How to start a farm in Maine.
Thought about taking life to a whole new level and dreaming of farming in Maine? The four letters “FARM” is a pretty big word. This blog post jumps into the topic how to start a farm in Maine. Reach out with questions about Maine farming.
For starters, the farm up in Maine, are you thinking using the land for now on vacations?
With the plan to slowly pull away from expensive city living to trade it all in for wide open space, no locked doors, zip for traffic? Then Maine land, just land where you bring up the travel trailer RV camper and part it for low cost Maine vacations. Eventually, when everything in your life lines up correctly, you pull the trigger and build the house of your dreams. With everything you wanted that you never had in previous houses and a few items you did.
You will never go hungry on a Maine farm.
I did not eat a lot of rice growing up but we sure have a lot of home grown Maine potatoes. There are so many ways to cook and prepare a Maine potato and I know them all. On the family farm, we also grew soldier, yellow eye and Jacob’s cattle dry beans. Unlike potatoes, what you harvest one year can last into the next to sell. You just have to hope and pray it is not a wet fall when you have to harvest the dry beans.
Water is not your friend when dealing with dry rattling beans inside pods that wick the water and start to swell.
You want that process to begin when soaking beans for the Saturday night supper meal. But not out in the field when trying to have a dry harvest.
Here’s over 80 acres of Maine farm land for sale, watch the real estate video.
The three buildings you saw and heard about in this Maine farm video can be worked into an agricultural use.
The pasture farm fields are seeded down, all bush hogged and ready to go. Maine land that is totally wooded means clearing the forest, removing stumps and lots of prep work ahead. Maine farm land that is high test soil and maintained makes the lifestyle change go a lot smoother. Buying a farm in Maine is done for a lot of reason. The land investment gives the owner a piece of mind, security. It is purchased by many as an insurance policy for life. It is the next step and helps a person knowing where they are head. Slowly or quickly if things go south where they live now.
Real estate buyers also purchase farmland in Maine for multi-generational use.
So everyone in the family can have an acre or two to build a camp, home, heck put up a yurt. Gram and Gramp are on the farm up in Maine too. I had one couple who had both sets of in-laws with them when they purchased 115 acres on a river in Oakfield Maine. There was a house and the plan to slowly create more. Lots of auxiliary buildings around the Maine farm house happens. The emphasis is on the Maine farm barn, the machine shed, the chicken house, all the other pens with standing or box stalls.
When you get the itch to start a Maine farm, when there are no buildings, the first one you construct is usually a barn, machine shed.
The emphasis is on the farm, living off the land. Making a paycheck by tilling the soil, managing the wooded sections is priority one. Or staking the pastures with fencing to contain the critters. There are many who start a farm in Maine that bank everything on the plunge into agriculture. But it helps if one person in the couple has a real job with benefits and a steady income. Or if you are retired and going small scale, micro farming, you have a “ticket”. That retirement income helps stabilize and keep the farm dream alive and well.
The big post and beam barns on Maine farms are like dinosaurs.
Slowly going to their knees and dying their last waspy breath due to lack of use and maintenance. Large round bales, not the small square or rectangular ones for hay have taken over. Putting hay up in the loft of a gable or gambrel roof barn is not done so much now. Labor costs are rising and if you can see daylight through holes in the barn roof, it’s whoa. Wet hay molds. Hay cut, conditioned, baled and put into storage with moisture in it can heat up and even cause a barn fire from spontaneous combustion.
Starting a farm in Maine, it’s not all fun and glamor.
Might want to wear your old clothes. Bring an extra set of gloves. Eat a hearty farmhouse breakfast. You are dealing with the weather in Maine that is always changing and unpredictable. Those totally surviving off the Maine farm land have worked a forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Spring planting and fall harvest of crops is never ending. Everything is counting on getting the seeds into the spring time ground and harvested off the land in fall. Frost going in or out is to be avoided at all costs.
Before you farm anything on for animals or crops in your pasture fields, where is your market going to be on the farm in Maine? You invested a lot of time, money, seed, fertilizer, etc for nothing if you can’t sell what you produce. You May be super duper at growing a crop but if no one wants to buy it, that’s no fun. That won’t keep the wolf or the bill collectors from your farmhouse door. Farming in Maine rides on a business chassis.
You have to be an accountant, good at marketing, a master at cruising the farm operation looking for loose ends and an expert at cutting through red tape.
All the time and it never lets up. Farming is a jealous master unless you have a ‘ticket” and keep it a hobby amateur operation.
Local farmers market like this one below create a sales outlet as shown in this Maine community video.
Unfortunately there is a cheap food policy in our country.
That is why it helps to live where the cost to do it is lower to the ground. Maine is just such a place and blessed with hi test fertile low cost farm soil. Like most small businesses, is it volume. Getting bigger, watching your costs knowing the profit is in the expenses. That’s why earlier in the blog post on how to start a farm in Maine asked you if you were talking small or jumping in hook, line and sinker.
The most home grown and do as much yourself as you can without hiring out kind of Maine farming is the most enjoyable.
Small, controllable and you are hands on involved in every aspect of the farm in Maine operations. It also makes it new and always something new needing attention. Your kids growing up on a Maine farm learn worth ethic, skills, and healthier living being outdoors. Off the device, off the couch and self absorbed. That’s not the lifestyle when there are chores to do on the Maine farm operation.
No farmer, no food and more folks are realizing how to be self sufficient, independent means learning how to feed yourself.
I grew up on the farm in Maine above and here to help with pointers and advice. Like people, Maine farm soils are different. I just happen to know a dependable Maine real estate broker with fire in his belly about farms (blushing ten shades of red). Reach out, let’s talk, learn more about how to start a farm in Maine no matter what size or kind it is! Thank you for stopping by and learning a little more about how to start a farm in Maine.