Petra, Maine

A few years ago, my wife and I bought a hundred acres of land in far northern Maine, near the Canadian border. It includes a couple of potato fields, a beaver dam, and a cedar swamp, but is otherwise mostly woodland. I have built a camp there, although I still need to finish the interior, install a wood stove, and furniture. We're hoping for a well, too. It is complete off-grid, being a couple of miles from the nearest utilities, on a road that becomes a snowmobile trail in the winter.

Here's a photo from Google Earth that shows our land, but not the boundaries, which is centered pretty much in this image. The upper potato field is five acres, to give you an idea. A link to a larger image is included.


Larger Image

Here's one that is zoomed in to show the top of our camp, between the two potato fields, on the right side of the road, along with a larger image. Although I saw the Google Earth car go by, Google Earth still doesn't have street view for our land yet.



Larger Image

 

Sometime in the next week or so, I'll be spending a couple of nights at camp. There is nothing there other than a shell right now, with a ceramic floor, but I shouldn't need heat in the summer. I need to cut the grass or front or the ATV Club will, and they plowed through half my garden the last time they did it, and I need to clear some of the trails that I use regularly, since they are growing up in saplings and ferns again. I also want to clear the same from a few of the clearings that I set my wildlife cameras up in. and may create a couple more clearings if I can get my chainsaw started; there should be nothing wrong with it but I haven't used it in a couple of years so I might have it serviced first. I brought my cameras home from the woods when I was up there last week, so that I could give them a cleaning, so I need to get them back out on the trees too.

If I do create a new clearing, it will involve another animal habitat beneath a brush pile. I have some old pieces of furniture that I can build the pile around in order to create pockets for various creatures to make home out of, but I think I'd like to include a potential bear's den as well. It gave me a great deal of pleasure to learn that one of my bears chose the home that I built for him to hibernate in winter before last. Bears, by the way, seldom use the same den year after year, and the male bear will put more effort into building comforts into his chosen place to den than will the females. While the males will seek a place with a roof, and even drag in things to use as a mattress, the females have been known to simply lie down beneath a tree that has a lot of undergrowth. Just a bit of bear trivia.

Mostly, I want to spend some nights there because I have never spent a night there yet and am looking forward to hearing the night sounds, since bear, moose, lynx, and other animals are regularly caught on camera passing by the camp.

 

100 acres is 40.4685642 hectares, according to the conversion chart. No, its not huge. My father had, I think, 10-15 forty-acre fields that he farmed. Only about five acres of mine is in farmland though, the rest being mostly woodland, with a cedar swamp on one end and a brook with a beaver dam on the other.

 

That is well understood, but the dangers from having them around are minimal. I have a hundred acres that borders on thousands of acres of unpopulated wooded land. Bears are dangerous when they feel trapped, or are afraid, and black bears are the least dangerous of the bears that are native to the North American continent. True, more attacks come from black bears from the other but that is because there are more of them living in proximity to people and to populated areas. In the entire history of Maine, there has been only one documented case of a black bear attack resulting in death, and that was some idiot who had a bear in a cage at a gas station in the 1930s, and decided to impress his gas station customers by entering the cage. Most bear attacks take place in large state or national parks, where generations of hunting restrictions have resulted in bears who have no fear of humans. All of my photos of bears were taken by a wildlife camera when I was not in the vicinity. I have only actually seen a bear on my property twice, and each time for only a moment before it fled.

 

I just got back from spending a couple of days at our camp. I spend only one night in the camp, then got a hotel room for the second night, and was going to go back to camp this morning, but it was raining so I didn't. I was sore anyhow. I mowed the grass in front of the camp, cleared a couple of trails that had overgrown with saplings and ferns, as well as three clearings where I often have my cameras installed. I marked some trees that I was going remove from around the camp but I was going to do that this morning, but went home instead. I had also planned on walking around in the woods some today, but I guess I'll have to do that next time. I do have few photos that I took from the road, however.


This, obviously, is the inside of the camp. I slept on a memory foam mattress and a couple of blankets one night. At first, it was hot, then it was pretty much perfect until about four o'clock in the morning, and then it got very cold.


Here's the camp from the front. Most of the trees that I plan on removing are from the front of the camp, with the exception of the two larger ones that you see here. It's not that I hate trees, but they tend to fall down during storms, and I'd rather reduce the number of trees that are likely to fall onto the cabin.


