Starting homestead in Maine. Help me
 

Hello, I've been reading the forums for a while, but this is my first post. My wife and I bought ,(1) 25 acres in new Sweden and (2) 50 acres near perhm ? I think that's how to spell it. It's 25 min from the first property. The 25 acres has pretty decent wood. The 50 ac has been recently cut, also has about a 5 ac beaver pond and a small brook. Want to move on the 50 ac . Both have electric at the rd. I want to raise black hogs, a milk cow, and 1 butcher cow. Lk to have about 10 hogs. Do I have enough land to support all that? Remember it's not beautiful pasture yet, it's cut land. Any sugestions? I'd lk to fence in about 20 acres. Next question. I have a a John deere 110 tlb (44) horse backhoe that I can attach a 3 point implements to it, is this enough machine? I would ok to till and plant some of it. Also money will be tight, so I was going to build a cabin on 6x6 posts (aprox 20x32) for a few years until I can get a house built, any suggestions on that would be helpful. Next question. Water, there are me my wife. And 3 kids. Do u think I have to get a well drilled or can I get away with a dug well near the brook and rain collection system? Next question I read a lot on composting toilets, good and bad. Anyone in northern maine using them, what's your thoughts? Next question Solar panels Should I use batt storage or tie into the grid and let the overflow go back into the grid? Thanks a bunch. Benny

OK, I will bite !! Maybe the reason your not getting a response is why anyone would buy property somewhere that they don't know how to spell the name of the town !! And 25 miles apart from their other property !! 1) You have plenty of land to support the stock, but you will need grass unless you are gona buy feed for the cattle, course you will for that many hogs. 2)The tractor is plenty big, especially with backhoe capibilities to remove stumps and such prior to seeding. 3) If I were gona build a cabin then something later,I would either build it where I plan the latter place to be and plan on adding on in time, or, build it away and plan on useing it at a latter date for storage for farm stuff such as hay, feeds and such or used by your stock. 4) As for the water, you can get a lot of opions on that. The water in the creek could used if it don't come from out of the beaver pond. A dug well near the creek is subject to ground water and you would proably be gettin the same water from the pond, again, iffin it is down stream from the beaver pond. 5) Can't help ya on the toilet and compostin' ! 6) You said money is/would be tight. Solar power is expensive at start up !! I would go public power, then build up my solar dependencey in time. Overflow back into the grid ?? Well, you lost me on that one. You might get some more replies to your threads with different opions, with that said, these are just my opinions !! And welcome to Homesteading, there are a lot of good folks here !! Ooohh yeah, ain't any suggestions fer ya on the 25 acres other than, In the winter, if you put stock there, 25 mins=approx 25 miles ?? I think that is a ways to travel in the winter to tend to stock daily.

Welcome & good luck. ME is beautiful, we were there for a month last summer, in a cabin on Worthley Pond, Peru. I can relate to not knowing how to spell the town, or to just where ya are...seems in new England they like to use one name for several towns in the area-East Peru, West Peru, Peru. Central this & south that, etc. :)

Good luck, you'll get a lot of advice.

patty

Probably meant Perham, its in that neck of the woods with new sweden, up in the county.

I dunno, lot of questions. Start small and work into bigger things as money allows.

Probably go with battery bank on solar, you would need quite a pricey array to have enough power to sell back on the grid and you power production will be limited by climate and dark winters.

Building on posts is ok , You doing the work ?

Are you from the area ?

Dug wells can work but many go dry during droughts and folks end up drilling one.

You definitely want the electricity for now until you get firmly established. In case something happens to you while your at work or your wife at home its nice to just flip a switch and your heat, water, AC, lights, etc comes back on. Situate your house close to the electric grid. If not you may have to pay to have a line strung up to your house or have to rent a digger and have to put the electric line 2-3 ft deep below the frost line so it dosent heave which is alot of work. At some point down the road if you get solar definitely tie it into the grid so the power you generate back to the power company they will pay you some money for it. ME winters can get really dark and if 3 ft of snow covers your solar panels you may not get any power so definitely have electric backup.

