MeInMaine Blog

Tag: living in maine

  • Made In Maine, What Does That Really Mean?

    If you are lucky enough to be a real Maine native, not a transplant, not a wannabe for only a week’s vacation a year, you keep life simple.

    Maine Living, Keeping It Simple, Down To Earth. You are not simple minded, but your life style is. Moderated to take it slow, keep it real, free of drama. There is nothing gaudy, over the top or ostentatious about living full time in Maine whatsoever.

    Maine has a Portland with around 60,000 people that sometimes consider themselves a little more sophisticated than the rest of the Pine tree state.

    But the majority of Maine has deep roots, heritage that centers around the family, the home. Small town community living with either forested woods or agriculture related industries the two staples used to generate the smaller income needed to fuel, to pay the household bills.

    The need for money to burn to live a lifestyle of Riley, to have a happy life without hard work, problems or worries is not what typical Mainers strive for, dream about day to day.

    The ones that do leave the state in search of fame and fortune. The ones that don’t are not failures that stay home. Their choice to live, work and play in Maine is a simple one. Small town values to make sure their children, families grow up with their heads screwed on straight. Built to fear God, respect others and pass on the same simple basics of good Maine living to the next generation.

    Less complicated, slower paced living days under cobalt blue sunny skies happen in Maine. Or unfold under a canopied black velvet firmament of brilliant stars over head. Instead of honking horns, heavy traffic, high crime and bright harsh neon big city lights.

    We are independent, can do people in Maine.

    And figure if it is to be, it is up to me. Money saved for rainy days can help you sleep nights because you don’t put yourself on the brink of financial disaster. Your life is not built on a deck of tittering cards just waiting for a gust of air, a strong wind to begin the chaos.

    We don’t live recklessly but still enjoy a gentile form of poverty that is high, wide and handsome from the local perspective. You could have a BMW car parked in the garage… might be a well cared for, pre-owned 1987 model with a lot of highway miles. But the pride, joy and care for the ride and how it is built, not for any prestige or status is just as strong with the Mainer who could not afford it when it rolled off the assembly line from Germany. The Mainer who is content to wait his turn, to be the second, third, fourth driver to slide behind it’s steering wheel.

    Made in Maine is not just a term to apply to products from LL Bean, or tourist items peddled by local craftsmen, artisans.

    It makes a statement about the people, families that are forged in simple, real, honest down to earth natural surroundings. Living in a state almost forgotten because of it’s isolation. Some say insulation due to Maine’s far northeast location. Some argue we should be in Canada we are so far to the north and by ourselves. Off the beaten path in a special place.

    Watch a video clip from Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations segment on Maine to get a taste, glimpse, feel of what the real Maine is about. I saved you the best seat in the grange, church, community hall at a small inland Maine bean supper.

    When you are ready, finally at the point in your life to tap in to all Maine offers, in a simple way, call, click, come visit me. I know a sensitive Maine real estate broker who loves what he does, where he does it. That can find you a piece of Maine to call your own. To begin tapping in to the simple essence of what the word Maine really means. Providing those that make the time to be in Vacationland a rich sense of well being, contentment and peace. You can figure things out in Maine. Get here quick as you can.

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

  • Maine, Working Hard, Family First, Keeping It Simple.

    “Well la de da”…. is not the typical way people in Maine lead their lives.

    Kids Feel Loved, Have A Place On A Maine Family Farm
    Learning To Work Hard For What You Have, Earning It On Your Own.
    Local wages are lower, the standard of living kept simple, plain, without excesses because of it. Out to impress, calling attention to yourself is not the norm in Maine. Family is. You provide for that family first and foremost. It should be the strongest purpose in life, the source of all your joy, contentment. Where you give and receive loving attention under the guidance of God’s daily instruction.

    I grew up in a household in Maine without the ravages of alcoholism. I did not have one parent that dominated the other, I did not see maniuplation or live under a judgemental critical spirit. There was no holier than thou tutelage taught to the household. We were neither in steerage or first class.

    What you saw was who we are. No better or worse than anyone else around us. All beginners in consideration for others, not our own selfish designs to impress or need to have anyone else envy us. We did not seek to call attention to ourselves. No one in our household was a carrier, would test positive for a character of unrepentive sin, idolatry of someone with a destructive Jezebel spirit.

    Everyone in the family was unique. A special instrument contributing to the harmony for the common good of what happened inside, outside those four walls. No one put on airs, a show outside the Maine home and there was transparency.

    There was not a sharp cutting tongue putting down anyone in our household growing up.

