MeInMaine Blog

Tag: growing up on maine farms

  • The Need For A Production, To Make The Everyday An Experience, Memorable.

    <1>When I was a small child, I worked on a Maine farm with my parents, three older brothers in Aroostook County.

    Part of my job as a young grasshopper was picking vegetables, fruits, produce we grew and sold at a Maine farm road side stand. Working with the motoring public was an eye opener as a lad.

    Maine Farm Stand Markets
    Maine Farm Fresh Veggies, Fruits, Produce. Nothing Sweeter, Healthier Than Close To Home Food.

    The lady with the expensive shiny, squeaky clean, heavily chromed car was often difficult.

    Snarky, not in the best of moods to deal with in her Maine farm stand purchases. The driver of a not so new, multi colored fender ride burning oil, needing a muffler was a joy.

    And maybe too free with her money that the car would need to keep running. On the road and getting a new vehicle inspection sticker glued to the inside of the windshield. With a new notch cut out of it to be legal.

    The lady in the Rambler, Studebaker, Desoto, whatever brand happy with her purchase of fresh Maine farm veggies, fruits. Highly content, humming a song and smiling. With the quality, but also the baker’s dozen of thirteen philosophy we add to the cash and carry trading of what we grew on the Maine farm.

    Now it seems instead of just offering close to home, grown local Maine farm fresh foodstuffs, the lowest price, an experience above and beyond helps in the marketing.

    To hold your own or increase the bottom line tale of veggie sales.

    Home Grown, Maine Farm Fresh.
    Small Maine Farm Sustainable Agriculture. Hard Wood, Highly Rewarding Lifestyle.
    So instead of the old days of picking a trailer load of pumpkins and placement in one place behind the big front door of the farm barn. The public would rather take a ride. Hop up into the wagon. Lead by a jovial guy wearing overalls, a sun shading straw hat. With a blade of long grass perched, dangling out of the corner of his mouth. As he adjusts, pulls the throttle level a couple notches. To increase the “put put put” speed of the narrow front end iron horse pulling the wagon out back.

    Smiling, navigating the antique Maine farm tractor down the winding, twisting field road to the patch beyond sight of the Maine farm buildings.

    Destination the rear forty acres. To strawberry fields going on forever. High silk topped rows of soldier straight green corn stalks. All aboard for the deal direct at the source. Coming up, raised from the good Earth. Rich soil rocks removed each spring. The Maine land worked, tilled, fertilized. Seeds planted and tended to produce the loving bounty of hopefully a big yield crop harvest.

    The personal escort to the farm field in Maine. For the helping, involvement in the picking the cream of the crop. Just the one you want, that is still hooked to the vine. Fresher, there is not to be found than that. Ground zero. From the very source, selecting not just any old pumpkin, blue hubbarb or acorn squash from a pile. But picking the apples of your eye that are reached up to rip from the tree connection. Plunked for the filling up the basket or bag to carry back to the Maine farm tally it up, check out.

    Maine Farm Fields With Cows.
    Space Happens On A Maine Farm. Open Places For Raising Critters, Crops. Outdoor Living With Fresh Air.

    No just any produce from the boot scoot and boogie from the Maine farm.

    But the best of the patch in your personal humble opinion. Having it your way without donning the paper crown with flat illustrated jewels adorning it around the rim. For filling, being king, queen for the day.

    People want choices. Have so many options today unlike back in Henry Ford’s beginning days. Where you had selection of just one color of tin lizzy or lizzie. Basic black. Where ice cream was vanilla plain. Maybe a handful of grape nut seeds strewn in the hand churned home made ice cream.

    Was it easier when there was less money to fuel the eenie meenie miney moe?

    Not needing to be entertained, everything to be fun and light, bright delightful. Just happy to have whatever was delivered, offered to you. Like at meal time, this is what we are having. Mom was not a short order cook with a three plastic coated fold out menu of other options to fit your fancy. If your nose turned up, head swiveled away. And oh oh. Here comes a picky eater when it raised its ugly head.

    To please the taste buds. Dulled by too much snacking out of boredom not hunger. Just prior to the sit down for tonight’s special of the day. Prepared in the Maine farm home pantry and placed before you made with many loving hands. And you were grateful to have it served up, just available to dine on. To satisfy the deep down hunger worked up from laboring, using energy and burning up the calories. On a Maine farm where you worked hard, respected the labor process, appreciated all you received from the toil.

    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
    207.532.6573
    info@mooersrealty.com

  • Different Flowers From The Same Maine Garden.

