Heading North to Maine. Heading into the North Maine woods
What is the magic of just the location, that one word North? Heading into the North Maine woods. Pointing whatever you drive or piling in with a group of friends to head North to ski, snow sled, hunt, fish or get out on the water.
North Sign, What’s The Buzz, The Big Deal About Up North?
On a compass or a map, the first thing the user wants to determine is where is North. Because the needle better seek north. Not have a mind of its own. And after rolling out the tightly curled up map, you look first and foremost for the arrow pointing in the direction of North. The orientation of North trumps all the west. You have to know where is North first to get your bearings and avoid vertigo.
The North star, Polaris used for navigation unless pesky cloud cover messes up the exercise to know if you are still heading in the right direction.
Up North in Maine. Each quadrant of the circle conjures up an image or two of the other regions. Causes the dream maker insider all of us to consider what if we headed in that particular direction armed with knowledge from the grapevine. Just hearing, seeing, thinking about one word from books, the boob tube or conversations.
West, heading out west.
Panning for gold. Laying claim to free land, a new start for your family in the wagon train. Or smelling like soot. Riding the iron rails in the steel horse gnawing on beef jerky. New unspoiled fertile land, heavily wooded with incredible scenery out West awaits you. All aboard.
Someone in your family’s past headed West to make their fame and fortune right? Hoping they were not a gun slinger or horse thief. Cowboys, rodeos, branding irons, lasso roping scared little Hereford calves. Waving a branding iron for the circle K tattoo. Surf boards, 409’s, Rodeo Drive, Route 66, Area 51 are what you find out West. Hope we don’t have one big final Earthquake.
Pass me that harmonica Cookie. We get to the Rockies by night fall tomorrow if the bag balm works like a charm on lame old on Lightning here. I got a dose of the joint paint myself. Hand me that little green square tin will you? (Rattlesnake sound, hungry wolf howling, cactus shadows around campfire perimeter). Another splash of coffee or a long haul on the flask filled with the recipe?
South, down south.
You might picture mint juleps, Southern hospitality, cotton and tobacco and moonshine. Gray colored material pitted against dark blue. Sitting a spell on a huge mansion porch held up by large pillar columns. Pleasant weather in the sunny South where snow shovels are not needed. Kentucky blue grass music fills the air. Is that a banjo in the mix?
Chasing white golf balls, fishing for red snapper, liberally applying sun screen on your kids at the sandy seashore. Visiting glove wearing cartoon characters at the Magic Kingdom. Pour me another tall glass of the orange juice Anita Bryant. Leave in lots of the pulp and make it country style. Boll weevil and termites and Tennessee walkers. We’re down south.
East, Far east.
Sounds exotic, I can hear zitars and harp strings and pan flutes. Where we have a serious shortage of four legged chairs. Lots of pillows though all over the flooring. You might think about spices, smooth shiny silk, the fragrance pretty blue lotus flower and sitting cross legged clearing your mind. (Snap) Need another pair of chop sticks to chase your rice cakes and raw fish around the plate? Those waxed paper thin sliding house doors would not stand up to a gale force Maine wind.
North. Due North.
Unfortunately for some, the first thought that pops in your head is snow. Lots of white stuff. Maybe reindeer that go air born. The cheerful short round guy dressed in red velvet / white fur trimming. Ho ho ho Santa, Mrs. Claus and their low to the ground gang with the pointed ears. Dog sleds and float planes for transport and igloos for housing. Polar bears of white riding on ice floes.
Heading North, Hitting The ITS Trails In Maine.
Maine is parked up North.
But you can go way way further climbing up the lines of latitude on the spinning globe. Extreme north can be the vision of Maine for those who have never set foot in the Vacationland state. Maine shares borders with Canadian provinces which causes a cultural exchange missing at the North Pole. There are no polar bears in Maine.
When you live in Maine, West becomes Jackman, Sugarloaf Or Sunday River. Your South orientation becomes the Wells, York Beaches, the Old Port, Kittery Trading post.
Your Downeast Maine a winding trip up US Route One to get your fill of lobsters, steamers filled with clams and fresh native corn on the cob. Look, was that a distant lighthouse, hump back whale or eagle spotted off the bow of the schooner?
I live in Northern Maine.
Snow Is Not An Evil Four Letter Word. Not In Maine.
But where I blog from you can travel two hours north and still be in Maine. Up in the St John River Valley in the Crown of Maine. Aroostook County is the largest of Maine’s sixteen. Aroostook the garden of Maine known for its potato fields. The heavily wooded forest land, the clean lakes and rivers. The fresh air and winter is just one of the four months. And there is lots to be said about your wood burning stove, the charm of winter living in Maine.
What is your image of Maine? Hopeful more than winter snow flakes, icicles and hand knit mittens and hat. Sample ME for yourself. You fill up your mental slate with experiences in Maine. Any chance you can get, sneak or steal away to Maine. Easy to find and always due north from most places. Define Maine in your own words and from personal experiences you collect and cherish any of the four seasons.
The Norwegian Designed Cast Iron 118 Model Wood Stove Has Old Country Designs But Burns With Modern Techniques To Maximize Your Fire Power.
There are so many reasons to heat your Maine home with a wood burning stove.
