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First, allow me to say I've searched for and read all the "I'm thinking of moving to Maine"-type threads and found them all terrifically helpful, but, like everyone else, I find my situation unique, and so desire specific perspectives.
I am putting the finishing touches on a log cabin I built for my wife and myself in upstate New York. I just finished my first year teaching physics at a local high school and now during the summer have found a moment to breathe. In that moment I heard more traffic, lawn mowers, and heavy equipment than I ever realized could have existed in the little valley below our hill. So our thoughts have turned to moving from our beautiful little homestead. My wife and I grow or raise most of our own vegetables, milk, eggs, and meat. We cook, heat, and heat water with a wood stove only with wood I cut off our land. Our plan is to stop working outside the home in 5-10 years. My wife works from home for a medical office.
We decided we want privacy.
Our county has a population density of 97 people per square mile. One of the lower populated counties in the state is immediately to our east, at 58 people per square mile. We have neighbors who have all either claimed, used, and built structures on our side of the property line, or seem to ignore us when we tell them we bought the land, pay taxes on it, and would like them off it! We want privacy.
We want lower taxes.
Our tax bill on a property assessed at 130,000 dollars is approximately 4,000 dollars a year. I calculate that at our current rate of saving, I would need to work an extra 7 years just to pay property taxes if we stayed here until I can be expected to expire, even longer if my wife were to hang around a bit longer. This is not a lavish property: a 24X32 log cabin sits here, a hand-pump on the well, a small solar system (the house is not wired), no utility hookups whatsoever, on about 39 acres of forest, recently logged and fairly steeply sloped.
We would also like to leave New York.
I imagine every state has a right to complain about internal politics, but here we have to deal with New York City. With a population of about 19,000,000 in the greater metro area, it if fairly safe to say that rural residents (if you can call 97 people per square mile rural) have almost no say whatsoever in state politics. Hence the recent firearms registrations. And the state mandates that make our local taxes so high (about 75% of our county tax bill funds programs the state mandates the county to run, but allows no funding for).
So we researched population density, taxes, land prices, firearms legislation, homeschooling regulation, vaccine regulation, income taxes, and so on, and decided that the only place that fits the bill in the entire United States for us is Maine.
If you've read this far, thanks for your forbearance!
So, folks, what do you think? Would a small homesteading family be welcome in rural Maine? Could we be an asset to a (small!) community? Are there places to avoid (besides the sprawling cities and built-up ski resorts)? Are there people or resources you could point us to? We would prefer to buy a decent-sized plot of land that already has a structure on it with well and grey-water septic, but would be very willing to build if the building codes aren't too restrictive. (Our building inspector here in NY was a great guy, but I grew very weary of having to apply codes that I just didn't think suited our lifestyle. Electrical codes are the reason we decided to go off-grid and not use high voltage). Anyhow, we're looking to make the move in less than 10 years, before our first son grows old enough to forever think of our current place as 'home'.
Again, thank you for reading. If you have any advice, bitter warnings, criticisms, or otherwise helpful words, I would be very grateful for the sharing.
First, allow me to say I've searched for and read all the "I'm thinking of moving to Maine"-type threads and found them all terrifically helpful, but, like everyone else, I find my situation unique, and so desire specific perspectives.
I am putting the finishing touches on a log cabin I built for my wife and myself in upstate New York. I just finished my first year teaching physics at a local high school and now during the summer have found a moment to breathe. In that moment I heard more traffic, lawn mowers, and heavy equipment than I ever realized could have existed in the little valley below our hill. So our thoughts have turned to moving from our beautiful little homestead. My wife and I grow or raise most of our own vegetables, milk, eggs, and meat. We cook, heat, and heat water with a wood stove only with wood I cut off our land. Our plan is to stop working outside the home in 5-10 years. My wife works from home for a medical office.
We decided we want privacy.
Our county has a population density of 97 people per square mile. One of the lower populated counties in the state is immediately to our east, at 58 people per square mile. We have neighbors who have all either claimed, used, and built structures on our side of the property line, or seem to ignore us when we tell them we bought the land, pay taxes on it, and would like them off it! We want privacy.
We want lower taxes.
