Maine: Incredible Opportunity - 22 Acres, Detached 2-Car Garage + More

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Discussion Overview

The thread discusses a property opportunity in Maine, including details about the land, the house, and the surrounding community. Participants also engage in light-hearted banter about personal relationships and local living conditions, with some expressing interest in gardening and wildlife management.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • One participant describes a property for sale in Maine, highlighting its features and the owners' urgent need to sell.
  • Another participant mentions the lack of a high school in the area, suggesting that children must travel to neighboring towns for education.
  • Several participants humorously discuss the qualities they seek in a partner, with one listing a variety of skills and another expressing skepticism about the feasibility of such a list.
  • Concerns are raised about the use of chemicals in gardening, with a preference for organic practices to protect local groundwater and wildlife.
  • One participant shares their experiences with local wildlife and the benefits of the area's ecological balance for gardening.
  • Another participant reflects on their past experiences building a house, indicating a willingness to contribute to community projects.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a mix of agreement and playful disagreement regarding personal relationships and the qualities of potential partners. There is no consensus on the feasibility of the humorous partner requirements, and the discussion about gardening practices highlights differing views on chemical use.

Contextual Notes

Participants' comments reflect personal anecdotes and local knowledge, which may not be universally applicable. The discussion includes speculative elements about relationships and community dynamics.

Who May Find This Useful

Individuals interested in real estate opportunities in rural Maine, those considering a move to a close-knit community, and people who value organic gardening and wildlife conservation may find this discussion relevant.

  • #61
Math Is Hard said:
Hey, it's my husband we're talking about. I reserve the right to edit the list. :biggrin:

I also need to add:
make a grilled cheese, finish a crossword, open a stuck jar, and rub an achy shoulder.

OK, maybe the ice-skating, too. You make a good point.
If I ever get un-marriried, due to circumstances beyond my control, I will relentlessly pursue you. I can do lots of stuff that is not on the list, including making chili relish that will knock your socks off.

BTW, when I make make grilled cheese sandwiches, I need to make the right to use fresh-baked bread bread to whack some nice foods together.

Make good bread, use good cheese and condiments, and eat well. Home-made beer-barrel rye bread, spread with mustard on the inside to combine with the sharp cheddar, and spread with butter on the outside, pulunked into a hot cast-iron skilled for about a minute a side. Perfect grilled cheese sandwich.
 
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  • #62
Math Is Hard said:
I don't believe Evo's moose story.

Turbo, I just need a husband who can:

"change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."

That's not too much to ask, I think.

Math Is Hard said:
Hey, it's my husband we're talking about. I reserve the right to edit the list. :biggrin:

I also need to add:
make a grilled cheese, finish a crossword, open a stuck jar, and rub an achy shoulder.

OK, maybe the ice-skating, too. You make a good point.

Well, if you're ever going to get married, you're going to have to join the reformed Church of Latter Day Saints. I don't know who else you could marry besides me, and I'm already married to Tsu, so it would have to be a multiple wives thing.

We could do like the one Mormon guy who hangs his hat on the door where he will be staying that night. But he had 13 wives, so we may not need anything so formal.

...but don't get your hopes up until I check with Tsu.
 
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  • #63
Math Is Hard said:
"change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."

Math Is Hard said:
Hey, it's my husband we're talking about. I reserve the right to edit the list. :biggrin:

So, where did the Greg failed? Was it sonnet or manure?
 
  • #64
Maybe it's on the unpublished list... Making salsa, smoking salmon, canning vegetables, making pickles. MIH needs someone who knows how to cook so she can kick her Stouffer's addiction.
 
  • #65
BTW, the organic-gardening neighbor was at work yesterday, but we had his wife, daughter, and two little grand-daughters over for snacks, drinks, and company. The girls insisted that I hula-hoop for them just to prove that I wasn't lying about being a kid when those came out. I am no longer coordinated enough (lack of practice?) to get the hoop climbing on me and dropping my arms to get it up around my neck.

