Seeing Maine On A Snowsled, Snowmobile Means Getting Places You Can Not By Car.
Maine is four seasons and winter is not a time to hibernate, shiver, hide out indoors.
We ski cross country and down hill. Snowsledding is big and the ITS trail is 3500 miles long. Ice fishing and hockey games have a heck of a local following.
And those snowsled trails groomed by these Tuckers pulling drags to smooth the path for snowmobiles, snowsleds. The new snow was piled high but light and fluffy, full of air. But we’ll take it and are grateful.
Maine, one big state, four seasons to enjoy the outdoor recreation.
From a Maine mountain top, or riding a snowmobile you see beauty that is unspoiled and causes you to lose your voice, choke up. It is spiritual, hits you deeply when you are transported to this special place called Maine.
No matter what the season. Maine, she grabs your heart, in a good way and will not let go no matter how hard your try to break loose. Get here quick as you can.
Have that pioneer spirit or ever think you were born late?
Own A Piece, Live Off The Maine Land, Woods.
Would you like to homestead in Maine and be self sufficient?
Maine is a great state to take it to the level you are seeking to reduce the size of your carbon foot print. Did a sister site off grid Maine blog post this morning with a couple of video versions of how to do it. What these folks ran in to for set backs and how they would do it differently which help you avoid the same mistakes with their honesty.
Back in 1980 when I pinned on the “REALTOR” designation and started listing, marketing, selling Maine real estate, I would see what were affectionately called “granolas” and “back to the landers” that creaked in to the office driveway with rickety cars filled with the nicest, a little naive people.
Some of the “find me a piece of cheap of land way way off the road” Maine wannabees were sons and daughters of pretty wealthy city lawyers, doctors, successful business folks. Not as ambitious as the above described folks courting the Amish way of good honest living.
And ones you knew that in about a year, the back to the land in Maine craze would disappear from their eyes. Usually when the money mom and dad shelled out to get them up here ran out.
If you are looking for a low cost piece of Maine land. A property for vacations and part time off the beaten path, maybe without power to plug in to living. Have a good selection of affordable Maine land listings. Some properties on the Maine waterfront, all with peace and quiet and several with attractive, generous owner financing help to complete your dream.
Maine’s Fertile Fields Mean Big Yields Of Anything Raised On Them. Like Potatoes.
My dad was a Maine potato farmer and instead of just growing his own for market, he bought potatoes from others too and was a spud broker.
It seemed logical to buy a trailer truck to haul them to market too. Usually in Boston, Hartford, New York City. The first trailer was a 1957 Trailmobile. But after after all the trailers were Great Dane brand.
That first truck a single “screw” with a tag axle with Prem Pak hand painted on the door by local artist Allison Britton. The trailer’s were shorter, I think 38 feet and the loads less until Interstates started popping up and more powerful trucks were put on the roads.
Eventually eight trucks collected. Whites, an International Transtar, A Peterbilt were added to the Maine transportation fleet.
As a kid my three brothers and I took trips from Maine to the city produce markets.
Helped unload and saw lots of other truckers bringing in grapefruit, tomatoes, various produce to go with the Maine potatoes we hauled in. Then high tailed it back to Aroostook County to load up another trailer. Do it again. no matter what the weather.
Having a truck back haul was critical to help with the fuel, and subsidize the trip. My dad and mom had bought ICC rights because cargo hauling was regulated. You had to have the authority to haul certain comodities to market. Loads for other drivers, usually french fry cartoons but sometimes something exotic like Jade East perfume boxes were hauled up to the St John River Valley where it was “bottled” for reshipment. 25% of the backhaul for other truckers that had to tape on a “Prem Pak” sign to their doors went in to the trucking operating account.
Because trucks were one arm of the Maine potato growing business, I had one brother who became a mechanic engineer and worked his way up through the ranks of White Frieghtliner to eventual management of the Portland Oregon truck plant. He grew up designing trailer trucks and cars..working long hours in his room with a desk dad had built to create the new designs, master piece layouts. The businesses your parents are in give exposure to job areas that may lead to your career employment.
My parents also built a large central potato packaging warehouse to store and process the potato orders from the city produce markets. And another brother worked on that construction project. He became a civil engineer and works in the Boston area.
The jobs, careers your parent’s expose their Maine families to can lead to directions, choices, paths their kids decide to go. I am glad I grew up in Maine and in a family where lots of business exposure seen first hand by working in them in my childhood. Maine, neat state, no crime, friendly people. Like to consider owning some Maine real estate part or full time? That’s where I come in when you are ready.
Vacationland Information, What Living In Maine Is All About, Like.
You’ve never been to Maine but have heard good things about the state.
But you have burning questions, concerns, topics needing addressing. Ok (stepping up to the podium) I’m game. In fact, we get asked many questions in the course of our work as a Maine real estate broker every day. Heck we did a video for the Maine FAQ common ones.
