Back in April my mom got her annual spring order of baby chickies! She picked them up at Blue Seal when they were only a day or two old. Their box had a US Mail label on it – so crazy that you can send baby chickens in the mail! They were postmarked from Idaho. In the box were fourteen little Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks, peeping and scratching and peering up at us. For the first few weeks they lived inside the house, in a big cardboard box filled with sawdust, then they moved up to a bigger cardboard box with a roost and a tree branch in it.
three days old
two weeks old – little feathers growing in!
After a few weeks they got to move outside into the big girls’ chicken coop! We’ve had an annual problem with foxes raiding the coop and carrying away our chickens, so each year my parents have to upgrade security on the hen-house. Last year they re-built the whole chicken coop entirely, and it is pretty much a high-security luxury chicken palace. Before they could move in, we had to finish shingling the roof and staple hardware cloth all over the ventilation holes to keep out sneaky rodents. The first day they were happy scratching and running all around the fenced-in yard, they’d never had so much space before and they had to try out their wings, making crazy flapping leaps and jumps all over the place. It’s a little bit sad because at that age they are little tiny birds with big wings and they can almost fly, and you can see them thinking “whoa, this is awesome.” But then as they keep growing, their wing-to-body ratio just gets worse and they will be stuck on the ground like the rest of us. Poor little gals.
about a month old.
Anyway, the first night, it started to get dark and they were all out in their yard and didn’t know how to get themselves back inside the chicken house, and they were all settling down to sleep underneath their house, or in the tall weeds around it. We had to go out and chase them and grab them and put them up inside their house, one by one. Chasing fourteen tiny squealing chickens around through waist-high weeds in the dim twilight is really really hard, it took us nearly an hour to grab each one and put them all to bed. Happily they’ve learned to put themselves to bed now. They all sleep in a big snuggly heap most nights, or sometimes a few sleep on the roost like grown-up birds. They’re still little but they look like small adults now, some have tiny red combs and wattles and they’ve all got grown-up feathers instead of fuzz. Judy says we could expect them to start laying their first eggs in the fall.
the new high-security chicken fortress
a pair of inquisitive young ladies (around two months old)
cauldrons of boiling maple sap steaming in the cold morning air
Sunday was Maine Maple Sunday, a day when all the maple farms open up their sugar shacks for visitors to come see the steamy maple-syrup-making process. They use taps and hoses to gather sap from lots of trees, and pour it all into a giant vat, then build a fire underneath and boil and boil and boil and boil until the watery sap cooks down into a concentrated, sticky, tasty syrup. It takes around 30 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, and 1 cord of firewood to make 25 gallons of syrup! We went to visit a few neighborhood farms, Merrifield Farm in Gorham and Morin’s Maple Farm in Limerick, which is close to our new house in Limington. Our friend Paz came with us to visit Merrifield’s. Over the course of the day, we tasted pure shaved maple sugar, warm maple syrup on vanilla ice cream, maple cream on crackers, leaf-shaped maple sugar candies, and chocolate cupcakes with maple cream icing.
We’ve arrived in Maine at last! Got in to Boston mid-morning (beautiful snow falling all around) and made it to Gorham in the afternoon, after about 23 hours in transit. Feels like a miracle that we made it here. Dogs didn’t enjoy the flight, but are still alive and are now in high spirits. Today we went to SEE the house for the very first time! It was mostly just as I expected it, after seeing photos and videos. But I was really struck by how BIG and cold and messed-up it is. It’s like a maze that just goes on and on. The walls are basically totally uninsulated and it was bitter cold today. And it is a mess! A beautiful, rambling shambles. There is so much stuff left behind by the previous tenants; in the ruins of the upstairs ell apartment, the bathtub is filled with baby clothes, a large old beige computer monitor and a smallish plastic christmas tree. The fridge and freezer are still filled with stinking, eight-month old food. In other rooms their traces are fainter, just cigarette burns and half-painted walls. It’s weird and a bit creepy but oh, it’s ours, and filled with possibilities. The room that might be my studio is huge and has six windows and a beautiful peaked ceiling. The dogs went nuts running in the yard, Inga was careening around, crazed by more open grassy space than she’s ever seen in her life.