In the old days hogs were used to clear land and dig up stumps. If put some corn underneath the stumps the hogs will dig up the stumps for you. The tractor you have is fine. Dont build your house too far from the road otherwise you have alot of plowing to do.

Not sure about the composting toilet but if you mean an outhouse, everything in ME is frozen in winter and the mosquitos and black flies in summer are horrendous. Get an indoor toilet.

To greg_n_ga, not sure why you have to have an attitude, are you still salty because the north beat the south? We live in sw pa, only had a very short time to look at the land. But I was more concerned with the land than the proper spelling of the town. I do know how to spell the name of the town I live in. The 25 acre property is going to be used mainly for firewood and hunting purposes. The 50 acres is what I want to raise the stock on and live on. To the rest of you, thank you for your civil responses. A lot of your responses said to tie into the electric, but we're trying to eliminate the bill and the dependency on the electric. I'm a small contractor, so I will be building the cabin with the help of a few guys. We have a 4x4 dump with a plow, I know a lot of you said about staying close to the road and tapping into the electric. My family and I want to be back off the beaten path. I have engine driven welders for back up electricity if needed. We are going to heat with wood. I am going to install propane for on demand hot water and a gas stove for cooking in the warmer months. Thanks for any help

Also I've built several plod buildings but they were just open span buildings. I was concernd about the weight of the furnished cabin with two lofts. Cabin is going to be 16x32 with a loft at both ends, setting on 6x6 posts every 8 ft including down the center. Tks benny

Sorry but I got 2 more questions. How big of a wood stove/ heater would I need for a cabin that size? Also could I use a 2500 gallon water tank to make enough pressure run a motor to make power? Tks benny

Ouch !!! Please accept my apologies !! Offending you was and is the fartherest thing from my mind !! I just didn't understand why you hadn't got a reply to the OP !! A post askin' for help does not usually go that long without a reply here !! You will find a lot of good people here that are more than willing to help with advice and opinions or whatever else they can do. I am truely sorry I got off on the wrong foot with ya !! Again, please accept my apology, and again, I meant no harm

Thanks for the apology. I did like some of your answers. If I post anymore questions feel free to chime in.

New Sweden is nice area. I have driven through a few times.

I have four adult breeding hogs out on 4 acres of woodlot. So you should be fine :)



That is plenty tractor. More than what you need.

A backhoe and front loader will get a lot of hard use. I have a backhoe and loader-bucket on my tractor, and I use them a lot.



A pole-barn on 4X4s is fine. You can make it any size you want. I built our house at 40X60. Then I insulated to R-60.

I recommend you use a woodstove that heats water, and install radiant PEX in your floor. So your woodstove heats your floors.

You might never build a second house, once you get settled in the first house.



This is Maine. You will never use a rain collection system. Much of the nation is drought-prone. Maine is not.

Gutters fill with ice, and rip loose from the roof. Barrels of water outside freeze, then split the seams [ice expands].

I know market-farms here that use sand-point wells driven to 10' for both their homes and crops.

Anywhere you drive a well down will hit water. This is not a region of scarce water.

I get get water at 2' down anywhere on my land. But in winter frost goes down 4' here. So wells must be deeper than the frost-line. 6' is good, 10' is better.



Composting toilets are very popular here.

Do not bother spending big money though. It is a waste. Just a wooden cabinet, with a nice seat/lid, and a 5-gallon bucket inside. Setup a row of raised beds outside. Once/day you dump the bucket and throw a bit of peat over it. The next year your growing tomatoes.

I am not familiar with any 'bad' from composting, not from anyone who actually using one. Maybe armchair spectators.



We have solar panels. Grid-tie only makes sense in the cities.

We moved to Maine in 2005. So far we have not seen any calendar month without the power going out. Not to say it is not possible. If you live here long enough, you may experience a month sometime that has utility power all month long.

Get a battery bank. The Utility company only provides power when they can, but you will go days at a time without power from them. Your solar panels will become your primary source of power.



You seriously need to look at MOFGA, and start attending the fair in Unity.


Welcome :)

I have lived in areas before where there was water in the ground near to creeks. So I see where your going.

I have 1/4 mile of river frontage, and I can see where digging a well near the river might get water from the river.

