Photo by Carolyn Bates / Carolynbates.com
Photo by Carolyn Bates / Carolynbates.com
The NaDeau’s hillside home sits on 26 acres.
By Robyn Griggs Lawrence
When Kate NaDeau’s former husband, Phil, proposed they leave Northern California and relocate to Maine, she reacted, “Maine!? That’s the North Pole. I couldn’t live there!” she laughs. But Kate, Phil, and their eleven-year-old son, Justin, longed for a simple farming life, and they couldn’t afford the size of acreage they wanted in expensive California. Phil introduced Kate to Scott and Helen Nearing, pioneers of the back-to-the-land movement. As Kate read the Nearings’s simple living manuals, “I was totally blown away not only by the integrity the Nearings brought to the garden, but the fact that they could garden that much in Maine,” she says.
So Kate’s family relocated to Maine’s central coast in early December, a time when Kate thought she could witness the worst of what the region may provide. “It was raw and open and stark,” she recalls. And in Monroe, Maine, the family found an ideal location: 26 acres on a south-facing slope near a stream.
Slow Going
Kate and Phil were especially impressed with their property’s southern exposure because they wanted an opportunity to build a passive solar home. Influenced by the Nearings, they desired to build a stone house using a slip-form method of construction and, influenced by their years on the West Coast, to include elements of Japanese architecture. “I wanted to build a building that was connected to the land and fit in with what was already there,” Kate says.
Kate and Phil designed a simple home, bermed into the hillside to the north and open to the south, that curves down the hill to the west. “The idea was to weave together beauty and utility,” Kate explains. “Passive solar is so wonderful— working with the climate instead of trying to fight it—bringing in some kind of harmony, working with the elements.”
The 1,500-square-foot home was constructed by hand, an exhausting process that took five years. “If you could do it the hard way—we did it,” Kate laughs. They hand-dug four-foot-deep trenches for the foundation and flat stones were obtained from the local woods and fields. Kate and Phil prepared cement in wheelbarrows and built wooden forms that contained the cement while it set around the stones. Inside the house, they attached insulation, plastic vapor barriers, and pine walls to two-by-fours inserted into the six-foot-high stone walls. They built a second-story bedroom using fir two-by-fours and finished the structure with a double metal roof. Eventually, after five years of surviving with only a cistern, hand pump, and outhouse, they drilled a well and had running water for their kitchen and bath.
“The construction was spread over five years because we were paying as we went,” Kate says. “But the advantage is that you really get to know the land—where you spend time, where the sun comes up at different times of the year. There’s something to be said for going slow—which is very different from the way people in this country do things.”
Making the Most of Each Season
From the large overhead beams for drying herbs and flowers to the attached greenhouse on the west side, the home was designed to welcome agrarian ways. “I live a strongly seasonal lifestyle,” says Kate, who now lives alone. “The weather is ever changing, and farm-related activities are so different. So my home’s areas of use are very seasonal.”
In spring and summer, Kate enjoys in the sun on the fifteen-by-twenty-foot wooden deck on the south and serves tea or picnics on the covered terrace attached to her workshop. She loves to watch the sunrise on the eastern porch. “Because summer’s such an expansive time, I really use that outdoor space much more,” she says.
In winter, the low sun cascades into Kate’s denlike dining and living areas, contributing heat that she supplements with an early evening fire. “Burning wood is a winter activity that I love, a gentle way of keeping things going—getting a couple of armloads of wood each day, keeping ahead of the storms,” she says. Kate spends the winter months as an “armchair gardener,” adding to the knowledge she’s acquired over the past twenty years.
A Sloping Masterpiece
Before moving to Maine, Kate had grown tomatoes and basil but had no major gardening experience. She’s now created a terraced masterpiece on the steep, sunny hillside near her home. “This isn’t rocket science,” she says. “I read the Nearings and other books, but it’s mainly a matter of just doing it, learning from your mistakes, trying and trying and trying.
“It always seems to be a good year for something or a bad year for something,” she adds. “Some pest is eating this and this, but you get the bounty in something else. When you look at the big picture, it all seems to work out okay.”
After moving to the site, named Stone Soup Farm after the inspirational folktale, Kate began offering vegetables, flowers, and herb vinegars for sale at the Belfast Farmers Market. She now teaches workshops on using herbs and runs a small shop on the property that sells plants, herbal crafts, and other garden-related products. One of her personal thrills was selling a perennial to the late Helen Nearing. “Here was someone I’ve so respected, who so influenced me and the way I’ve done things,” Kate says. “It just felt like a complete circle.”
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