Today’s election day and there’s a REALLY BIG referendum question on the ballot in Maine. In May, Governor Baldacci (formerly opposed to gay marriage) signed a bill to approve same-sex marriage in Maine. Over the summer, of course, the hateful, the intolerant, and the homophobic joined together and rallied to raise signatures on a petition to put a referendum on the ballot to overturn this ruling. By the time the law was originally set to take effect (in September), the petition had been filed and the law was put on hold until today’s election decides whether or not gay marriage will be allowed in the state of Maine.
I’ve already cast my absentee ballot… I am so excited and hopeful and nervous about this. Early polling showed the results would be too close to predict. I actually feel that this is going to all go down for the best. No reason, I’m just feeling optimistic and hopeful. I want to believe that people in Maine are more tolerant than hateful. I read predictions that only 35% of voters would turn out for this mid-term election and I honestly find that really hard to believe, given what a HUGE ISSUE this is. I feel like this will probably be one of the most important things I’ll ever vote on in my life. I think there are a lot of people in Maine who will also feel it and get themselves out to the polls. Fingers crossed. I want this so badly for the people I love, for my state, for the human race.
postscript: ugggghhhh. I am so disappointed in Maine.
I’m sure I don’t need to explain that the vote on gay marriage in Maine did not turn out as I had hoped. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s really disappointing anyway. It was so close. I do not want to give up! I hope that Maine will continue to progress forward on this issue and I hope that I can be involved when I get back to Maine next year!
we’ve gotten some confirmation from the realtor: tomorrow (Thursday) should indeed be the final closing date!! Hooray!! meanwhile, we’ve gotten some historical documents from the State of Maine, it’s the official paperwork regarding the Limington Historic District, of which our house is a part. We read through and found the description of our house!
Moulton Family House, c. 1880-C, Route 11 This two-story three-bay frame house is comprised of what appears to be an earlier side gable building to which have been added a pair of Queen Anne style corner towers and a wraparound porch. Presently, the dwelling is clad in asbestos siding. The original house has corner pilasters with round arched panels and gable end returns, whereas the alterations feature three-sided towers with two-over-one windows and turned porch posts with sawn brackets. A one-and-a-half-story ell extends to a small, much altered barn. To the northwest is a larger, free-standing barn.
According to local tradition, this house was erected in the 1870′s or early 1880′s by the Moulton family. Its materials are said to have come from two houses that had been dismantled in Hiram.
this is interesting – my parents had thought the house was older, I wonder if we’ll ever find more historical info about this! I know that my parents’ house in Gorham included several structures – including an original house and an ell, which had been taken from a location a few miles away and dragged off its foundation by oxen, in its entirety, and transported across the fields using rollers made from giant logs, a team of oxen pulling the whole structure to its current location, where it was just tacked on to the side of the original structure. So I wonder if our house was also transported from Hiram in the same manner? or was it dismantled and re-assembled on the current location? Anyway, it would also be fun to find old photos of the house someday…
OK, we’re totally obsessed with this house and absolutely overflowing with excitement and anxiety to find out whether the whole deal is going to go through! Today we got some positive news, our offer has formally been accepted by the bank, on paper. Looks like it’s a go!!!!! Thursday is supposed to be our official closing date. So, we’ll be able to really say it’s our house by the end of the week, hopefully! My mom went in to the town office and did a bit of research, and learned that this property & house were last assessed in 2003, at that time they were valued at around 400% the price we’re going to pay! WOW. Perhaps that was before the barn collapsed and before the ell roof fell apart.
Meanwhile, we’ve been doing lots of research about the place. Because the house has a historic plaque on the porch, Mike started researching the history and has been corresponding with the Limington Historical Society, he’s found some colorful stories about the history of the town but hasn’t found anything specific about our house yet.
historical plaque on the porch
We read all about the Francis Small nature preserve, hiking on Sawyer Mountain, and swimming at Pequawket Beach on Horne Pond, just down the road from our house! (Of course there’s also the Limington Rips, where I remember splashing around as a kid.)
