When Scott Goodwin and his wife, Corinna, moved back to Maine in 2018, they found their home in Cundy’s Harbor through “dumb luck,” he said. He started a business, Good Home Property Inspections, and it thrived from the start.
That luck changed when the pandemic hit the following year and, although homes sold faster than before, inspections weren’t a priority.
“Everyone from everywhere was moving to Maine or wanted to move to Maine, and the money was crazy,” Goodwin said. “I don’t know how many people bought homes with just a Realtor walking through with a phone and saying, ‘Yep, we’ll buy it.'”
Realtors told him buyers were making cash offers and waiving inspections. “It was scary,” he said.
Scrambling for solutions, Goodwin remembered clearing land in West Gardiner when he was younger. He did some research online and realized forestry mulching — somewhere between bush-hogging and tree service — was in demand. Forestry mulching reduces small saplings, brush and invasive species to 3- to 5-inch wood chips, according to the website for Goodwin’s business, Good Woods Forestry Mulching.
So, in June 2024, he bought a Kubota excavator and an FAE mulching head and was in business — a second business that allows him to work outside in the state he loves and diversify enough that he’s not dependent on the real estate market.
Forestry mulching has filled other niches as well, often perfectly suited for jobs not quite right for a landscaper or an arborist.
“This is work we used to have to do by hand that can now be done by machine,” Goodwin said. “I’ve done a handful of roads where people are like, ‘I put my road in 20 years ago. I can’t see my ditches anymore and this (brush) is starting to scrape my car. I used to have a view and the view is gone.’ I can come and quickly take care of that. A landscaper may say, ‘I don’t have the equipment for that,’ and tree guys tend to want to cut down trees.”
“One customer has a solar array and just wasn’t getting the sunlight anymore because the field was growing up,” he said. The man told him, “I need to get this all beat down so my solar field stays engaged with the sun.”
Harpswell, like much of Maine, has many dirt roads, long driveways and private roads, creating much opportunity for Goodwin’s services.
Goodwin partners with arborists, landscapers and forestry management companies from Saco to Oakland to Camden that lack the staff or equipment for the work he does.
He coordinates jobs for his two businesses, aiming for two mulching jobs a month in season, after the snow has melted and the ground is dry. He hopes to increase that to one job a week, filling in home inspections around that.
Eventually he hopes to add another employee and maybe more attachments to his excavator, which would allow him to remove small trees and offer additional services.
Goodwin grew up in Augusta. He attended the University of Vermont before following a friend to Arizona, where he worked for 25 years and met and married his wife. Tired of the heat and “too many people,” and wanting to be closer to his family, they made their “best move ever” and came to Harpswell, he said.
When he was working as a contractor in Arizona and preparing to return to Maine, “everyone kept saying, ‘There’s no labor,'” he said. “I talked to contractors and they said, ‘We tried to grow, we tried to get employees.’ … I said, ‘I have to find something I can do on my own.’ Eventually I’d like to grow … but I just want to be able to satisfy the local market and be comfortable living in Maine again and be able to get out and enjoy Maine again. It’s such a great place.”
For more information about Good Woods Forestry Mulching, go to mulchingmaine.com, find the business on Facebook, call 207-522-4384 or email scott@mulchingmaine.com.
