A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: More lambs

Thursday, March 19, 2015

More lambs

I managed to catch one of our students' colds -- an occupational hazard. Students are routinely disgusting when it comes to colds. They come staggering into class, just dripping snot and spreading it on everything they touch. I sometimes wish I could just spray them down with an anti-viral solution.

I wish they'd stay in bed, but I expect they worry about keeping up with the work.

This one was mild, but primarily involved a snotty, itchy, sneezy nose. Not the best thing if you are trying to keep quiet so as to not wake a sleeping baby. I felt fine as long as I was outside, in the shower, drinking soup, or sipping scotch. The rest of the time my nose itched and I sneezed my way around the house. Just like one of my students, in fact.

I managed to drink all the actual scotch in the house. It sounds like a lot, but there was probably an ounce-and-a-half left in a bottle I'd been nursing for nearly ten years. Even that was enough for two of my normal "drams." I'm not a big whisky drinker.

I tried some of Aimee's Bourbon, but it wasn't the same. It dried up the nose just fine, but the flavor was all wrong. So I bit the bullet and went to the supermarket to buy another bottle of decent scotch.

I wanted an Islay malt, and they had Laphroaig, one of my favorites, but at $47 I just couldn't do it. I settled for a $22 McClellands faux-Islay, which turned out to be quite up to the task.

But then I got better. No excuse for drinking whisky now! I expect we'll still have the McClellands in ten years time.

In other news, Roo is eating bread-and-butter "soldiers!" It turns out that Americans, or at least Aimee, don't know what bread soldiers are. This is when you cut up a slice of bread into sticks just small enough to fit in a child's mouth, or the top of a soft-boiled egg in an egg cup.

Our old mum used to make me and my sister Carol bread-and-butter soldiers to eat with soft boiled eggs. You crack the top off the egg and dip the buttered bread inside so it comes out covered in yolk. Yummy.

Roo is not yet eating the egg part. She can have egg yolk, but not egg white, the doc says, something about avoiding allergies later on. But she loves her soldiers.

Two more lambs were born early yesterday morning, to lead ewe and head cuddle-sheep Nellie.

Nellie is our all-time tamest sheep and has been my favorite for years. She gave birth to two strong ram-lambs, one of which has a black pirate's eyebrow patch. No pictures yet. I'm not taking my own sheep pictures this year -- I've already dropped two cameras in the sheep's water over the years, as well as broken quite a few, and now I have a nice camera, albeit one of Aimee's cast-offs, as well as a (secondhand) iPhone, I'm trying not to do the same. All my sheep pictures are stolen from Aimee this year.

The weather has been cold and clear and windy since the weekend's snowstorm. It will get a little warmer today. We now have our deck back -- all shoveled off for the first time since Christmas Day, and when it's warmer you can take Roo out there for a little sun.

We're sort of done with winter but it keeps lingering on. Maybe spring will come next week. We should know after long experience that April is the month that winter ends in Maine, but hope lingers on.

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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