Anyway, I’ve got some more pictures of the place! Here is the exterior:
complicated roofline (front side of the house)
In back of the house is the ell, which is in terrible condition:
side view of the house and ell
I think this is currently the main entrance (on the side of the house)
trashy looking junk piled up beside the ell
The ell is filled with junk. My mom found a fridge in there, still filled with food! yuck.
there is also an “in-law apartment” in the ell, but it’s badly damaged by water from the leaky roof so it’ll have to be all torn out and… maybe we’ll even have to demolish the whole ell. or maybe we can save it. who knows.
Here’s the back yard:
i’m pretty sure that’s one of three apple trees growing in our back yard!
too bad about the barn
squash growing in the back yard
basketball hoop behind the barn
richard and backyard
backside of barn
back side of the ell – looking towards the house from the barn
inside the house!
nice wood floors and windows. first floor, front room (this is inside one of the front turrets)
downstairs
kitchen
nice bannister, missing plaster
upstairs, turret bedroom
more missing plaster, upstairs bedroom
in the cellar – the granite slab & boulder foundation
front porch & front yard:
the front porch
barn view from porch
retaining wall, street view from downhill
hydrangea bush
pampas grasses
here’s the hitching post where visitors used to tie up their horses
it looks like there are lots of other pretty old houses in the neighborhood! here’s a video of my sister and brother-in-law driving around getting lost in the neighborhood:
i thought i’d try to wait on this but I’M SO EXCITED I CAN’T KEEP IT UNDER MY HAT! we are suddenly, kinda out-of-the blue, (hopefully) about to start work on repairing and renovating OUR NEW HOUSE! Probably. the whole deal hasn’t gone through 100% yet but it seems like everything’s set to go and by October 29th it should be finalized IF all goes well!
Both Mike and I always said we’d love to get a house someday, we’d love to renovate an old place and learn all about carpentry and plumbing and have a garden and live in the country and all that good stuff, and we’re starting to save money, but we don’t have enough savings to seriously look at buying a house yet. So it was like a “someday down the road” kind of idea. Still, Mike sometimes likes to browse through craigslist and look at houses for sale, just for kicks. Just window-shopping. He came across this place a few months ago, thought it looked interesting and sent me the listing. I thought it looked cool too, and it’s nice because the location is right between my parents’ house in Gorham and our beloved summer cabin in the White Mountains in New Hampshire.
It’s a five-bedroom farmhouse with a wrap-around porch on the front and side, an ell in the back and two acres of land, with a collapsed barn off to one side. It has Victorian-style turrets in the front, which were probably added in the late 1800′s, but the rest of the structure probably dates back to the early 1800′s.
The price had already been reduced a lot, and the place obviously needs lots of repairs – which made it even more intriguing. We got a little infatuated with this place and our fantasy about living in it and restoring it.
So every few weeks we would go back and look at the website, scroll through the pictures and think “gee, that would be fun… if only…” So, when the price dropped again, we sent the listing to my parents and asked if they might want to swing by the place and look at it, next time they were driving past, just for kicks. We just wanted to hear what it looked like in real life. Since it’s right on their way over to New Hampshire. They did stop by and were also intrigued! Eventually they decided to call up the realtor, just out of curiosity, and make an appointment, just to get a peek inside. When they spoke to the realtor she mentioned that the price had just been dropped again, to ONE THIRD of the original price!
So they went on over and scoped it out in great detail. The property is now held by a property liquidation company, and they are in a big hurry to get rid of it before the winter freeze comes on and the pipes all freeze and winter storms cause even more damage to the section of the house that has a broken roof. The house is so badly damaged and the bank is in such a hurry to get rid of it, the whole property is now being sold for the price of the land. So basically you buy the land, you get this hulking wreck of a house for free! The house looks pretty decent from the street but inside it’s all messed up. The furnace is broken, the plumbing is all crazy, the electricity is so faulty that most of the house has been disconnected. Up until two months ago, there were 11 people!!!!! living in this house, and not doing any maintenance whatsoever. In the main house, the interior walls have spots of missing plaster, where the original lath shows through. There is a rotted sill above the foundation, under the kitchen. The interior looks like a total disaster. In the back, there is an additional structure (the ell, for those who are familiar with traditional farmhouses) with an “in-law apartment” and garage space, but the roof over the ell is badly damaged, there are blue plastic tarps covering it but there’s extensive water damage in the interior of the ell, where the roof is missing. That area is badly rotted and strewn with debris. So overall, it’s all in really bad shape.
But the original structure of the house dates from the early 1800′s, the foundation is made of boulders and granite and is still completely sound. Most of the main structure is solid and the main roof is new-ish, with only one small leaky spot. The house comes with two acres of land, which really can’t depreciate in value – regardless of what happens to the house. My parents had bought a house in similar condition back in 1973, and they nursed it back to health and still live in it happily today. So they’re pretty knowledgeable about restoring old damaged farmhouses, and they felt that despite the extensive problems, it was still a great bargain, and basically they felt that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a result of the crazy economy and messed-up real estate market. Of course we could find other cheap houses to restore, but we’d never find another one this cheap.
So they offered us… if we were interested… to BUY the place and we could throw ourselves into restoring it and pay them back.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Judy, of course, was completely infatuated with the place too, and overflowing with ideas and excitement! Richard was cautious and warned that we had better understand what a huge project we’d be getting into.
When we originally showed them the pictures and asked them if they wanted to stop by and visit the house, we had expected that they would visit the place and say “Oh, gosh, it’s so sad but that house is a total disaster and there’s no way it could be saved.” I really didn’t expect anything to come from their visit – I just figured it would be an interesting learning experience for everyone. And of course I never would’ve imagined that they would offer to buy it themselves! So we were REALLY surprised to hear their offer! We spent the whole weekend talking it over, alternating between giddy excitement and thinking “this is such a crazy idea, we can’t even seriously consider it.” We talked a lot with my parents about the unbelievably huge amount of back-breaking work, endless time, blood sweat and tears, and money that it would cost to get the house up to basic living standards. We talked about the fact that buying this house would mean we wouldn’t have time or money to travel again for five or ten years, we might never get to Thailand or Japan, we’d be basically camping out in this shell of a house for the first few months (or years?) and we’d be isolated and completely swamped with work for at least five or ten years.
But we also talked about how we’d always dreamed of this, we talked about growing a big garden and making jams and pickles at the end of the summer, having goats and chickens one day, having a giant yard for our dogs to run free. We looked at prices for those underground dog fences and we looked at prices for used cars and new furnaces. We talked about all the amazing things we could do with so much space. How we hoped friends would come visit us in the summer and keep us company!
Yesterday everyone was headed over to Intervale so they stopped by the house again and Amy was kind enough to bring her video camera and tape some footage of the neighborhood and walking around the house, both inside and out. It’s been amazing to watch her videos, it’s the closest thing to being there. The whole place feels like one of those places that I’d drive past and think “wow, how can that place be so abandoned? what’s the story there?” I always used to notice places like this and want to stop and explore, poke around, try the door and go inside. I love to sneak in to abandoned places and imagine the history of the place, imagine myself camping out in there, cleaning it up and making it my own. I’m pretty sure that no house is as compelling and enticing to me as an interesting abandoned place.
Thanks to Google Maps, we’ve studied pictures of the house from the street and aerial photos of the property from above, as well as street-views of the entire neighborhood and some aerial perspective on where it’s located in the state.
The location is in southern Maine, near the border with New Hampshire. About 30 minutes from my parents’ house in Gorham; one hour from Portland; 45 minutes from the ocean at Old Orchard beach; 1 hour from our family cabin in the white mountains; 2.5 hours from Boston; 6 hours from New York (probably more with traffic).