Later, I got out one of my guitars and sang and played a couple of old blues numbers for them. They were pretty stoked up, though at 5 and 7 they are at an impressionable age. Not old enough to be critics.
 
  • #66
I have a bit of a concern. I'm going to have to reduce the price that I'm willing to offer my neighbors to buy their house. The housing market is Terrible with a capital "T" here, with job prospects worse worse than awful. The sticking point is that the guy is losing his mental capacity, and his wife has already lost hers. She can drive, call the sons, etc, but she has NO ability to properly evaluate this place.

I'll pay cash for their place, sit on the place (maybe rent it) and wait until I can sell it for a reasonable profit, but I'm not going to pay high-dollars for it and wait and hope that a decade or two of appreciation will fix the gap.
 
  • #67
I was just in Maine a few weeks ago. Went to Androscoggin to see Stephen King sights. Also checked out Lewiston/auburn, Portland (which was totally booked hotel wise) Biddeboro, and Sanford. I was a bit surprised by the "rural sprawl." That is to say, I was expecting more undeveloped land. It seemed like there were small rural farm towns across the whole of Maine. Didn't find Ackerman's field.
 
  • #68
I almost went to College of the Atlantic (in Bar Harbor) but the weather + isolation combo scared me off. New England seems like the kind of place I'd want to live, as long as it was always summer. I remember visiting my girlfriend at UVM in late april (in Burlington, VT) during a hail storm. It was literally painful to be outside.
 
  • #69
Galteeth said:
I was just in Maine a few weeks ago. Went to Androscoggin to see Stephen King sights. Also checked out Lewiston/auburn, Portland (which was totally booked hotel wise) Biddeboro, and Sanford. I was a bit surprised by the "rural sprawl." That is to say, I was expecting more undeveloped land. It seemed like there were small rural farm towns across the whole of Maine. Didn't find Ackerman's field.
Anything from Lewiston/Auburn and south is all turning into sprawl. Head north from Augusta, and you'll soon be into the land of overgrown farms, woodland, country roads...
 
  • #70
turbo-1 said:
Anything from Lewiston/Auburn and south is all turning into sprawl. Head north from Augusta, and you'll soon be into the land of overgrown farms, woodland, country roads...

About 25 years ago, Tsu and I pulled into Bangor Maine, around 7 pm, on the evening of Mother's Day. Not only was the entire town shut down, but we couldn't even find a public phone to call my mother! [no cell phones back then]

Back then we lived in Los Angeles, so it seemed like we had fallen off the face the earth!
 
  • #71
And Bangor is a BIG city by Maine standards. It was once the lumber capital of the world, with sawmills, lumberyards and shipping docks lining both sides of the Penobscot river. There is a huge photographic mural in the city's planning office that showed the riverfront during the lumber hey-day. You could almost have walked from shore to shore by stepping from ship to ship. Ships loading at the docks, ships moored, waiting their turn... Very impressive.

Want to pick antiques? Bangor is a good place to go nosing around and knocking on doors. Home to lumber-barons, ship-captains, etc. Lots of interesting stuff turns up there, and there are many old mansions that probably are loaded with interesting artifacts that eventually found their way the attic as people lost interest or the lady of the house exerted more control over what could and could not be displayed in the home.

Speaking of antiques, there were a couple of home-made patriotic flags with stars, stripes, and eagles that dated to the start of the civil war. They were found in a trunk in the attic of an unoccupied farmhouse less than 2 miles from here. I made a deal with the dealer who had them on consignment, after consulting with a militaria specialist. The specialist offered to take them off our hands for $6000. They sold at auction for $16,000 plus sales commission.
 
  • #72
turbo-1 said:
And Bangor is a BIG city by Maine standards.

As was indicated on the map. You can imagine our surprise!

We had an RV. One night we parked in a national reserve of some kind to watch the sunset. I recall that this was about the most Northeastern point in Maine that one could go.

While we were sitting there in our RV looking through the bay window, some guy opens our door, walks in, sits down at the table, and starts talking as if we were all best buddies. Tsu and I didn't know if this guy was just friendly beyond belief, or dangerous. Not only that, we were in the middle of nowhere. Where did this guy come from?!

