SOLD with multiple offers for $685,000 total! $595,000 for the farmhouse with 37 acres and $90,000 for the additional 7.5 acre parcel!
Live on the Maine Countryside With Your Choice of 37 or 44.5 Acres of Privacy!
Charming 3-bedroom farmhouse on 44.5 acres (or available with 37 acres for $564,000) with privacy, perennials, fruit/nut trees, and extensive vegetable gardens that make this property an absolute delight. The spacious combination high-end kitchen (south facing) and dining room has beautiful cherry cabinets and a Viking gas stove, roomy pantry, and granite countertops. French doors lead to a rustic patio perfect for entertaining. There is a spacious master bedroom with a full bathroom and two walk-in closets. Two additional bedrooms, another full second floor bathroom, and a downstairs living room and office along with half-bath allow for plenty of room for you and your guests. The house and barn are perched on a small hill across from the Saco River with full sun, except for two mature maple trees which provide the house with ample summer shade. Professionally installed permaculture design swales within the open meadow acreage of the property incorporate a budding orchard. This immature orchard consists of full size, standard root stock fruit trees (10 apples, 4 peaches, 2 pears, 3 nanking cherry, 2 mulberry, and plum trees), as well as nut trees (walnut, hazelnut, butternut, chestnut hybrid varieties), and berry bushes (8 raspberries, 3 high bush blueberries, and 8 blackberries). Three mature peach trees and one pear tree, three grape varieties, and perennial asparagus patches are also established and thriving along with many perennial flowers (4 mature lilac bushes, hostas, roses, columbines, daffodils, comfrey, tulips, crocuses, bee balms). Close to Portland, the turnpike, and beautiful Biddeford Pool (featuring town beach access), this place is a homestead dream!
More details on the 7.5 acre lot can be found at 0Murch.com
Sit back, take a tour, and learn more about this home with this cinematic tour:
Tour this home anytime, day or night, with this unparalleled 360° view inside:
Property History:
The house at 205 River Road was built by the Dow family sometime around 1870. The barn probably dates from the same time. In the southeast corner of the tack room, pencil writings tallying the calving of dairy cows in the 1870s can be found on the horizontal beam. The land originally ran all the way across River Road to the Saco River. The grave markers of the first generation of Dows on the River Road can be found in the copse of pines directly across from the driveway entrance. The second generation of Dows, Frank Sr. and Lu Lu, raised ten children in the old 24’x24’ portion of the house. The new portion, with a kitchen and indoor bathroom (which is now the pantry) was added in 1947 as a gift from husband to wife for raising their children, after the last of the children had left.
There was a blacksmith shop run by Frank Sr. on the front of the property along Gordon Road (what is now Murch Road). It fell into disrepair and was burned by the fire department in 1994. Long ago, a sawmill was located southwest of the barn. Concrete footings of both buildings can still be found in the grass.
Frank Sr. died sometime in the late 1960s and Lu Lu lived until the early 1990s. At that time, less than ten ears before the twenty-first century, the house was pretty much as built except for the addition of electricity. It had no insulation and two wood stoves, one in the kitchen and one in the living room, which provided heat. All cooking was done on a wood stove in the kitchen. Water was pumped from a dug well across the street and drained to a dry well outside the kitchen window. There remained a two-hole outhouse which supplemented the modest bathroom off the kitchen with its single commode and small tub.
When Lu Lu died, the property was put on the market. The land was extensively logged for timber at that time. A septic system and well were put in and the house was put under the care of Frank Jr. who lived there until it sold. His original handwritten “For Sale” sign is on the wall in the southwest outbuilding.
The house was purchased and renovated by Christopher and Raffaella Reimer. All the plaster and lathe were removed, the electrical and plumbing were updated, and insulation added. Two and a half baths were put in. All windows in the house were replaced, but none were added. The only changes made to the floor plan of the house were to accommodate bathrooms and a master closet. The upstairs door between the old and new section of the house was added. The master bath sits over the original wood room which had a dirt floor and a raised ceiling (the ceiling was lowered by four feet to make the floor of the master bath). This room, and the building that is now a workout room, were loaded with firewood in the old days to make it through the winter. There was only one window in the wood building and no floor. It was used exclusively for storing wood.
The day lilies, columbines, Solomon seal, astilbe, and irises are all original to the house. The cherry tree was planted in 1994.
The most recent owners, the Manys, landscaped with a Permaculture lens and visions of a food forest to share for the generations to come. They installed on contour swales and planted fruit guilds such as mulberry, walnut, heritage apples, comfrey, and berry varieties. They also planted cherries, peaches, chestnuts, hazelnuts, butternuts, pears, and black, blue, and raspberry bushes, to name a few, all over the open meadows of the property. They are happy knowing these gifts of nourishment will be enjoyed by the next caretakers of the land here.
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LandUseTable.pdf