    No one tip toed because heads would roll if you did not. There was pure strong love. Both parents thought they had gotten the better end of the trade in the marriage.

    No one thinking he or she deserved more in a mate.

    No one pregnant, forced to get married and dragged to the altar for the knot tying or resentful because they were sure they deserved better. And did not care who knew it, inside or outside the four walls. No parent trying to change the other but working on adjustment, tinkering within themselves to improve the performance of the marriage.

    I saw a Dad that openly expressed love to my Mom. Affectionately calling her “Weeze” or “Mother” her special title as the ring leader for raising the four boys. Dad giving her a hug, kiss and saying I love you heard, seen, felt though out my childhood. Kids seeing that beam, both parents are working together. You felt the unending love. Conflicts, good and tough times came up, but there was a common connection. Family love was the glue that cemented it rock tight. They took turns, shared the reins guiding, shaping the family.

    The marriage started from scratch, lasting over sixty years and everything they had they toiled to earn together. No second marriages where one mate was out to better their financial station in life. Leaving one mate with distaste in their mouth and blamed for everything wrong in the marriage. To upgrade to one with a more income zero places on their tax return. And the sole attraction to tap in to a money pit to live a more lavish lifestyle to impress others with their new found financial success. That is shallow, arrogant, selfish and your kids placed second to the need for money to get attention and artificial happiness.

    A marriage is not supposed to always be happy, it is suppose to be holy.

    Both my parents were spiritual, and during discourse would retreat, lick their wounds and consider where their thinking needed adjustment. And apologies presented. Forgiveness on both sides extended and received. It was not one way where there was an alpha male or female dominating the wrinkle smoothing when offenses happened. You saw ownership of who did what that rubbed the other the wrong way. I did not see manipulation to get one to do what the other wanted. They did not play mind games.

    If one parent had always been the one beat down, to come up short, made to feel the blame and shame for not measuring up, resentment would have in time filled the family home.

    The toxins tainting the way the kids in that family grew up to raise their brood. In a healthy family relationship you all build for the common good of the household. Rather than develop unhealthy coping skills to survive and take care of yourself to get what you think you need and deserve.

    When you grow up on a Maine family farm, you see your parents, brothers, sisters more than the nine to five routine households.

    You eat breakfast, lunch, supper together. No one runs out the door to catch a train, do the morning commute to work. You live where you work. The barn for chores with critters, the neighboring fields to labor in. To create, plant, cultivate, harvest crops working around the weather and market conditions. To feed your family, with left over to sell to maintain that farm house, out buildings. To provide the shelter, food, surroundings for your kids and a place attached to the rear of the home for a set of elderly parents.

    At the center of a strong, down to earth Mainer’s life is the family. Bumps, bruises, warts and all. You’re in a family. Something to learn from, cling to during the ups and downs of life. Maine real estate buyers often comment that boy, these small town folks are friendly, helpful, hardworking but pretty much day to day life is centered around church, their families, outdoor recreation. It makes it harder for singles, couples without kids or extended families in the area because of it. Watch some Maine farm real estate videos. Not a bad place to raise a family, provide healthy education for your kids.

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

  • Maine … Less Money, Harder Earned Means Better Spent.

    Values, in the items we buy, in the good thoughts we all in Maine try fervently to carry, to use to run our day to day.
    Our Fun In Maine Is Low Cost, No Cost.
    Enjoying Simpler Maine Outdoor Living.

    Living in Maine means not needing more money to impress someone. To use to make another person envious or to call attention to your material success. The real value, gold and silver is having money saved for a rainy day, a twist in the road. Money is security for lean times that happen in life.

    Love of money is never having enough or the newest model that is bought, admired, discarded when something shinier comes down the marketing conveyor belt.

    In Maine, a rural state, we try to take money out of the equation. With plenty of do it yourself ingenuity and a healthy supply of patience as we save smaller wages. You don’t need to make more money, but rather see, study and take note of how you spend the stack of dead Presidents you slowly salt away.

    Getting value when you do decide to spend requires better impulse control. Not needing it, wanting it right now like a child beside themselves. Clenching a new, crisp twenty dollar bill in a candy store and set loose like a bull near a china closet is not the way we raise our kids in Maine.

    Raking Maine blueberries, picking potatoes, reeling in lobster pots on a boat far from the sight of land.

    Chores, earning our ipods, the upgrade to the standard issue our parents budget for, can afford happens in Maine. Taking a deep breath, making sure the money you let go of that was carefully, consciously earned and tucked away is not wasted. It requires going without, not needing to test the credit limit of the plastic.

    Patience in our spending and an easy does it approach to the Maine household budget. Where money is needed for essentials, luxuries like heating oil, groceries, insurance on our Maine homes, vehicles. Saving for college and updates to the house that are for its structural strength and not for just cosmetic show.

    Luckily we live in Vacationland so our fun is no cost, or involves only a couple gallons of gasoline and a picnic to accomplish.

    Less money, harder earned means sweeter, simpler living in Maine. It prepares our kids for practical priorities in their life and heaven help them if they get yoked, saddled with someone I remember hearing about reading to the kids nights at bedtime. About the galloping gimmees, never being happy for long.

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

  • Maine, Find Peace, Patience And Understanding Here.

    Peace is a calmness in your heart, your soul, your life.

    Outdoor Simple Living, That Is Maine.
    The Sizzle Of The Steak, Enjoy Life More In Maine.
    And like scales perfectly balanced, our own personal habits of moderation to maintain that peace require effort. Situations arrive right on schedule in our lives that can challenge as the Eagle’s rock band crooned your inner “peaceful, easy feeling.”

    Maine offers the peaceful backdrop setting to arrive at peace in your day to day.

    Because Vacationland is not over crowded. Too many people jammed in a small space causes big problems. Pressures, added stresses from the pushing and shoving to achieve your own special place in the sun. Everyone needs space to create peace. Maine has that wide open, four season elbow room plus 2500 lakes to add magic to the foundation for that peace to happen.

    The more trees and wildlife than people natural surroundings in Maine are real, pure, natural. And this is the healthy place you need to be in to recharge, revive, renew your inner spirit of peace. To relax next to a Maine lake in a deck chair on a long dock or paddle a kayak slowly around it gives you perspective. You can think because there are not a million people rushing, dashing, anxious for this or that to happen. With chop chop drive through, speed of thought quickness expectation.

    Living in Maine full time and not just lucky to get a week’s vacation of her each year if everything goes as planned out of state can spoil you.

    No need to drive hours and hours to get here. Natives tap in to outdoors all four seasons. To gaze out over the expanse of rolling farm fields, pastures studded with different color horses, cows, small animals. To be hill top in hiking boots or with snow skis strapped on provides you with a commanding view, vista of your surroundings. This is the training grounds for understanding life. Yourself and other people in it.

    Being able to detach, let go, trust in the creator of this wonderous beauty radiates from the drop dead gorgeous Maine landscape. Removing the anxious pit of your stomach fears, doubts, feelings that something has been missing in your life. And it becomes crystal clear what needs rearranging. Given more or less priority to achieve peace.

    To gain understanding on how to lead you day to day. To check in and take inventory of the balance of your life. Where that peaceful state radiates from if you cherish it, preserve it. This peace, understanding helps trigger a stop to worrying. You know the head spinning, waking up from a restless night of sleeping and the tossing, turning kind. Thinking about something over and over again but not resolving the situation. Or mixed with a pinch of self doubt, guilt seasoning. Keeping you uptight, anxious, wandering around lost and not arriving at a solution to your problems.

    The cherry on top of Maine being the place to find balance in your life that leads to peace, greater patience and understanding is you can own a piece of it very cheaply.

    You also don’t need a large property either. One acre of Maine land is plenty to park, camp out on and then venture forth to explore, discover all the Pine tree state offers.

    Slow Down, Don’t Worry So Much, Spend More Time In Maine Video

    And the people that live here are the down to earth kind. Anxious to help, considerate of others and respectful. Getting high marks in the family and work ethic test scores. There is a sense of community, a connection of caring and sharing when you are lucky enough to live in Maine. The small town bean suppers, pronouced “sup-PAHS” in Downeast Maine, provide plenty of social interaction.

    So does cheering on, encouraging little league players racing around the ball diamond as sunset approaches on a Maine summer evening.

    Gathering at the local ice cream dairy bar win or lose as a team to celebrate. Maybe lick their wounds. Or being at Church to celebrate a baptism, wedding, or offer condolences in time of need at a funeral.

    Maine living is simple, the people are not. Money does not fund the most valuable things in our life. Relationships with others that are healthy, two way make us blessed to live up here in the upper right hand corner of the state. Where with eleven people per square mile, you can live day to day maintaining your peace, developing patience and gaining a wealth of understanding.

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

  • First World Problems. My Son Explained The Term, Expression.

    When you live in Maine the lifestyle is pretty simple.

