A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: A "new" camera!

Saturday, April 27, 2013

A "new" camera!

The college was cleaning out its (only partly) proverbial closet, getting ready for science laboratory refurbishing this summer, and some bright spark decided to have a "yard sale" of old science equipment.

Ever the scrounger, I investigated the cache before the big day. On top of the pile was a 1999 Olympus Camedia 2500 digital SLR camera, previously assigned to Dr. Potter, a fisheries professor.

Having destroyed at least five privately-owned small digital cameras, several of them on college business, I felt entitled to appropriate this particular camera before the official yard sale began, and did so (with the begrudging permission of the organizer).

If anyone complains, I'll just point to all the photos I have on the college's website and in various publications, made with my ill-fated private cameras over many, many years. Two of them were actually dropped into the sheep's water tub, having slipped out of my jacket pocket. At least another two quit after being banged about in my book bag.

It took a little Internet research to figure out how to connect this rather ancient camera to my computer. It's so old, the modern plug-and-play protocols don't work. But after about an hour of web research, and $16 plus shipping at Amazon.com for a "Pixelflash Superspeed" USB 3.0 Compact Flash memory card reader, we're in business.

And, despite the hoots of derision from my lovely wife (who herself has spent at least $2,000 on cameras and camera-related accessories in the nine years of our marriage), it works! I'm very pleased with the results.

I've always wanted a digital SLR. If I'm good, I can make this one last a long time.

Here are the fruits of my labors, the week's activities on the farm:

Charlie-cat on the pouffe

Regina's first-ever, named "Tango" in honor of the RAF Leeming MR Team call-sign

Shaky on his feet and not as robust as other lambs this year, little Tango gave us a moment or two of worry

A new hay supplier, Simon Stoll, Amishman, of the Palmer Road in Thorndike. This is the first cut. The ewes prefer the second cut

Tango tries out the outdoors for the first time

I shifted four tons of well-rotted pig-manure compost on Thursday afternoon, after a tough morning at work. Very cathartic, is moving compost piles. I recommend it.

This is one Kubota-B6000 bucket-load of pig manure compost, ready to be tilled in. Black gold.

Aimee's cosseted plant starts in the big greenhouse for the day. At night they go back to the smaller heated greenhouse.

Lamb city. Lambs feed, frolic, and nap in the waste hay. It must be nice to be a Womerlippi lamb

Nap time

I "de-horned" this apple tree for the second time. Of all our ancient apple trees, this is the one I most want to keep, but it's not easy to keep it down to size and get a decent shape. But it shades too much of our lawn and we can't reach apples at the top of the tree. I'm going to see how well this one responds to the savage de-horning process before I try it on any other trees.

The lawn finally beginning to green up. It's been a late spring.

Watch this space for more purloined-camera photography. In your face, Best Buy!

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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