Tag: small maine towns living

Living In Maine, Small Rural Town Decision Making.

Common sense and being forward thinking are two skills true dyed in the wool Mainers possess in great supply.

Small Maine towns survive if resistance to change is removed, if creative brainstorming is done. To figure out what do we do now? Way way before arriving at that all important crossroad that makes it do or die important.

Resistance to change happens for a lot of reasons.

You might have liked it just fine the way it was. Or the issue(s) at hand are large and many in number. So where to begin and how will it upset the rest of the apple cart has to be considered. Like the ticking bomb, you holding the wire cutters and with sweat on your lip and brow, hoping you pick the right colored wire to snip snip in just in time. With barely seconds to spare.

When It Is Less People, More Peace And Quiet Happens.

The stakes are high because the room for error in the direction you head to work around the problems to arrive at solutions is small.

When you know hard decisions are needed but delayed, population starts to drop off. Folks that don’t want to leave do anyway. Because inefficiency and delay of implementing new policies that control the spending in a small Maine rural towns is disasterous.

High property taxes in small Maine towns, hikes in user fees and service permits signal something is not being correct quick enough in the belt tightening. When you see one by one small Maine towns and plantations lined up to wave the white flag.

To deorganize and step into the boat being lowered into the water from a sinking local community ship. That opts out to go all in with centralized services from one of the sixteen Maine counties. To lose their local identity because not enough volume of people, too low a population, and too higher a tax burden. The bilge pumps can not keep that local boat afloat.

Drift, Glide, Pop Up And Down Fishing. Maine Loons Dressed In A Black And White Tuexdo.

Local control is something small Maine towns are finding harder and harder to hang onto despite the fierce pride, the colors of the sport’s teams worn proudly at state contests on the way to the top. Reaching for the gold ball.

So when you see the loss of population going down, the cost of living in a small Maine town spiking upward, why so slow to rein in the spending?

Rather than hiking the mill rate to dangerous levels like watching the pressure readings on a steam locomotive engine with a dial needle dancing in the red. Drastic times do call for decisive measures to control the skid.

What adds to the frustration is true Mainers that know the rules of survival don’t run their own households that way. They adjust the spending and live below their means to prepare for those sharp curves, crater sized potholes in the road ahead.

Like pushing the heavy car that is out of gas to who knows where. Getting out, bailing and hitch hiking and looking for the best trail out of the situation can make it every dog for himself. Centralized services, removal the layers of duplications in spending and letting go of the way we always used to run the show in a small Maine town. With a spirit of we’ll be better off on the other side and around to rise and shine.

Style, Comfort, Home Sweet Home Made To Last Design. Life The Way It Should Be Protected In Small Maine Towns.

Like pruning a tree of life sucking dead limbs, what remains can thrive and prospers in new healthy ways. If.

Letting go of personality conflicts, using the wisdom of what happened in history when similar scenarios found their way into small Maine town life.

To arrive at this is the best course of action now for the good of the community, everyone in the small burg.

The Mainer who prides himself or herself on being independent will find new ways to work collectively because there is no other option. Just no room for slow, stalled or just not moving in the best course available correction. To keep as much of the distinct, the original flavor of a small Maine town. While preserving, at the same time streamlining and preparing for the future to assure survival of a small Maine town.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com | MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730

August 20, 2016
Living Our Lives In Locked Chains, Never Knowing We Have The Key.

The Eagles had some neat, catchy wisdom snippets packed into the measures of their many hit songs.

Philosophy on life in three four or more time. Forty song quotes from the Eagles.

The combination of words, putting a different spin on the topic and sneaking it all in for a musical road trip experience. When you were just driving along minding your own business. Humming, thinking, drifting until the next stop. Then the light bulb, the aha moment happens.

Thank you Glenn Frey, Don Henley. Oh and Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner and other Eagle band members.

Maybe Maine is what is missing in your life. Playing an old haunting familiar song refrain repeating loop in the mental tapes in your head.

Maine Is Rich Colors, Simple Pleasures, Natural Beauty.

That tightly wrapped, living too fast, dipped in fear and dripping with sweat a stressful city landscape causes. It takes its toll.

And looking frantically. Following, connecting the blue evacuation dots around an urban area to get out. From the life in the fast lane. Too high an RPM to keep it up.

Maine. Yeah, that might be a good idea. Ah, but an exit strategy. Lots of folks are struggling with that one. To get to Maine. Someday. ” It’s a girl, my Lord In a flatbed Ford.

Slowing down to take a look at me”. Me, you in Maine.

Lots of the Maine land we sell is to folks needing a safety net. For a mental form of insurance binder coverage just in case. Not just for the investment value or recreational fun alone that happens on their piece of dirt in Vacationland.

But purchased, the Maine land acreage or small plot spot for bailing out, the rip cord maneuver. Like break the glass. Pull when needed.

As Far As You Can See, Trees. That Is
Sea Of Trees, Lots Of Wildlife, Not So Many People. That Is Maine.

