The beginning of the dark days

So I woke up this morning, feeling a little bit better. I have been coasting the flue or something-I feel like it is more like the Bubonic Plague though. Horrid. I work at a place that does not allow sick days-so we show up and spread the germs. Anyways, loaded on what I thought was Day-Quil (Turned out to be Ny-Quil!-had to follow it with my third cup of coffee when I figured that one out!)-I drudged outside to find my car in the almost two feet of powdered snow! It is Maine you know! Anyways, I did eventually find it way out in the front of the dooryard (driveway) by the side of the road. I had learned to park my car there from last winter when we had over eight feet of snow and I had to shovel out by hand! This year-I treated myself to have someone plow it. They usually have to come by twice-due to the duration of most storms up here. Well, after finding my car under the mound of snow-I noticed that I had left the back window open! I smoke and since my front driver window does not open-I open the back window on my side-and as usual-I forgot to close it. Well, after shovelling out the outside of my car-I still had to shovel it out on the inside! Just my luck. If I could put my luck in a bottle (and I could sell it)-and it could be reversed-our country would have no problems at all! So loaded on Ny-Quil followed by the coffee to reverse the affect-I left for work. I navigate on the most beautifully archaic country roads and need to keep a constant eye out for moose. Today I was lucky-they were probably at Wal-Mart in town buying shovels for the next storm. So on my way to work I was thinking of what to write about tonight. With my life, there will never be an end to this blog....

In order to understand my daily adventures, I thought there should be some more history on what I have endured in this great Maine Adventure. When I first arrived, again-as you probably figured out-I really had no clue what I was in store for. The first winter was scary in just the pure nature of it all.

Sure enough, after the winter followed the Spring. It arrived in all of its pure beauty untouched seemingly by any modern forces that I was ever used to. Yes, we had electricity and running water-though from a well (I had grown up on a steady supply of town water and could identify the towns by the taste of the water), and cable. However, our high speed Internet was forever lost due to the size of the town-or lack of it. I had to go back to dial up. Sure I wanted a farm and all. I just forgot how rural all of it truly was until confronted with the realities of true rural life. I had always been a farmer at heart, though very high tech and had a career to support it all. I left it all behind for many reasons.

Before moving up here I used to own my own business as an independent paralegal and had a staff. This was active for over seven years. I left it for political reasons which will make another story on yet another day. I also was living in my second house. In Massachusetts, the first house you buy-is the "starter home" the one that you will fix up to gain the equity to purchase the house in the town where you plan to settle. One that has a better school system to send your kids to. My first home was in Attleboro and I sold it four years later for the profit on which I put down for my second house in Norton. This second house I had planned to live in until I died. It was in the perfect neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac. The neighbors were my age and their kids played with my daughters. Everything was perfect! That was how I grew up. I was finally able to provide for my own for my daughters what my parents had done for my sister and I.

However, I did not plan on two horrible marriages. The second one was worse for so many reasons and I had struggled to appear normal and found it more and more difficult. After leaving my business I went back to work as a claims examiner at an insurance company in Quincy. My youngest daughter is special needs and no day care could keep her. I had to give the insurance company my notice that I had to leave. My husband at this time caused a lot of trouble and I was forced to return to work and found a job in a law firm as a paralegal in Taunton. Again, I had to leave due to the daycare issue and at this time he was not living in the house and had owed several years in child support. With that as an issue as well as a mortgage that had turned from fixed in four years to variable and had increased monthly by several hundred dollars- I had to make a decision. To stay and fall or to leave and to completely start fresh. I knew what was ahead of me with either decision. I obviously chose the latter and begged my husband to move back in so that we could move up to Maine. I could not have made the move without him!

So we left all that we were used to for a land far away. I had researched all I could about the town and had them even mail me a copy of the town map. It is a huge area geographically with a very small population and there are still many areas of town that can only be reached by a four-wheel drive (which I still do not have) and are unpaved. Being from Massachusetts the dirt roads were always private and it took awhile for me to unstand that I was able to travel on them here in Maine and that I had no choice on many occasions in that they were the only access to where I wanted to go.

So, with the very short version of what bought us up here mentioned-I will continue....

Spring arrived and I was more than eager to start my farm. Unfortunately, not being raised here I was a perfect target for all sorts of weird people. My neighbor's husband who continued to hang with with my ex-husband thought it would be funny to send over all of the town drunks telling them that I was looking for a man! Oh, my word! I was a pacifist and went out real fast to the local Wal-mart to purchase my first gun and decided to practice in my back yard. That seemed to deter them for a while. My dog, I taught to warn me of any stranger as well.

I had found out from asking around- another farmer down the road- who offered to give me some egg laying hens and a rooster to start out a small farm. Naturally, I had no idea what he had in mind for payment. I eventually found out that he wanted custody of his six children and was looking for a new mom for them to home school them as well!! Yikes! I kept the chickens and ended up weeding his garden in a payment that I could agree on-not his idea!

