“Buy what you triple-love,” says Portia Clark, who has been running Portia’s Barn, a rotating collection of curated vintage and found rugs, furniture, art, and objects, out of her home in Portland since 2017. In Clark’s opinion, one that has been honed and perfected since her high school days prowling Goodwill for vintage clothing, that’s the number one rule when it comes to finding gems in the dusty corners of antique stores, vintage boutiques, and flea markets across the state. “I don’t want to buy something where, if I don’t sell it, I’m stuck with it,” she explains. “Double love is okay, but triple love is when you wake up the next day like, oh, I hope that hasn’t sold.” The second rule? Be curious. Stop at a variety of places—especially nonflashy or unmarked ones—and stop often. The 30-mile strip of Route 1 that stretches from Kittery to Arundel, for example, is home to more than 50 unique antique shops. “Be nice and ask questions,” says Clark. Like the watches you see on display? Kindly ask if there are more stored behind the counter. “A lot of times people will open another drawer for you.” And don’t be afraid to fix things, be it an old, beat-up dresser that needs a little elbow grease, or a lamp whose wiring looks a bit, let’s say, sketch. “There’s a wonderful shop in South Portland called the Lamp Repair Shop,” says Clark, who takes her finds there to be looked over. “I’m usually like, okay guys, I think this looks okay, but is this safe?” Another situation in which being nice often pays off is haggling. “If you’re respectful and really like something, you don’t have to be afraid to ask, ‘What is the best you can do on this?’” says Clark. Especially in smaller shops, bargaining is expected. Are there rules on how many types of wood to place in one room? Yes. But also no. “Stop looking at Instagram,” says Clark. “If you love a collection of items and they speak to you, they’ll have a place and won’t go out of style,” says Clark. Finally, and perhaps the most practical piece of advice: rent a trailer and hitch from U-Haul to schlep your treasures home. “It’s $19 for the day, and you don’t have to pay for mileage!”

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The post How to Go Antiquing Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

The criterion for a snow day is, first and foremost, the inability of school buses to operate safely on their routes to school. Here in Maine, the third coldest and second snowiest state in the U.S. according to the World Population Review, where we receive an average of 77.28 inches of snowfall per year, the potential for impromptu neighborhood snowball fights is high. But if we’re seeing fewer of these nostalgic-laden days off, it’s not, according to Charlie Lopresti, chief meteorologist at WGME Portland, because there’s less snow than there used to be. (Though remote learning could certainly be to blame.) “The road crews in Maine are amazing,” says Lopresti. “You always hear from old-timers who say, ‘When I was a kid, the snowbanks were so much higher!’” In reality, Lopresti says, that’s not the case. “Two things are happening there,” he says. “First, you’re a kid; you’re small, right? So the banks look higher.” But what’s really happening, he explains, is the advancements in technology. “The hydraulics on these big plows, they’re blowing snow, sending it deep into the woods. They’re not making those big snowbanks that you once saw when you were little.” These days, Mainers are remarkably comfortable driving in snow. “If there’s two inches of snow on the ground in southeastern Massachusetts, people are gonna stay off the roads,” says Lopresti. “In Maine, we just call that Tuesday.” He says that in his 20-year career there’s only been half a dozen times when he’s told people to stay home, such as the blizzard of 2013 (“my favorite blizzard”) where Portland got 15 inches of snow in just six hours. So, for people who pride themselves on staying on the road, how is it done? Does moving to Maine mean you have to purchase, say, an SUV? “Obviously something that sits higher is going to do better in deeper snow,” says Lopresti, who recommends not trying to blow through the snowplow-made berm at the end of your driveway in anything other than a truck. “Yeah, I got stuck on the top of one of those in a Subaru Forester,” he explains. But other than that, all one really needs is front-wheel drive, less than six inches of snow on the ground, and some snow tires. “I’m not an expert on tires, but you don’t want a regular old tire you bought in Florida,” he says. Feel yourself starting to skid? “The recommendation is, once you start skidding, you turn into the skid,” says Lopresti. “You can recover that pretty easily in snow,” he continues. On ice? “Um, you might just keep turning, and before you know it, you’re doing a 360.” When it comes to ice accumulating on the windshield and blocking visibility, though, Lopresti has a tried-and-true trick: crank the defrost on high and, in order to keep from sweating yourself out, crack the windows a little—the operative word being “little.” Finally, drive slowly. “The faster you drive, the faster and the farther you’ll probably go into the woods.”

