Escape the Grid! Tiny Home & 32 Acres in Rural Maine

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:01]Hey everyone, it's Rick Terry, your main real estate guide. And today I'm on location in the small town of Matawakeg, Maine. And I'm up here at 873 Main Street in Mataw Keg. And what we've got coming to market today is 32.69 plus or minus acres of land with public road frontage on on Main Street, also known as Route Two or Military Road, which is a paved uh public uh highway. Uh and uh for improvements on the property, we have a tiny home of approximately 240 square ft with a drilled well, septic system, an off-grid power supply. So even though this this property could have utility power, the the person who developed this property opted to go off-rid, but you could connect to the grid if you want. So, what this property will be coming to market at $124,900 for all the improvements we're going to show you, plus the 32.69 plus or minus acres of property. So, with that, let's take a look around uh the property and show you some of the highlights.

[00:01:07]So, we got a nice private gravel roadway that comes in on into the property and through those trees approximately oh 50 to to to 70 yards through the trees uh is US Route 2 where you could tie into the utility lines if you wanted to. But over here in this area, this is where the the tiny home is and it you could live here year round.

[00:01:34]This was built more as a camp and a recreational getaway, but you could live here year year round. It has a new drilled well for domestic water.

[00:01:48]It has a two-bedroom septic system.

[00:02:00]So, this is where your septic tank is.

[00:02:04]And the leech field is over here beyond.

[00:02:08]And I do have the design on file.

[00:02:11]It has a mini split heat pump.

[00:02:16]And you can see the metal bestos chimney coming up through the roof. It also has a wood stove on the interior.

[00:02:30]So within the confines of this 240 ft building, you got all the comforts of home. So with that, let's take a walk inside and I'll show you the interior.

[00:02:44]So as we enter inside, remember it's a tiny home, 240 ft. So you don't it's not a grand entrance. You enter into the the kitchen area. Got a nice little kitchen table for two.

[00:03:01]Gas range, microwave, some cabinets, a little refrigerator, freezer.

[00:03:15]Remember, tiny home, tiny appliances.

[00:03:22]On demand propane hot water heater.

[00:03:28]All wired for breakers.

[00:03:35]Nice little bar area to sit as well. If you have a couple of guests, you could could have uh I don't know, maybe four people in here having dinner.

[00:03:47]Get a place to sleep, read a book.

[00:03:52]warm up by the wood stove and you get a full bath with a standup shower.

[00:04:10]It's all finished in Vmatch pine. It's pretty well insulated.

[00:04:16]Oh, I bet you could heat this for little to nothing. Um, you know, it's 240 ft of of finished space. So, uh, nice nice tiny little cabin. So, with that, let's head back outdoors.

[00:04:31]So, this is an opportunity for someone to have a recreational getaway or perhaps build a more elaborate home and use this as a guest cottage or maybe have a couple of tiny homes. And we'll show you that was kind of the the vision that the folks that are selling the property had. But then uh you know life life goes on and throws you some curve balls every now and again. So plans change. But um we'll uh let's take a closer closer look around here.

[00:05:00]So the cabin has a metal roof. The roof's in pretty good shape.

[00:05:06]It there are a couple repairs that are in progress of being made. I identified when I was here the other day meeting with the with the owner that the boot I don't know if you could see the boot around the vent vent pipe there on the roof. It uh it needs to be replaced and it was uh leaking a little bit around the vent pipe because of the damaged boot, but that's going to be fixed and the damaged area inside will be taken care of.

[00:05:35]We got this nice walkway that's been freshly bush hoged to get to the powerhouse. So again, this was an off-grid property. It has about 1,000 watts of solar. It's a 24volt system with a Magnum uh inverter and a colar propane generator. You can probably hear the generator running. I have that fired up. We're going to have a little solar power lesson as part of this video tutorial of this property once we get inside the powerhouse.

[00:06:08]But you got a nice cleared area here where the owner of the property had had a couple of Alaskan floating slabs poured cuz his vision was to have a couple more tiny homes for some family members so they could each have their own cabin. It just never happened. But you could do that. There's one slab here, another slab here.

[00:06:34]So, there's the possibility of putting a couple more tiny homes and having uh, you know, some guest cottages.

[00:06:42]Got a beautiful cleared area here. I'm going to say there's probably an acre and a half, two acres that's cleared of the 32.69 acres of land.

[00:06:57]kind of look around and you can see the 1000 watts of solar on the roof. And we'll we'll begin the solar power lesson.

