While I enjoy summer in New England, there are few places prettier than Maine in the early fall. Today's estate is a 7,200 square foot home on Cousins Island, an island which is part of Yarmouth and connected via a bridge to the mainland. The home sits on 7.4 acres and faces beaches and ledges and has its own separate smaller private island. There are six bedrooms and the style of the home is classic Colonial with modern updates. Charming details include tile-surrounded fireplaces, a curved staircase and a large sunroom. It also has a matching guest house with a small balcony. This home is listed at $7.5 million.



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Care for a little alfresco dining? A pair of New Hampshire and Maine farms along with four award-winning chefs combine for one fabulous evening that includes a four-course meal and event held in the fields of Weston's Farm on the Saco River. August 29th is the date for the Second Annual "Fields on the Saco", an event that offers up the best of the season's harvest in a lavish feast for 100 under tents set up in the field. The menu will be accompanied by paired wines and Maine Cold River Vodka and will be presented by Chef Bryant Alden of the Chef's Market in North Conway, Executive Chef Brad Southwick of the White Mountain Hotel and Resort, Chef Jonathan Spak, co-owner of the Oxford House Inn, and Chef Jim Harrison of the Flatbread Company.

Hors d'oeuvres will include sweet corn fritters and scallops wrapped in pancetta with an Amaretto reduction. The meal begins with an appetizer of roulade of pork gratin with braised baby beets and butternut-apple coulis. The salad is baby spinach with grilled peaches and goat cheese with a maple pecan apple cider vinaigrette. The entree will be a mixed grill of tournedos of beef, lamb sausage, and chicken kebob with summer vegetables on a potato nest. The meal finished up with a blueberry polenta pound cake with honey and chevre semifreddo.

The event actually begins at 1 p.m. in the afternoon and includes far more than the dinner. There are guided farm tours, farm stores showcasing foods, flowers and local products. Cold River Vodka and complimentary wines will be offered with live music provided by Jazz Meisters and a "wet art" auction (wet art refers to paintings created on site). Winners of the Art-A-Ron-Dack Chair judging will be auctioned, offering bidders the chance to take home a unique chair and artwork combined. A Border Collie exhibition at Nerefield Farm on East Conway Road and a bonfire will round out the schedule. Each person attending the dinner will take home a beautiful Lead Wine Glass by Cristal d'Arques of France and a gift bag. Tickets are $125 each and the event will be limited to 100 people. Info on ordering tickets can be found on the Mount Washington Valley website.

Many top drawer people in the Northeast spend summers in Maine's preppy enclaves. Photographer Sarah C. Butler's new book Portrait of a Maine Island is a love letter to one such locale, Northeast Harbor.

In this never-before-seen collection, Butler showcases her extraordinary art portraits of Northeast Harbor's local inhabitants, architecture and stunning land and seascape, as viewed from properties like this 2006 Estate of the Day.

60 people and places are brought to life through original photographs that "convey and identify what it is that makes Maine culture so distinctive." Martha Stewart, who has an estate on nearby Mount Desert Island, often uses it as inspiration.

Butler doesn't just focus on the well-heeled summer residents however. A post-mistress, mechanic, carpenter, lobsterman, librarian and artists are all included, as well as a visual journey through the area's coves and rocky necks.

Mother's Day doesn't have to cost you a dime if your essay wins the Captain Lord Mansion's "Mother of the Year" award. The bed and breakfast in Kennebunkport, Maine is offering an essay contest that gives the winner a two-night stay valued up to $1,000. The package includes luxury accommodations for the winning mom and a guest, daily breakfast, a pampering spa experience and a special gift. Captain Lord Mansion will choose a winner to be notified on Mother's Day so you might want to get a back-up gift just in case you don't win. To enter send an email to innkeeper@CaptainLord.com.