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The post How to Drive in Bad Weather Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

It is November, and unless you’re a lucky lottery winner with a license to kill, you’re not looking for moose right now. In addition to the sporting thrill of the hunt (and the potentially 400 pounds of meat), moose are hunted in large part to manage their population densities: “So while we joke that in our line of work we would prefer to have more of them, we know that overpopulation can be a real problem for the herd, and therefore also for us,” says Reid Anderson, recreation manager at Northeast Whitewater near Moosehead Lake. Anderson is one of several Registered Maine Guides who leads moose spotting tours in northern Maine, the season of which runs from mid-May to mid-October, specifically until the day before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, “because that’s when the moose hunt starts in our district,” he says. Anderson clarifies that there is no bad time of year to see a moose, but Northeast Whitewater leads tours when the roads are passable. “We don’t have snowmobiles in our business. We don’t want to have snowmobiles in our business.” Snowmobiles are about a billion times louder than, say, a canoe, Anderson’s preferred moose touring vehicle. “It’s really about being quiet,” he says, “just be quiet.” Thinking about purchasing some camo? Think again. Colors are a nonissue (moose have terrible eyesight). This also means it’s best for a group of canoes to stick together—without, of course, playing bumper boats—“because their eyesight is such that we can potentially be seen as one blob instead of five blobs, and we won’t look like we’re swarming them.” Do perfumes and colognes affect moose, hypothetically speaking? “Sure. But not to the point where we’re not gonna find them, and especially not if we can stay downwind.” Northeast Whitewater runs tours as close to sunup and sundown as possible, when the moose are most likely to be feeding on the pond grasses and woody shrubs they’re known to love. “There’s a reason there’s no noontime tour,” Anderson says. Speaking of tours, get to booking for next season. Tours typically see at least one moose about eighty percent of the time. And the record? “First week of October, right before mating season and the moose hunt, at sunup, we spotted 17.”

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The post How to Spot a Moose Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Giant pumpkin growers are a furtive bunch, or so it seems when you’re trying to learn their secrets. First Edwin Pierpont, of Jefferson, who beat his own state record at last year’s Damariscotta Pumpkinfest for his massive 2,121.5 pound fruit, humbly declined to speak on the subject: “Get in touch with Buzz Pinkham. He and Bill Clark taught me everything I know.” Buzz was called, but he kept his cards close, sending us instead to BigPumpkins.com, a helpful resource for sure, but not quite the lowdown we were looking for. Next came Clark, who agreed to spill the beans. “First off, you need to be completely and totally insane to do this,” he says. “When I used to compete, I put in 40 to 60 hours a week between feeding, patching, prepping, pruning, and vine training. It’s a full-time job.” Feeling just crazy enough to try? Clark’s advice is to start now, this fall: “People will amend their soil for next year with composted manure, gypsum, lots of calcium, things like that,” he says. “Get that in there and till it, and put in a cover crop, which is what we call a green manure, to replenish the soil with nutrients.” Wintertime is for research. Clark first started with seeds from North Carolina Giants, which yielded five 200-pound pumpkins; he now sources what he calls “some decent seed” for a strain of Atlantic Giants at, you guessed it, the aforementioned website. In March, get the snow off your patch and start warming up the soil. “Most of the big growers will build fairly good-size hoop houses,” says Clark. “They’ll be running heaters, running ground cables, to try and get that soil warmed up to around 70 degrees.” Next comes vine training. “You don’t want just like a big mess,” says Clark. “If you don’t stake them down and train them, a good wind will blow the whole vine over, and then you’ve lost your roots.” Springtime is for the birds and the bees, but don’t rely on them, since you don’t want any question about the genetics of your plant. “Cover the males the night before you cover the female,” explains Clark, who sounds like he’s describing colonial bundling practices, “and then cut the males off, strip them down, and paint the pollen onto the female to pollinate it.” How much water does a giant pumpkin need? “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,250 gallons for a thousand square feet,” says Clark, who recommends installing an automatic irrigation system. You may, at this point, be wondering about the point of all this. Prize money? Not much. Glory? Sure. But as Clark likes to say, referring to the Pumpkinfest’s legendary regatta, which features numerous 400- to 700-pound pumpkins motored—or paddled—by volunteer captains, “You can’t make a boat outta a jack-o’-lantern.”

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The post How to Grow a Giant Pumpkin Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

If you love Maine, and you’re lucky enough to not be allergic to shellfish, you’ve eaten your share of raw oysters. Maybe you’ve even done the loc

al thing and traveled to Glidden Point Oyster Farms on the Damariscotta River for “BYOB” and “shuck-your-own.” But are you prying open your bivalves the right way? And by that we mean the Maine way. “There are nuances that really make it efficient, and the best oyster possible to eat,” says Libby Davis, cofounder of the popular mobile raw bar called Lady Shuckers. First off, don’t be an idiot. “People have used slam knives, butter knives, flathead screwdrivers. Don’t,” says Davis. Use an oyster-shucking knife. Hold the knife in your dominant hand and cradle the oyster in your nondominant hand, flat side up. “I like to put my thumb on the blade of the shucking knife so that I get a little bit more leverage,” explains Davis, “and then I wrap my fingers fully around the handle.” Look down. Are you wearing gloves? You should be. “Definitely wear protection,” says Davis, who recommends an aquaculture glove, something rubber dipped with fabric on the back. “Some of the knives can be pretty sharp, especially right out of the box. In case of any slip you don’t want a trip to the hospital and, in my case, to be out of work for two weeks. That’s not fun.” Hold the oyster and knife firmly and look for a small hole, or point, where the two shells come together. Put the tip of the knife in this apex and wiggle it back and forth laterally while applying downward pressure. “Not like a car key,” says Davis. “People think it’s a car key motion, but you really have to sink the blade in there.” And then, pop. Now what? “Don’t do a lot of crazy stuff with your hands,” says Davis. “With the same motion, I just kind of rock my knife along that outer edge, severing the abductor muscle, which is what allows the oyster to open and close.” Davis explains that you also don’t have to go around the entire outside of the oyster: “That’s the Chesapeake Bay style.” Pick out any stray shell pieces or other debris, give the oyster a half-turn toward you, and then take the knife and separate the meat from the inside by running the blade along contours of the shell. “You really want as clean of a release as possible, leaving everything intact to make sure the integrity of the meat is preserved,” says Davis. If it smells clean—“like the ocean,” she says, “a little seaweedy, but not fishy”—then slurp that sweet, sweet meat.

