BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 25, 2023
Given the cost of land — especially land near the Maine coast — Nathanial 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. “It’s interesting looking at the new buzzwords like ‘sustainable agriculture,’” Gandy said. “I realized that every four or five generations we need to rediscover things and put new names on it.”