    Maine Small Farm Living, You Work Hard.
    Growing Up On A Maine Farm. How To Work Hard Just Part Of Childhood Education Day To Day.

    The argument about where you live being more or less important than the genetic DNA make up, wiring that Mom and Dad contributed to the first seed called you.

    What if you lived in Maine, instead of in an urban sprawl? How would your kids have turned out different or more or less the same?

    If you lived on a Maine farm, and your kids by seven had mastered every piece of machinery. With skills at behind the wheel driving. Confidence, industrious, productive vital members of the Maine farm operation. Not child abuse. Not youth exploitation. Not slave labor with your brothers and sisters joined by a thread of steel links on the same chain gang. No one wearing prison stripes of black and white or orange jumpsuits with a bar code, long number row of identifying digits.

    No one stole their childhood on a Maine farm or in a small business owner’s family.

    It just was not spent pretty much on a couch holding a wand high. With a 300 hundred channels and uphappiness that there’s nothing to watch that’s exciting, entertaining. Plugged into the boop tube. The electric babysitter as they grew larger around the middle, more unhappy and frankly bored stiff. As the childhood raced by parked. Missing out on talents needed for life. Developed by trial and error. By example from watching older siblings, listening to parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. All working the same till the crop dirt, fence the beef or dairy pasture Maine farm operation. Weed, feed, tend the garden and wood box.

    Respect for old, tired Maine farm equipment. For the animals, plants, people, nature you come into daily contact. How to repair it when it does break down to keep going. Tinkering skills. Mechanical prowess when its up to you and only you if all alone. During a shut down out in the back forty. Or when part of the farming operation cogs. That turn, whirl, buzz, hum during the planting, cultivating and hoeing, the harvest of crops or critters. Or is suppose to if you are not asleep at your station. Where sharp awareness, crystal clarity of how the Maine weather, climate that you have zero control over can ruin or boost the Maine farm operation. Acceptance, patience, but keep working on what you can do to make it better. Keep the Maine farm afloat.

    You don’t have to be told, scolded or patted on the back and given lots of praise because everyone in the Maine farm family around you is pitching in just as hard.

    The motivation, praise is self made, comes from deep within. By examples all around you. All Maine family farm members have their specific roles, place in the birth order contribution, skill set, involvement.

    Maine Winters, Look For The Color.
    A Hint Of Warm Red Brown, Blond Mane With Maine Winter Black, White, Gray.

    And until the Maine family farm kid gets a job during high school or college in another discipline other than agriculture, he has no idea that not everyone else was raised with the same engrained work ethic.

    In fact, you hear on more than one occasion the question “why are you working so hard?” And without much thought, you smile. Answer but keep on task with a side response because that is how I am made, put together. Over achiever or just not wanting to waste daylight, get the chores down. To keep up.

    Others notice you, your parents, your kids all pitch in, do more than your share. Have pride and respect for the quality of the work you all do. No matter what it is. The right plan, going all the way and then a little bit more. Because it all falls back on the way you were raised. Your reputation for not being lazy is something you hold high. The hustle says something about the way your parents raised you. They were raised, taught, shown. To be productive, not a drag on the system. To make your presence known. To do so good a job that others around you can not help but notice you stand out. Not your typical striped cat. Just want to work, have a productive day. Every day.

    Does living in Maine’s small town simple surroundings help a kid turn out to be a more productive member of society? Or whatever community he or she lands in? No matter what state or country becomes the transplanted home? I know so. The stakes are higher to stay on a independent Maine farm. It is not a forty hour week. Heck, during planting, harvest, calf births or milking, you have met the forty hour mark by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

    You do whatever it takes to get the job at hand done on a Maine farm.

    Your enjoyment comes when it is complete for another season, year. Not in whining along the way to anyone who will listen how much you dislike this job. It is not about enjoyment, entertainment or aversion or pleasure for a task. It is about completion and moving on to other goals, targets. Chores to achieve them. And finding creative ways to short cut for greater efficiency without loss of quality workmanship.

    Being positive, having not much sympathy for those that cling to lazy, an entitlement attitude. Or claiming they are being picked on. Instead, moving forward, stepping aside from emotional tantrums, melt down or drama. Making it a game, sport, passion learned on the Maine farm. And oh so foreign to someone that never had to work growing up. To contribute for the greater good of the family instead just being on the receiving end of spoiled, special, pampered, sheltered.

    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
    207.532.6573
    info@mooersrealty.com