[00:07:17]1,000 watts isn't nearly enough to power this property with solar. uh you're really gonna going to have to run the generator quite a bit. Um and that was uh part of the problem that uh uh the the batteries for the solar system will all need to be replaced. And part of the problem was the wasn't enough solar. So the generator had to run more often. The generator ran out of fuel.

[00:07:45]Consequently, couldn't charge the batteries. The batteries sat uncharged in a in a depleted state for a long period of time. Ruined the batteries.

[00:07:53]So, the batteries will need to be replaced, but there's plenty of room to add more solar and and right now in in today's market, the solar panels are probably your least expensive portion of a off-grid power system. Now, the inverters pretty pretty well set price.

[00:08:11]Um, and generators pretty well set price, but panels have come down uh greatly in cost. But so there's plenty of room to add a couple thousand 3,000 more watts of solar. I have 3,000 watts at my home in in Milanit. And there's only a thousand here. I I would think you probably need three to four times.

[00:08:30]It depends on what you're going to be doing here. But uh but you do have a drilled well, so you're running a water pump. You do have electric lights. If you run the microwave, you know, on and on it goes. So the more more load you use, the more power you're going to need. So let's uh let's step inside the powerhouse.

[00:08:45]We're inside the powerhouse and you can hear the generator outside droning droning away. And this is just a an Amish made building that was probably dragged on site and uh you made into this powerhouse. And you can see there's a lot a lot of room here. I I mean with that added some insulation, you could probably turn this into a workshop powerhouse. You know, this is uh another 240 or 50 feet of square feet of space under roof that could be utilized. And all we're using really is this little little corner right here. Here's your Magnum sinewave uh inverter, your solar charge controller, breakers for the system, generator, auto start circuit, and and your battery storage. And there's eight rolls lead acid batteries in that box. They are all junk. they need to be replaced. So, you could use lead acid batteries if you want.

[00:09:55]A better battery, a better battery for this application would be AGM batteries, uh, which are are really maintenance-free other than, uh, you know, charge cycles and and rebalancing and those sorts of things that you need to do with an off-grid power system. The problem with wet cell lead acid batteries like a roller is they're they're a very good quality battery, but they require m maintenance. You know, you got to equalize them uh in charge, but you also have to add distilled water a couple times a year.

[00:10:38]If you aren't in a position to do that or you ne neglect to do that, um what happens is what happened here. you know, the batteries one, they didn't get get charged, right? But they also went dry. Uh so the plates were exposed to the to air because the distilled water evaporated from use and was never replenished and just turn the batteries into junk. So if you want to be off-rid because you're you you got to realize that you are your own power company. So you have to take care of your power system. You know, if you're connected to the grid, there are professionals that take care of your power system. There are linemen that, you know, in the power hudge go and fix things. But here in, you know, in an off-grid situation, you are your own lineman. You are your own power company. So, if you're not going to maintain it, probably hook up to the grid. It would be the best bet for you.

[00:11:32]But this is a great application with new batteries.

[00:11:36]This could be a very robust system. I I would add more batteries if it were me, more solar panels, and you could really enhance this uh this off-grid power system. So, let's head back outside.

[00:11:47]So, as you can hear, the colar generator is chugging away here, producing electricity, and that's what's powering the the well pump and the lights in the cabin while I'm here. Uh because since the batteries are damaged, uh the solar panels aren't adding any charge cuz the batteries just can't take any charge. Uh they're junk. They need to be replaced. That's kind of kind of how it works. But let's uh let's take a walk down and show you some of some of the land. Um, you know, we're up here closer to Route Two here where uh, you know, where the cabin is and the and the couple of Alaskan slabs and the powerhouse, but there's a nice gravel road that goes back. This is a kind of a long narrow 32.69 acres. There's about 238 give or take feet of of uh, road frontage on Route 2, Main Street.

[00:12:42]And then this lot goes back about 4,600 feet straight back.

[00:12:48]And this road that's back here, it hasn't been bush hoged and it hasn't been trimmed, I'm going to say, in 12 or 14 years based on the growth of these small birch trees along the the edge of the road. But the road's in very good shape. You can see that here we are.

[00:13:08]You got a nice nice ditch on both sides of the road. So, the road's built up with good gravel about 3 feet above the edges of the road. So, you got good drainage. This road sits up nice and high and dry. It's very solid under my feet. We just had uh about an inch of rain over the weekend and there's no evidence of mud or mud puddles. It's very well drained back here. area. You could trim this road up if you wanted to come back here and explore or hunt or, you know, build a build a garage. I mean, you got 32.69 acres of land to use. You know, it's your it's up to you what your your vision is. But you can see uh this has been logged in the past. I think the last time it was probably cut would have been about uh oh I don't know looking at the the regen the the birch trees the uh young maples the popppel that's coming up that all looks to be about 12 to 14 years old of regen so it was probably last harvest about that time now the town of Madawank main guide trivia. It's where I grew up.

