A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: Various voracious eaters

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Various voracious eaters

Today was piglet-picking day. Haggis and I motored in the "new" flatbed Nissan to go get our feeder pigs. We chose three "gilts" (or young sows). Gilts are less trouble than barrows (young boars that have been castrated), but they don't grow out quite as fast or as economically.

For a small outfit like ours, less trouble is more important than fast growth. And these Yorkshire/Landrace/Canadian types will grow plenty fast. They'll eat a pound of food each a day and double in size in the next two-three weeks.

The same farm that operates our slaughterhouse also gets in feeder pigs and sells them on at a small profit. Smallholders like us will always bring the grown pigs back to butcher, so this is a form of "vertical integration."

Good business sense on the part of the farm family.

The new flatbed is performing well. After some trial and error, I have the tailgate set just so, and although it's held together by regular hardware: strap hinges and barrel bolts, it doesn't rattle as you go down the road. The next project is removable stock-sides, so we can transport lambs and small to medium pigs without a trailer.

Full grown, 280-300 pound pigs will still need a trailer. I can't lift a pig that big, even if the pig would let me lift it. Four guys could do it, but there's only two of us. The butchers say that they won't be able to loan us a trailer in the fall, so I'll have to start looking out for one.

The preferred way to grab a squealing piglet is by the hind feet. This doesn't hurt them and they can't struggle much. But that doesn't mean to say they enjoy it.

However, since their destination after this unpleasant carnival ride is a nice well bedded pen with a full dish of food and clean water, they should just shut up and let me get on with it.

Haggis is rather nonplussed by piglets these days. They don't respond to his herding abilities quite like chickens do, so he's learned to avoid them, as he so often does with sheep. What a sorry mutt he is, such a poor excuse for a shepherd dog. So called. But he does love to go for a ride in the truck. Here he is, still sat there even though the doors been open for ten minutes. He's still out there as I write this, hoping for another ride, even though he must be quite hot since it's muggy today.

I've been on weed and bug patrol every morning. Today is too moist to weed. the weeds don't die unless they can be dried out after you pull them. But the potato bugs were out.

Here's a potato bug larva, a couple of mating adults, and a larva being squished between two leaves.

I either squish them or pick them. If I pick them I drown them in a pail of water we keep handy. If I squish them I get nasty potato bug juice on my hands.

Don't ask what the brown stains are on the sides of my dungarees.

We can keep the potatoes sufficiently free of bugs this way that they continue to thrive. It helps that the soil is fertile and that the summer has been nicely watered. Hearty plants better survive the onslaught.

But Colorado potato beetles, to give them their "proper name," are voracious and they multiply quickly. I've seen them eat a whole patch of three-feet high potato plants down to two-inch stumps in less than ten days. This was in our college's garden, and the student gardeners were picky about picking, so they lost their crop.

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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.

After getting tired of spam comments (up to a dozen or more per day), I required commentators to be Google "registered users". You can write me at mwomersley@unity.edu if you have a serious comment or question and are not a registered user.

Spammers -- don't bother writing -- there's no way I will post your spam to my blog. Just go away.

The Farm

The "Womerlippi Farm" is actually a homestead or smallholding where most of the food is grown for our own consumption and that of our friends and family. We raise Corriedale/Romney-cross sheep, feeder pigs in season, and Golden Comet, Aruacuna, Black Laced Wyandotte, Brahma, and Buff Orpington hens. We have wooded pasture, old apple trees, and a large kitchen garden. We build and maintain our own energy-efficient buildings, service and fix our own vehicles and farm equipment, and generally live a thoroughly self-reliant lifestyle. Our farm goals are less economic and more psychological/spiritual and lifestyle oriented. We like an independent, quiet home life with a lot of interaction with animals and the earth. Farming, building and energy-related engineering were also part of our education work at the former Unity College. Having said all that, we're practical people and grow a lot of pretty solid food and fiber. We're also happy to sell you some eggs or yarn or lambs.

PS: "Womerlippi" is a combination of our last names, "Womersley" and "Phillippi." The one is broad Yorkshire, the other Greek, although Aimee's ancestry and home culture is Pennsylvania Dutch/Shenandoah Valley Church of the Brethren. When Aimee and I married, she didn't take my name. She said she "wasn't trading up."

Why is this "A Great Farm Diary?"

Because the setting for the events recorded here is the "Great Farm" of Jackson, Maine, that's why. (Not because this is such a great farm, although we like it.)

Started by privateer and financier Israel Thorndike in 1806 as a vacation home, the famous Great Farm of Jackson was an agricultural showcase for this area of Maine, and Thorndike used it as such, an advertisement for his private land office business, as he disposed of the famous Waldo Patent, in which he was a part owner. Land purchasers could work off their mortgages as laborers on the Great Farm. Most deeds in Waldo County trace back to Israel Thorndike.

Thorndike, born to a family of modest means, went to sea to make his fortune. He captained a privateering vessel during the Revolutionary War, and tweaked the nose of the great Royal Navy more than once. He then settled to a life as a financier, merchant, and captain of industry in Boston. He remains listed as one of the fifty richest Americans of all time. He was the author, with Eldridge Gerry, of the first recorded gerrymander, and so his name went down in history for that peculiarly undemocratic deed too.

He was, in short, a rich, arrogant, unrequited arse, whose primary redeeming feature was impressive ambition. If you are such a person, you should feel ashamed. My work in academia has introduced me to many such wealthy people, and frankly, I'm tired of them. The world doesn't revolve around you and your silly ideas of what is important. Grow up.

Our own much smaller farm sits on a few acres of the original 2,000 that Thorndike developed as an agricultural showcase. As he was a famous Federalist, while Aimee and I are obvious neo-Jeffersonians, of sorts, I doubt he'd be pleased with what we've done with the place. But we don't give a rat's wotsit. As I said, we like it this way.

Read the very last posts in the archive for more details, or use search terms like Israel Thorndike or "Great Farm history" in the Google Blogger search engine (above, on the left).

How this Diary is Arranged:

From Mick:

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 below, click on the link provided, and read backwards from there to get it all in chronological order.

To find out what is happening right now, read the first post first.

Other blogs by Mick: UC SAR, UC Sustainability, Farm Diary

Enjoy.

Farm Produce

Purchasing Womerlippi Farm produce in season can be done by email arrangement, and/or by shopping at the Marsh River Coop in Brooks.

We sell yarn, fleece, lamb, and livestock for meat or breeding.

The yarn is Bartlett Yarn's 4-ply, a medium-thick yarn, in natural gray and brown, as well as natural dyes. It is soft and bulky, and makes nice old-fashioned knitwear. You can buy it for $7.50 a skein by emailing womersleymick8984@gmail.com. We ship priority mail, minimum four skeins at a time. The shipping is extra. We also have raw white and brown (natural colored) fleece in large quantities each spring, unwashed, untreated. Email us at mwomersley@unity.edu and name your price. Expect to pay shipping or pick up in person. Coming to the farm itself without prior appointment is not recommended. We have a child. We also have a dog who bites. We like that he bites, because we have a child we want to protect. If you come unexpectedly to the farm, stay behind any temporary hot-wire gate or fence, or park in the driveway, until someone comes. We'll know you're there because the dog will tell us. Loudly. Annoyingly. They will wake us or our kid, if we are asleep. We will be mad about this.

If no-one comes, we're not home. Go Away.

If you are yet more foolish and try to get out of your car and/or cross a gate or fence, expect to get bitten by a shepherd dog, rammed by a ram, or chewed out by a shepherd.

A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals