A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: Completing circles: "Our" Amish

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Completing circles: "Our" Amish

It's been a delight for me to have the Amish families move to Unity and Thorndik e. I appreciate it for lots of reasons.

One is that I have had Amish neighbors before, when I lived on and helped look after Peter Brown's farm on Pea Ridge in western Maryland. I got to know the four grown boys of one large family, and spent time hunting and talking horses with them. I learned a lot about life and homesteading from them and from the local Peace Church culture.

The other reason is because of the connection to the Shenandoah. Aimee hales from that ilk, as well as western Pennsylvania, and we really enjoy the Mennonite farmer's market and the Peace Church historical scene whenever we go there. There's even a new Brethren-Mennonite museum in Harrisonburg. Some of our Amish share names and ancestry with the Shenandoah and western PA communities in which Aimee's Summy and Showalter roots sink deep. You won't have to go too far back to find a family connection. Brethren and Mennonite peoples have always been good neighbors and are considerably intermarried. Aimee has Mennonite relatives even today. The Amish are in many ways just conservative Mennonites, and have always remained connected to their more liberal cousins, Mennonites and Brethren.

Some of "our" Amish women even seem to look a lot like Aimee does. Family resemblance?

Finally, I see it as a kind of rebirth for the Peace Churches in Unity. Few people realize that Unity was founded in part as a Quaker town, and back when Quakers were plainer than they are today to boot, far more Amish in all kinds of ways. The Civil War and outmigration to Ohio and the "west" killed Quakerism in Unity. Although this is a good place for certain kinds of farming, the soils out in the new territories were deeper and the fields flatter, and the best farmers both before and after the war lit out for the west, abandoning barns and fields all over Maine. To see folks on the streets in plain and home-spun clothing and broad-brimmed hats would have been normal, in say, 183o, in Unity. Now it's normal again.

Come to think of it, this is a rebirth for farming in Unity and Thorndike too. And for the homestead life.

(What would be really great would be a small Amish store, so we could get Yoder's meats and bulk foods locally, instead of loading up every winter in Harrisonburg.)

The Peace Church connection is the widest circle to complete, although few neighbors would know it. Aimee and I had what was probably the first true Quaker wedding in Unity for 70 years. We even metaphorically blew the dust off the old meeting house to do so. (We borrowed it from the northern Baptists, who've had it since 1927 when the Quakers sold it to them.)

The joke of our wedding day was that were more Quakers in the graveyard than there were in the congregation.

I expect there's a few Quaker ghosts that are as happy to see the Amish as I am.

Welcome, Friends.

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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