In the early Spring my neighbor Pete came over to help me make a home for the chickens that I wanted. He came over with his friend-Junior (who I later found out was the local peeping Tom-harmless they tell me). They both had brought over logs that they had sharpened with axes and put them on the ground outside the wall of my garage. We all worked on making a small house for the chickens outside. Then I got nervous about them freezing and not being able to get to them in the winter when I found another way. My dog Loki (who I purchased at the local shelter) loved to watch us build it and run around the yard. She was another project. She was already two years old when we got her and had all of the bad habits of an abused dog. With love and patience, she got rid of them all and is now the best dog ever. Though at that time she would growl and bark at any man with a beard and baseball cap-which was pretty much all of my male neighbors!

By this point my next door neighbor on the other side of my field-had brought over her sons. She knew that I was alone and needed some help. Her youngest son was very nice, but it was her second son that I had fallen for. He was the hippie who worked at Sugarloaf. His name was Tom. He and his younger brother Jacob came over to help me build a chicken coop in the old work area behind my garage. We all strung up chicken wire all of the way to the twenty foot ceilings of the room and made a make-shift door with hooks. It worked and was the new home for the chickens. Another neighbor came over and gave me some chicken feeders that he had found in the old abandoned chicken farms down the road. I felt like a real farmer! Every morning we would feed the chickens their grain and scratch and pick up their eggs before noon. I learned to cook a lot of meals with eggs! I was even making each person who came to the house take home some eggs with them.

I also had my garden! I had tilled the side of my yard by hand (since I was afraid to ask about the prices-still thinking of Flatlander prices). It was huge and done completely by hand! I was very proud of my skill in providing food for my children. Literally blood, sweat and tears went into that garden! I was still owed a lot of child support by then and was not working. Since I owned my home outright-I had purchased it with the profit of my home in Massachusetts-I did not have a mortgage and very little bills. And that summer was when I had also planned on resurrecting the old fields around my house for livestock. I was told that there had last been a sheep farm on this property forty years ago. I surveyed the land and planned the next project.

I had also started my divorce in Maine. With my free time, I had found services for my youngest daughter and started writing the novels that I had been planning for years. (I have since finished those two novels and am working on my third).

I had considered myself divorced from my second husband years ago and had been using my birth name for years legally on everything. I just had to make it formal through the courts.

I had started dating Tom and he became a regular feature in my household. He had gone back to Seattle to take care of some business and flew back to join us in the fall of that year when my divorce was finally done-however, soon after it went into appeal!

We had very little money. I was not formally working and had some money from child support and had made most of the money for the house from the sale of some wood out on my property-it was due to be logged in the forestry plan. Tom had spent a lot of time at Sugarloaf and I recall being alone with the girls a lot facing hardships we never thought possible. We had to block off the upstairs and sleep downstairs for us to be warm enough. The house was very drafty and old. We seemed to have to put plastic everywhere and still the pipes would freeze regularly! By this time I had met a couple named Eleanor and Lloyd who have helped us to survive in the harsh conditions of Maine with very little money. I had learned to cook very filling meals with very low cost and how to keep the house warm with lots of plastic and duct tape. They and my neighbors down the road- Angela and Pete taught me how to work the wood furnace. The loggers had left a huge stack of wood and I helped to split it in the side yard. We all worked to get it into the basement and stack it for the winter on sleds in the fall. When the creosote built up and poured through the house one day-that happened to be twenty degrees below zero-my neighbor sent over her husband Pete and her father Harland (The former Fire Chief of the town-he told me that I was the only Flatlander he ever liked)-and they showed me what to do. We took out the pipes and brought them outside to clean them in the snow. That was only one of the of many valuable lessons I learned that year. In a climate that can be so harsh-the people will help you-you only have to ask. That is a concept that I still have trouble with-though had to learn literally for our survival.

I was heating the water with oil and it was running low and had to duct tape the hot water faucets to make sure that no one used them-since I did not have any money to buy more oil for two weeks. So, for two weeks, I boiled the water on the stove and put it in a huge tub in the bathtub in the bathroom to take sponge baths! I made it fun for the girls and told them to pretend that we were settlers in cute bathingsuits-they didnt laugh. They did not buy it and have probably washed it from their memory. It certainly made us stronger though! All of our windows were covered in plastic and we were still cold-but we survived. I think that the chickens might have been warmer in the barn! This was the winter of 04-05. My oldest daughter, Alex was just getting started with her revenge on moving up here. She had already ran up my long distance phone bill by going on the Internet-she told me that she thought Augusta was local! So, we had to get rid of our only connection to the outside world and go local! Since Cheddahville is in the middle of nowhere-it seemed like every town possible was long distance to us! This was the beginning of the days of darkness. Though, like us-we had to make it fun and I am glad we did. It was also the beginning of many more adventures...