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The post How to Shuck an Oyster Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Despite what one might think, there is more than one way to kill a lobster. The classic beach lobster bake, which involves digging a hole, putting rocks and coals and seaweed down, setting the lobster in, and covering it with more seaweed and possibly a burlap tarp, is the party version, not unlike a goat roast in New Mexico. Then there are people who meddle with the lobster ahead of cooking it: “The most inhumane thing I’ve ever heard of was a chef who would use a butter baster to inject the lobster with hot butter before placing it in an oven to bake,” says Lucas Myers of SoPo Seafood. Other people go so far as to blow marijuana into a lobster’s face to make it more comfortable before going into the steamer. “I’m kind of skeptical on that one,” says Myers. People will argue that killing a lobster before steaming it is the most humane way to go about it. “In commercial cookeries, there’s an electrolysis machine that will electrocute the lobster and stun it ahead of going into the steamer,” explains Myers. And then there’s the at-home cook who will, Julia Child–style, point a chef’s knife between the lobster’s eyes and push down to sever the brain. “But the thing is,” says Myers, “that lobster is still moving when it’s going into the water, and I can’t imagine that is a painless way to die.” So, what does Myers suggest? “I think the very simple way is the Mainer way,” he says. “And by keeping it simple, it is done well.” Get yourself a large pot, fill it with two inches of water and half a cup of salt. Myers likes to cook his lobsters outside to avoid stinking up the house—and to circumvent boiling water getting all over the stove. “Get yourself a tripod connected to a propane tank and get 40,000 BTUs going underneath it, so it gets to a very hot boiling steam really quickly,” Myers says. “I want to get my pot to a point where it’s going to boil over.” Take the rubber bands off the claws (otherwise they will impart a rubbery flavor to the water). Take the lobster by the back and place it headfirst into the steaming pot. Follow it with several of its friends. Put the lid on top. “Those lobsters are going to be dead within a minute,” says Myers. Soon the lobsters will rise to the surface and the water will boil over. With a beer in one hand and a potholder in the other, take the lid off. Let the percolation settle back down, and then put the lid back on. “It’s going to percolate up and pour over again,” Myers says. Finally, after 10 minutes of this, turn off the heat and put the lid back on. “Your lobsters can sit like that while you’re waiting for everybody to sit down and get plated.” Then, get cracking.

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The post How to Kill a Lobster Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

First, gather your wood. “With the biscuits and the beans, we use about two cords,” says Ken Libby, vice president of the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum, which has been holding bean hole dinners on the second Saturday of August since 1965 to celebrate the important role the meal played in Maine’s lumbering history. But assuming you’re not planning to feed 600 people, you might need only about 100 pounds of wood. Then, get digging. The holes they dig at the museum are about three feet deep and 20 inches around to accommodate 14-inch-tall steel pots. Whatever size pot you use, be sure it has a heavy lid that drops down over the outside by a couple of inches to keep out dirt and coals. Cast-iron pots have mostly gone by the wayside, even here. “They leak a lot of moisture, and the beans often come out mushy,” explains Libby. “If you’re really hungry I guess it wouldn’t bother you too much.” Libby and his team divide 150 pounds of dried yellow-eye beans between 16 to 18 pots—about 9 pounds per pot. In the morning, start by presoaking the beans with just enough water to cover them, then start a fire in the hole. Once the fire is going, hang the pot over the fire (the museum uses a system of posts and cables) to parboil the beans before adding the fixings. “We use quite a lot of dry mustard, salt pork, onions, molasses, salt, and pepper,” Libby says. “The recipe’s here somewhere, but it wouldn’t do you any good unless you have the same size pots we have.” Once everything is mixed together, shovel out half of the coals and store them in a tub, then lower the pot into the hole. (“This takes us two men to handle,” Libby says.) Then dump the extra coals over the pot and up the sides, and cover it all up with the dirt that came out of the ground. Don’t forget to put a wire on the bail of the pot that sticks up above the ground, so you remember where you buried it. With your beans buried by the afternoon, there’s nothing left to do but wait until the next morning to dig them out. “Sometimes the crew brings beverages with them,” says Libby. “We don’t let them get into it until they’re done handling those hot pots, though.”

