This was in the late 30’s-40’s. Grampa was a Maine Guide... had been a blacksmith, a snowshoe/tennis racket maker, grew berries for sale and trade - aside from growing the gardens, fruit trees, meat from the barns and woods, fish from the waters.
Grammie had a market garden - acre of cabbages - for extra income and traded her butter at the village store for things like flour, sugar, molasses. She had 50 laying hens and sold the eggs in town. She also crocheted bedspreads for extra money.
They had a huge maple grove - “The Thousand Trees” - and sold the sap. I remember the big shiny silver, horse drawn tanks that were driven down for the sap.
WE always had a years supply of food. In season, there were the gardens, apples, berries, dandlions, fiddleheads and mustard green. There were the hens and eggs in the coop; milk, butter, meat - including pigs - in the barn.
In the winter - the added shelves of gleaming jars of ‘canned’ vegetables and fruit and barrels of potatoes and apples and salted pork.
We had no electricity.
We had no utility bills.
We provided our own heat and all we had to buy was oil for the lamps.
We lived a good life on the Ridge. And the folk still up there, though they have electricity now, still live the basic, simple way.
I hope to get back up there, My sons are thinking it would be a ‘prudent’ place to be. The fact that we are known, that my family was the original one that settled there in the early 1800's - for whom the Ridge is named - is a plus. I am not alone in the country, as you probably know, in thinking that it may be the better part of wisdom to form alliances with like minded people in close knit communities of people who can provide for their own needs the old way - and have a mutual ‘watch yer back’ society. A little Galt's Gulch.
Yep. I could live that way again. As long as I don't’ have to make the sausage.
That's what grandchildren are for...
I was born in Boston, but spent grades 8-12 in New Brunswick and went to college there. I still have family in Houlton, Island Falls and Caribou.
I do love and miss fiddleheads. There is exactly ONE restaurant here in Columbus that has them seasonally and charges as much as a steak for them. Last time I has was up in the Saint John Valley was two years ago and my wife and son (both Mid-Westerners) are aware of the delight of fiddleheads.