# Our new adventure ~ homesteading in Maine



## paiche (Feb 19, 2018)

In 2016 I ditched my techno-utopian deadbeat husband and moved in with my grandmom and helped her with her end of life care. She helped me out with a free place to live so I was able to pay off my debts and I helped her with geriatric stuff, food, medicine, etc. She passed away in November and I'm doing the best I can now to beat off the bankers that will ultimately take her home. This is my opportunity to make the leap. I've saved enough to buy some acreage in rural Maine where land is still cheap and I am so eager to get out of this electrified house! The five of us will start looking when the snow recedes enough to get a glimpse of the soil. The only places we can afford are super rural and I worry that I will feel too isolated and that I won't find community. I even emailed some folks that are looking to start a little ecovillage nearby to see if they would welcome us but I don't know it that will work, maybe it will and that would be ideal. I want this move to be super long term because I fall in love with land so intimately that it really hurts to leave and I don't want to move my kids around anymore until they move themselves out into the world. 
I'm writing this looking for support in this new transition in life. I'd love to hear your success story of joining community in rural places, overcoming fears in life transitions and others who have settled on raw land and had a successful experience with building a dwelling and putting food by, especially with kids. (My kids are addicted to screens so will be going through a jonesing period while we build so it's goin to be intense at times.)


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## Tony Leon (Feb 19, 2018)

Little Ecovillage awesome I'm a Writer to and I am interested in Eco Villages!
My Family resides in Danvers MA and sometimes in Salem MA. My wifes mind is that of a 19 yr old from the Melanoma Cancer she moved out to Danvers Mass to Die.
My Son is in Baseball and My Daughter is an Artist...
There is always an obstacle but I would be willing to explore the adventure and this would open a venue for me to visit my Family !


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## Tony Leon (Feb 19, 2018)

Organic/Bio Farms Eco Villages


 501(c-3)-12 Non Profit

 70-80 Residents including families


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## Tony Leon (Feb 19, 2018)

366^(1-3): Strategic Analytics ECO Village


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## Deleted member 2626 (Mar 15, 2018)

wish id seen this sooner. stand strong. I feel if you aren't fully nomadic, having a little off grid cheap place is next in line.
my avatar is my place. completely off grid. I am back there in 10 days. I hope to get up your way this summer for itchy feet and to renew my patience for solitude for a winter alone in a my tiny dark hut. Community is my only issue ever. I have great neighbors, food, work, conversation at times but it ends there. I hope to have people stop in this summer or fall and if thngs go well with anyone I"m open to other huts and tipis. my land is located in central northern pennsylvania. Is liam your friend? the walker? I just got back from the west coast and his book has been here for awhile and its going to be some reading for this year. @paiche


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## paiche (Mar 15, 2018)

Tatanka said:


> wish id seen this sooner. stand strong. I feel if you aren't fully nomadic, having a little off grid cheap place is next in line.
> my avatar is my place. completely off grid. I am back there in 10 days. I hope to get up your way this summer for itchy feet and to renew my patience for solitude for a winter alone in a my tiny dark hut. Community is my only issue ever. I have great neighbors, food, work, conversation at times but it ends there. I hope to have people stop in this summer or fall and if thngs go well with anyone I"m open to other huts and tipis. my land is located in central northern pennsylvania. Is liam your friend? the walker? I just got back from the west coast and his book has been here for awhile and its going to be some reading for this year. @paiche


Thanks Tatanka, we plan to stand strong. Yeah, he stopped walking and came home to help save money to buy land. We're not there yet, still slaving in with the system. We'll be breaking through soon, not sure where we will land but I'm itching to get there.


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## Deleted member 2626 (Mar 15, 2018)

right on. i was lucky enough to have my dad sell me my 1.69 acres for 5 grand when my parents split up. and the place is mostly recycled. I own no vehicle so only bills are land owner ship(rent) taxes. not much over 150 a year. and of course food here and there etc


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## Hillbilly Castro (Mar 15, 2018)

Where in Maine? I'm buying land downeast and there's a property next to the one I've put an offer on that's around 20 acres for $19,000 - and the seller is motivated and listed the property in April 2016. It borders 11,000 acres of state land, is a half-mile from the coast, and is in a very rural, 100% off-grid area. The coast there is a prime clam-digging area, with thousands of acres of wild blueberries and bogs that may have wild rice in them. No zoning, no codes, taxes on my 11 acres $25/year. And yeah, I wrote "$25", that's not a typo.

If that's within your range, and you'd be a good neighbor, maybe it'd work out. If maybe not, I'm probably going to be closing on my land between May and June, and I'd love for y'all to stay. 

Never met ya but I'm aiming to not attract the boozy hell-raiser demographic, but more the "let's read books all day and survive the fucking apocalypse and maybe even create a tribal living situation etc". I like building weird shit, shooting guns, and writing anarcho-primitivist polemics.


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## marmar (Mar 16, 2018)

Hillbilly Castro said:


> Where in Maine? I'm buying land downeast and there's a property next to the one I've put an offer on that's around 20 acres for $19,000 - and the seller is motivated and listed the property in April 2016. It borders 11,000 acres of state land, is a half-mile from the coast, and is in a very rural, 100% off-grid area. The coast there is a prime clam-digging area, with thousands of acres of wild blueberries and bogs that may have wild rice in them. No zoning, no codes, taxes on my 11 acres $25/year. And yeah, I wrote "$25", that's not a typo.
> 
> If that's within your range, and you'd be a good neighbor, maybe it'd work out. If maybe not, I'm probably going to be closing on my land between May and June, and I'd love for y'all to stay.
> 
> Never met ya but I'm aiming to not attract the boozy hell-raiser demographic, but more the "let's read books all day and survive the fucking apocalypse and maybe even create a tribal living situation etc". I like building weird shit, shooting guns, and writing anarcho-primitivist polemics.


That sounds cool. What state is it in? I don't really have immediate 19grand but could be food for thought for the future.
I was looking into land project but the lack of community and normal people around those rural areas, among other issues, turned me off and into different goals. I looked at a few cheap land parcels in NY last year.
I think neighboring is the best way to go, in terms of off grid community building. Not a commune, but more of a village of like minded people


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## Deleted member 2626 (Mar 19, 2018)

@Hillbilly Castro man thats great. you can really do a lot with 11 acres. Even legally use firearms for hunting depending on vicinity of buildings. Would be cool to maybe communicate on things, both being "landowners"/ travelers, for nomadic places for people-ourselves to check out/ work exchange etc and lay over. That goes for anyone else. PM or vice versa


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## Hillbilly Castro (Mar 20, 2018)

marmar said:


> That sounds cool. What state is it in? I don't really have immediate 19grand but could be food for thought for the future.
> I was looking into land project but the lack of community and normal people around those rural areas, among other issues, turned me off and into different goals. I looked at a few cheap land parcels in NY last year.
> I think neighboring is the best way to go, in terms of off grid community building. Not a commune, but more of a village of like minded people



I'm with you, I like the idea of each owning their own property but sharing common areas and hanging out all the time. Not into collectiv*ISM*, but into collective living, if you know what I mean. Maybe even nightly dinners with the whole neighborhood, collective homeschooling, shared wood shop, etc. My only real worry other than blackflies and wetlands is loneliness.
I'm actively looking for folks who want to live on or near the property if I buy it. If you wanted to throw up a temporary camp for a while while you save for the adjacent land (and there are other properties on that private road that will get listed soon, I believe) I'd be happy to let you do that for free. With the right people - types I could see being "family" with - I would even consider splitting ownership via a trust or a buy-in.

I visited the land this weekend and holy shit, it's great. It's currently snow-covered so I can't tell how wet the property is, however, there is a big-ass boulder in the center of the property which is covered in trees and bushes and has an excellent view of the surrounding area. I called the agent about the taxes and it turns out $25 is for the tree growth tax easement (no building allowed), but without it it's still only about $200 a year. Homestead tax credit may make that zero, gotta search into that. It's near Lubec, which is a great little small town on the border very close to the easternmost point in the US which has a library, grocery, and even a little vegan restaurant.

Edit: Also, NY is tempting because of land prices, but watch out. Taxes are high and are often not included in listhub information. Codes can be oppressive. If you do buy land in NY, there are a few counties where it's a decent idea. I'm local to upstate NY, feel free to ask. I may purchase a house in Utica area at some point, and go between downeast Maine and Utica seasonally. That way I can get some urban organizing going, see my family, and get my city on in Utica, and then spend the winters up in Maine with solitude. Semi-nomadic with a tribe is what I want.


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## paiche (Mar 20, 2018)

I'm definitely looking at downeast Hillbilly Castro & wokofshame. We haven't gone out to spy the land there yet because we are waiting for the snow to recede. We are open to going in on land with others. There are some pretty sweet large tracks of land out there that are totally affordable. We are looking to be off grid, have a food forest, some cleared land for gardens and orchard space, decent space for building, some elevation gain for root cellar and potential to try an underground home, a brook or spring on the property.. It'll all start this summer, I'm itching to know where we'll end up. I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah the black flies and the mosquitoes can get pretty intense, I'm not excited about them.


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## Deleted member 2626 (Mar 20, 2018)

Now we are talking folks. This is great. Semi nomadic with a place to chill out at, grow food, hole up and not be trespassing, while working or scrounging little money for the land ownership rights. Man, if we all had like trails, obviously roads and such, connecting it'd be quite cool. Loneliness is one of my only tough points, I have no friends much interested in any of this off grid, sustainable thing.


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## Hillbilly Castro (Mar 20, 2018)

Tatanka said:


> Now we are talking folks. This is great. Semi nomadic with a place to chill out at, grow food, hole up and not be trespassing, while working or scrounging little money for the land ownership rights. Man, if we all had like trails, obviously roads and such, connecting it'd be quite cool. Loneliness is one of my only tough points, I have no friends much interested in any of this off grid, sustainable thing.



Actually, right in Cutler, there is connection with an extensive grid of ATV trails, as well as the Sunrise Trail which spans from Ellsworth to somewhere near Eastport, I believe. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to connect properties easily with this.
But I should also say, the land I'm looking at is some weird little development where someone bought old paper company land, subdivided, and is selling plots. No one is there yet really, judging by the unplowed road. If we move quick we could all occupy Bog Brook Way legally and have our own community within a mile of the ocean.

@paiche are you trying to be near the ocean? I'm really into the idea.


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## TheWindAndRain (Mar 20, 2018)

Very cool. I hope yall can get a whole village going. My plan is to do something similar in Missouri after I graduate because I like the political freedoms there more. As HillbillyCastro says, government can can be unpredictably oppressive if you pick the wrong place. I hear you should avoid tracts in or along national forest for the same reasons.


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## paiche (Apr 27, 2019)

We made it! Found some land in Western Maine and built a little woodland fort last fall. It held up fine through a rugged winter. I'm learning to eat road kill and tan hides. The ground is finally thawed so I'm starting in on digging our root cellar so I can put food by this winter. water is abundant and the neighbors are cool. I love the richness of being in the woods with no electricity and thriving as a part of the ecosystem. Our couch is always available and there are beautiful tent sites by the river if squatters ever need a place.


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