Often what drives a home owner to feed a wood burning heater stove or furnace is the spike in the cost of other fuel options. When heating oil, natural gas or electricity bills soar higher, the natural fall back routine is to fire up the wood or coal burning stove.
Today it is smart to have more than one heat source combination so you can adjust to seasonal fluctuations. To play the energy market if you have more than one fuel system to maneuver. Let’s face it, if the talking head news reporter signals a shortage of oil or natural gas production, brace yourself. For the here it comes. Suddenly blip. It is a helpless feeling. When the beep beep beep Maine winter heating routine fuel delivery truck is backing into the driveway too often to hook up the expensive hose.
Next Year’s Wood Pile In Tree Life Form. Ready To Knit On, To Slowly Cut And Split Into Just The Right Stove Lengths. Mainers Stay A Season Ahead With Their Wood Stash.
So burning wood, heating your home with rock maple, beech, white and yellow birch, ash, oak and other hardwoods.
Maine is ninety one percent wooded and with all those vast timber resources increasing in cordage yearly right out your back door, why not? And not just to save money. Wood burning provides lots of other perks besides the warm your bones. You cut up a few blow down tree limbs off your back yard. Or venture into the wooded sections of your land acreage to hook on and haul out to a yard whatever did not make it through the last winter ice storm. Slice and dice to fit your wood stove heater box and often the big limbs don’t require a split down the middle to crack them open faced.
Your Maine house yard is cleaned up in the spring and the stacks of wood created are part of your fuel stored for the following winter. Or to use to take the chill off a Maine home in late spring, early fall. Before the wood heater stove is put into round the clock action. Some folks burn wood only when they are home and awake. Others build a smug to heat the house floors with a small cellar wood heater when the temperature sinks low in the glass tube. To supplement whatever the kitchen wood cook stove does not do to increase the warmth in that very important space in a family home.
Heating a space in a Maine home using a wood heater, but not keeping the entire house to the same temperature is economical.
Does to mean you are going to be wearing your snow suit inside or that you can see your breath. Or won’t be able to have house plants. Just things are going to be a little lower temperature than seventy degrees in the second floor bedrooms or down in the formal parlor used on special occasion. Like funerals at home in the original days when the Maine home was young. Or when gentlemen callers came to call.
More Modern Woodheater Stoves Used In Norway! The US Jotul Stove Buyers Like The Boxy, Square Stoves With Norwegian Animals And Winter Scenes, Lettering.
Wood furnaces keep the wood chucks in the cellar where they are stacked and racked to prepare for the seasons of snow flakes and thick sheets of ice. The central wood furnace can be hot air or hot water and tied in to work in tandem with the oil or gas unit. Making sure the chimney is lined, solid and not tapped with lots of “appliances” That are vented into the same heating stack which is a no no.
The clean burning wood pellet stoves that use the pallets of forty pound sacks that a fork cliff delivers in ton increments like the kerosene K-1 monitor type heaters are direct vented out the home’s exterior sidewalls. Woodstoves need more than just cleaning the chimney, emptying the ash pan and using fire wood that is not twenty minutes old green green green. Which is the kind full of creosote and that causes the house fires that roar loudly up the burnout in the stove flu. Cementing in fire brick, replaced a handle that breaks, and always studying for any cracks or danger that lack of repair can cause with any wood stove or furnace heater.
Nothing wastes wood for heating more than a Franklin wood stove or a fuel hog fireplace.
The hypnotic smell of a wood fire outside as you head indoors. Combined with the sound of your boot crunching, compacting the new soft snow underfoot. Sometimes it is the dancing, crackling wood fire romance you want and not to squeeze every renewal heat source BTU out of your Maine log timber tid bit. Especially at a seasonal lake camp after ice fishing or ski chalet when the boards are removed that you used to carve the groomed down hill gravity ride. Or cross country slide and glide to end up relaxing in your front den. The fireplaces that have a woodstove insert that are air tight or the stone / brick chimneys that have blowers and heatalator grates can pull their weight lots more efficiently. Helping heat the inside of a Maine home to keep it warm as toast. To greet you when you decide to come in from all that fresh air, the beauty of new fallen white snow that transforms your location.
I am very partial to Jotul wood stoves because my Dad was a dealer who believed in these Norwegian tried and tested gems.
Jotul North America employs about seventy five people and produces roughly seventeen thousand woodstoves, wood and gas fireplace inserts. About nine thousand stoves are imported from the mother company in Fredrikstad, Norway. Jotul is a major player in the cast iron woodstove parts market. The Norway main operation has been producing wood, coal, gas heater stoves since 1853. Jotul Gorham Maine’s operation started in 1980. The same year my Dad linked up as a wood, coal, fireplace insert distributor to sell the stoves put together from the parts floated over from across the pond.
The small but mighty Jotul 404 wood cook stove does an amazing job as a cast iron heat producer. But the smaller fire box means foot long wood to whittle down to from a cellar feeding a wood furnace using sixteen and longer lengths. And little box means more trips to stoke the flame, tend the fire. That goes out shortly after the led lights do in the old farmstead located west of town in Houlton Maine.
Old Maine Farmsteads Create Fresh Veggies, Fruits, Produce. Nothing Sweeter, Healthier Than Close To Home Food. The Homesteads Heated, “Fueled” With Wood From Your Own Forest Land Too.