Turned out that he was the Constable and apparently did whatever he pleased. Great guy, but there was no mistaking that he ran the place. I guess we passed his test.
 
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  • #73
Well, I guess my offer for the house was supremely insulting. The people who are selling it won't even speak to me. Too bad! The next offer will be lower still. I'm the only person who has made an offer, and the house has only been shown one time, and that was through a competing agency, not the one with the contract.
 
  • #74
turbo-1 said:
Well, I guess my offer for the house was supremely insulting. The people who are selling it won't even speak to me. Too bad! The next offer will be lower still. I'm the only person who has made an offer, and the house has only been shown one time, and that was through a competing agency, not the one with the contract.

The reality check messenger is rarely appreciated. :rolleyes:
 
  • #75
Borg said:
The reality check messenger is rarely appreciated. :rolleyes:
I may have to endure another round of the idiocy. My wife hates the appearance of their house (street view), but would like to have the extra space. She's thinking about the possibility of a dedicated exercise room in the finished basement, starting vegetables in the sun-room in Spring, and other advantages.

I hate the thought of moving again, but at least it's only a couple of hundred yards. I also don't relish the thought of selling this cozy log house, but she does have a point about the extra space. The elliptical trainer and the BowFlex could be well out of the way, and she could leave a slant-bench set up with a rack of dumbbells nearby. Add some mats, a TV, and DVD player for yoga routines, and she'd be pretty happy. We had a home gym in a spare room in our last house and she misses that.

OK, anyone want to move to a log house in Maine with a VERY nice garden spot and a custom irrigation system? I think I know a place... ;-)
 
  • #76
Oh, wives.
 
  • #77
turbo-1 said:
OK, anyone want to move to a log house in Maine with a VERY nice garden spot and a custom irrigation system? I think I know a place... ;-)
How are you going to live without your garden?
 
  • #78
Borek said:
Oh, wives.
Ah yes, the source of random imperatives.
 
  • #79
dlgoff said:
How are you going to live without your garden?
There's a garden spot at that place, too, and I would take a year or two to build up the soil. Plus, cut some large trees on the south of that lawn for better sunlight. I talked the owner into buying a 14 yard load of rotted manure last year, and I tilled it in for him this spring. A partial load of sand to improve drainage would be a good addition, but the garden is acceptable in its current state, if a bit small. That's what the PTO tiller is for, though. :devil:
 
  • #80
Please, some rational PF'er (I know there are at least a few!) buy the place next door! I don't want to sink $105K+ (probably the minimum buy-in) into that place and ride out the housing market until stuff gets "normal" again. Taxes, insurance, and upkeep would erode the gain in value and lock us in for longer than we would like.

My wife and I considered buying that place and moving in, but we can't bear leaving this place and selling it. This house has a nice permanent metal roof, code-compliant chimneys, a new detached garage for gas-powered stuff, and their gas, plus diesel and the tractor. Plus, we have a wholly remodeled kitchen with custom pine cabinets, stone counter-tops with cherry trim, a rebuilt back deck... Plus we have a back-yard pond and a cobbled-together irrigation system that kept our garden healthy during the drought. Just can't give it up.

I have spent the last 5 years building up the soil in this garden-spot, too, with dump-truck-loads of manure, sand, and smaller amendments of peat and organic fertilizers to bring this soil to peak fertility and drainage.
 
  • #81
I have Portland cement, sand and lots of water. Tomorrow, my organic-gardening neighbor and his daughter (the same people who helped build the stone-bordered flower-garden) are going to tow their cement mixer here and bring all kinds of plastic molds so we can make decorative concrete stepping-stones. Some of the molds are quite decorative, and some allow you to make intricate interlocking pavers for walk-ways. Life never gets dull around here.
 
  • #82
Sounds fun!
 
