Hey everyone, I finished reading the Florida moving to Maine thread and I figured I would start one of my own.

Long story short, I'm from Minnesota, currently working and living in Colorado. I'm 5.5 years away from retirement in my current job.

My current job brought me to Bangor a few times and I absolutely loved it! My wife and I are vacationing out to Maine next year and we want to scope out the state.

When I retire, I'm going to have a fresh start in the trades. I'm thinking of going into welding.

My wife and I want 30-40 acres somewhere rural to homestead/shoot. I don't mind a 45 minute to an hour commute to get to work. What part of Maine should I be looking at? I figure as a welder, the bigger cities near the ocean will have more employment opportunities, but I also want to be very rural with where I live.

Any advice?

We have quite a bit of equity in our current house, and my retirement should be able to cover a 3-400k mortgage. We'll be looking to build our house on whatever property we buy.

BIW (Bath iron works, makes navy ships) is always hiring welders. Plenty of places you could find what you are looking for within an hour from there. Mostly inland.

I work at the PNSY in Kittery as well. I would look at opportunities there and Bath Iron Works as stated. You're going to be close to an hour inland down south to find what you are looking for so Bath may be a better area, but the big conveniences will be further away, too. Maybe you're ok with that especially if you'll be homesteading. Southern property is drying up fast but there are still some bigger pieces here and there. I would think a solid 20 acres is really "all you need" if you want to do some shooting and have some privacy. I only have 3-1/2 and can't see my neighbors. As long as I dont shoot any high powered rifles they don't care if I shoot here either. Which is rare where I am as its mostly city transplants. For reference, I'm 10 minutes from the shipyard and my 2000 sq ft house on 3-1/2 acres appraised 2 years ago for 450k lol (ridiculous honestly), so its probably going to be tight grabbing 30+ acres with a modest house for 300k even an hour inland down south. Especially in 5 years. If you seriously want to come here and decide you'd rather be south than up near the Bath area if theres any way shape or form you can maybe swing a land purchase now I'd start looking into it. Look in the Lebanon area, Shapleigh/Newfields and Waterboro. Best of luck to you.

ETA: Theres a ton of welding opportunities all over the state, unfortunately most of them won't offer any training so if you don't have any experience you're looking at something with an apprenticeship, which basically leaves you the two places mentioned

Awesome, thanks for all the information everyone! Hopefully this covid crap is over this summer so we can come check everything out. How has Maine been with lockdowns? It's miserable here in Colorado, and we've been under mask mandate forever.

+1 for BIW or PNSY.
Folks commute to BIW with vans etc from literally all over the state. Great place to work and plenty of trades to consider. Also, the yard is hiring, big time.

Maine is far from perfect, but is a great place to live.

Since you asked about which regions to look at, I think most will agree with a few basics.
Realty in extreme southern Maine and the southern to mid-coast coastline are very expensive. Also very liberal.
Most of the rest of the state is great, minus Lewiston/Auburn, which is widely regarded as Maine’s worst area.
Most rural communities and smaller cities are good to go.
In your OP you stated 45 minutes to an hour commute to work would be ok. That’s a very typical commute to BIW and also puts you in nice areas in any direction but south in my humble opinion.

Great hunting and fishing, lots of good people.

if you choose BIW Bath is a great town.

Thanks for the input! Being from rural Minnesota, hunting and fishing are big for me. I didn't know Lewiston was a bad area, but thanks for letting me know.

I would also be ok with less acreage if it's backed up to state land. How is Maine for state land for hunters/fisherman?

Any ice fishing in Maine? Any walleye in the state?

Although I do not work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, lots of folks around me do (Sandford region, note the use of region its a bit space I'm referring to) and although there are ups and downs, mostly its ups.  I like Portland but the politics are liberal to an extreme.  Cool place to visit, not cool to live in.   As far as having some space, 1/2 hour to 1 hour north of that, and somewhat northwest of that in NH, you can find affordable, nice, properties with acreage still.

I have 85 acres or so myself and we can do what we want, when we want.  Gun fire is officially NOT a basis for a noise complaint.  Frankly I've got folks shooting  360 degrees around my place with nearly every caliber I an imagine.  Many, many Trump signs around here.

Do be aware that Maine has very high income taxes but the property taxes are silly low.  This is ideal for those who want to retire which it sounds like you are not too far away from.

I grew up in central Maine.  The whole state is amazing and fun to explore.  I've seen it all.  Been very lucky to do so.

If you are into people, stay away from the coast, till you get to Downeast, then as long as they are not in huge houses and from New York, you'll enjoy their company.