What are we toying with buyer for a Jotul woodstove and why not consider any other brand, or a sleek sexy soap stone model that is out there to tempt us? Because my family’s exposure to Jotul woodstove has been an over the top positive one. My oldest brother heated his Bangor Maine home for years and years with a Jotul #4 unit.
This model wood heating stove has a front door that can open up, push down and slide under so a fireplace screen can be added for open blaze effect. Another older brother swears by his years using a 602 and 118 Jotul model outlined in the same previous model link you just passed in the read read read. Slow burning like a cigar to make the fuel burn clean, even, and more completely. Not headed up the chimney in wasted heat that does not benefit the inside of a Maine home sweet home atmosphere.
My Dad sold a slew of Jotul stoves using all fuel sources and fireplace inserts too!
The farm neighborhood neighbors that had the amazing 602 heater kept them. They did not leave them in a house when they moved. You get attached to your Jotul woodstove because you know as the slogan goes “Jotul woodheaters have been fighting the Norwegian winter cold for 160 years”. Wood is a little more precious in Norway where wars, too many centuries of burning wood and more people all tapped the tree woodlot hard. That’s why these cast iron wood heater stoves are so so energy efficient. The tall coal stove Jotuls were not as popular but folks who bought them still use them which speaks volumes. Made to last and too heavy to move when you consider cast iron that needs three men and a small boy to wheel in and out of the Maine home.
Heating with wood gives you a good stewardship feeling deep down inside.
When you have your winter wood all cut, split and ready for the next heating season, it means you are prepared. No worries. And if the power which is rare to lose goes off, no one misses a beat with the wood fire routine. You really feel self sufficient like a homesteader living off grid in Maine.
This Spot For Vacations Is Not A Place To Open Up A Wood Heater Stove Store. But Air Conditioning, Something With A Lime, Siestas Help Handle A Different Kind Of Heat Inside / Outside Your Grass Thatched Roof Hut.
There is an independence when no matter what foreign oil prices shock and awe to new for new price levels, you keep chugging along with your wood heat routine in your Maine home. These Jotul woodstoves are a timeless Norwegian craft. And I bet, chances are you will if you have not yet heard of them first hand in your lifetime. Like rooting for the Red Sox, Patriots, Boston Bruins sports teams, you no doubt feel strongly about your brand of wood stove that keeps your toes from freezing. That heats your home and warms your soul.
Vermont Casting models of all kinds fill the properties that get listed for sale in my area. The Intrepid, Resolute, Defiant models in all colors of enamels. Neat names too for fighting the winter cold. Other woodstoves out there too! Lots of home made ones welded from steel, fashioned from shop trailer truck tire rims, fuel tanks and 55 gallon barrel stove wood heaters. Plus the dependable Ashley or Suburban models square models that are not fancy but work like a charm.
And don’t forget the old Home Comfort, Clarion, Glenwood, Atlantic and other smasher wood cook stoves too heavy to take apart and lug off still stand guard in many Maine country farmsteads and in-town Victorian house kitchen parlors. Some are rough and you find them in Uncle Henry’s, on Craig’s List in searching for Maine treasures in the buy, sell, swap guides. Others have been re-nickeled and have all their parts, are working stoves not just conversation pieces.
Your appreciation for how well your wood stove heater works increases.
You fall in love. Get more attached to the wood heaters you stoke and stroke. That you spend lots of alone time with over the peaceful, lazy winter months. Or those wood cook stoves, outdoor wood boilers that take monster sized tree pieces that you use more often than just the snow calendar months. The former for serving up your Saturday night brown bread, soldier or yellow eye or Jacob’s cattle baked beans in the oven section. While topside another cooking show is playing. Grilling the neat rows of red snapper hot dogs on stove top mingling with the sliced onions like “upta Maine camp ayuh” Chummy.
The really old woodstove parked and forgotten much of the year in the dark of the log cabin retreat in T this R unorganixed township. That’s used for R and R, for hunting, fishing, reading, sleeping and snow sledding or four wheel ATV trail fun. With the woodstove almost driving your out as you play fifteen two, four, six and one point for last card high spirited cribbage matches. Chasing up and down the rows with your wooded match stick marker replacement because the one that came with the board turned up missing. And whoever made the board is gone. Pegs by Porter. RIP Paul Porter a local accomplice to Torrey Sylvester a retired attorney who has made many an exotic wood cribbage board for camp fun.
F-45 Jotul Greenville Wood Heater. Simple, Powerful, Made To Last Norwegian Woodheater.
Heating with wood is an old time tradition in rural Maine because it saves money, heats more completely and gives you healthy exercise year round.
Nothing is wasted when the limbs and blow down trees are cleaned up so it is a win win scenario. Maine is a state not flush with cash, without money to burn so anything along the lines of practical, frugal, we’re all over that. The study and slow impulse control to do your home work is part of the thrifty living.
Like anything, is this model the best value, is this size the closest fit to what is needed based on the specifications of your home for safety clearances to keep the fire marshal and insurance adjuster away from your doorstep.
And that won’t be too much or too little to do the job of heating your Maine home for the maximum comfort for your family. To hang yours mittens next to, to position the wooden rack to dry other clothes a little snow covered from playing or working outside in Vacationland. Every household in Maine’s dry fluffy snow winter climate could use a little moisture inside generated from the drying clothes. And with a wood heater stove, there is always a kettle of hot water for a spot of tea, to make your fresh press hand ground coffee.