  • #83
Promise to PF'ers who might want to move here - if you buy the place that's up for sale, I will spread manure and other amendments with my tractor and till the garden spot for as long as I am kicking, at no charge. Just be a good neighbor.
 
  • #84
Evo said:
Sounds fun!
It will be, for sure. If they bring the grand-daughters and Max the wonder-dog it will be even more fun. My wife went down to their place a few months ago to help the little ones mold pavers, and she brought them glass beads and polished stones to embed in them. They were thrilled.
 
  • #85
You can (kind of) see the natural stone raised rock beds I put all around my house. I picked up all of these stones one by one at construction sites in the area and hauled load after load home. They are fossil rock that is just a few feet under the dirt here, kansas was under a natural sea 440 million years ago, so we have all of these incredible rocks.

house20front1akv7.jpg
 
  • #86
Evo said:
You can (kind of) see the natural stone raised rock beds I put all around my house. I picked up all of these stones one by one at construction sites in the area and hauled load after load home. They are fossil rock that is just a few feet under the dirt here, kansas was under a natural sea 440 million years ago, so we have all of these incredible rocks.
Nice. Here we have mostly either edgy fragments of ledge or heavily-weathered field-stones (often granite). Glaciation has taken its toll here, so building things with field-stone can be problematic.
 
  • #87
Well, the neighbors showed up early, and just left. We used 4 loader-buckets full of sand, 5 bags of Portland cement and LOTS of water (thanks to my pond-pump!). Instead of the decorated stepping stones, we did cast-in-place pavers, so now I have walkways though my front lawn, and wending between the flower gardens. They have gang-molds that simulate custom-laid pavers. It is a very nice effect, and a lot cheaper and easier than buying and laying pavers. I'd post pictures, but we covered all the paths with plastic and tarps due to intermittent showers expected this afternoon.
 
  • #88
Thanks to yesterday's "neighbor blitz" we have all kinds of concrete walking-paths. I have to figure out how to border them, if my wife doesn't take that role. Tomorrow or Wednesday, I have to help my wife make molded decorative stepping-stones out of mortar-heavy concrete. Need the mix to be a bit rich and a bit soupy so that all the details in the top of the stones (bottom of the molds) are well-defined when they set.

I'll probably be on and off the tractor tomorrow, shuttling sand for bordering, etc, but I expect that my wife will want to stay outside and attack that, while relegating me to making tomato sauces.

Any PF babes want to harvest, process and freeze food while I work outside? I think I married a too-capable lady that wants to stay outdoors as much as possible. To be fair, I'm home all week, and when the weather turns nice I should be willing to spend some kitchen-time processing food for the winter. I've done pretty much all the canning, pickling, salsa-making, etc for the last 5 years, so I'm used to it.
 
  • #89
A few weeks ago, we built the stone raised-bed garden and I filled it with rotted manure. Last Sunday, with the neighbors' help, we made walkways with cast-in-place pavers, and yesterday and today I tilled and hauled manure while my wife pulled out the grass and roots, and planted perennials, set out decorative stones, planters, etc. Still a work in progress, so it's pretty rough, but I'm sure it will be very nice when we're done. Eventually, all of the grass on this lawn will be gone, replaced by flower beds and mulch. Now, we have to figure a way to border the pavers and fill the voids between them. Probably fine crushed stone... Caution: wide panorama.

th_panlawn.jpg
 
  • #90
turbo-1 said:
A few weeks ago, we built the stone raised-bed garden and I filled it with rotted manure. Last Sunday, with the neighbors' help, we made walkways with cast-in-place pavers, and yesterday and today I tilled and hauled manure while my wife pulled out the grass and roots, and planted perennials, set out decorative stones, planters, etc. Still a work in progress, so it's pretty rough, but I'm sure it will be very nice when we're done. Eventually, all of the grass on this lawn will be gone, replaced by flower beds and mulch. Now, we have to figure a way to border the pavers and fill the voids between them. Probably fine crushed stone... Caution: wide panorama.

th_panlawn.jpg

What do you mean wide panorama.. Its a 2kb file mang.. :frown: