# Greetings from Maine



## thequeensblessing

I haven't posted in a very long time, but I'm back! We sold our homestead in Ohio and relocated lock, stock, and barrel to Western Maine. We bought a colonial house built in 1790 that needs a ton of work, on 32 acres that had been neglected for decades, right on the Nezinscot river. Its beautiful and so nice to be back where winters are truly cold and snowy, something we greatly missed in Southern Ohio. We've already got the orchard pruned up and expanded and the old trees are loaded with apples. We got our first hive of bees up here, and have been putting in the gardens along with working on the old farmhouse. Other Maine homesteaders here?


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## CajunSunshine

Welcome back! You were missed! Looking forward to reading your posts again, and especially about your adventures on your new homestead. 1790? Wow, I hope you post before and after pictures! 


.


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## Bret

I just like HT Homecomings. All the best.


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## mzgarden

Good to hear you've landed and are happy. Is it possible we visited your place in OH for a pear tree grafting class? Can't wait to hear about your new place.


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## hunter63

Hunter63 saying Hey and Welcome back....From Wisconsin


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## ET1 SS

Greetings;
I think you and I [and my wife] crossed paths on a previous forum for a while.

We live just a bit North of Bangor Maine, on 150 acres with river frontage on the Penobscot River. I am also a beekeeper.


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## DoubleAcre

Welcome back. You're a couple hours North of us. Though those couple hours seem to make a difference with a colder winter


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## thequeensblessing

ET1 SS said:


> Greetings;
> I think you and I [and my wife] crossed paths on a previous forum for a while.
> 
> We live just a bit North of Bangor Maine, on 150 acres with river frontage on the Penobscot River. I am also a beekeeper.


I remember you both well! Good to "see" you again! We'll have to cross paths in reality one of these days now that I"m here in the beautiful Northwoods of Maine.


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## thequeensblessing

DoubleAcre said:


> Welcome back. You're a couple hours North of us. Though those couple hours seem to make a difference with a colder winter


Where are you? We're in Buckfield, but Hubby drives to Portland to work every day.


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## thequeensblessing

mzgarden said:


> Good to hear you've landed and are happy. Is it possible we visited your place in OH for a pear tree grafting class? Can't wait to hear about your new place.


Yes, that would be our place! We just planted apples and pears that we grafted in Ohio for up here. We already have about a dozen mature apple trees on the property. Thanks for remembering us!


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## ET1 SS

thequeensblessing said:


> I remember you both well! Good to "see" you again! We'll have to cross paths in reality one of these days now that I"m here in the beautiful Northwoods of Maine.


Any chance that you might attend the Common Ground Fair?

http://www.mofga.org/TheFair/tabid/135/Default.aspx

3rd week of September in Unity


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## mzgarden

thequeensblessing said:


> Yes, that would be our place! We just planted apples and pears that we grafted in Ohio for up here. We already have about a dozen mature apple trees on the property. Thanks for remembering us!


Aw, sorry you've gone so far away. Really enjoyed meeting with you. All but one of our newby grafted pears are still growing. Best wishes to you!


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## wdcutrsdaughter

Hi there! I'm a couple hours south of you on the border of lebanon and sanford. I love to see other folks here from maine!

wish you all the best with your "new" ( to you ) place! I've always admired old homes, oh if the walls could talk! How neat, hope you can find the history of it if that is something you're interested in.
peace!


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## DoubleAcre

Also in Lebanon.


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## Doug Bo

Hi, TheQueensBlessing

Me and my wife and son are currently in San Diego, but originally from southern NH. We are actually hopefully heading back there in a few months. I have been recently entertaining the idea of homesteading in Maine, but have read many mixed ideas on it. It definitely doesn't sound easy, but I'm interesting in learning more about it to see if this is the direction we will go for our family. I'm just new to this site and you're the first Maine homesteader I came across, so wanted to send out a greeting and say hopefully everything is going well for you there and hopefully we can talk again sometime in the future.

