You wake at 4:30 AM, need to get to the barn to start your day haying, graining, watering, cleaning out the cattle, small animal pens.
One Potato Two Potato Three Potato…Four. Then sit down to a big breakfast before finishing fixing the power take off on the farm tractor you need to run the post hole digger. The one needed to create the extra ten acre pasture that needs fencing so you can rotate the feed plots. To give the primary pasture a break to recharge, grow as your herd increases.
You, your wife, kids are partners with true division of the Maine farm labor.
She and your youngest child collect eggs for resale at the Maine farmer’s market in town. You and the oldest child spend a lot of time together working, talking on the farm chores when he is not in school.
Maine Farmers Market Video
Next winter’s wood is being processed now so it will be dry, stacked, and not green. Or loaded with creosote which could cause chimney fires in the kitchen cook stove or in the cellar furnace. The day to day on a Maine farm is varied, interesting, never the same ole same ole. You are in the best physical shape in your life. You can see what you did today and enjoy the empowerment, hands on activities.
You get to see your family a lot through out the day on a Maine farm.
It is not a case of Mom and Dad race out the door early and come home late. Not a case of latch key kids alone most of the childhood. Or wisked off to day care by individuals outside the home.
You help the Maine farmer next door and can expect the same in return.
The weather is not always your friend but you make it work around the reports you have to make the best of things. You are grateful for all your have. Don’t lament what you do not. You’ve become a better carpenter, mechanic.
You have extreme patience, are good at shopping for the best deal. Money is precious, hard earned and never wasted. You are willing to learn how to fix things yourself. Go on line and read books and are not afraid to ask others for guidance to run the Maine farm. Thinking we just described the life you want to lead full time, part time, on a Maine hobby farm? Check the selection, ask some questions. Call, click, come visit us!
Could you raise animals, crops, take care of yourself on a Maine farm?Winter peace on a Maine farm, awaiting spring’s rebirth, renewal.From your vantage point on the open side porch of your Maine farmhouse, you can see your wife talking low, softly to the arabian horse on the other end of the lunge line she is holding. You have a sense of peace, contentment that was missing ten years ago when you worked the concrete jungle, pounded the pavement in the financial district of Wall Street. You had the shiny cars, the boats, the vacation homes but never really had time to use them, enjoy them. The three kids grew up in a flash and now you are on a porch in late summer reflecting on your life, your family, your day on the farm ahead.
You are set financially as long as you don’t go overboard on buying any six digit farm equipment you don’t really need. Today’s job jar contains one mission to repair the fence in the hidden rear five acre pasture. Mr Maine Moose decided to be neighborly and visit the Arabian, the hereford and holstein cows grazing the rich clover bed of that pasture and two fence posts were sheered clean off in the visit from Bullwinkle.
This summer you are anxious to get to know two of your grandchildren better, to teach them some life skills, work ethic. To recall the same family stories your dad, his dad and mom told them to pass on to the new members of the family. The pair will spend the summer with you and the wife. And the grand daughter Echo will be riding shotgun with your wife to a dozen horse shows, jumping in green hunter competitions in Maine and over the border into New Brunswick Canada. You and Hercules will be tinkering on the antique tractor, shopping for a two cycle dirt bike and hopefully getting the big original barn on your spread coated with a fresh splash of red paint. Restoring the old John Deer B tractor and doing a motor job on the Farmall Super M that is as old as you are. Filling that freshly painted barn with hay. All on the to do list to check off one by one but all the jobs / plans very weather dependent.
You heat with wood, have a primary furnace in the cellar, and an old timer 1920’s cook stove using the same fuel from your own land in the kitchen. There is a summer kitchen to can and preserve everything from apples in the orchard to free brocolli from the farmer down the road. For fun instead of the theatre, the opera or a river cruise on the Hudson or Potomac, you feel a satisfaction from a visit to the feed store to purchase salt mineral blocks for the critters. The soil is silenium deficient and the salt licks mean no white muscle disease or vet visits to give them mineral supplements. You learn that trick the first summer when the cattle started losing weight, looking poorly and you did not know why. Then.
You plan to enlarge the quarter acre pond that was on the farm when you bought it but that trout will populate next summer when the grandchildren visit again. Feeding those fish released with the same grandchildren from large water filled plastic bags. Fish food broadcast nightly as the sunsets and watching the fish jump is your new nature channel cable television diversion. Your hands are calloused. You have a farmer’s tan, wear a Boston Red Sox or Bruins hat and have lost the tire of fat that circled you like a moon the last ten years of the fast paced life in the city.
Could you leave the urban life behind, move to Maine and stand listening to friends and neighbors where you live in the city wonder if you are off your rocker. And then the same people visiting and seeing how happy, how at peace you are on your Maine farm? Simple living, healthy four season Maine weather to serve as the backdrop for the next chaper of your life. Maine, It’s The Way Life Used To Be…Honest, Down To Earth, Friendly. Me Real Estate