I love the classic summer homes of New England. The Tiffany Cottage in Isleboro, Maine is one of those grand summer cottages that were built in the early 1900s when people would settle in for a few months by the shore. This Dark Harbor estate was built in 1912 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The shingled home with white shutters sits on a 4.8-acre parcel of land with approximately 700 feet of shorefront and a sheltered dock. A porch faces the water and offers summer shade and the home is surrounded by perennial beds and lawns. There aren't too many interior listing pics but they reveal wood floors, brick fireplaces and wide windows opening to the outside. This home is listed at $4.75 million.

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Today's home, the Rockhouse takes its inspiration from the craggy piece of Maine coastline it is perched upon. The home is located in the small town of Cape Neddick, Maine. The style is modern with lots of glass, stone, and warm wood, particularly in the delightful curve of the kitchen counter and the swirl of the circular staircase. The first floor master suite opens out onto a terrace and an infinity pool overlooking the sea. This home is listed at $5.75 million.

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On a little island called Nash, off the Maine coast, a flock of sheep lives undisturbed, except in June when weavers from Swans Island Blankets come by lobster boat to gather some wool. This year's shearing produced 420 pounds of wool, enough for a year's worth of weaving.

Swans Island started in the early '90s when a pair of lawyers, John and Carolyn Grace, decided to move to Maine, meet some sheep farmers and get weaving. What developed was a company that has produced hand-woven blankets significant enough to warrant a Smithsonian Blue Ribbon for Craft in 1996. Weavers work in an 18th century farmhouse making blankets for summer and winter. Recently, the group started weaving scarves, wraps, throws and pillows, too.

I'm a complete sucker for age-old craftmanship. Add the free-roaming sheep, rustic farmhouse and beyond-cozy blankets, and this company is every New Englander's dream.

The king-sized version of the winter blanket at right retails for $1,125. Everything Swans Island makes can be custom ordered and monogrammed in a hand-done cross stitch.

The Olympia Group has revealed their plans for the Oxford Highlands Resort- Spa-Casino in Oxford County, Maine. The project will have two phases costing $150 million total and ending up with a 300 room hotel, a large conference center, a casino featuring up to 1,500 slot machines, a wide variety of table games, fine and casual dining options, a spa, indoor and outdoor pools, parking for guests and accommodations for snowmobiles, cross country skiing and numerous other year round amenities. The resort is designed to be a resort destination for Maine and one that is hoped to create jobs for up to 800 people and add revenue to Maine's economy. The specific location hasn't been chosen yet but it will take up around 25 acres. If the casino is approved by Maine voters in November then construction would begin as soon as possible.

This summer, Dean & Deluca is sending its customers Maine-caught lobster in one of two rolls: light mayo, lemon and celery or mayo and tarragon. This lobster is prime to eat right now, weeks before shedder season when lobsters molt, meaning soft shells and wimpy meat. As far as fresh lobster goes, it's reasonably priced at $135 for eight rolls (plus $35 for mandatory next day shipping). If no decadent picnics are in your future, at least get on the Dean & Deluca mailing list. Because a full-page spread of plump lobster is kind of like foodie Playboy.

NeighborhoodScout.com has used their matching function to find neighborhoods that are "discount equivalents" of some of the hot and pricey communities we recently covered in our Most Expensive Zip Codes estates.

The Neighborhood Scout chooses Southwest Harbor, Maine as a seaside equivalent to the pricier island of Nantucket. On Nantucket the median house value is $1.56 million but Southwest Harbor has a median house value of just $266,936. The two locations have much in common including a quaint New England charm and island beauty, you just trade in Nantucket for Mt. Desert Island. It's a little colder and doesn't have as much of a reputation as a summer getaway but it has some beautiful properties.

Today's home is actually on Greening's Island and has views of Mt. Desert Island. This shingle-style cottage was constructed in 1932 and sits on 9.75 acres of meadows and woods reaching all the way to the granite ledges. The property has western views of Southwest Harbor and Manset villages, and North to the views of Somes Sound and there is 1,544+/- feet of shore frontage. The property includes a shared dock and the "Captain's Cabin" a special retreat near the dock. It is listed at $2.65 million. A bargain compared to the shingled home we recently featured on Nantucket which is listed at $11.75 million.

