NEW GLOUCESTER — Reading about Sister April Baxter’s new life at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, since becoming the third active member of the last community of its kind, I found myself thinking: this sounds pretty nice.

Living rent-free on a scenic hillside farm among historic buildings, in exchange for keeping the place running, struck me as the best deal going in southern Maine. Surely, plenty of people would find the mandatory oath of celibacy a worthy sacrifice for that kind of housing arrangement.

Come to find out, there are other requirements for becoming a Shaker that could present bigger challenges. Along with being at least 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, you must be single, childless and — likely the disqualifier for most — debt-free.

And then, of course, there’s the religious piece. While I can get behind many Shaker values, like pacifism, equality and purposeful work, to say I could give myself wholly to God is a stretch, which, Brother Arnold Hadd agreed, “would be a tremendous barrier” for me.

But I imagine there are other people without faith-annihilating childhood church experiences who might meet the prerequisites and want to know more.

So, I sat down with Sister April and Brother Arnold to learn the finer details of everyday life as a Shaker and the intangible qualities they look for in prospective members, who also need to win over the community in order to get an offer to join. Here are the takeaways.

The food is really good.

Three communal meals are served daily, all prepared by Brother Arnold, who takes into account dietary needs and personal preferences in setting the menu.

“He knows what everybody likes,” Sister April said.

The noontime meal is the biggest of the day (healthy, right?), shared with at least a dozen staff and volunteers, and might feature meatloaf or mac and cheese, roasted potatoes and bread, both regular and gluten-free. No matter what, there’s always dessert, with apple brownies and banana cream pie on offer when I visited.

“Somebody joked once, ‘If you’re going to be celibate, the food better be good,'” Brother Arnold said.

A crowd favorite is his mayo chicken — or mayo tofu for Sister April — which has a crispy coating and, they swear, is much better than it sounds.

“Brother can cook vegetarian better than most vegetarians,” she said.

For breakfast, eggs are served three times a week, and cereal on other days. They keep a pot of fresh coffee going at all times.

And, occasionally, they enjoy a beer, glass of wine or, like Brother Arnold had on a recent night, “a really good cider from Normandy,” he said, “and I don’t regret it.”

You live with your coworkers.

While attention given to the Shaker community often focuses on the few official members, there are actually seven people who live at the village full-time and many others who are around regularly, including staff, volunteers and churchgoers.

Brother Arnold and Sister April acknowledged that, while the strong sense of community is a part of the appeal of Shaker life, sharing a living space with the people you work with can be challenging.

“You’re stuck with the same people all the time,” Brother Arnold said.

And whether you’re in the mood for company or not, others are constantly coming by, which sometimes can be more distracting than helpful.

“Generally, I’m happy to see people I haven’t seen in a while,” Sister April said. “And I’m happy when they go home.”

There’s a lot of laughter.

If you can’t tell by now, the Shakers have a good sense of humor. That was one thing that surprised Sister April upon joining the community.

“I feel like I’ve never laughed so much in my whole life,” she said.

Something they do at night for entertainment is to go through a collection of page-a-day calendars they have, including ones with strange facts and trivia, but the majority are bad-joke-themed.

“It ends the day on a happy note,” she said.

You have to be humble.

Over the nearly five decades Brother Arnold has been a Shaker, he’s seen some 30 people come and go from the community for different reasons.

One thing that can make for a bad fit is when someone has spent too much time living alone and only having to answer to themselves. People with strong opinions, too, aren’t going to last.

“You’ve got to be able to bow and bend,” he said.

A cornerstone of their religion is that all of their possessions are owned by the community as a whole, including the clothes on their back. They get a $100 monthly stipend and have access to a common purse to use as needed on personal items or purchases for the village. Anyone who might abuse that wouldn’t have been accepted into the community in the first place.

“We’re very practical, humble people,” Brother Arnold said. “We’re not about things. We’re not consumers.”

The work is rewarding but requires overtime.

Six days a week, after breakfast and morning prayers, the work day starts at 8:30 a.m. and ends by 5 p.m. with an hour-and-a-half break for midday prayers and dinner.

Brother Arnold, however, often stays up until midnight paying bills and answering emails on top of his full days preparing meals and doing barn chores.

But those are responsibilities he’s acquired over time. Like most new members, he started by packing the herbs that are grown on the property and sold to generate income. The general approach to delegating labor is to find out members’ strengths and weaknesses and assign duties accordingly.

Sister April’s gardening skills might be put to more use in the future, but right now she does a lot of laundry and little things like stocking the bathroom with toilet paper, works in the gift shop and takes care of the other active Shaker, Sister June Carpenter, who is in her late 80s.

Everyone’s busier, though, when preparing for an event, like last month’s Harvest Festival, but the hard work has its rewards.

“As exhausting as it was, it was a great success,” Sister April said.

You will have doubts.

Like everyone, Shakers have better days than others. The monotony of the routine can get to you, Brother Arnold said. And the work can feel never-ending.

People who visit the village for retreats and view the setting as idyllic aren’t seeing what the Shakers see — the paint that’s peeling and the porch that needs to be fixed.

But small joys can just as easily turn that around, like Sister April’s morning ritual of taking her coffee out to watch the sunrise with her favorite sheep by her side.

When the doubts about her choice creep in, she leans on her faith and the people around her.

“That’s where living in community is a real joy. We’re not in it alone,” she said. “But we all have our own rooms, so there’s that.”