Now, he trims about 3,000 sheep every year — almost a quarter of the sheep in Maine, based on the most recent agricultural census. “It’s all word of mouth,” he says. “When people find out you can ...

Rose Iuro-Damon dips into ice-covered Somes Pond. She’s a member of Cold Tits, Warm Hearts, a group that hosts swims on MDI throughout the winter. After Puranjot Kaur wades up to her shoulders into 36 ...

In one sense, Maria Girouard admits, this winter was a counterintuitive time to open Dawnland Handmade Creations, a gift shop in downtown Old Town, featuring work by artists and makers from the four ...

For 172 years, Hancock Lumber has been carefully cultivating eastern white pine, ensuring that Maine’s signature resource remains vibrant for future generations. Forget lobster — no Maine natural ...

Misty Lane got used to being on the receiving end of glowering looks from passersby while running her Hillbilly Furniture and Furs stand at run-of-the-mill craft fairs. She sells animal furs, skulls, ...

Let’s be honest: There’s no place like Maine during the holidays. As friends and family reunite, the state sparkles with festive events and extraordinary light shows, making it worthwhile to bundle up ...

Twenty minutes before the show was slated to begin, the lobby at Belfast’s public library was already thrumming with excited kids. One little girl, in a pink dress and sparkly ruby slippers, bent low ...

When I drove to Orr’s Island to fetch the Fishouse on a chilly November morning in 2003, it sat exactly as Lawrence Sargent Hall had left it when he died 10 years earlier. His desk, topped with what I ...

A one-lane road winds tortuously through a kind of Black Forest of hemlock, spruce, and giant rhododendron, crosses a rushing stream, barely skirts granite outcroppings thick with lichens, drops into ...

Although he’s Korean, chef Hwansoo Kim has nursed a fascination with Japanese culture ever since he was a kid reading manga comics in Seoul. It was there, in the South Korean capital, that he trained ...

Growing up in Maine’s capital in the ’80s and ’90s, Justin Fecteau thought of Water Street, the heart of downtown Augusta, as a museum that was always closed. “It was my parents and grandparents ...

Editor at large Kathleen Fleury on resettling in Maine — and why you too should take the leap. From the June 2017 issue of Down East magazine. Illustration by ...