But besides questions about the weather, crime, if we have any gangs (no, thank you) the inquirers are like an explorer hungry, thirsty for information.
Over and over the same why is Maine real estate priced so low, how far are you from Boston, New York, Saturn and tell me about your schools, recreation, healthcare, churches.
It runs the A to Z and we produce many other videos to handle those questions.
Talking to the person posing the Maine questions works better than just tapping out electrons to form words. Like you are grazing on right now as you pair of eyeballs do the typewriter scan like eating corn, back and forth. With Maine videos, you can hear the blogger’s voice. See his facial expressions. Have some audio visuals packaged in and to just sit there.
Scope out our Maine community videos when you have some time if you are serious about learning all I can share about life in Vacationland. Maine, one super place and the longer I listen to the questions coming from outside, the more I know life here is very special.
It is no secret that job discrimination happens in favor of folks from Maine.
You hear stories about a parking lot full of people looking for a job after World War Two in say Hartford CT. People making aircraft parts like jet turbines, or in shipyards needing laborers that know how to work. Want to be employed and pitch in, get the chores done.
Without crying about not being paid enough or considering striking, unionizing. And the question being raised to the crowd, who is from Maine? Which became just another way of filtering out the many faces, meaning if you are from Maine you have a job. And do you have a brother or sister in the same boat that needs work? Tell them to call, stop in.
Why?
Work ethic, pride of doing a good job and being hungry, dependable, consistent and just plain needing employment.
To send part or most of the check back to parents at home or some family member depending on you. To cause you to go south looking for a job and being a hard worker from days on the farm, in the Maine woods, or along the coast fishing.
Maine, not a bad place to be from especially when you find yourself in Florida and the eyes light up when they learn where you are from when looking for a job. In Houlton Maine there is a Smith and Wesson factory for handcuffs, gun production. And I have heard that the 140 or so employees here in Aroostook County crank out over half of the production when combining a 600 person Springfield MA work force.
That work ethic reputation is the best advertising for a company wanting an employment force that produces. Day in and out. 365 days a year. Find it in Maine where pride of doing a job job, earning a hard earned day’s pay still applies. And where Maine real estate is so much cheaper, the crime non-existent in the 4th lowest state in the union for all that mischief. No gangs here either.
Traveling north on Interstate 95 with youngest son and tuned in to Maine Public Radio’s NPR as we zip along in the jeep on I-95 Sunday.
And Prairie Home Companion had just wrapped up another radio show when programming shifted to a piece about how the country developed a spend it if you got it attitude.
There were a number of experts on people, society that gave their two cents about how folks work, what makes them tick these days. The sentiment that it used to be your happiness and contentment was inside, internal. That joy came from running a tight ship with your household finances and not over spending. Being frugal and everything in moderation under each and every home roof. But the shift to you have equity in your home and why not tap in to it to improve your life by loosening up a little happened.
In other areas of the country the new found source of wealth in refinancing your home, tapping in to cash locked in your assets became in style. Maybe to compensate for the go go helter skelter living pace that emptied, tired and bewildered in urban areas is part of how it happened too. Something missing in your life and the attempt to replace the basics with items off the shelve that were shiny, new, shrink wrapped, high cost because it was the latest and greatest Daddio.
The show illustrated the happiness module becoming external and tied to spending money, resources to strive for more material things.
Sometimes to impress your neighbor or because you neighbor had this and that and darn it, you should too thinking. But the final analysis is the shift back to down sizing. Trying to get out from under that second and third mortgag, the expenses. To finally have no debt living at all.
A Maine home that is within your means and living, striving to not be over extended. Humble living, not ego stroking and stoking tied to more and more out of sight spending. Maine is living simple, not calling attention to what you have. But knowing you have savings to sleep better nights for that twist in life, that next rainy day set back. And you could buy it if you wanted to but deciding that you just don’t need it. So more often than not you don’t dip in to the pocket or wallet. It is the exception not the norm when you do spend money and having way way better buying impulse control.
In Maine we watch this exercise and remember our local roots. That we take money out of the equation easily because we live in a vast, unspoiled state. Up here in the right hand cornrer of the world bordering Canada on three sides. The ocean blesses us on a 4th. Because we are not over populated, there goes the traffic, paying for parking, high auto insurance. Because our small towns are run with volunteers and a home grown approach not store bought, the communities are tighter, more connected. Happier living because it rests on each and every local resident in Maine’s shoulders and we all have a role in the day to day.
Natural resources and four seasons outdoor recreation, beauty for free when you live here in Maine. Low and no cost fun that does not involve whipping out the plastic, signing on the dotted line for that third mortgage. Maine, it is not about the money. It’s family, communities and local pride in where we live. Self sufficient living, not expecting a hand out and fierce local fire in our belly joy. Because we are lucky enough to live in Maine and know it, feel it every day. Maine, the way life should be.