This is the part of the cabin facing the road. If it seems odd that there are no windows, that is because I didn't want it to be obvious whether anyone was there or not, from the road. I am also thinking of planting a couple of thick trees for privacy at the start of what looks like a driveway. The driveway was necessary in order to place the camp (since it wasn't built on location) but we don't need to drive right up to it.


This is pretty much the same view, but from the road. My Tracker didn't have a flat yet in this photo. By the time I left, the next morning, the rear driver's side tire was flat.


This is the road that leads through our camp. My land begins two miles from the paved road. I own the land on both sides of the road in the section that you can see here. You can see one of our potato fields in the background, on the right, although they planted hay there this year.


That's one of our potato fields. We lease it to a potato grower but he rotates other crops in order to keep the soil fertile. This was a hay year, probably because it was too wet to get to in time to get potatoes in. The road leading to our land is a snowmobile trail in the winter, so it's very muddy during the spring.


This is one of our seasonal streams. In the spring and early summer, water runoff from the surrounding mountains is moving pretty fast through here, but it sometimes dries up entirely by late summer. Because of the rains, there's still water in it this year.


This is looking back in the other directions (roughly south) at the area where our camp is, just to the left of the big tree.


This is the year-round brook that forms part of the northern and northeastern border of our land. It's called McClean Brook. Further on from here is where the beavers have dammed it up. It's wider than it looks, since the heavy brush on either side makes it look narrower.


This is our other potato field, although we only own a portion of it, roughly the section shown here. The trees on the left are the southern border of our land. There is a road there, called Property Line Road, although it is not maintained. I have a photo of that too.


This is Property Line Road. Our land is on the right of this road, which leads to the other corner of our property, where there once was a sawmill, although I don't think there were ever any buildings there. This is actually the worst part of the road, right at the beginning of it, which is good because it keeps most people from driving on it. Since it is a property line road, I can't prevent people from driving on it but most people assume they'll get stuck. You can actually drive to the right around the puddle and it's fairly dry the rest of the way. I'll take photos from that part of the property next time if I can get back up there before the snow comes. Our daughter will be buried at Arlington in early October so we'll be away for about a week, but I am going to try to make it back up north before then.

By the way, you can see a moose track right near the bottom of the picture, just to the left of center.


Our land starts about a half mile from the tree line in this photo. At the very end of where you can see the road in this photo, it turns to the left, and that is the beginning of our property. The trees you see to the left of the road are ours, and the road itself cuts through our property as it turns to the left.

It's not entirely clear in the photo but this is at the top of a small mountain, called Flat Mountain, because the top of it is very wide and flat. The road seen here is all downhill, so our land is still well above sea level, but in a sort of a valley.

 

We just made the last payment on our mortgage, so our land in northern Maine is free and clear. So now, while we have nothing saved for our retirement, neither do we owe anyone anything. Our house is paid for. Our land is paid for. Our cars are paid for. That's a good feeling.

 

That is beautiful property, @Ken Anderson ! I really like your little cabin, too. it looks like you have the start of an awesome retirement property there.
That reminds me a lot of what I was doing in Idaho (before I met Bobby). I only had about 40 acres there; but it was property that had belonged to my parents, and was where they had lived during the Great Depression, as well as when I was born, so it was special property.
Originally, it was 240 acres; but after my folks died, it was divided up with my children. They actually owned the part where I was living; but as long as I had a place to live, that was all that I wanted.
I bought an older 12x60 mobile home, and had that dragged in , much like you did with your cabin, although I was a lot closer to a main road, and could at least get up to my driveway in the winter.
I really like the little creek that you have, and was wondering what kind of fish are in there ?
I miss my little place in Idaho; but certainly not the cold winters and all of that snow !

 

If I can arrange it with the well drillers, we will be able to get a well drilled this fall. It's cheaper this time a year because they don't have a lot of work. However, there is a narrow window of opportunity before the snow blocks access to the land. We want to get a well drilled as soon as possible since, at this time, Maine doesn't require a permit and does not track wells on private land. Eventually, they may, as some states are even requiring meters on wells place on private land. The next step would be paying for the right to use the water from your own well. So I'd like to get it drilled ASAP, then disguise it as an outbuilding or something.

As for fish in the brook, I don't know. I don't know one fish from another, with a few exceptions. I know that I've seen some very small fish in there but don't know much else about it.

 

Here are a few photos of me walking through our land, taken by my wildlife cameras.


This is the stream that borders the north and east of our property, not far from the beaver dam.

This is taken behind our camp, heading out to one of the clearings where I typically have a camera.