Small Livestock Operation | Penobscot County, Undisclosed Town

Sometimes an abandonment sneaks up on you. A friend of mine recently purchased a parcel of land behind his property and found a surprise. We were measuring the new property line and ended up following a gravel packed driveway in the woods that went nowhere to find a disused, very small 'farm' that had been behind the property he'd owned since the early 1980's, and he'd been unaware of it for all this time.

Granted, the 1970s assumption is going off of the map of the original subdivision that explicitly stated no commercial activity and no trailers, considering this 'farm' had its own parcel and wasn't too far the property line of the previous owners' neighbors it may be a safe bet that it may have pre-dated the subdivision.

I spoke with a few locals who indicated the previous landowner had roosters a few cows, and a bull. The site is severely overgrown with small hardwoods and moss that indicate a wet environment, it would have been hard to imagine grazing even a few goats here. Nevertheless, photos are below and I have next to nothing about this site other than that animal feeders, pens, cages, and fences are still present.

The first that we found was a two story structure with an animal pen in the bottom and a ladder leading upward. Considering neither of us were featherweights, I was unable to photograph the upstairs. On the left you can see a ladder (the end of which is out of frame) as well as the remnants of what appeared to be a second story deck. I'm not quite sure on exactly when I had my last booster for tetanus, so I didn't find out. Inside we found an old air conditioner, a hole full of garbage, and a scale....

As the property has a new owner, I may be able to rummage through the remainder of the refuse located inside the two story shack and see if someone had lived inside at one point, or if it was merely storage/living space above an animal pen. A local source tells me that in the mid 1990s this used to be the 'hide out' of a local recidivist, it's not impossible that someone could have eked out a meager living on an unapproved structure on a subdivision in the middle of nowhere.

Upon hearing of the possible tale of adventurous recidivism, I did some digging and found a Bangor Daily News article from 1997 indicating that two individuals had escaped from minimum security work detail and were possibly found here in a search that "included helicopters, dogs, and more than half a dozen police agencies" according to the Bangor Daily News.

There were several other various "pens" around for different sized animals. Small hardwoods have grown up around the side, making it impossible to determine if animals had been grazed here or if the site's previous owners had fed their livestock with other resources. One thing that did stick out was a child's swing set. Whenever this was built and used, someone has fond memories of this place.

The barbed wire creates a line that splits the parcel in half.

Below, are some of the various 'pens' located throughout the property. The pens, the two story structure and its fallen patio, the swing set and some buckets/feeders are all that is left of what someone had tended for quite some time. There is room for five small animals and a few stand-alone pens for medium sized animals. A rusted dog crate is also present onsite.

The pen with the fallen in roof in the photo above is on the very edge of the opposite property line, and the free-standing pens stretch off into the veritable cornucopia of tetanus. As we were leaving, we noticed that someone may have indeed lived here, at least for a little bit.