We had about seven days of dry breezy weather, with a high pressure ridge lingering over the great State o' Maine, and so it seemed that the whole state set about making hay.
That much reliably dry weather after a spring in which we got both sun and rain in abundance, and not too much of either, will mean a bumper crop, too.
Accordingly, on Monday night my own phone rang and I heard the high reedy voice of a fifteen year-old Amish farmer with an offer of hay.
Timothy is following in his brother's footsteps and learning to make a living from the land. One of his other brothers is an extremely competent self-taught wind power engineer, but that's another story. Timothy and James, brothers two and three (out of thirteen siblings total), have opted for the farm rather than the workshop.
I was scheduled to be busy with my crew all day Tuesday, so I arranged to come get as many bales as I could on Wednesday.
This, of course, is not the way you do hay, being picky about schedules like this. You drop everything and make and put up the hay while you have the weather to do so. But I have a crew to run, and so can't drop everything.
But, when a little more weather-luck and a serious but fortuitous snag with Tuesday's wind power research job left me free Tuesday afternoon, I showed up a day early at the farm with my truck and a borrowed trailer, and Timothy and I labored together to load the first hundred bales while his father drove a two-horse team around the field dragging an older baler with a large single cylinder Wisconsin engine, making a fresh bale every twenty or thirty seconds.
Not too shabby a productivity rate for horse power! It took both of them to get that old motor running, though. There's just a flywheel to spin by hand, no starter motor or pull cord, and even working together they could only push the crank through one ignition stroke.
Think of it: Only one chance for the engine to catch on each try. When you start a car the starter motor can turn the engine through as many ignition strokes as are needed.
It was a bit like prop-starting one of the old Chipmunk trainers we still had in the RAF in the 1970s and 80s.
And any baler is so heavy you need the most massive horses to pull it, especially when you also tow a hay wagon and load at the same time.
It's quite the system. But it works. And picking the hay off the field saved me fifty cents a bale, even though I had Timothy's help to pick it.
Actually, towards the end of the first load a crew of Amish youths from a different family showed up to help, and one of them came with Tim and myself to put the bales up in my barn.
This was the first time any of our local Amish had traveled to our own farm, although I've visited most of them at their farms for one purchase or another.
Their verdict? "Cute." Our place is small and only lightly productive by their standards. But it's obviously well managed, or at least they thought so.
I only required a total of two hundred bales, and the day was wearing on with the driving back and forth very slowly, our old farm truck carrying and towing three tons of hay at a time. I had the two youths load me another hundred bales as I drove around the field, planning to off-load them by myself.
Just as we were finishing our second load, the shear pin connecting the Wisconsin engine to the baler severed with a loud bang, and I watched as their father threw the mechanical clutch, replaced the pin with the engine still running, and then started the baler again.
Most balers have a shear pin somewhere, in case a big rock or piece of iron is encountered in the windrow. It's easier to replace a small pin than it is to repair the damage to the baler mechanism.
That old Wisconsin must truly be hard to start, though, to require the pin be replaced with the engine running. I think I would have shut it down, even if only to have a minute's peace in the hayfield while I switched out the broken shear pin.
A starter motor would be nice.
Back home with the last of the bales at about five-thirty, I struggled to get them into the barn attic by myself. The hay door is eight feet off the ground, and having already loaded and unloaded a hundred bales, I was pretty tired. The bales were a good solid forty pounds each, and some were much more. I managed to get half the load in the attic. The rest was temporarily stashed on the ground floor.
But that was that: The hay was in, safe, out of the weather. The important part was done. This was a nice bit of good luck.
Of the several big farm jobs each year: shearing, firewood, hay, all but one are done now. I've made a start on firewood, but I still need three more cords.
Aimee will have to help me get the rest of the hay up to the attic this weekend sometime.
Despite the fact that we will have to move some of this hay later, this was still the most efficient hay-day we've had since we bought the farm.
Thanks to some good weather and a very young Amish farmer.
Wouldn't it be nice if all youngsters were as helpful and as productively engaged?
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Where are you from?
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."
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).
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.
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.
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.
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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.