    The people are not, but the day to day is.

    Grateful Simple Living, Comes From An Awareness, Appreciation.
    Cobalt Blue Skies In Maine Over Head.
    Why? Not complicated with trying to impress. Or putting material goods higher than family, local community tradition and your neighbor that might need a helping hand. Maine is not stuck inside either. Pretty much tied to the outdoors where you can figure, sort out what’s really important.

    Grateful.

    Because you may find yourself blessed with greater luck.

    The natural four leaf kind or flavor you make yourself with hard work. Having more of something than the fellow down the street does. So you share, reach out and help because you can. Because it is right. He would and has done the same in reverse.

    The basics.

    You live in Maine, a rural setting and your home has lots of improvements. Or is a total creation of your own sweat, effort, creative passion. The wood you burn to heat it, keep the family warm is often from your own Maine land. Or family woodlot. Gathered in from wooded land or delivered tree length to the back yard. Then, slowly cut up, to fit your stove or furnace. And split, stored. Ready for another winter heating season.

    The food we eat in Maine. You know where it comes from, the majority of it planted by you and the kids. Tended, hoed, weeded when the sun is high over head during the summer. Harvested in the fall. Stored for the months of layers of snow on the ground over a Maine winter. Sampled as it becomes ripe off the vine before that.

    Meat from a cow named Sirloin or Chuck, Burger Boy.

    Double yolk orange large eggs from laying hens in a coop out back. One protected from foxes. Money problems…not so much. Because money is not the end all, not so depended upon with a Maine country lifestyle. Removed on purpose, the price of admission to rural Maine involving a lower pay scale. But a rich life setting to raise your family in and assurance that practical values will be instilled in those kids.

    Self sufficiency, standing on your own two feet. Whining less, working harder. Teaching your kids the same course in life. My youngest son, the last of four used the expression “first world problem” over the Christmas break. He and I were in a conversation and he caught himself. Explaining his lament was a “first world problem”. Examples of First World Problems.

    In a third world, where you might not know where your next meal is coming from for you, your family. Where seamless exploitation happens every change of political regimes. New dictator, same old treatment of full throttle oppression. Medical problems but no one seems to care. Life is not so valuable, precious as you and I in this country are accustom to in America.

    The ability to speak your mind. Heck blog on any topic under the rainbow, beneath the stars shining brightly on a velvet black sky. Without worry of a knock on the door, being wisked away for offending someone. For thinking freely, openly expressing what could be a contrary view point.

    Mainers have their heads screwed on straight.

    Have it figured out, are grounded. Keep life simple on purpose. Being as self sufficient as possible. Home grown not store bought. Real, honest, un-spun, unplugged. Is this what you are looking for or enjoying now?

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

  • Hiding Under The Desk, Saying The Dog Ate Your Home Work.

    Maine Means Home Town Proud, Fiercely Proud Of Your Local Zip Code.
    Small Town Maine Living, Everyone Is Connected, Close, Special.

    Maine is a state that folks are not afraid to speak up. History shows the long felt need to stand for issues, appeal to common sense.

    “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” may still apply. In a rural state, not flush with money but long on hard work, family values, maybe the sparsely spaced populace is in the real world. And cringe on spin from media beamed in, remotely fed from outside state lines.

    In my job as a Maine real estate broker, it is hard to see market events in California, Florida, Michigan, Vegas and have the population think it is that same market in Vacationland. Maine is 46th lowest for FSSR.

    We work hard to buy lower priced Maine houses and we don’t like debt. We double up to not have payments, to own the Maine home free and clear.

    Maine home sales are up and it’s not just houses we list, market, peddle. Land, waterfront real estate in Maine are a popular attraction. So low cost and big sized. Maine, a place you can dream in blue and green, unspoiled and natural. Here when you are ready.

    But it’s not all work, no play.

    The folks in Maine are friendly and you better learn how to wave if you plan to pass through, spend time here. In Maine, we are responsible, don’t pass the buck when the time to step up happens. No one ate our home work on the local community volunteer events. No one hides under the desk when something needs doing on the local level.

    Maybe being less populated, sitting on smaller wallets means hiring everything done is not an option. So we are more involved, personally, financially with the way we use our time to make the small town life vibrant, unique, special.

    Bold, fresh, raw honesty, outdoors and not polished, commercial store brought rhetoric. That’s the Maine I live in, enjoy, and the place to raise a family. Or own a piece of for vacations, investment. Maine, what’s holding you up, keeping you away?

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