Welcome! Collinson Farm is a little 20 acre piece of heaven located in Litchfield, Maine. Never heard of Litchfield? We hadn't either until we started our search for a property with at least 10 acres with a good mix of garden space, fields, woods, and a house built within the last ten years. (That last spec was a demand, I mean suggestion, from my grandfather. We originally tried to purchase a property in Pittston, on which the house was over a hundred years old and quite charming, but that is another story.)
Why Litchfield? The property had to be commuting distance to Bath, Maine, where I work as Marketing & Communications Director for the Hyde Schools. We have a Bath campus and Woodstock, CT campus. Excellent schools for character/grit-building in teens and their families. I hope our daughter will one day choose to attend. But back to our property search. Have you ever tried to buy real estate on the Maine coast? We could afford a town house, but trying to find anything with at least 10 acres in our budget, forget it. Those lovely dream-properties start at 1.5 million. So Litchfield it was. And we haven't been happier.
Two houses down from us is the locally-famous Black Crow Bakery. Our neighbors bake bread out of their barn in a period home, and to buy the bread you let yourself in, choose a loaf from the one rack, and leave your cash in a dented old antique tin. It's brilliant. And the loaves are always still warm.
The Litchfield fairgrounds are down the road from us, and the town office and transfer station are right around the corner. There are two gas stations/ country stores and a hardware store 5 minutes from us. We are only 20 minutes from Augusta, Topsham and Lewiston. And only 7 minutes from the highway. And our land borders on 250 acres in the Kennebec Land Trust, with lovely marked trails and old fields.
We have a nice big garden plot that borders the road, then about the same amount of space in fields and woods. We love our 100 year old barn, and keep free range chickens in the pole barn. There are two spring-fed streams that go through the property, and in both the watercress is plentiful.
It is my husband Davyd who had the good sense to look for a homestead for us with all these features. We both got our master's degrees in England in 2011, he in International Relations from the University of Bristol and myself in Brand Development from Bath Spa University's School of Art and Design. He studied food systems on an international scale and I studied how to market local food. After moving back to the U.S., we both knew we wanted to start a life where we had some control over the food we were consuming, so finding a small farm became our goal.
We moved in in June of 2012. Since that time we have added the large vegetable garden, smaller flower garden, fruit trees and berry bushes, chickens, 2 beehives, 2 cats, and our new daughter, Guinevere. We have learned how to can pickles, tomato sauce, and applesauce with the help of our parents and grandparents. We heat with wood, which Davyd uses elbow grease to provide from the back woods to neat stacks in our basement. And we are working on building a root cellar beneath the barn. We hope that sheep and pigs will be in our near future.
Davyd adores sports, especially baseball, and follows local and international politics and news. I am a graphic/web designer and follow web and marketing trends. Our daughter has us both wrapped around her delicate little fingers and is especially talented at making our hearts melt.
Jenny
Why Litchfield? The property had to be commuting distance to Bath, Maine, where I work as Marketing & Communications Director for the Hyde Schools. We have a Bath campus and Woodstock, CT campus. Excellent schools for character/grit-building in teens and their families. I hope our daughter will one day choose to attend. But back to our property search. Have you ever tried to buy real estate on the Maine coast? We could afford a town house, but trying to find anything with at least 10 acres in our budget, forget it. Those lovely dream-properties start at 1.5 million. So Litchfield it was. And we haven't been happier.
Two houses down from us is the locally-famous Black Crow Bakery. Our neighbors bake bread out of their barn in a period home, and to buy the bread you let yourself in, choose a loaf from the one rack, and leave your cash in a dented old antique tin. It's brilliant. And the loaves are always still warm.
The Litchfield fairgrounds are down the road from us, and the town office and transfer station are right around the corner. There are two gas stations/ country stores and a hardware store 5 minutes from us. We are only 20 minutes from Augusta, Topsham and Lewiston. And only 7 minutes from the highway. And our land borders on 250 acres in the Kennebec Land Trust, with lovely marked trails and old fields.
We have a nice big garden plot that borders the road, then about the same amount of space in fields and woods. We love our 100 year old barn, and keep free range chickens in the pole barn. There are two spring-fed streams that go through the property, and in both the watercress is plentiful.
It is my husband Davyd who had the good sense to look for a homestead for us with all these features. We both got our master's degrees in England in 2011, he in International Relations from the University of Bristol and myself in Brand Development from Bath Spa University's School of Art and Design. He studied food systems on an international scale and I studied how to market local food. After moving back to the U.S., we both knew we wanted to start a life where we had some control over the food we were consuming, so finding a small farm became our goal.
We moved in in June of 2012. Since that time we have added the large vegetable garden, smaller flower garden, fruit trees and berry bushes, chickens, 2 beehives, 2 cats, and our new daughter, Guinevere. We have learned how to can pickles, tomato sauce, and applesauce with the help of our parents and grandparents. We heat with wood, which Davyd uses elbow grease to provide from the back woods to neat stacks in our basement. And we are working on building a root cellar beneath the barn. We hope that sheep and pigs will be in our near future.
Davyd adores sports, especially baseball, and follows local and international politics and news. I am a graphic/web designer and follow web and marketing trends. Our daughter has us both wrapped around her delicate little fingers and is especially talented at making our hearts melt.
Jenny
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