However I can walk back 200 yards away from the river and still hit water at 2 foot down.

That water is not coming from the river. It comes from the weekly rain we get.

:)



That was what we did. We used the utility company, planning on going solar later.

It was not until after a few years that we finally caught on to how unreliable utility power is here.

Every spring we load up incubators with eggs, and brooders with chicks; then the power goes out. A week later we start over.

Utility power is good for low cost power, but only when it works.

If you need reliable power, you gotta make it yourself in Maine.



Good idea.



Good plan :)

I built our house 100 yards off the road, with a narrow cut in the forest for a driveway. Folks on the pavement only get a quick glimpse of our house.

There are no other homes visible from our land anyway.


Is any of your land in 'Treegrowth' tax status?

You can get Engineered wood products that will span much longer distances for you. I used Engineered Wood Beams in a previous home.

Now my house is a steel warehouse, like an airplane hangar. But our garage is a pole barn with 4X4 posts at 10' distance. So each of our vehicle stalls is 10' wide, and it works great with the snow-load.



We have a Vogelzang two-barrel woodstove, the upper barrel has 50' of 3/4" copper-tubing coiled inside it. The woodstove throws out plenty heat, and the tubing heats water just great to heat our radiant floors.

I do not follow your idea on the water tank. Do you mean outside? No. It will freeze solid.

:)

A generater turned by water in the creek would be a power option to keep the battery bank charged if ya have enough flow. I found a lot of different ways/info to rig something like that up a while back when I was lookin at a piece of property on a creek up in the NC mtns..

Sounds as though your going to be a buzy guy. As for the woodstove get the best stove you can possibly afford. It will pay for itself in the savings in wood and good even heat in the coldest parts of the winters .We ended up buying a Harman stove - best stove Ive ever owned and we have heated with wood for 30+ years. , they are pricey [oh you can get a grill attachment and grill on them ]- love that feature! Napolean makes a decent mid priced stove - the best IMO for the money.

Now the hogs - hogs are just going to root up pasture so they will do great in just cleared land.

Listen to the folks who are telling you to grid tie - solar is not dependable in the winter months!!!!!

Creeks; up on the surface? where everything from grade to 4 foot down is frozen?

Or some form of sub-surface flow?

How much head do you have in this subsurface flow?

My land is pretty flat, I get some flow in summer, but no head.

Is the Harman good for heating your water like regular woodstoves?

Yeah I keep a canning pot on mine for hot h2o. If I want to heat some to boiling quick I open the top and set the grill in. The stove opens from the top or the front. Hope that was clear enough.

I was wondering if you were talking about Large black pigs, or just the color black? I have a large black I got in MO, he is a great big pet, but he has a real hard time when it gets cold. We have been below freezing a lot in the past month and my other pigs run and play , but he just moves real slow and sort of stoved up. Today was 50 and he was back to being a handful.

If I ever move from here and build a house, I will hook up my panels and convertors to a battery bank and not hook in to company power. But like you I will have to see how tight money is. Maine is one place I would love to go to for awhile.

Wow thanks for all the replies , that's what I was hoping for! The pigs I was talking about were the large black face or a guy raises heratage boars in the upper pinnsula that is almost all pasture raised. ( sorry I can't spell). I really like the idea of the double burner with the pex. My idea was to pump the water to the highest point on my land into a 2500 under ground tank then use the pressure from the tank and a length of pipe to spin the turbine, with all piping under ground. But I don't know if that would be enough pressure. If I ran aprox 6 solar panels and 6 batteries , with all led lights , a radio, small tv. Or should I use dc lights? Also do you think it would power a small frige? And does anybody know the aprox cost of tying into the grid grid, if I run all the wire? I wouldn't mind having a well drilled but $4200 isn't in the budget. Tks Benny. Ps my 50 acres is on tangle ridge rd. the 25 acres is on west rd about one min from little madawaska lake,100 yards from a snowmobile trail and 1/2 mile from an atv trail. Think theres any value in building a cabin to rent? Aroostook co maine. Tks benny