Our tax bill on a property assessed at 130,000 dollars is approximately 4,000 dollars a year. I calculate that at our current rate of saving, I would need to work an extra 7 years just to pay property taxes if we stayed here until I can be expected to expire, even longer if my wife were to hang around a bit longer. This is not a lavish property: a 24X32 log cabin sits here, a hand-pump on the well, a small solar system (the house is not wired), no utility hookups whatsoever, on about 39 acres of forest, recently logged and fairly steeply sloped.
We would also like to leave New York.
I imagine every state has a right to complain about internal politics, but here we have to deal with New York City. With a population of about 19,000,000 in the greater metro area, it if fairly safe to say that rural residents (if you can call 97 people per square mile rural) have almost no say whatsoever in state politics. Hence the recent firearms registrations. And the state mandates that make our local taxes so high (about 75% of our county tax bill funds programs the state mandates the county to run, but allows no funding for).
So we researched population density, taxes, land prices, firearms legislation, homeschooling regulation, vaccine regulation, income taxes, and so on, and decided that the only place that fits the bill in the entire United States for us is Maine.
If you have the time off, seriously you need to attend the Common Ground Fair in Unity, 19 - 21 September.
Much of Maine has population-density of 10/sq mile or less.
Most Maine towns [52%] are Unorganized Townships, as a method of keeping their taxes low. My township burned their charter in the 70's for that reason. So far 40 Maine towns have done this.
Quote:
... Would a small homesteading family be welcome in rural Maine?
LOL, yes.
A big section of people migrating to Maine is retirees [like me] who come to Maine, to do what you want to do. [with a pension we no longer need jobs]
Quote:
... Are there places to avoid (besides the sprawling cities and built-up ski resorts)?
Portland and a 50-mile radius around it. Anything near NH. The coast from MDI and South. The cities along I-95.
Quote:
... We would prefer to buy a decent-sized plot of land that already has a structure on it with well and grey-water septic, but would be very willing to build if the building codes aren't too restrictive. (Our building inspector here in NY was a great guy, but I grew very weary of having to apply codes that I just didn't think suited our lifestyle. Electrical codes are the reason we decided to go off-grid and not use high voltage).
In my town, we already have 3 homes off-grid, soon there will be a fourth.
Many people have set up the lifestyle you are talking about. There are some really rural, peaceful parts of Maine that still let people do what they want unless it's ridiculous. I don't think you would have any trouble finding the kind of property you want. The question is exactly how rural you want to be; you can live in semi-wilderness in Maine if you want, with the nearest neighbor ten miles away. Or you can live out in "the boondocks", where the nearest neighbor is a mile or two away. Or you can live in one of the many tiny villages, with neighbors "just down the road".
Submariner, the Fair seems like a good suggestion. I will bring it up with my wife, and likely put it on the long term calendar.
I certainly appreciate the spirit of burning town charters, though I have been concerned about trying to build in LUPC jurisdiction. There was a thread on this forum that gave the LURC somewhat negative reviews in this regard. With the slight change in constitution, has this changed? I'm also worried about keeping animals in LUPC areas. When I make paddocks I do leave a high percentage of the trees; my pastures tend to look somewhat similar to tree plantations from satellite photo. I just haven't found any regulation on that yet. I also don't want to disturb things too much, that is, I don't want to be the guy from away who changed the feel of a particular area by bringing in a few cows, hogs, sheep, and birds.
Maineguy, thanks for the response. I believe that my wife and I are looking at the semi-wilderness to boondocks area, though if the village was right, we would be open to that too. We live just outside a 'tiny' village now in NY, and do not like the constant noise, and we grow weary of swerving around police vehicles perennially parked at the more unsavory houses. We do like living on land with some terrain, so we haven't really looked much at Hancock, Washington, or Southern Aroostook counties. One of the purposes of this thread for me is to narrow our options down before we start spending weeks in a vehicle: Maine is a big state!
Submariner, the Fair seems like a good suggestion. I will bring it up with my wife, and likely put it on the long term calendar.