The Inn by the Sea on the Maine coast is Maine's first hotel heated by biofuel and the first in the state to be carbon neutral. The hotel also has five acres of indigenous gardens certified as a Wildlife Habitat. They also offer green weddings and green meetings. Now the eco-friendly inn is bringing green to the tale with the new restaurant Sea Glass which opens in June 2008. They have hired executive chef, Mitchell Kaldrovich to create a restaurant that will focus on the freshest fare from local and seasonal ingredients. The changing menu will incorporate dishes with regionally raised beef, pork, lamb and seasonal game as well as organic chicken, a variety of handmade pastas and vegetarian dishes and seafood fresh from the ocean. Kaldrovich was most recently the executive chef of the Plump Jack café in Squaw Valley, California. To celebrate the new restaurant they are offering a bed and breakfast package that start in June and includes breakfast for two in the Sea Glass restaurant. Garden suites are $331 per night, spa suites are $370.

A tip from Luxist reader Dave led me to an interesting story regarding one of our previous estate-of-the-day properties, Point Lookout. Maine Coast Now reports that a Maryland businessman is buying Point Lookout from Bank of America and has plans to turn it into a training center for seniors and executives in the aging business. The 378-acre property has been listed through Landvest for $26.4 million. John Erickson, the potential buyer, is the CEO of Erickson Retirement Communities which owns and operates 20 continuing care retirement communities throughout the United States. By next fall, Erickson hopes to reopen the facility to use as a training facility. Point Lookout also may end up as an educational tour destination for older adults including those living in his retirement communities.

If you've ever watched the show Lobster Wars, you know that obtaining lobster is no easy task. Now you can be part of the lobster experience without the hard work by investing in Catch a Piece of Maine. A partnership, which costs $2,995, entitles you to the proceeds of one lobster trap. Your trap will be fished by one of the eight lobstermen participating in the program. During each trip your lobsterman will record the catch from the trap.

The number of lobsters caught in your trap, each time your lobsterman checks it, will be credited to your personal lobster account. At any time you can have lobsters from your account shipped anywhere in the continental U.S. You are guaranteed at least 40 lobsters from your trap. Each shipment comes as a complete lobster dinner, and with every four lobsters ordered, you receive a pound of steamer clams, a pound of mussels, four servings of blueberry cheesecake, butter, lemon and lobster utensils and bibs.

Those who sign up during the holidays will be credits with 12 lobsters so that they can use them during the holiday season, but the traps go in May 1, and are pulled out on December 31.

What to make of Boldwater, a four-season resort in Brooklin, Maine? The 38 acres is well-situated with 1400 feet of shore frontage on Blue Hill Bay. The land includes a massive 15,084+/- sq.ft. main house and three additional houses. The main house which appears to have been built in 1980 according to the MLS listing seems rather hotel-like. I do not know if it was used as a resort or if it is just the lack of furnishings that make the home seem so massive. There are six-bedrooms total, a restaurant-sized, colorfully tiled kitchen, formal dining room, two living rooms, a family room, billiards room, Jacuzzi room, wine room and more. The home is also bedecked with some rather faded-looking murals. The land also includes three other homes, a pool and a long pier. The home is listed at $7.5 million but it looks like it was at $8.8 million last year. We are looking at some beautiful land here but the home needs a bit of updating so I would guess that the sale price might be a bit lower.

Today's home in remote Deham, Maine is a rather unique project. According to the property Web site, in 1994 Charlie Adams went on a hunting trip in Dedham, Maine. When he came across Mitchell Pond he decided to buy it and build his pondside retreat. The home, on 60 expansive acres, is built on a grand, if idiosyncratic scale. There are two kitchens, both with stainless steel appliances and marble countertops. The estate has 12,000 square feet including seven bedrooms. The home has a large indoor pool complex complete with a fireplace. The home was originally listed at $8 million, but is now on sale for $5 million.