~Doug


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## ET1 SS

Nationwide we have fewer farms each year. But here in Maine we have more farms every year. Mostly small-scale and organic, but it is a growing trend.

We have been here since 2005, we did not go off-grid until 2015 though.


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## thequeensblessing

Greetings! We love it here! We've found that things grow so well in this rich alluvial soil. There's a little clay, a little sand and a little loam, a great mix! All we really did this year was mix in some composted manure and our garden has grown itself. The crab grass is tenacious, but even so, our veggies have done so much better than any garden we were able to grow in the heavy clay soil of southern Ohio. Summers are short here and so is the growing season, but we planted all short season crops and have everything we could have wanted. Even though I was raised in NH, I am, as an adult, amazed at the wild offerings here in Northern New England. I've already made wild strawberry jam and wild raspberry jam. We're looking forward to the wild blackberries and the wild cherries coming ripe soon as well. Apple trees are EVERYWHERE, just growing wild. Yes, winters are long, but we find there's so much to do outdoors in the winter here and so many kindred spirits doing it, and the wood fires sure feel nice when you finally head indoors. Did I mention that we love Maine?


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## greenTgoats

Welcome back


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## Doug Bo

That is great you get to make those things from scratch. Let me ask you though, is it easy to cultivate and grow enough for a small family to live on? Making jams and jellies sounds delicious. But the scale of homesteading I'm thinking of is having an amount of crops to feed a small family for the bulk of the year. I understand preservation is a key factor, but would you consider the land good to put out enough veggies to last through a year and maybe enough to even sell outside the home supply at farmers markets and such? I'm assuming the size of the land plot would have a lot to do with the answer, but the amount of veggies that the climate and land will yield is a huge piece of the puzzle. You obviously don't want to end up depending on a piece of land to survive for food if you have too many acres that it's outside your ability to even tend to all of it, so there's gotta be a good balance, and I'm wondering if Maine is considered to have a good balance of seasons, soil, and climate to make an idea like that worth it.


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## thequeensblessing

Doug Bo said:


> That is great you get to make those things from scratch. Let me ask you though, is it easy to cultivate and grow enough for a small family to live on? Making jams and jellies sounds delicious. But the scale of homesteading I'm thinking of is having an amount of crops to feed a small family for the bulk of the year. I understand preservation is a key factor, but would you consider the land good to put out enough veggies to last through a year and maybe enough to even sell outside the home supply at farmers markets and such? I'm assuming the size of the land plot would have a lot to do with the answer, but the amount of veggies that the climate and land will yield is a huge piece of the puzzle. You obviously don't want to end up depending on a piece of land to survive for food if you have too many acres that it's outside your ability to even tend to all of it, so there's gotta be a good balance, and I'm wondering if Maine is considered to have a good balance of seasons, soil, and climate to make an idea like that worth it.


Yes, you're right, preservation is the key. The amount of food your land will produce depends on YOU more than on the land. If you are willing to amend the soil, put in the hours needed to weed, water, fertilize and harvest, then yes, you can grow the bulk of your food for the year. We do this same thing. We grow potatoes, and depending on the space they are stored in, will dictate if they store for the entire winter. You may end up canning them. Onions and garlic are easy to store. Root crops are easy to store if you have a cellar for the sand boxes. Squash and pumpkins store easily as well. If you are short on land to start, grow bush style cucumbers and beans, or grow vertical. Our crops did great this year. Winters are long, and summers are shorter so you'll want to grow short grow time veggies. Nearly everything comes in a short season variety so nearly everything can be grown here. You just have to pay attention to days to harvest. It only takes a small area to raise rabbits and chickens in at first. larger animals take larger spaces and more food. Are you planning on raising your livestock without added purchased grains? Do you have a hayfield? Are you planning on a cow or goats for milk? Fruit trees can be grown in dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties for space conservation, although the larger the tree, the greater the harvest per tree. 
There are a lot of variables, but you want to find land that has space for pasture, gardens, and a small orchard. Its not hard to find land on water in Maine. Along with land along a river or lake comes "shore land zoning" in most places, which has added stipulations about what you can and can't do within 250 feet of the body of water. We have it and its not odious at all. 
Also, my point about the jams and jellies is that if you take advantage of what nature has to offer here, you're having to actually grow less in domestic crops. I was raised in Northern NH, only about an hour from where I now live in Maine and we grew 90% of our own veggies and raised all of our own meats. I love this way of life!


