or pond real estate buyers are seeking. The red light that blinks on the giant wind beater turbines to warn aircraft getting too close that they are ahead shines across the water like an eerie tentacle. Making the giant structures closer than they really are and a reminder of what new man make device is in the scenic view of what was just Mt Katahdin, a mountain or foot hill range view.
A lake without milfoil or pollution trumps one even larger in size that is a mess that has the pressure of man, over development, lack of education to protect the waterfront and a lack of self preservation obvious to all who visit the lagoon you call “Uptah Camp Ayuh”.
A lake in Maine I am on refreshes, or turns over every one year, one month.
As long as safe, well planned timber harvesting is done in the watershed of the lake or pond, and if area crop or critter farmers go easy does it on the nitrite, nitrates put on the fields with care to keep it from leaching into the natural resource, things can stay static. Or if you practice good stewardship where you pass on the lake or pond property in better shape than you received it, it means a waterfront investment could actually improve. The condition of a rickety dam at the outlet can be a concern and how strong is the lake or pond waterfront association if there is one? Same with the road association where most of the access trails and pathways are private, not much like a public transportation set up.
You don’t need to own a piece of Maine waterfront. You just need a kayak, canoe and to sample the buffet of them dotting the map around whichever part of Maine you are lucky to find yourself visiting on vacation or living in part or full time!
