A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: The final push

Sunday, December 2, 2012

The final push

We were back to reality with a bump on Monday, after our nice long Thanksgiving Break, which was marred only by my struggles with the crashed computer. Monday marked the start of the last stretch of regular teaching before Final Exams. We have one more full week, then two days of wrap-up, three days of finals, a weekend of grading, and then home again for the Christmas break.

I'm looking forward to catching up on some much-needed rest. As usual, the tension is killing my sleep, and I've been up a lot at midnight and two and three in the morning getting work done so I can be free to spend time with students during the day.

Good teaching doesn't come without struggle. You need to be able to give each student your best efforts, and you shouldn't give up too easily when the student is being lazy or weak-minded about things. As a result, you wear yourself out not a little, butting heads with students that need to work harder, or struggling mightily to find a third or fourth way to explain something when the first and second methods didn't work. If you come home relaxed and refreshed, you're probably not doing it right. You should feel bruised and battered, at least a little.

I usually sleep a lot the first week of any of our two long breaks, as my body and mind repair themselves from all these bumps and hurts.

This weekend isn't helping any. For various reasons, some good, some not so good, the college decided to hold the biannual student conference on a Saturday instead of the first day of the final exam period. Student conference is a great event, and very good for student learning, since students are put on the spot by professors and made to defend their work verbally. But I was pretty battered at the start of it yesterday, and wasn't sure if I gave it my best by the end. I came home, did my farm chores, took about a half a cup of white wine, slept on the couch for two hours and felt better. Aimee, for her part, poor girl, had to do the weekly shopping before she could come home and take her nap.

I was in bed by eight-thirty.

Today is the Maine Association for Search and Rescue Quarterly Meeting, which I must attend if the Unity College SAR team wishes to continue to make a contribution to Maine SAR, and which takes several hours, and a couple hours of driving on either side.

Not a happy weekend pour moi. Aimee, for her part, cranky too but still good-hearted, will do the laundry and no doubt keep the wood stove stoked while I'm away. At least, I hope she will. It wouldn't be the first time she let the fire go out while I was on an errand, so I plan to leave the electric heater on too, as back-up. Nothing worse than coming home tired to a cold house.

Additionally, since we knew we were going to lose the great majority of our weekend, we were forced to take a risk with Bentley, our ram. His job for the year done, he needed to be separated again from his ewes. But this is an unhappy event for him, and so of course he batters fences and gates to make himself feel better. Normally. we'd do this job at the start of a weekend, so we would have time to monitor him as he settled down. Instead I was forced to do it Wednesday evening at dusk. That gave him Wednesday night and a little time before work Thursday morning to settle down, and of course he was still pretty mad, battering the fence as I drove away to work.

I'm reminded a little of the finale to Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, when the ecological and systems problems plaguing the German armies have piled up, so much the system begins to break down and they can no longer resist the western armies. All it takes is a straw, when the poor bloody camels are already so obviously overloaded.

But don't feel too bad for us. My comparison, except for the bit about straws, is obviously pure guff and hyperbole. And no-one said I had to run a farm as well as hold down an academic job. It's my own silly fault.

We'll be done with the semester soon enough, and recovery will happen. I'm looking forward to it. We've done our pre-winter duty as Mainers and homesteaders particularly well this year. The house and farm are all set up for the coming winter, so we'll be able to relax. I have some minor energy efficiency projects to do around the house, mostly just for fun, a wild notion to try felt-making with our own fleece, as well as a nice tall stack of serious reading.

Since the weather turned bad and the farm and pre-winter workload has reduced itself, I've been reading some great books, including Anatol Lievin's Pakistan: A Hard Country, and Patrick French's India: A Portrait, and as a result I now feel I understand both countries a lot better than I did, even though I grew up around Indian and Pakistani people in Sheffield. Additionally, and not without a groan or two from Aimee, the History Book Club offered a special, all three volumes of Manchester's book on Churchill, The Last Lion, to add to my Churchill collection. All this I consider necessary to understanding how to fix climate change, and so I take credit for it as an academic. Even Churchill, whose "wilderness years" are an inspiration for many climate academics.

I also plan to eat well, rest well, and be nice to Aimee, although sometimes I think that doesn't get me very far, or not as far as it perhaps should.

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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