The Jotul F-45 Greenville model is a sweet stove that could be a good candidate for replacing the old trooper Jotul 404. Will never sell or get rid of the black beauty smaller cook stove. But the Jotul F-45 is a wood stove under consideration. There is a $300 Energy Of Maine tax credit rebate too which improves the taste for burning with wood to heat your home.
How big a home is best for you depends on area housing stock economics and whether you really are ready for a Murphy bed or farm house sized kitchen.
There are pros and cons for tiny homes, larger housing floor plans and it is a personal choice. But what about the local area real estate options and pricing in a state as vast as Maine? Is it best for a home on wheels or a big smashing Victorian house in Maine that works best for your real estate needs?
Know House Thomaston Maine Is One Big Residence With Rich History, Plenty Of Bedrooms.
For starters, the average price of a home in Northern Maine weighing in at $71,000 and reality that the SAME home would fetch $210,000 in Southern Maine. That fact alone makes the folks in the market for a Maine house do a quick check of their finances. Before considering the plus and minus evaluation of what size home is best for me.
Debt ratios, how much of your income can go to housing and the associated maintenance to carry the sticks and bricks. Spending habits, not just your income shows where your priorities are when opening up the wallet or purse wide to pay for daily expenditures. Saving for kids to attend college impacts how high a house price range you filter the real estate search when just sneaking a peek at what is currently for sale in your market.
If 28% of your income or less should be dedicated to housing, there is one ceiling in place on what you plan to buy today for a house of any size.
If housing stock is larger in rural Maine, those homes cost less and are more plentiful. Yes, more to heat and a bigger square footage for maintenance, to clean, but cheaper than plopping down a starting price of $46,000 for a tiny home on a trailer that are out there.
Micro housing, the proponents brag up you will save on utilities, less to heat and cool. That smaller castles mean time freed up for other endeavors besides cleaning and maintenance keeping the house straight and sound. If you live a couple blocks from a gym, why would you need the corner den or space in the cellar rec room for a treadmill or stair stepper? In rural Maine, your “gym” is outdoor exercise cutting, stacking, splitting wood to heat your home. Or climbing on a tractor to plow the back field to get it ready for spring planting. Or maybe the all out aerobics of producing square or round bales of hay to feed your own livestock and the animals of others with whatever is tucked away in your barn. For a methodical draw from the deposits as the calendar pages cycle through from fall, winter, another spring in Maine.
One Beach Is Not Exactly Like The Next. This One In Maine In Kennebunkport At Dusk.
Larger homes in Maine, what space is used for when there is extra to go around? Home schooling desks, wall charts, science labs and the reading resource library. Or work from the home office space where the Internet connection allows telecommuting. In laws living in the converted farm house shed or Victorian home carriage house. Or using a series of water front or rustic wood camps seasonally before the move south. To places you won’t need a snow shovel or an windshield ice scraper.
The open outdoor and glassed in porches one more common space for more family members to consider hanging out or shelling peas, sipping coffee on. Renting out the extra space for Airbnb or to provide areas for exchange students or to run an inn, a Maine B&B.
The US Census uncovered that the average size of a house in this country is 2657 square feet.
How do you fit into that statistic? Maine is not a state flush with cash, or filled with residences that boast three bedrooms but eight bathrooms. That’s HGTV west coast Hollywood talking. Could you pare it all down and squeeze into a tinier you 500 square foot leaner, greener four walls? They say smaller, tiny homes mean less decorating, force you not to accumulate so much. Tips for moving what and when regardless we hammered out in an earlier real estate blog post on relocating to Maine. The local Amish settlements produce small buildings that many use as “tiny homes” that get modified by the owner. Lots of folks for vacation or homesteading combine more than one Amish storage shed to make them into living area. Here is another Maine tiny home link.
There was a time in the early 1980’s when the Farmer’s Home Administration (FmHA) made the decision to lighten the load. Of housing stock 1400 square foot or larger that came into foreclosure inventory. And that was to be financed for a dollar down and the 33 year loan with 396 payments. The subsidized housing program shifted to a ranch style 1008 square foot goal that was one floor, insulated to the hilt. And the folks buying them made to look hard at their housing budget to make sure they were taught economics 101 to hang onto the home not lose it to come back to Uncle Sam in foreclosure.
Small Maine Farm Sustainable Agriculture. Hard Work, A Highly Rewarding Lifestyle.
The 1400 square foot houses that were priced low, financed for 10% down for a ten year loan were so cheap to buy. That it allowed the new home owner of a foreclosed home to have money left over from the payment load to channel it into whatever maintenance the big and beautiful housing stock required to be ship shape.
Or to fix up, flip and move on up the real estate housing food chain. To try on something different for the house around them. To adapt to a new to them home with a different set of features, size and location that worked best at the time for whatever life cycle they swam in today. Your real estate needs change and not just because you use a walker to get around or the chicks have flown the coop. Divorce, death, disease and on a brighter note promotions, more stork deliveries can cause the itch that needs to be scratched to make the move to something new and different. To impact your quality of life. Being self-sufficient working on fencing, puttering on farm buildings from hen houses to tractor sheds and storage barns.