Just knowing there is a place where they could survive without the plastic card swipes and wracking up debt. Where basics are more than enough in the needs department to meet.

Building a small shelter that is plenty for your needs. Growing your own family table food and knowing exactly what you eat.

Because you started it from seed or did the transplant. With the comfortable, peaceful, easy feeling taking it easy on the spray application. If you care, dare to use any at all.

Because food was not sprayed with anything toxic or exotic to preserve or enhance it’s visual appeal.

Same treatment and respect goes into the meat, poultry, dairy products you tend and nurture from

Hitting The Trail Out Of A Crowded City. You Are (Pointing) Here. Connect The Blue Dots. Head To Maine.

day one. Giving you a best of my love for nutritious food feeling. About what goes down the gullet. At least three times a day around the family table.

Or packed in the bring from home school lunches. Not the slide the tray kind and most of the goop ending up in the metal trash can and wasted.

Heating with wood from your Maine land, being a real son of a birch.

And not following the up and down spike of oil prices with any interest at all. Not caring about the cost of the bubbling crude that Jed sang about before the big move to the west coast.

In small town Maine, there is an intimate connection and everything goes local. Turning within to dig in. And heave ho, make a different in many small ways. That is what everyone that hangs their hat in a small Maine town does.

Steer The Shortest Path To Maine. Get Some Sand In Your Shoes. Never Ending Up At A Hotel California Like The Eagles Crooned.

With greater awareness. Be careful Desperado, don’t draw the queen of diamonds. Look for her sister with the heart to avoid being cut every time if she is able.

Pitching in and bartering the collection of skills sets honed and perfected over the years.

In the trade you this for that? Deal? I’ll be over Saturday morning at the crack of dawn to get started, have the cup of Joe on and those world class fruit explosion muffins the Misses creates.

Has to because if they don’t, bye bye. Not more small Maine town which is what 98% of them are in this pretty under populated, vast state of fresh air, clean water. It is a greatest awareness when money is tight, you respect resources and make survival a game.

Not like life in the fast lane with a Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac.

Trapped at your Hotel California.

Where not check out bill is ever slid under your door to wake up to after a hard night. When you are just another garden variety one of the boys of a never ending summer. And you feel strung out, already gone.

What else makes a small Maine town great?

Plenty and usually home grown, like pot luck supper special. Everyone brings something that together makes for one tasty, memorable spread.

Maine, Get High. Lots Of Chances To Rise Above The Static.

Nothing store bought and always about home grown, one of a kind recipes past down over the years. From lots of practice makes perfect runs at family gathers held around the calendar.

Stopping in at the local corner store to fuel up and tap the grapevine. Not for gossip, for details behind the scenes that the column inches of black ink and white space did not delve into enough. Or at all.

Learning this morning Buzzy Nightingale has four acres left of Maine potatoes to harvest. Seeing his harvester crew inching along with a sea of lights at 8:30 on the way home to the lake last night.

Looking like a grounded, landed alien space ship of sorts pulled by a diesel Maine farm tractor.

Plying the fields, back and forth with the tired, hungry crew putting on the big push before Jack Frost takes over and works full time on the landscape.

The harvester followed by a wind rower to set up the next pass to combine six rows into one. For the squeaking digger beds to elevated, shift out the dirt. And then one potato, two potato sort and filter out good from bad. Or the rocks.

Talk about the spending waste, duplication of local services a small Maine town can not afford to ignore in it’s life blood drain.

The local Sear’s appliance and tools moving to serve you better. At a new location and to make room for another dollar store in the old hole. Details that would be mundane to someone not in the six by six mile Northern Maine border town. Or the collection of about forty more in a ring around it.

How People Interact On The Life Team When Everything Is Not So Peachy Keen Is An Eye Opener.

But keeping current and watching, listening in earnest because of every local’s personal investment in their small Maine town.

As the reach for a sugared donut hole from the open bag happens. Then slurping the black stuff to wash it all down.

Staying away from the spicy breakfast burrito knowing there’ll be a heart ache tonight if you don’t.

Want some of that? As you plan your day? Take it easy. Avoid the fanfare. Get away from the hype. I can’t tell you why, but that is the heart of the matter. Drink, eat, breathe in the all natural, pure, never filtered always real Maine.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton ME 04730

October 21, 2015
Where You Get Your Information In A Small Maine Town.

What is happening, going on in a small Maine town is pretty easy to follow.

Because small rural living in a lower population concentration. A state like Maine means intimate, connected, extra special is how we roll. You don’t wait until the news sources catch a headline in your small rural Maine town. It is spread through the grapevine. You get the film at eleven from the source, a brother in law or one of their parents. Heck you are probably related if you dig a little, look a tad deeper.
What’s That Wonderful Smell? The Kitchen Wood Cook Stove Door Opens Soon To Reveal What’s The Supper Time Star Attraction.

Developments learned as they happen each day hoisted up in the manual pump barber shop chair.

