Qat Langelier

Roberto pokachinni wrote:So I got a bit more of an update from the accident scene yesterday.  The auger was a post hole digger, and what happened was that the auger grabbed onto a length of old wire that was buried in the sod, the wire whipped around and got around the guy's leg, and it constricted so tight on his leg that it could not be removed, even at the surgery at the clinic that I was at, where the ambulance brought him.  He was flown by medivac helicopter to Vancouver.  

Oh yikes! I can envision how that happens. I'm still trying to finish getting some old decorative flower-bed fencing removed. Still haven't gotten to it all. Had to individually clip the wire in multiple places all over because of all the roots grown through it. How scary!!!

I grew up in a farming community, so I was well aware of various problems, and knew someone a few years older than me (same bus, very small rural school district) whose father died in a farming incident (with machinery). I've read recently that this is a growing problem as of late with people returning to small farms where they think they are getting a bargain by buying older tractors that do not have modern safety standards & lack awareness of how dangerous things can be. This article says that tractor accidents count for a third of all farm deaths, and over 80% of those were a result of rollover, but since small farms are exempt from federal oversight, I'm not sure how they know those figures are accurate. https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/04/the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-000395

Getting appointments around here is a challenge, for sure. That's great that things are moving!

You have had so much to deal with in such a short time! You may very well also have the health-issue of depression, but I can't help but imagine all of these difficulties are creating a very compounded, complicated grief. Even if everything else were going well for you healthwise, grief can really drag a person under.

What you wrote is beautiful and raw. Have you ever intentionally kept a journal? Even if you don't ever intend to publish anything as a memoir (which as I'd said before, I think you have great material for it that people here in Maine, if nowhere else, would find interesting!), a journal can have real therapeutic benefit.

Melissa Erin wrote:John Donovan Jr, any leads? Aside from searching for old paper mills, care to give some areas to look at? We've been casually looking for land in Maine, thanks!

I was looking for several years before finally succeeding because I was limited geographically to not make my husband's commute insane, so I can tell you in my experience if all you are constrained by is finding the most affordable acreage, you are going to have a much simpler search the farther east and north you go. Anything in York & Cumberland and parts of Oxford & Androscoggin (counties) not nailed down in agricultural easements tends to be sucked up by real-estate developers making new suburbs in the middle of nowhere for vacation homes (I'm not exaggerating on this - I've driven by many in rural Oxford County in my meanderings where they are selling it for 50,000-100,000 per acre lot or so, destroying a perfectly lovely farm because of "potential" views or proximity to ski resorts. (I don't know how many times I saw "potential" view in a real-estate listing, but it was enough for it to turn into an irritating joke in my head.)

Maine Listings is an aggregate sorted first by county then by town/township, and then by type. The longer of a drive from Massachusetts land is, the more affordable it is. It drops off quite a bit to the east of the Androscoggin River, really, but the farther you go, the better the price on more hospitable land, even actual whole farms, or all of the farm minus the original house - which, if you have young children, isn't necessarily a drawback because of the lead issue.

There's a map on the website showing where the counties are, so you can see for yourself, but I'll go ahead and add my suggestion (from my experience of looking) that if you are purely looking for affordable land, start with Aroostook & Washington, then Piscataquis, Penobscot, and Hancock, and so on - working your way east to west and inland to coast. There are variations within those areas, and don't just completely not look in the west & south because you can always get lucky, but generally speaking, that's how I saw things over the several years I was looking. There were many places very near or practically on the coast in Washington and Hancock that were pretty dang affordable.

Good luck!!! <3