Home too large, a big house scaring you from purchase? Consider an income generating apartment in one section and if you ask lots of questions going in, you can get a quality renter for the rental portion of the down sized home. Also tax deduction write offs because a portion of maintenance, maybe heating, other items can be used to sweeten the renting out part of your Maine home.
Do you run the roads, do you entertain at home, do you enjoy sitting in a den in front of a roaring fire? In a kitchen rocker not far from a wood cook stove?
Are the kids on every sport’s team known to man and summer camps, year round tune up clinics are part of your daily experience? Is being home a joy or torture? Are you anxious, feeling like you are missing out on something that is not happening in your own backyard? Had it up to here with neighbors? Or long for a few good ones? Would you consider buying then tearing down the house next to you if it came up for sale? Or approaching the neighbor on the other side of the eye sore to purchase it together and have it hauled away with the remaining house lot split down the middle. For one less neighbor in the hood.
Christmas Reflections In Houlton Maine. Small Town Proud Makes The Holiday Colors Brighter, Spirits Higher. Ready, Want A House In A Small Maine Town Setting?
Where the house in Maine is big or small or somewhere in between. To add a water front element. To have a view, to add to the property acreage to own fields, pasture, your own wood lot to heat the house. Or the option to add on easily with a pay as you go, DIY using some bartering skills. Beyond the size, features in a Maine house you can afford to enhance your lifestyle is a big part of why you might want to move. To experience living in a yesteryear grand old larger home in small rural Maine is possible where the same elegance in an urban area is not so common and priced out of reach.
Formal dinners at home, not at Bonanza sliding a plastic cafeteria tray with triangular numbers riding on them or dining on the daily special at Governors or a Pat’s Pizza.
Using a butler’s pantry, the servant’s corner nooks and crannies, overseeing the canning and preserving operation in the summer kitchen. Sneaking up hidden rear stairway passages. Watching your cat bask in the stained glass natural lighting spilling on the floor where he or she naps. Wainscoting, raised panel ceilings, tin, marble, granite, exotic maintained or not patterned multi toned woods of all kinds. Using the upstairs sleeping porch on a hot summer night.
Converting the walk up attic space into a teenager’s hideaway or media room. Drawing from the root cellar provisions and wood just the size of the heating chamber it feeds through out the day and night. As Old Man Winter loses his gas. And Jack Frost packs up his weather tools for another year. And the early flowers poke their heads through the ground signaling spring is knocking. Bring out the porch furniture, refill the gas grill canister. Service the lawnmower. Fill those driveway potholes and re-hang the rain gutters.
Or on your knees in the spiritual flower beds and tasty vegetable gardens. Enjoying bird feeders, your pets of all sizes with space to hang out in and outside of home. Why you live where you do and was it inherited, where you grew up? Or a house that Jack built without a large mortgage hanging around your neck. Built slowly calling in favors and watching you tube videos on house construction. Tapping into skills honed back in shop class. But the table saw in the living room for years until the housing project turned the corner at least. And earlier work is time to replace because the kid’s grew up and out they went. It’s been a couple decades filtering out of the hour glass revolutions. What size house is best for you if you relocated to Maine or already live here but thinking of changing it up when the real estate market is favorable?
Loosen the belt, put away the Zumba fitness CD. It was not just the Pilgrims who sampled quite the feast put on by the native first settlers. Maine food dishes prepared with local ingredients taste so much better too after being outside in the fresh crisp air too. Whether working on a farm, tramping the woods while hunting looking for game or splitting, stacking firewood.
Mountain Ash Berries Wrapped In Ice On A Maine Lake Today.
So Thanksgiving dinner, what to serve up for the gathering around your table? Traditions for Thanksgiving mean much of what you create in the kitchen or ask others to contribute is from memories of what you remember growing up. Everyone likes green bean casserole with the onions on top and the yummy sauce right? But what is the best recipe for green bean casserole? Do you want it crunchy, cheesy, jazzy?
On our farm table growing up Maine potatoes were a given. When you grow them, you are exposed to many ways to enjoy spuds. Whipped potatoes seemed to be the choice by my mom. The pearled onions, the squash, sweet potato all steaming in bowls escorted from the pantry to the formal dining room table used on special occasions. Cinnamon rolls like any breads take a special touch I have been told. And growing up, whenever my Mom asked what should she bring to a family or social dinner, it was hand’s down always her cinnamon rolls. They were to die for and akin to the nectar of the Gods.
Layered jello salads, watergate salads. Not only the sweet potatoes had marshmallow swimming in them. Never was a fan of the jello with the carrots and who knows what else mixed and chilled inside. But some likes them because they are a constant.The plate is only so large and what to fill it with in the eenie meenie miney moe of Thanksgiving food offerings.
Peas and yellow beans with cream could show up as a vegetable choice for some. Peas were a standard entry that you could bank on. Ambrosia salad with the cherries, mandarin oranges, orchard apples. pineapple, peaches, everything plucked from a fruit tree. The dinnerware not used but a handful of times a year added to the celebration remembrance. So did the decorations, the floral arrangements that were all natural, from the local seasonal surrroundings.
Turkey with the stuffing, gravy to lather the taters the standard, spiral ham could debut at Christmas. Deer meat venison. It’s what’s for Thanksgiving dinner for some.