I certainly appreciate the spirit of burning town charters, though I have been concerned about trying to build in LUPC jurisdiction. There was a thread on this forum that gave the LURC somewhat negative reviews in this regard. With the slight change in constitution, has this changed? I'm also worried about keeping animals in LUPC areas. When I make paddocks I do leave a high percentage of the trees; my pastures tend to look somewhat similar to tree plantations from satellite photo. I just haven't found any regulation on that yet. I also don't want to disturb things too much, that is, I don't want to be the guy from away who changed the feel of a particular area by bringing in a few cows, hogs, sheep, and birds.
We bought land in a UT, I have built a house and we live here. I did not experience any problems with doing so.
I walked my property lines with a GPS. We decided where we wanted to build and I walked the projected house-footprint with a GPS. Some freeware I down-loaded allowed me to print-out a to-scale map of the property and projected house foot-print. It also gave me exact distances between features [property line set-backs, set-backs from the river, etc]
I am a career servicemember, I am used to filling-out government forms. To me, the building permit application was very easy.
For example; they asked for a short essay on how you planned to deal with disturbed soil to prevent soil erosion. I went online and found on the DEP website where it describes preventing soil erosion. I copied word-for-word what the government said as being the proper method, onto my building permit application.
Many people told me to expect at least 6 months before my application was approved. I got a phone call 2 weeks after I submitted it, telling me that it was approved and in the mail to me. The guy said that they normally get applications written on the back of restaurant place-mats, nothing is to-scale, many lines are left un-answered, etc. In his career, he had never seen an application that was as easy to follow, and that did not require a bunch of leg-work from office staff. They were going to hang a copy of my application on a wall, as an example to others. To me, dealing with LURC/LUPC was among the easiest parts of this adventure.
We have around 150 acres that is in 'treegrowth'. Some of that is floodplain, it produces fiddleheads and has mature maples that I tap.
Treegrowth works beautifully with livestock, and with 'forest-gardening'.
We have had goats and sheep. Goats seemed to work well, as they eat trees, chickens follow them and peck through the droppings. It was a good way to convert trees to eggs. But the nature of goats is to escape fencing.
Currently we are trying pigs. We have pigs free-ranging out in the forest, producing piglets. They are very easy to contain with an electric fence.
Some of our land, I replaced wild trees with fruit / nut trees. Between those trees and beneath the canopy I have poultry coops. So long as trees are growing there, you can generally merge a lot of other functions in with the trees.
For example; consider mushroom logs. You can inoculate hundreds of logs with mushroom spore, and lay/stack them under the canopy in treegrowth land. You can also plant crops like ginseng under the forest canopy, though we have now began finding wild ginseng. We want to try forming volunteer colonies of curcubits out in the woods too.
We bought land in a UT, I have built a house and we live here. I did not experience any problems with doing so.
I walked my property lines with a GPS. We decided where we wanted to build and I walked the projected house-footprint with a GPS. Some freeware I down-loaded allowed me to print-out a to-scale map of the property and projected house foot-print. It also gave me exact distances between features [property line set-backs, set-backs from the river, etc]
I am a career servicemember, I am used to filling-out government forms. To me, the building permit application was very easy.
For example; they asked for a short essay on how you planned to deal with disturbed soil to prevent soil erosion. I went online and found on the DEP website where it describes preventing soil erosion. I copied word-for-word what the government said as being the proper method, onto my building permit application.
Many people told me to expect at least 6 months before my application was approved. I got a phone call 2 weeks after I submitted it, telling me that it was approved and in the mail to me. The guy said that they normally get applications written on the back of restaurant place-mats, nothing is to-scale, many lines are left un-answered, etc. In his career, he had never seen an application that was as easy to follow, and that did not require a bunch of leg-work from office staff. They were going to hang a copy of my application on a wall, as an example to others. To me, dealing with LURC/LUPC was among the easiest parts of this adventure.
We have around 150 acres that is in 'treegrowth'. Some of that is floodplain, it produces fiddleheads and has mature maples that I tap.
Treegrowth works beautifully with livestock, and with 'forest-gardening'.
We have had goats and sheep. Goats seemed to work well, as they eat trees, chickens follow them and peck through the droppings. It was a good way to convert trees to eggs. But the nature of goats is to escape fencing.
Currently we are trying pigs. We have pigs free-ranging out in the forest, producing piglets. They are very easy to contain with an electric fence.
