Ashley Gouin not only loves nature. she loves machines. She creates Youtube videos on Jeep repair under the name ChickBuilt as a way to get more women interested in their vehicles. Gouin, who runs her own business called MIA Trash Removal, has three younger brothers, a 13-year-old daughter, and a 20-month-old son. Her mom and dad live in South Paris.

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I am military a brat. so I grew up all over the place. My father was in the Army. We lived in Germany, Texas, Missouri and various other places for shorter amounts of time. I found it interesting.

My dad was out in the field a lot. He was an engineer by training, so he had a lot of deployments. He was in Desert Storm and he was always going to Saudi Arabia. My mother was more in the forefront. When he did spend time with us, it was significant. His family hails from Maine, which is why we ended up here.

My earliest childhood memory is when I went fishing with my father. We were living in Germany. I was 4 or 5. I remember walking along the bank of the Rhine River. while my father told me about different species of fish. I caught a little bass, but that was it. My dad gave me my first fishing rod that day. It was the one he’d had for several years. It’s worn and weathered, but I still have it.

I was interested in everything that was not girl-related. I had a fascination with taking things apart—a radio, a lawnmower—and putting them back together again. At first, my interest zeroed in on lawnmowers, weed whackers, and other small engines. When I got into high school, I started working on vehicles.

Though I had always enjoyed making new friends and going to new schools, when we came to Maine and I started high school at Oxford Hills, I found it difficult. It was such a small community compared to the schools I had been to. Everyone already knew each other.

I was shy and introverted until I started working at Norway Savings Bank after high school. The customer interaction got me out of my shell.

I stayed at the bank until 2003. I got a job at Car Quest first, then at Goodwin’s Chevrolet. I started out in parts and then became a Service Advisor. I helped customers understand and worked with the mechanics. It was a problem-solving kind of job, which I really liked.

I stayed at Goodwin’s for seven years. Then I worked for Windham’s Public Works Department. I was more or less a parts manager there. My primary function was to coordinate services and do inventory control. When I started, they had no program for tracking anything. I went through all the inventory and created a database for them. It was really interesting. I was there for two years.

My daughter, who was born in 2006, has autism. This is closely related to her having tuberous sclerosis, which causes benign tumor growth in different organs. It can also cause epilepsy. That is actually what caused her to regress into autism when she was 8 years old.

Because of this, she was in a special Pre-K developmental program. When she was ready for kindergarten, the district did not have the therapies she needed, so I moved to Auburn. She attended Margaret Murphy School which focuses on autism, downs syndrome, and developmental disabilities. I worked part-time so I could work around her school schedule. My daycare was my parents who lived in South Paris, but it was hard to go back and forth.

We lived there for three years. I moved to Skowhegan in hopes of opening a guiding business with some friends. When that didn’t work out, I came back to Oxford Hills where my family lived.

It was the right move. My daughter enrolled at Rowe. She started to flourish.

My daughter and I ended up staying with friends for a while. That’s when we met Bucky. In 2018, our son came into the picture.

My son has been a catalyst for my daughter. She attempts communication more than I have seen before. Some of that is sibling rivalry. Some of it is having a little brother who does not have the ability to speak. When I started using sign language with him and he started saying words to go with a sign, she started seeing the correlation. it upped the ante for her. He idolizes his big sister and has done a lot for her in social interactions.

Since I moved back to Oxford Hills, I have more or less been freelancing. I worked at a small garage in Oxford for a while doing scheduling, invoicing and some repairs. At the beginning of my pregnancy, I worked at a garage in Bridgton, but the body shop fumes did not jive with being pregnant.

This past May, I started a trash collection business called MIA Trash Removal. MIA is my daughter’s nickname. She and I do curbside trash removal and pickup construction debris. I hope this will generate some supplemental income for me and we also that by exposing her to people and places she does not know, that it will be beneficial for her anxiety. We are also beginning to turn paper trash into things like small pots for succulents and beads for jewelry. It’s good for her to do something hands-on.

I got my hunting certificate when I was 18. My father hunted but I didn’t do that with him. I did it on my own. I have been hunting ever since. I have only gotten one deer, though I try every year. I enjoy bird and rabbit hunting more because it is more physical. I am walking and seeing things when I rabbit hunt, not just sitting and waiting for something to cross my path. Hunting or just being in the woods is a way to connect with nature. It’s also a way to connect with my daughter.

I like living in Maine. I also like the seasons. Whether it’s fishing, hiking, camping or hunting, this is something I have always wanted to share with my kids, if I ever had them. Now I can.

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