Reporting Live: MAINE

An introduction to Blue Barn and what to eat when you are glamping on a budget but love the taste of expensive foods.

Reporting Live is a July Series wherein Alison rents out her upstate New York home, Oak Hill Estate, and thus reports live from all the other homes she stays at. This Series is for paid subscribers of May I Please Be Excused. You will see a preview, but to get all the drama, consider upgrading your subscription. One month is $5.

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me, Biggie, tiny vodka martini, Blue Barn, and one of 5,000 deer flies

I’m typing this to you from the second floor of Blue Barn, the garage-barn-apartment-turned-arts’n’crafts-retreat that my protégé MiMi is renovating in Lincolnville, Maine. It’s 69 degrees, 93% humidity, one window cracked.

Lincolnville is north and a little inland of Rockland, closer to Camden. You might have heard of Lincolnville General Store previously owned by Phish Drummer John Fishman (now Owen’s General Store). You might follow Maine’s social media ambassador and Lincolnville resident, Rudy Jude (Julie D. O’Rourke).

It is the first stop on my July tour of homes. Gyps and I have been here since Wednesday and will drive back to Oak Hill to tend to the garden Monday before I leave again for my next crash pad.

Currently Blue Barn is in her up-and-coming she shed phase. But as any grandmother gazes longingly at her adolescent grandchild, I think she’s simply perfect. I plan to be coming back until I am no longer able to drag my old bones up the stairs.

a snapshot of MiMi’a Blue Barn Pinterest board

The lay of the land is that the kitchen is downstairs in the once-garage. You take the outside stairs up to the second floor where there is the bathroom, cozi corner and the bedroom. Blue Barn sits on 5 acres inhabited by the world’s largest population of deer flies, Bun the resident full-sized rabbit, and my favorite tree in all of Maine which I call Shimmer Tree but is technically called Quaking Aspen.

Anyway, now that you know where you are I will get to today’s Paid post which is about what to pack and eat solo glamping on a budget with expensive taste and a palette for fresh seafood. This approach of meal prep is not location-specific (with the exception of the seafood), but I do include some local nods because this is a travel blog.