Some of our land, I replaced wild trees with fruit / nut trees. Between those trees and beneath the canopy I have poultry coops. So long as trees are growing there, you can generally merge a lot of other functions in with the trees.
For example; consider mushroom logs. You can inoculate hundreds of logs with mushroom spore, and lay/stack them under the canopy in treegrowth land. You can also plant crops like ginseng under the forest canopy, though we have now began finding wild ginseng. We want to try forming volunteer colonies of curcubits out in the woods too.
Your farm sound idyllic. Do you happen to have any photos of it and/or the surrounding countryside? I am a lifelong Kansan, but something about Maine keeps calling to me... I would LOVE to move the kids up there someday, but can ya grow tomatoes in that climate? I am an organic gardener & have always wanted to live near the woods, as I did growing up. Hoping to learn all I can about Maine.
Your farm sound idyllic. Do you happen to have any photos of it and/or the surrounding countryside?
Photos?
Here are a few photos I took of our land, just out behind our house:
A bit further
The river, looking left
The river, looking straight
The river, looking right
We own 1/4 mile of river frontage.
Quote:
... I am a lifelong Kansan, but something about Maine keeps calling to me... I would LOVE to move the kids up there someday, but can ya grow tomatoes in that climate?
Some years tomatoes do better than other years.
Where I grew-up in California, each tomato plant is expected to sprawl 10' is every direction to make a circle 20' across, and should produce enough fruit to fill a 5-gallon bucket twice a week through the season.
Here tomato plants rarely sprawl more than 6 sq ft, producing 5 or 6 tomatoes a week is doing pretty good.
Tomatoes are a tropic plant, they need 105F to 110F temps for months at a time with lots of water to really perform well.
Quote:
... I am an organic gardener & have always wanted to live near the woods, as I did growing up. Hoping to learn all I can about Maine.
There is a strong organic movement in Maine. 92% of Maine is forested.
Our home sets on a square parcel, approx 1/4 mile on each, or 40-ish acres. Our house is about dead-center with dense woods all around. We have no visible neighbors.
It is certainly possible to live with your home set a mile [or more] into the woods.
"There was a thread on this forum that gave the LURC somewhat negative reviews in this regard. With the slight change in constitution, has this changed?"
The Constitution has not changed. The name of the commission has changed.
That said, there are towns with no zoning. You just need to know where. Maine is a low hassle state except for some agencies that are relatively easy to avoid. Maine needs people including physics teachers and medical field people.
I know people who live as much as six miles from a public road. They go out in winter by snowmobile and during "mud time" by ATV. That is the time before the roads are firm enough to support pickup trucks.
"There was a thread on this forum that gave the LURC somewhat negative reviews in this regard. With the slight change in constitution, has this changed?"
The Constitution has not changed. The name of the commission has changed.
That said, there are towns with no zoning. You just need to know where. Maine is a low hassle state except for some agencies that are relatively easy to avoid. Maine needs people including physics teachers and medical field people.
I know people who live as much as six miles from a public road. They go out in winter by snowmobile and during "mud time" by ATV. That is the time before the roads are firm enough to support pickup trucks.
and many of these folks have grown medicinal marijuana, knowing someday it would be legal!!
Here are a few photos I took of our land, just out behind our house:
A bit further
The river, looking left
The river, looking straight
The river, looking right
We own 1/4 mile of river frontage.
Some years tomatoes do better than other years.
Where I grew-up in California, each tomato plant is expected to sprawl 10' is every direction to make a circle 20' across, and should produce enough fruit to fill a 5-gallon bucket twice a week through the season.
Here tomato plants rarely sprawl more than 6 sq ft, producing 5 or 6 tomatoes a week is doing pretty good.
Tomatoes are a tropic plant, they need 105F to 110F temps for months at a time with lots of water to really perform well.
There is a strong organic movement in Maine. 92% of Maine is forested.
Our home sets on a square parcel, approx 1/4 mile on each, or 40-ish acres. Our house is about dead-center with dense woods all around. We have no visible neighbors.
It is certainly possible to live with your home set a mile [or more] into the woods.
Hey now, those look familiar... hee hee heee!!
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hee hee heee!!
