A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: You say tom- ae-toe, I say tom-ah-toe...

Sunday, August 15, 2010

You say tom- ae-toe, I say tom-ah-toe...

We started putting up tomatoes today. Aimee's been putting up pesto for some weeks now, but the canning tomatoes are ready, and that's my job so I spent a couple hours this morning making a start.

We'll want about thirty jars to last us. May not get that much, but we'll get a sight more than last year, when the blight robbed us of almost all our berries. The year before we did alright. There's still blight on the leaves, but it hasn't hurt the berries, nor has it spread to the spuds like it did last year.

I harvested about half those already, gave some away, put up the rest in boxes in the cellar. Today I may start on the last half of the potato patch. I also picked a few of each kind of apple for us. Not too many.

But I'm happy to have my tomatoes again, especially the canned Juliets and Aunt Ruby's German Greens, which we eat fresh.

In Maine, of course, we should say tom-aah-toe, as in Bah Haahbor.

It's really Bar Harbor, but that's the traditional pronunciation. Here's a great video for the real Maine accent. It was taken at the Cumberland Fair.

Our local fair, the Common Ground Fair, will happen soon. It will be interesting to see all our new Amish at the fair.

2 comments:

DawnaAugust 15, 2010 at 7:04 PM
Hi. I stumbled across your blog via the Unity College website which I came across after viewing your slide show about building a straw bale house. My husband and I are just beginning our adventure into learning more about sustainable living. We would love to be self sustaining and live in some sort of home that allows us to be debt free and live off the land (straw bale, cob house, log, or something along those lines). We have much to learn before we can attempt such an endeavor with three kids but I was wondering if you had any pointers. How long did you live in the straw bale house and was it adequately warm in the winter months? Thanks for letting me pick your brain. Happy canning! :)
ReplyDelete
Replies
MickAugust 16, 2010 at 3:40 AM
The Bale House was OK, but could have been better if we'd known more when we (mostly I) built it. In particular, we didn't put in a proper basement or foundation. We did this to keep what was meant to be a cheap house really cheap, but it made for a lot of cold air underneath, and it means that we will have to demolish the whole thing eventually, when the cedar piers it sits on rot.

I tell folks not to make these mistakes, and also to use recycled foam insulation instead of straw in Maine if what they want is a cost-effective building. You pretty much have to use a timber frame anyway since it's too risky to build a Nebraska-style bale house, so straw is just meant to be cheap, natural easily available insulation. It turns out it's only one of those things in Maine.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

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