I think this is the first time I've ever heard anyone call maine property taxes silly low.  In my opinion they are pretty high and in some towns downright outrageous.  Silly low to me is places in the south that are sub $1000 a year on a moderately priced house.  

I'm going to guess the poster above me lives in one of the more rural towns above Sanford because Sanford's property tax is high, but who would want to live in Sanford anyways.  When I lived in shapleigh the property taxes were moderate I'd imagine newfield hiram porter are even lower.  

Well, by comparison with New Hampshire and Massachusetts, they are silly low.  As noted though, the income taxes are painfully high.  There is always a balance of some sort.

I live south of Sanford and also own now and have owned properties in Bangor, Brewer, Corinth and Eddington.  All property taxes were very low in my estimation.  There are some exceptions of course but compared to other surrounding states (with the exception of VT which I don't have any info on) Maine has very low property taxes.  A property I own in Derry NH is very high but that town is a local extreme.

Just my $0.02.

Most towns have publicly available property tax data bases.  Easy stuff to research.

Yeah i work about 30mins from Lewiston and we get some not so nice visitors walking around.  Its been over run by nothing but refugees that cause trouble.

Now hunting and fishing is definitely gtg here. Plenty of ice fishing aka getting drunk in a box. Haha. I havent gone in years(job gets busy in winter). This should help with state land question  Maine hunting and fishing laws

I'm a refugee from ny and was pretty surprised when I moved years ago how high property taxes and other fees were.  My experience is limited to southern maine though so I'm sure up north it's much more reasonable.

I currently live in a town my wife and kids love but it's over run with Massachusetts idiots that fled but still vote for the shit that fucked up their home state.  

If I had to do it all over again I think I'd have headed west or maybe Tennessee or Carolina's.  But to be honest the leftist cancer and taxes is gonna catch us all so what difference does it make anyways.  

At least in nh the property tax sucks but no income or sales tax gives you some offsets.

My wife and I escaped from Connecticut a couple of months ago after finding a beautiful one-floor home on a few acres just 15 mins from the shore and Camden.  Guys shoot around me all the time and I actually got to shoot my new plinker myself for the first time, in my back yard, in my underware.  No kidding. (I wear boxers)  

Compared to Connecticut we are making money every month due to much lower taxes on virtually everything.  My CT property taxes were $583 a month on 3/4 acre in a suburb.  Here, on 2-3/4 rural acres, my property taxes are $191. I can't see one of my neighbors and the other I can barely make out through trees with no leaves. Both are 100% with firearms.  My car insurance on both cars is $31 a month and that includes liability (we have stellar records).  No tax on SS.  It goes on and on.  So, the old-hat argument that Maine has high taxes is all relative as the other poster above said.  Now, that being said, there are some expensive towns in Maine that vye CT taxes,  no kidding.  Check out Rockland, Brunswick, and Portland. And, in Maine lobster is considered essential and I'm on #34 since June 1, but who's counting!  Yesterday I bought my first handgun; no permits, just 4473. Before I could whip out my debit card the cheerful clerk had run my driver's license through NICS and I was merrily out the door with the new gun in a paper bag and me with a mask on.  Go figure.

And one more thing, just to get ahead of this "Maine is too backwoods",  I needed some follow up bloodwork from my old doctor back in CT.  I had them fax an order to this lab in the Waldo County hospital.  I dropped in yesterday morning at 10am.  I completed my forms and sat for the blood draw in 10 minutes and was out the door.  I got home for lunch after some additional shopping and there was an email for me that my doc in CT had already received my numbers and all is good to go!  IF that isn't incredibly efficient, well, I don't know what is.  We LOVE it here and tomorrow are heading to Acadia for lunch and some shopping in Ellsworth, enjoying the ocean vistas all the way up and down.  We also eat lunch at least once a week at the shore.  

Go for it!

As alternatives to consider:

Newport/Pittsfield area. Cianbro hires tons of welders (and all other trades). Land is very cheap and this region puts you less than 30 minutes from Bangor, Waterville, and Augusta. Also about at the crossroads for outdoors stuff. One direction is Moosehead, straight up for Katahdin, or head right for ocean. Great pike fishing ice or open water within 20 minutes.

Or, look at rural Hancock county. Plenty of high end yacht builders along that stretch of coast. Also cheap rural land, as long as you don't want to be on the ocean. Summer traffic heading to Acadia Nat'l Park can such.

You could also check out the Bradford, Hudson, Lagrange, Maxfield areas. Cheap land to be had. Within your target drive to Bangor. Lots of trades in that area with Cianbro again having a facility there.