Or aired hollering a little louder over the blow dryer at the hair twister’s salon. While getting a new doo for you for the office Christmas party down at the Grange hall, the Elk’s lodge or snow sled club house. We all circulate day and night in the same small tight circles in small Maine towns.

The journalism articles on the close to home channel gathered at the local feed store too. While getting a work out. Loading multiple fifty, hundred pound sacks of feed grain. Into the open waiting pickup with the lowered tailgate backed up snug to the loading dock.

For special delivery, another reverse workout for what is waiting. Some glad to see you on the return flight back to your patch of dirt. Where filling the barns, pastures, windbreak hovels contain the critters. That missed you big time during your absence in town. Especially at meal time feeding, watering, socializing.

The hobby or working farm in Maine where you eek out a good honest living.

More and more following an organic field to table philosophy discipline. To know with certainty where the food you place on the table came from today. What it is you actually dine on. Having no doubts it is the one hundred and ten percent healthiest, most wholesome, nutritious for yourself, loved ones.

You are rich, blessed, like royalty. Because you are the lord of your manner, CEO of the level to rolling. The land around your humble but paid for, never to be truly completed work in progress shelter. Lucky and you know it clap your hands. Inside and out well done not medium rare. Joyful, frugal and in tune with your surroundings has moved in.

When you get to live in Maine. Up here in the right hand corner on the Canadian border. Along the craggy, sea salt air rock bound ocean front. Maybe the vast wilderness wooded sections that wear “T this, R that” designations. Not real town names. Whatever you are parked by, wherever you call home turf in Maine.

Where money is not the end all important. Maine, where stepping up and working hard to find more deep down inside you is the carrot. What every one of us marches to when the feet swing out of bed, hit the cold hardwood floor. We rub away what the Sand Man left as a parting gift of deep seeded sleep. To focus on the daily agenda ahead of us all in another day in small town Maine.
Maine. We Stick Together, Like Fast Moving Momma Duck, The Drafting Kids In Tow.

Self sufficient simple living frees up the dependency on costly artificial crutches that make you an urban junkie.

Those nasty retail merchandizing habits, safety crime concerns. The high cost out of the wallet and peeled, tearing a gaping hole out of your hide. Squeezing, robbing your daily blur called existence.

The good stuff you were raised on if born in Maine, spent a childhood gleaning. Raised by the village. Not just Mom and Dad, the grandparents, older siblings.

Veering away, avoiding the stuff warned about that used to be vices. Like the Doobie Brothers harmonized on vinyl circular tune grooves that is now a lamented habit. When eight out of ten folks used to live on country spreads. But now the number has flip flopped one hundred and eighty degrees the other way. Everything in the World, across the land is not so peachy keen and most of us are lab rat jammed in a city setting. Thinking we have to in meeting, exceeding our “career salary objectives” I think is the politely correct terminology.

News, genuine concern not gossip follow up stories in small Maine towns talked about after the church service.

Sampling coffee cake and tea, coffee or fruit punch for the kids in the audience. What’s happening as it does learned about in the bleachers of a local sporting event. Shared when someone visits and sits a spell to chew the fat on the open front Maine home porch. Now social media just adds to the speed of thought ease to stay connected.
Weaving, Needling Your Car, Bike Through The Highway Thread. Exploring Maine.

Or the news still delivered the old fashioned return the favor way. When someone who cares brings back something borrowed. Along with the excess of hidden treasures home made tasty. Not found on a store shelf. That just left the oven. Where the cook carrying it gingerly scales, slowly climbs up the back steps.

Who just happened to make a second batch still fresh and warm with just you in mind.

Because you think alike. Tag them back for the joy it gives the creator. Not just the receiving end of the covered casserole dish, sliding top brownie tin, towel wrapped cinnamon rolls in the bread basket they remember you especially enjoy.

When the shoe is on the other foot it is not dropped or forgotten. Nothing gets lost in the strong connection that only builds with the joys and struggles in life of a small Maine town.

When you know the people in the story, it adds a lot of rich background. Not just a name, you have experience with the folks you work on community projects with in small Maine towns. Or down at the hardware store. Get the essentials from at the Mom and Pop small business they run.
Scratch Behind My Ear, Stroke My Soft Yellow Fur, Hear My Purr. Maine Pleasures Small, Real, Alive.

You know their strengths, weaknesses, talents other family members.

Are glad they are in the ranks head counted by the Census people with wearing badges, carrying clipboards. They accept your good, bad and ugly traits too.

But the big thing in small Maine towns is we all know we need each other in the small crowd. The one needed to keep the small rural burg or village securing its spot on the road map.

To make it survive, hopefully grow.

Last a life time. Creating a source of pride for all the population that connects the dots, paint by number the landscape. To call make it a colorful home, where they hang their hat over the hill and dale.

In small Maine towns you feel the joy, experience the sorrow. Whichever way the local winds blow from inside, outside the town boundaries. The fine kettle of fish, state of affairs of each unique day. All shared with a small group. Of community members more deeply involved, personally responsible, committed to do their part for the greater good.

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

December 15, 2014