[00:14:25]I spent my childhood, my developmental years in Madaw. Lived uh in the more developed portion of town at the time when I was a kid going to school um and uh both in Madaw as well as Lincoln. Lincoln was at Madonuk Academy was where uh went to high school. Um, Madawank had a population of probably,300 in those days. Uh, today the population is closer to 600. So, it's it's in, uh, let's see, I left Madawam Keg 4 years ago. So, uh, so it's been a while, but uh, nonetheless, uh, had a great childhood, uh, growing up in small town. uh learned to hunt, fish, trap all all while growing up here. Um and uh today Madawamp again it's you know the population is about half of what it was.

[00:15:29]Um there's one convenience store gas station in town currently. You got a town office. You got a volunteer fire department. Uh police protection here in Madawan Cake would be county sheriff.

[00:15:43]Um, Ponopscot County Sheriff. Your service center community where you're going to go do most of your grocery shopping would be Lincoln. Lincoln's about from the property here is probably a 20-minut drive to Hannerford grocery store in Lincoln. In Lincoln, you got a Hannerford, you got Walmart. Uh, you got Steaks and Staff, another good grocery store in in Lincoln.

[00:16:08]And uh um nice and you got a hospital, Ponobscot Valley Hospital, plus some other healthc care options and lots of dentists in uh in the town of Lincoln.

[00:16:17]So no shortage of dentistry work in Lincoln. But as you can see, I'm walking along very nice nice road here in uh on this 32.69 acres of land. And again, this goes back about 4600 ft.

[00:16:34]It's a long narrow rectangle.

[00:16:42]So, we'll head back up to the to the cabin, talk a little bit about more about the area. So, where we're at at out here on North Main Street in Madaw is we're close to the town line. And if we go another mile, maybe two miles north, you come to the county line where Ponopscot County transitions into Arustic County. And that little township that you cross into there is Malcus.

[00:17:12]And then uh um just up the road about a mile is the Davis Farm Road. And Davis Farm does not go to a farm any longer. There was a farm out there on the Davis farm road at the turn of the century, but there wasn't even a farm there when I was a kid. There were just the remnants of a farm when I was a kid u know 50 years ago here in Madawarm. Nonetheless, the road maintains the its name, Davis Farm Road. And if you go back in there to explore, there's there's thousands and thousands of acres of undeveloped woodland back there. It's not public, it's private, but you can recreate there. There's a couple of nice trout streams. You got big and little Wittenbrook. You got Rocky Brook which is the outlet of Back Settlement Pond. All those tributaries flow into the Madawank River.

[00:18:03]Madawank River is a very scenic wild river that uh flows through the M through the town of Madawamp Keg and into the Ponobscot River.

[00:18:13]It joins the Ponobscot in the town of Madawamp.

[00:18:18]That river supports smallmouth bass, landlock and Atlantic salmon, brook trout, and other species of fish. I have fished and explored the Madawam K River and a lot of its tributaries over the years to great success. And it's all available to you just a short drive from the property. There is no water frontage on the property itself, but you're close to a lot of recreational water. You got the Ponobscot River, the Madawamp River.

[00:18:47]You get, you know, the big little Whittenbrook. If you head out towards Madawam Wilderness Park, there's Madison Stream, you got uh Big and Little Gordon. Uh and then uh you got the Madawake River there. And it's a very scenic area. As you get uh up along the Madawake towards Madawake Wilderness Park, you got Sluggundi Falls, upper and lower Gordon Falls. this time of year with good water flow, very very scenic area. When I was a kid, they had the Whitewater National Competition on that stretch of river.

[00:19:25]That was a canoe canoe uh whitewater competition.

[00:19:31]Hasn't been held there since, but when I was a kid, it was held there one time.

[00:19:35]That was a big event in the town of Madawake back in the day.

[00:19:40]But this is a heck of a nice property with a lot of potential. You got, you know, the 240 ft uh tiny home with a drilled well, two-bedroom septic. You got some concrete pads that are poured for a couple more tiny homes if that's your vision. You got a powerhouse that, you know, needs needs a little attention, needs new batteries at a minimum.

[00:20:07]more solar panels would would help immensely.

[00:20:11]Um, generator works fine and the auto start circuit and everything works fine, but uh but the batteries uh they need need some attention. But this is uh this is priced to move at $124,900.

[00:20:29]So, you want to give Rick Tero, your main real estate guy, a call at area code 207319902.