I'm not sure what tree growth is? I was going to use the 6x6 kinda as stilts, about 3 ft out of the ground then frame off of them. Tks benny

Do you think a 10ft deep x20 ft round well filled with gravel would work for a well? How much do you have to supplement feed your four hogs in the woods winter/ summer? Tks benny

www.microhydropower.com
They got one that operates at 2' of head. I found one a while back that choked down the penstock to produse the "force" needed to turn the unit, that was home built. They kept improvein' on it till they had enough power to invert and run a few appliances, well, that is what they posted on the WWW anyways !! Google has been a friend for a long time as far as gatherin info.. Google also has been known to give the shock and awe affect on me from time to time !! Matter of fact, that is how I found Homesteadin' Today !!

Before you site your house, well, garden, etc, I would recommend you study up on beaver behavior. Their movements may drastically affect your landscape over the years.......

geo

The previous owner said the beaver pond has been there for about 20 years and made about a 5 acre swamp. Might sound dumb but I like the idea of a swamp to attract the animals. If the beavers cause to much damage I will trap them out. I'm looking forward to running a trap line , and hunting, fishing. Tks benny

Our boar is 'large black', our sows are 'berkshire' [white socks]. They are doing fine this winter. The ground is frozen so I feed them through the winter. In the summers they feed themselves out in the forest.

It never gets very cold in my area, rarely does it dip below -20F, but I am not in Aroostook. We are down here in Penobscot county.

Welcome to Maine Benny, we transplanted from Pa 16 years ago, looking forward to hearing about your adventures

:)



It all depends on how much head you can get. There are calculators online. How many feet of drop, and how many gallons of flow per minute are needed to determine how much wattage you can make.

Pumping water up hill, to hold requires a lot of power. You will never re-coup all that in a turbine.

Plus the tank and all plumbing will need to be placed below frostline.



LED lights are DC. As individual lights they burn 3VDC.

I hired an electrician to install our pole/meter. He charged me around $600 [I think, it was a few years ago]. Then the power company did a transformer and stung a line to my private pole for 'free'. If you need multiple poles figure $800 to $1,000 per pole.

Then I ran power underground 100 yards to my house.



You can drill your own well.

Or you can go with a sand-point well.



If you already know some group or club that might like to rent in the summer, maybe.

We have discussed that idea a few times. But I do not know anyone who would want to rent it.

There is a state program, where you agree to grow trees, it is called 'treegrowth' and it limits your property taxes. I have about 149 acres in 'treegrowth', my taxes run about $1.05 per acre.

There are also tax programs for farmland, openland, water front.
http://www.maine.gov/revenue/propert...ndPrograms.htm


As you drive around and see mile after mile of forest, most of that is in 'treegrowth' tax status.

Usually a 55-gallon drum [with no top, filled with gravel] set in the ground 10foot below grade, with a pipe leading up to grade and a handpump fitted on it, will supply water year-round.

20 foot in diameter? maybe I am reading it wrong :)



In summer I feed maybe a cup of feed per day, per hog, mostly as a training aid. I call them with a small school bell, they eat their treat, and I rub their bellies. This way if they ever do get loose, they are trained to come running when they hear the bell.

Once the ground is frozen, I feed each adult pig, 1 coffee can of feed [a 2-pound coffee can], twice each day.

I wouldn't mind tying into the grid for electric i case something happens to my system, just don't want the bill. ( lol). I was going to try to use a wind mill to pump the water up to the storage tank. The land is pretty flat. What is a sand point well? I watched " off the grid" by less stroud. I was kind of modeling me well off of his. His homestead is in Canada. If you never watched it check it out on the computer. It's called off the grid with less stroud( the survivor man) I love the way they are living. I guess I could put the 25 acre under the tree plan, it just for fire wood and hunting. I'm going to check out the farming tax plan to. (I hate paying taxes to be wasted over seas) good old Uncle Sam needs to get his own dam job. It's going to be an adventure for sure, I like to do all my own work. When I was young our family canned food , got milk from the farm, if somthing needed done you got off your but and got it done. My kids sit in the house and play video games, watch tv. That's gonna change . Tks benny

My pig setup is about like yours large black boar and a couple of sows. Is your boar slow moving in the winter? Mine is only 2 years old about 600lbs and a big clown most of the time, but at freezing he gets hurting pretty bad.

