A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: Natick and the roadkill breakfast club

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Natick and the roadkill breakfast club

This year's ram Natick, actually Snorri's father, arrived this afternoon.

He's not quite the ram that his son was, nowhere near the size, in fact. But this is fine by us because Snorri was a little more rammy of a ram than we cared to deal with. This guy weighs only a little more than our biggest ewes, but still has Snorri's genes so should produce those 45-50 pound fat lamb carcass weights we like, and hopefully leave all our fences right where they are.

Fence moving, when done by sheep, is not desirable. They generally don't do it right.

Natick-ram jumped right out of the pick-up truck by himself and after a short unplanned tour of the garden, found the paddock entrance and got right to work on Molly, the oldest of the four ewes he is penned with.

Age has its privileges, I guess, Miss Molly.

In other news, Aimee left for work on time this morning at 6.45 am, but shortly after called from college to tell me there was a wounded whitetail deer on the back road to Thorndike.

So I threw the 30-30 rifle in the truck and drove over there. Didn't need the gun, though. This doe was dead by the time I got to her, having bled out.

But that only meant that much of the meat would be in good shape for eating, having been thoroughly bled, not always the case with roadkill.

Having no time to cut up a deer this morning, with classes to teach eight to eleven am, I took a short tour of local Amish family homes and quickly found an Amishman who had time to butcher and who wanted a deer. Then I called the Maine Warden's Service and asked for a tag to be taken over.

Chris, our local Warden, was pleased to oblige, and so nothing went to waste. I would have liked to have had the venison myself, but there wasn't the time, and it was better that someone used it.

Knowing our Amish and their great efficiency with such things, it's probably already in cans, or in white butcher paper in the freezer section of a kerosene-powered refrigerator already.

Interestingly Aimee said several cars drove by the animal while still wounded in the middle of the road. And I saw quite a few drive by myself.

So funny to think of the different ways this wounded, and later dead, animal was seen by the various people that encountered it. I'm sure that the folks who drive by felt bad for it, but who was going to do anything?

One of them, of course, actually hit it, and then left.

Hit and run.

While to the Womerlippis, the Amish family, and a Maine Game Warden, this was food that would otherwise go to waste.

Whatever happened to rural skills and attitudes? Can you imagine an animal like that going to waste back in the days of the Great Farm pioneers?

I later told my teaching colleague and buddy Tim, a former Maine Warden, that my hunting season was already over, even before November 1st.

I'd already got my deer. All the hunting I need for one year.

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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