Albert Mosher, 96, with a 1942 Oliver 60 Standard tractor that he uses to rake at his farm, Long View Farm in Gorham. Derek Davis / Portland Press Herald

Gorham’s Albert Erlon Mosher, turning 97 on April 10, is gearing up to plow ground, carrying on his ancestors’ tradition in town since 1738. He’ll plant corn in May, just like olden times, at his sprawling Long View Farm.

Mosher, a former town councilor and Army veteran, is mobile without leaning on any cane and describes himself as a “third as old as the town.”

A color photograph of Long View Farm in Gorham before the barn was destroyed by arson. Derek Davis / Portland Press Herald

“I’ve always been active,” he said, explaining his longevity. “My dad was, too. It helped both of us.”

His father, a state legislator, lived to be 99.

The Mosher family is an institution in Gorham. Early settler Daniel Mosher helped build the garrison on Fort Hill. Descendant Albert Mosher grew up on the same land his family bought in 1770 at today’s Mosher’s Corner at the intersection of routes 25 and 237 (Mosher Road). He lives in the same house his ancestors built in 1810.

Mosher, a widower, has three children, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

He sold his dairy cows in 1987.

An arsonist destroyed his complex of barns two decades ago, but the disaster didn’t wipe out his will to farm. He built back smaller, but laments the shortage of the hay storage the historic barn provided.

The Rev. Leslie Foley, pastor of Westbrook-Warren Congregational Church, where Mosher attends services, in an email to the newspaper Monday said Mosher is “a true Maine farmer. Al is salt of the earth.”

“He is a man who values faith, family, friends and farming,” Foley said.

Albert Mosher, 96, at his farm, Long View Farm, in Gorham. Derek Davis / Portland Press Herald

Last week in his living room, Mosher checked a handwritten list of a half-dozen sweet corn varieties he jotted down to plant in a large field to stock a farm stand. He owns a tractor-drawn three-row planter and said he’ll be tilled and ready to plant when the soil temperature rises above 50 degrees.

He’ll sell corn where his late wife, Lorraine, marketed it roadside, grown on 8 acres. “That was her business,” he said.

Foley said Mosher attends weekly Bible study and drives to worship every Sunday, “except during haying season when he can be found on a tractor.”

Mosher said his helper, Tim Profenno, of Gorham, will handle hay mowing, but Mosher will be behind the wheel himself on an 80-horsepower Ford 7700 tractor pulling the hay baler to harvest 90 acres.

Mosher has a collection of six tractors.

A 1942 Oliver 60 he bought during World War II as a teenager remains in service, attached with a rake during the hay season. It came new with steel wheels, but he later modified it with rubber tires. It’s raked “thousands of acres” of hay Mosher said.

He used the Oliver coupled together with a grain combine he bought for custom work all over Cumberland County. The Oliver is small and he said some customers had to tow him over field hills. The work paid for his education at the University of Maine after graduating from Gorham High School in 1946.

The Oliver replaced much of the farm work handled by real horse power. He recalls, as a youth, driving a team of horses hitched to a wagon loaded with loose hay home through Westbrook from a 25-acre field his family owned on Brighton Avenue in Portland.

That Portland field is now the location of Lowe’s.

A visit with Mosher at Long View Farm is a journey back through time. He speaks little about it unless prompted.

“There’s a lot of history here,” he said. “I don’t think about it much.”

In the spring, his focus is aimed at farming, a way of life.

“(It’s) a good day, we can work in the barn,” he said to Profenno on March 14, following an interview.