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The post How to Cook a Bean Hole Supper Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

To begin, of course, you need to buy seeds. Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Fedco Seeds are the two most well-known companies in Maine. “Or save your own,” says Caleb Goossen, a crop specialist for Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA). You’ll also need a container or seedling trays. Then there’s the soil itself. Goossen recommends compost-based mixes, such as ones from Vermont Compost Company, Living Acres, or Coast of Maine. Many of our garden favorites—tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers—are tropical plants, and getting the seedling to pop up out of the soil may not happen with-out the right temperature. While your house may be warm enough for you, “if you’re a frugal New Englander keeping the thermostat down,” Goossen says, it won’t be warm enough for your seeds. Goossen starts his seeds in the dining room because that’s where his woodstove is, but if you don’t have a room that is very warm, you can invest in a waterproof heating mat. For light, Goossen recommends using a couple of LED shop lights and keeping them only a couple of inches above the leaves of the seedlings. Finally, after babying your seedlings until they’re ready to be transplanted outside, which varies by plant and where you live in the state (check the growing calendar on MOFGA’s website for details), don’t just put them out into the harsh world. “They will get sunburned, and the tops will dry out, and they could just straight-up die,” Goossen says. Instead, move the seedlings outside several days in advance of transplanting in a semi-protected area so they’re getting some sun and wind without getting crispy. But if all of this sounds like too much work, you can always just buy seedlings, Goossen says. “It’s not the end of the world.” There will be lots of seedlings available at your farmers’ market or local garden store.

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The post How to Start Seedlings Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Like most projects, making maple syrup can be as simple or as complicated as you want. For the average backyard hobbyist, Craigslist is a good source for supplies. “A lot of people take a used 55-gallon drum, cut holes in the top of it, put steam pans in, a smokestack off the back, and a fireplace door on the front,” says Scott Dunn, a fourth-generation sugar maker and owner of Dunn Family Maple in Buxton. Here in Maine we can tap red maples, sugar maples, and silver maples—“If you can find it, you can tap it,” Dunn says. One good tree can produce a pint to a quart of syrup, depending on the year. Simply drill a hole in the trunk, stick a tap in, and choose a collection vessel, whether it’s a bucket, a water jug, or a tubing system. “The old galvanized buckets are by far my favorite,” says Dunn. “You get this sweet harmony of sap dripping on the bottom of the empty bucket.” Dunn started sugaring as a kid in Vermont using his great-grandfather’s buckets and boiling the sap in a big pot over an open fire. In its simplest form, making syrup is just a matter of evaporating the water from the sap. The heat from the fire causes the sugars to caramelize, creating the liquid gold we know and love. But be warned: you probably don’t want to boil sap in your kitchen. As the old farmer’s joke goes, “We have syrup, but now there’s no wallpaper.” These days, Dunn uses a sugar shack, which creates a perfect place to gather with family and friends on sugaring weekends. “The rule everyone tries to follow is, if the sap runs that day, boil it that day,” he says. Don’t have enough sap to boil at once? If temps are below 50 degrees, you can leave the sap out.

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The post How to Tap a Maple Tree Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.

First, consider your apparel. This is not a fashion show. No Gucci,” says Anderson, who has worked at the Camden Snow Bowl since 2000. You want to dress warmly, in layers, and consider your feet. Think Carhartt, Dickies, practical Maine wear. When loading, do not sit knees to backs but lay as flat as you can on the sled. “If you’re sitting up like you’re driving a car, you haven’t done this before.” Wrap your legs around the person in front of you—the point is to go as fast as you can, and if you sit up, you create air blockage. “At the Camden Snow Bowl, hundredths of a second make a difference between who gets first place and who doesn’t get a trophy at all,” says Anderson. When you go down the hill, you want to squeeze your whole body, keeping your muscles tight the entire time. The Snow Bowl’s chute is made of hard ice, so you don’t want to fling an elbow out and catch it on the side. And while it might seem like a good idea to stick your foot out or drag your hands to slow you down at the bottom so you’re not drifting all the way across the pond, you can catch something that’s in the ice and be seriously injured. “Just stay on and enjoy the ride,” says Anderson, “and have a nice leisurely walk back talking about what you’re going to do better on your next run.”

The 2022 U.S. National Toboggan Championships are scheduled for Feb. 11–13 at the Camden Snow Bowl.

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The post How to Toboggan Like a Mainer appeared first on The Maine Mag.