But Delmonico steaks grilled on the charcoal outside the farmhouse porch entry could make their way to our Maine family feast. The meat not parked for days and price stickered. Not the kind clear wrapped and hoisted out of the cooler but something different. Hidden like a present in white paper, tied with string. A pencil marking the price, what was hiding inside. After a special request was made ringing the bell. to relay the order to the hunched over butcher with the red stained white frock. Who hand delivered it to you as you continued to fill the wire basket grocery cart with the one squeaky obstinate wheel.
Lots Of Public Suppers, Ones At Thanksgiving Happen In Small Maine Towns. Across The Baked Beans, Coleslaw, Brown Bread And Potato Salad Table Conversations.
Mince meat pie, pecan, coconut cream, lemon meringue or cherry were not the norm but were on the holiday menu besides your year round standards of strawberry, raspberry, apple, pumpkin or blueberry pies. Or hot about another mocca ball, a little fudge or mixed nuts for grazing before or after the feast? Squares come in so many flavors and the cookies were not the kind you buy wrapped in cellophane with elves painted on the store bought packages.
Seafood from Maine got invited to Christmas celebrations and Thanksgiving more the bounty harvested from the local farm fields. Oyster stew or crab cakes served up Christmas Eve. No reason why a Maine lobster or steamer clams or salmon could be provided table space to celebrate the guy in white fur and red velvet and roof top tap dancing reindeer’s visit right? Ho ho happy holidays.
Thanksgiving dining to give thanks, to count your blessings even it is pizza, bologna and cheese sandwiches. Being thankful to have any food, for the fellowship and a time of reflection on the past year.
Thanksgiving meant who sits where, who carves the bird. The guest list created new. To include first time diners to the table, to include the regulars still living and the lost ones in your bow your head, holding hands blessing prayers.
It’s your holiday to celebrate the best way possible. Pass the cranberry sauce, the bread and butter pickles, the many relishes please. There is no shortage of the extras like lady ashburnham or beet pickles as your eyes scanned the family table. That is like a culinary tetris game to find open table space for one more dish or platter. The buffet loaded up with the overflow, the cold drinks, coffee urns and what could not be parked on the dining room table. That would only straight jacket diners and only serve to interfere with available elbow room.
Home Made Maine Pies, What’s Your Favorite Kind?
The Thanksgiving dinner spread seemed to be more harvest gold theme because we had just put the turnip, squashes, carrots, pumpkins in the root cellar. Fiddle heads to douse with vinegar could show up at Thanksgiving or Christmas or both. Picked from along brook and river side banks back in early spring and frozen for the special occasion family dining.
What’s for dinner this Thanksgiving at your home? Have you ever worked a free Thanksgiving dinner for the public members that have no family? Whether Veterans who served, shut ins house house bound and afraid of ice when using walkers. Or folks just missing any living or close by family members, Thanksgiving should not be spent alone. I think about the truck drivers, soldiers overseas who have to adopt new family to share the time of gratitude, the holiday called Thanksgiving.
I have a real job and it is not creating the Me In Maine blog post stream of news from up here in the upper right hand corner.
And the common theme I hear more than any is “get me out of the city, away from people.” Maine is a vast state and under nourished for population. The head count is low and the acreage of woods, farm land, water front is huge and unspoiled. Because the distance north protects and insulates the state of Maine.
Why People Pick Maine For Low Cost Property, The Wide Open Space. Low Population, Less Folks To Bump Into And Bug You The #1 Reason Order Up Maine.
So other people. Why are they the problem for many?
Because folks need to take Dale Carnegie and learn to win friends and influence people? No. That’s not it because I meet lots of people in my day job of listing, market, selling Maine real estate. That are friendly, personable and not difficult to deal with…but throw these same people into grid lock living of a city. Add a dash of crime, an element of noise and feeling jammed in and watch out. Things heat up like the tempers and anxiety levels.
It is the same do or die, fight or flight situation as an animal backed into a tight corner exhibits. With teeth bared, its shackles up. The nice as punch, easiest going dog, cat, person becomes a caged animal wanting to break out at all costs. They snap. That is why people buy property in Maine. They can breathe, not worry about plowing into someone that invades their space. They also can own and enjoy it without debt. Everything you know divide by three, four living in small rural Maine.
The stress of living with too many people, way too much regulation and high cost of surviving the urban landscape.
It is the reason folks age prematurely from the stress. They are not happy and no matter how much they try to retail therapy their way out of it, something is missing. Something money can not buy. Maine is outdoor experiences, the ability to get below radar and away from people. To spend time with me, myself and I.
This Is Not The Landscape Where Too Many People Live. Maine Is Less Population, More Natural Unspoiled Space To Enjoy As You Take It Easy.
Had a call this week from China. Joe is from Chengdu and teaches English. I told him in a phone conversation it must be neat to be fluent in Chinese and he says he is never going to stop learning that language.
He spied with his little eye a low cost house, land, near a lake and on a brook for $12,500. He wants a place to vacation at least once a year with the plan to move here full time someday. He has traveled extensively, is from California originally and has a buddy from Wales who also teaches English in China.
There is lots of demand for help teaching English and folks on the streets of China when they hear English flock to it to practice the language.
To become more proficient with the plan for many to take a leap to the USA someday. The land of opportunity. A cheap place for Vacationland ME real estate and why people buy property in Maine.
But back to Joe. He also has another friend who writes and is looking for a backdrop to crank up the creative literary juices. I told him after college, I worked in broadcasting in Bangor Maine, and for a time at a station writer Stephen King owns. And if you digest any of his many books, Maine is a common setting with a twist on the places to add spark to the fiction of his works.
The time zone difference, knowing China does not spring forward or fall back to save on the time to match the calendar here in Maine.
A dozen hours, it was 11:30 at night there and 11:30 in the morning on the call as crystal clear as a bell with no delay or static. I have been sending him property video links and bring him up to speed on how things rock and roll in Maine. He likes what he sees, hears and is sharing in his cyber circle. Others connected to his sphere are reaching out from far away lands and the spinning blue and green marble is becoming smaller, more accessible to many.
Easy Does It, Everyone Is Not Strung Out, Including The Animals. Plenty Of Elbow Room, Living Space Does That! Get To Maine For A Sample.
The same day another phone call from St Barths, an Caribbean Island. The caller with a thick French accent, asking about a church for the same $12,500 price tag we must be running a special on in Maine real estate. So much for so little makes Maine a bargain for property listings and add the sauce surrounding it of eye candy, less people, more wildlife and the strong connection to get some real estate intensifies. It is why lots of our sweat and tears is poured into telling, showing the outside audience what Maine is like.
Another caller from Garmisch, Germany buzzed in through thin air of a wireless signal.
He told me the location in Bavaria, near Germany’s highest mountain was the site of the 1936 World Olympics. Evidently whoever picks the venue for the next global games requires a certain size population. So Hitler anxious to be the host city combined Garmisch (in the west) and Partenkirchen (in the east). They had been two separate towns for many centuries, and still maintain quite separate identities. See link above on the location in Germany.
Have had a seller from England sell a home he bought from us to a purchaser from Ireland we located from one of our blog posts on simple Maine living. People move, look for a better location or just to sample a new part of the World. Traveling is easier today and folks have more disposable money to burn.
They don’t only come to the New Land riding in clipper ships, the Plymouth Rock models or the square back ones Chris Columbus navigated in search of rum, spices, real estate for the taking by planting a flag, for the fame and fortune. To go down in the history books as a remembered name echoed through time.
Church For Sale In Maine! $12,500! That Makes The Phone Ring, Email Server To Glow Hot Around The World.
One buyer from Seattle Washington has boat loads of blue chip software tech stock that went through the roof in value.
And did not want his four cats to ride on a commercial airline so he chartered a private Lear jet to whisk them away to Maine. I had to pick them up at the Houlton Maine airport and get the pilot and two other crew members a ride to a rental car place, to the check at a local motel.
The cost was $15,000 for the one way delivery of the felines and the pair of fly boys and stewardess were leaving the next day on touch down in Boston for the return back haul of a family heading to the west coast.
So back to the day job of peddling properties and will keep shooting images, uploading videos about life in Maine. The way life should be and a place where not many other areas of the World can compare.
Spring in Maine, a time of yard work to repair the truck plowing lawn scars, to remove rocks air lifted in from the snow blower.
Sides of houses pressure washed to release the sand and salt residue that clings to the exterior. And garage doors thrown open high and the interiors swamped out and organized. Just like the cars and trucks we hunker down in when the white blanket covers the landscape in Maine.
Spring is a time when not just your Maine house cats, dogs, whatever pet that samples the two dishes through out the day acts a little funny. Like they are on too catnip.
Cabin fever from the being stuck inside a little more than you would like over winter intensifies as the snow banks surrender and the temperature rises in the tube sampling the air outside your kitchen window.
Free at last. Especially if you are in the elderly demographic of Mainers and worried sick for too long. About that hidden layer of glare ice that might be lurking under the new fallen snow. That snow adds lubrication to the polished ice formation like a moat causing house arrest. That makes conditions ideal for a broken hip or dislocated shoulder if the house dweller inside gets any ideas of a quick escape to Wally World, Piggly Wiggly or Mardens. No one wants the siren ride to the ER and the OR pin applied to the hip right?
Searching For A Snack. Shy Maine Black Bears Shake Off Hibernation And Become More Social.
Throwing open windows and house doors to exchange the air inside for the fresh stuff the other side of the insulated barriers.
Study intently of the online and newsprint canoe and kayak racing circuit schedule news. For trophies to add to the collection gathering dust in the bookcase or on the fireplace mantel. Or the row row or paddle your boat for just the sheer pleasure of floating, coasting with the current at your own pace. Down a winter run off engorged river or stream in Maine with fellow friends, family and neighbors that is a spring tradition for many in Maine. You see the green and red water craft leaning against garages, getting ready for the heave ho hoist to the rack on the back of pickups around Maine. As the angled yellow or red or stainless steel angled plow and frame come off the other end.
The vegetable seed catalogs have long ago been delivered and peat pots on old newspapers cover card tables and porch room window sills.
Both areas littered with jump started, sprouting vegetables to transplant because of they are the best areas to capture the all important sunshine.
That is invited into Maine homes lucky enough to have an eastern, better yet southerly exposure location. The pools of warm sunshine same areas cats like to lounge as they follow the yellow and red ball radiation of heat and light from room to room in houses around Maine.