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## thequeensblessing

Also remember, make your land do double duty! Plant winter squash in with your peas so when your peas are done you can pull out the vines and let the squash take over. We plant melons and squash in with our broccoli and cauliflower too so that when those are done, we can let the vines take over. We plant a spring green bean crop and another late summer crop.


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## Doug Bo

That is good information. Do I have a hayfield? Haha, I have a tiny plot of grass located in the courtyard of our apartment complex in San Diego, CA! I was born and raised in the Merrimack Valley area of northern MA, and I did live in NH for about 10 years as well. We are actually moving back to that area in just a couple months. I was asking this because homesteading is something I have been considering. Traveling is also an important thing to us and although I think homesteading can teach you many great things about life and living without being spoonfed everything, I often get this tied down feeling by where we live, by jobs, etc... Homesteading sounds like a huge commitment and I'm only entertaining the idea and talking to people on here to get a better idea about it. It all started out as just an idea to buy land in Maine because of the low prices. But I'm only at the very beginning of these ideas, and although I'm very familiar with many of the basic things in New England, I don't know a ton about Maine specifically, especially concerning the culture, law, and economy. So I guess you could just say I'm testing the waters.

I just looked up Buckfield, ME. I saw the Buckfield Mall. That is hilarious!


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## thequeensblessing

Yes, the big Buckfield Mall is a hot spot in town.  But truly, homesteading IS a commitment. We still manage to take vacations and the like, but we're fortunate to have a daughter who lives a mile away and come take care of things in our absence. If you don't have livestock, traveling in the winter is easy enough. Crops will keep you busy spring, summer, and fall. After that, your time is your own. Livestock does add to that commitment because they need care around the calendar. You can usually find someone willing to farm sit for you, for a price. 
Property is fairly inexpensive in Maine, if you are inland from the coast. We bought our 35 acres with a 200 year old Georgian home, on the Nezinscot River, with a huge barn only 1 mile outside of the small town of Buckfield, for under $100,000.00 The house needed a lot of work, but its been a labor of love and we find ourselves falling more and more in love with the place every day.


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## Chris

I haven't made it to Buckfield yet!
Beautiful photos so far! Welcome back!


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## Amanda_W

thequeensblessing said:


> Yes, the big Buckfield Mall is a hot spot in town.  But truly, homesteading IS a commitment. We still manage to take vacations and the like, but we're fortunate to have a daughter who lives a mile away and come take care of things in our absence. If you don't have livestock, traveling in the winter is easy enough. Crops will keep you busy spring, summer, and fall. After that, your time is your own. Livestock does add to that commitment because they need care around the calendar. You can usually find someone willing to farm sit for you, for a price.
> Property is fairly inexpensive in Maine, if you are inland from the coast. We bought our 35 acres with a 200 year old Georgian home, on the Nezinscot River, with a huge barn only 1 mile outside of the small town of Buckfield, for under $100,000.00 The house needed a lot of work, but its been a labor of love and we find ourselves falling more and more in love with the place every day.
> View attachment 61482


That is beautiful!


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## RunningFromCity

Your place looks lovely!
I've just come back to HT after a back-breaking 3 months getting things sorted out with the farm we bought in Washington, ME. We love it here! We are new to homesteading but have been planning it all for about 7 years. We have 42 acres with 12 of it being hayfield. We have a sheep barn we'll be doing repairs on to bring in sheep in the spring/summer. We have a lot of fencing to do first! We have 13 chickens, 2 vegetable gardens, and a small apple orchard in need of care. The previous owners didn't care for apples so the trees haven't been pruned in quite a while. 

Anyway, we're in Maine too and wanted to say hi!


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