Benefits of Homesteading
Whether you live in the city or on a farm, homesteading is a lifestyle that can help you become more self sufficient. It teaches you new skills and allows you to have a closer relationship with nature.
Nathanial Gandy was having a good day on his homestead, despite being smack in the middle of Maine mud season. Morning chores were done, and he’d just witnessed the planned breeding between two of his pigs.
“My boar just did his job,” Gandy, 52, said. “I was able to actually see it, which is really good for planning purposes and knowing when the piglets will be born.”
In addition to the small herd of swine, Gandy is raising egg-laying hens and meat chickens on 93 acres in Brooksville.
cost of land — especially land near the Maine coast — Gandy knows he is one of the lucky ones who could finance his homesteading plans. He managed to make it work thanks to a hard-working job with a pension and some good fortune.
Gandy is retired and the former commandant of Maine Maritime Academy. His wife is the librarian at Blue Hill Consolidated School.
The couple began talking about Gandy retiring and starting his homestead dream in 2018. At the time they were living in Blue Hill and had been keeping a small backyard flock of laying chickens, animals Gandy jokingly refers to as “the gateway drug of homesteading.”
They found their land in 2019 and were able to close on it just days before the pandemic shut the world down. The purchase included a year of owner financing. That, Nathaniel Gandy said, gave him and his wife time to sell their own home in Blue Hill and secure a loan from a bank for the remainder of the mortgage.
“In those early days of COVID we could not get movers to come,” Gandy said. “So we ended up just getting a U-Haul and doing it ourselves.”
Leela Stockley for the Bangor Daily News
Source: bangordailynews.com