Maine Moose Jogging By A Maple Syrup Tapped Grove. Spring Air Stirs The Wildlife And The Local Natives.
Plans for a bigger garden this year with new editions that were not on the menu for family dining when harvested after the regiment of planting, weeding, watering, feeding in the labor of love. To serve your family, yourself and all the folks you share the excess bounty from the good old Earth that creates the all natural foodstuffs. In the piece of dirt that can be measured in feet, yards or acres depending on the size of the metes and bounds legal description in the deed to the house you call home in Maine.
Funneling the income tax return to needed repairs or to erase debt for the free and clear. That is part of spring’s ritual involving whether you owe or get a refund. Filling in driveway pot holes, pushing dirt back in to smooth out the runway stop and go. Spring means lots of exercising that involves ladders, holes, window washing and tightening, straightening what is loose.
New Year’s a regular time of resolutions for a better disciplined life as the ball drops and you kiss the one you love and rip off the month of December from the kitchen calendar.
But spring is a time of action to get results from the pledge IOU’s written under the influence of bubbly grape juice or barley pop or whatever firewater tickles the taste buds to fresh you in life celebrations and mile stones. Gratitude is riches and that blessing increases inside especially in spring. A time of renewed hope, faith and relief that robins and song birds return from the south along with lake loons who serenade us nightly as we circle our chairs around open fire pits for some outdoor gap fests and heart to heart therapy sessions.
Opening up the lake, woods, river camps in Maine.
Chasing out the mice who hung out while you were gone. Making a mental list transferred to the scribble on the job jar items that may be a little too ambitious for your back and wallet. But nonetheless created in gusto with prioritizing like the triage exercise in an emergency room. To determine whether the machine shed roof on a set of Maine farm property buildings trumps the replacement of the two windows or sliding doors that have lost their seal and fog over. Interfering with the view of the bird feeder that attracts winged delights of all kinds and a fair share of the cats and squirrels, chipmunks from around the neighborhood to shoo away with the daisy red rider broadcasting copper pellets.
Next Year’s Wood Pile In Tree Life Form. Ready To Knit On, To Slowly Cut And Split Into Just The Right Stove Lengths. Mainers Stay A Season Ahead With Their Wood Stash.
Screwing back on or replacing hanging by one screw mud flaps. Getting a new windshield pinged by a sand truck rock on the way to the local sport’s team and their quest for a gold basketball or coveted hockey trophy. The new sheet of glass so the new vehicle inspection sticker can be applied to avoid the blue lights from Smokey Bear asking for license and your registration please.
Tending the wood home fires stops. Feeding the stoves and furnaces winds down. Next year’s tree length is delivered to prepared early for the next round of winter weather. Staying ahead of the heating curve.
Trips around Maine because you are lucky enough to live here and sample easily the delights of the many regions of Vacationland. Those are mulled over in the shower, humming while shaving with the guy you meet and greet each day in the bathroom mirror. Or while performing the thorough, deep spring cleaning where interior walls get scrubbed, curtains washed or dry cleaned and wardrobes exchanged. To slip into something more comfortable to match the weather in Maine now playing outside your home or camp or cottage.
Treks with picnic baskets to Baxter Park, down to the rugged rock bound coast line in Maine.
Hiking up the hills, biking around the islands that deliver whatever you peddle by ferry boats running on tight schedules when the Maine weather allows them to without peril. Collecting another light house in Maine for the collection.
The Sweet Stuff, Rock Maple Sap That Boils Down 40 To 1 For The Golden Mixture To Ooze And Drizzle On Your Griddle Stacks Of Maine Blueberry Pancakes.
Trips to visit, pay respects to family plots on the spots in a cemetery where departed loved ones are buried. The plastic flowers replaced with rear ones in some cases. Trimming bushes, shaping landscaping trees to keep them low to the ground and respectful. Silent and audible conversations had with the ones you miss but know are in a better place with no suffering and saving you a seat.
Maine home shows around the state give you ideas for renovations to your castle this spring and beyond.
New toys for the water front or all the trails that dot and dash the Gazetteer map to explore get attention too if sales too hard to pass up are marketed correctly. The seed is already planted in Mainers who study the Uncle Henry’s and Craiglist for a true bargain. Snow sled trail markers and directional signs are collected, uprooted in muddy fields. To make way for the farmers to drop the chisel plow to get ready for another spring planting when the soil warms up and drys out.
Awareness sharpens in spring because of the lull caused by spending more time than you would like indoors over a Maine winter. The exercise regiment increases and the pounds added on during the holidays melt away like the snow flakes free loading in receding bank on properties around Maine. Green grass awaits, golf courses too and hardware trips to perform a few of the requests at a time on the honey do list.
Spring time in Maine, folks of all ages smile more, dream louder.
Kids sense it first as bikes are hauled out of storage way too early. And forgetting to wear a coat as they race for the trampoline under chilly conditions remind you what it is like to be young and not carry the weight of mortgage payments, poor medical reports and juggling the check book.
If you only spend time in Maine around July 4th, add some new dance steps to your vacation fox trot or jitter bug up the pike numbered “95” into the Pine Tree state. Maine, she does a body good and once those heart strings are found, she never lets go and you don’t mind one bit.