Pumping 'up' into a tank, on flat land. ?

Not sure how you can do that while keeping the tank below frost line.

Besides every time you transfer energy from one source to another you lose 20% or more.



Google is your friend.



He is one man among thousands.



Good luck :)

I think it depends on how thick their fat layer is. It is their fat layer that protects them from feeling the cold.

I have my pigs on a high calorie feed in winter.

I just wanted to wish you well Benny b! Sounds like an incredible adventure. My husband and I grew up in midcoast Maine, lived inland for our first years together. I'd move to Aroostook County in a heartbeat!
My mother in law lived with a dug well for many, many years near the coast, only had to be careful in summer dry spells. My dad had a hand dug well out on Vinalhaven Island for winter use when his above ground tank was frozen, he had a small diesel pump and gravity feed from a pond into a tank the rest of the year. But he wasn't needing water for a family of 5!

I was studying my topo map, looks like I have about 75 foot of drop over aprox 500-600. That should make things a little easier to get hydro power. If I dig a pond at the head of the brook about 10 ten foot deep, and run a pipe out the bottom , that should increase pressure a good bit from what I've been reading. Mope to get enough power to run the whole house, between that and , solar Thanks benny

First, Benny, if you want to dig a pond on a free-flowing stream in Maine you'll need beaucoup permits and pay huge fees to the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and the town planning board -- and even then you'll probably be turned down. Interfering with free-flowing streams is widely frowned upon here. If you can get some beavers to do the work for you, that's a different thing.http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/ima...ons/icon12.gif The same applies, in spades, with trying to run a turbine off the stream. I know a guy who did it in western Maine by taking water off a brook and running it in a pipe alongside the stream for a quarter mile to a turbine. He finally shut the operation down after the annual permitting process got too expensive and complicated.

Pumping water uphill with a windmill might be an occasional solution, but unless you have a hellaciously tall windmill it won't be a reliable energy source, especially if you want to run some sort of turbine off the stored water. There's a concept called Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) that you might want to acquaint yourself with. Using a windmill to directly produce electricity might be the better alternative, but again you'll need permission to build it from the town planning board. You should also acquaint yourself with the neighbors and find out from them how reliable the local electrical service is. While ET1 SS has lots of good advice to offer, he lives 170 miles south of New Sweden and is serviced by an entirely different power company. If local service is reliable, you could cut significant start-up expenses (you did say money was tight) by putting off the solar panels until later.

If you intend to build on posts, sink them deep (better yet, make them concrete instead of wood) and insulate the dickens out of the floor, because it gets darned cold in New Sweden in the winter time and you may end up living in the house longer than you plan. I have good friends who have homesteaded in neighboring Westmanland for 40 years now, and they ended up living in their "temporary" house for more than 30 of those years.

Good luck, and be prepared to drink a lot of coffee. New Sweden was originally settled by Swedish immigrants, and their descendants drink coffee by the barrel.

Benny, Are you thinkin' of using the water to turn a DC genny to keep your battery bank charged or a AC genny ?? I don't think it would take much "flow" to turn one to charge a battery bank iffin you are close enough to not have a lot of voltage drop between the ginny and the bank.

I dont live in that area of Maine but I have heard arsenic is a problem in the water in that area....along with very few jobs....I'd recommend a basement too....I wouldnt expect to sell hogs or grow anymore than what your own family eats not much of a market unless you accept foodstamps/EBT....we have dairy goats and raise a calf to baby beef each year and a pig every couple of years...actually prefer a winter pig...less smell!

Our tractor is only 36hp and it has plenty of power from tilling to digging to wood processing.

Forgot to add: There are active farmer's markets in Caribou and Presque Isle. Maybe Fort Fairfield, too. Crown o' Maine Organic Co-Op also buys local produce to ship to retail customers downstate. It used to be headquartered in Fort Kent, but I see the address is downstate in Vassalboro now, since its founder, Jim Cook, died a few years back. Jim was my college roommate for a year and he died way too young.