WOOLWICH

As seasonal pop-up businesses go, Todd McPhee is lucky. That’s because he owns a lot of property along Route 1 Woolwich where he sells Christmas wreaths.

What that means according to Chip Kelly, a field inspector for Maine Department of Transportation, is that McPhee can put up signs advertising his greenery up and down Route 1.

“He owns more frontage, so he can put his signs beyond the 1,000 foot restriction,” Kelly said.

According to Maine State Highway laws, you can sell lawn ornaments, summer squash, Native American dreamcatchers, shrimp, Christmas trees and all variations thereof by the side of the road as long as signs advertising the products are on the same premises where the business is conducted.

For a business that’s open only three weeks a year and operated out of the back of a pickup truck, where your sign sits along the five miles between Nequasset Road and Big Al’s in Wiscasset can be an important advantage for a guy who takes a three week vacation every year just to sell wreaths, trees, candle centerpieces and swag roping.

And the occasional rum cake.

The rest of the year McPhee works as a pipefitter at Bath Iron Works, where he once served as president of Machinists Union Local S6. 

Thursday afternoon he was busy tying red velvet bows for customers and loading wreaths into trunks of cars. After a visit from Kelly, who received a complaint about the vendor signs along Route 1, McPhee moved a sign from one side of the road to the other. 

Two other roadside vendors got a visit from Kelly. “I decided to take the ride down the (Route 1) corridor to see where people are putting their signs. We’re not trying to restrict any selling — as long as they’re not on the shoulder, we don’t have an issue. We just want to enforce the law in the fairest way possible,” Kelly said.

Just over the hill past the Woolwich-Wiscasset Baptist Church, Christina Barter tended her boyfriend’s plot of Christmas trees planted in old tires as a couple inspected fir tips and measured heights. 

Signs for their business did not comply with the law.

“He asked us to move them, but we haven’t yet,” she said.

On Saturday, the signs remained at their off-premise sites.