The road to Limington
So… of course, after heavy deliberations we decided to go for it! Mike was completely convinced pretty early on, but it took me a whole weekend of heavy thinking before I decided we should go for it! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? We had to act fast because we knew that at the super-cheap price, there were lots of other interested buyers scoping the place out. I can’t believe we just made such a huge decision. It was kind of the same when we moved to Argentina – very sudden! But this feels even bigger, and even more sudden. The craziest thing is that I CAN’T GO SEE THE HOUSE! I won’t be able to see it for another 4 months! Judy and Richard will be looking after the place over the winter, draining the pipes, stretching new tarps over the broken roof, and getting an electrician in to get some basic wiring set up. They honestly sound really excited about this, just as excited as we are! We won’t be able to see the place until March. We’re thinking if all goes ahead as planned, we’ll move in with Judy and Richard at first and stay with them while looking for work and going over to Limington to work on the house whenever we can. By the beginning of June we’re hoping to have at least a few rooms habitable so we can move in. We’ll hope to get a furnace installed over the summer so we’ll be ready when the fall comes. We’ll plan to close off a few core rooms on the first floor and live in just those few rooms for the first winter, so we don’t have to heat the whole house. It’s so unbelievable that now we’re not just moving back to Maine, we’re moving back to our new house and this crazy epic construction project. What a lot of changes. I can’t believe this is all going on – I can’t sleep at night, I’m lying awake imagining our new house! And imagining all the work this is going to take, yikes. And wondering if it will even go through – these things often seem to go awry at the very last minute. So… we’ll see!
so… yes, we are finally making plans to move back home! and by home, i don’t just mean the united states; we’re going back to stay at my childhood home in Maine, with my parents, and look for work and our own apartment in the Portland area… hooray!
we’ll be flying out of Buenos Aires on March 3rd. Arriving in Boston on March 4th. but first mike’s going to quit his job and we’re planning to travel around south america for a month or two! of course I’m sad to leave argentina – but very excited for all that is to come.
this is our tentative plan:
December 11th: Mike’s last day at work then we’ll have two weeks to pack and sell everything we own! December 29th: Andrew & Vickie coming to visit then we’ll go travel somewhere with A&V – we’re thinking maybe go to the beach near Valparaiso, Chile, or maybe head north towards Tucuman or Salta (in the North of Argentina). We’ll definitely find somewhere beautiful and interesting to spend some quality time with them, we’re totally excited for the visit! Then maybe we’ll continue northward towards Bolivia, after they head back home. So we’ll spend January and maybe part of February exploring Bolivia and Peru by bus. We want to try and do lots of hiking. We’re thinking we might end up avoiding Machu Picchu because it’s SO touristy and expensive – there are lots of other amazing Incan ruins and beautiful hiking around the same area – this article about Choquequirao really piqued our interest! At this point our trip plans are totally up in the air, we’ve done a ton of research but haven’t managed to figure out exactly what we want to do. We are totally open to suggestions if anybody has ideas about great stuff to do (on a small budget) in Peru and Bolivia!!! I think to some extent we will enjoy the freedom of having more time and just figuring stuff out as we go along, depending on weather or what we feel like doing or what we hear from fellow travelers we meet along the way. Our biggest concern is that January and February are rainy season in Peru and Bolivia, so that would make the going a bit harder. Supposedly there can be serious problems with muddy, impassable roads and even mudslides in Bolivia, but there’s also the chance that it will be totally fine, so we’ll see… Otherwise, there’s just a TON of stuff we really want to do and not enough time or money to do all of it. But I’m sure it will be awesome and exciting, no matter where we end up… we’re hopefully going to have some friends staying at our house in Buenos Aires while we’re gone, taking care of the dogs and keeping an eye on the place for us. then… sometime in the beginning or middle of February we should get back to Buenos Aires to pick up our dogs and suitcases and say goodbye. And then… March 3: fly back to the USA! we’ll arrive in Boston in the morning on March 4th.
I can’t believe we’re really doing this – when Mike first mentioned that he wanted to go back, I thought it might be a passing whim… but a few weeks later it seems to be a real plan, and now we’ve bought our tickets so it’s definitely on. I’m sad about leaving behind Argentina and all our friends here, and there are tons of things that I’m sorry we haven’t had time to do… but we’re also totally excited about starting the next chapter in Maine, it’s always irresistibly exciting to think about what the future might bring. We really have no idea. But for sure the move to Maine will mean spending lots more time with my family, and getting to do lots more outdoorsy and nature stuff, hiking and beaches and all that good stuff. Dogs running free in the fields instead of cooped up in an apartment.
So for now, I’m trying to focus on making the most of the time we’ve got left here- spending time with friends, spending some good hours making stuff in my studio, going out to see all the museums and places that we’ve always wanted to check out but somehow never got around to visiting.
