We had another foot of snow on Wednesday night and Thursday. We were both busy at work, and the snow didn't fall fast enough to close roads or college. (The nice thing about a snow day is, you get extra time to move snow.) As a result, we had to leave it all until Saturday morning. Aimee's little car was still buried, and so she took the truck all day to go shopping and to go clean off her desk at the college, leaving me to sort it all!
No matter. As I mentioned before, somewhat to Aimee's chagrin, and not without somewhat snarky comment, possibly snow removal is still a man's world in Maine.
It certainly seems to be so at the Womerlippi farm. Empirically so, I would say.
Not that I'm complaining.
Because, sexist thoughts aside, it was nice to get out. The sun was bright, the snow lovely, and the tractor, as always, shifted several times more than it's own weight in snow in a matter of minutes, leaving us nice tidy piles and plenty of room to work in the dooryard.
A "dooryard," by the way, pronounced "door yahhhd," is the term Mainers use for what Yorkshire and other English folk call a farmyard. Ours comprises functionally the various spaces between the garage, mailbox, barn and greenhouse. I say functionally because that's the area that gets used for dooryard chores: splitting wood, fixing cars and machinery, shearing sheep, moving grain, fodder, and water. I get ninety percent of my annual exercise in the dooryard.
There's a tractor's eye-view of our dooryard, looking tidy and fit for the work week. Dad always used to say, whenever we went as a family on a drive in the country, that we'd finish up lost, in a farmyard or churchyard.
Jewel the ewe-l has dropped her lambs in the womb and "made a bag." Her belly is dragging in the snow, poor girl. Looks like two, or maybe three. I hope not three. Could be any day, but last year she did this early too, and it was weeks before she actually gave birth.
We also have two new hens, courtesy of Ed and Amy. Rhode Island Reds. They're settling in with the usual pecking order adjustment. Hens are such fascists.
We'll keep you posted.
PS: Here's Guardian article about how, in Iceland since their collapse, women are increasingly those running the country, while men are less influential because they are blamed for the collapse.
See? If they'd just stuck to what they know: Moving snow.
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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.
The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.
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