A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals: There and back again

Friday, January 1, 2016

There and back again

We're just back home from an eight day trip to Virginia to see the in-laws. It was almost a nine day trip, thanks to American Airlines, but that's another story, the only hero of which is the Washington DC National Airport authority, who thought to provide a small sanctuary for parents of screaming babies in the form of a privacy room for nursing mothers, wherein we all took a nap and retreated from the madding holiday airport crowd. There was also an heroic American Airlines clerk called Sterling that finally ended our limbo by overriding a glitchy computer system -- after two other clerks had failed.

We were in the DC airport from eleven am through nine pm. By my count there were six departure delays involved, caused by one broken plane and one late plane, plus the aforementioned computer glitch. We even climbed onto the bus to go to the plane once, to be turfed off again.

We'd like to say we're not flying this FUBAR airline anymore, but it is the only one that goes from Bangor to DC.

I told Aimee that the whole episode was a deliberate plot on her part to get me to stay up and see in the New Year for once! I'm usually in bed by nine pm, even on New Year's Eve. When you live in a different time zone, on a different continent than the one where you were born and raised, it's hard to draw a line where one solar year ends and another begins.

The purpose of the visit was of course for the kid to see her uncles and aunts and grandparents. This was duly achieved, as were a number of home improvement projects. So I shouldn't, and won't, complain. But I'm quietly ecstatic to be home. It was the best of luxury after our poor tired cranky kid was finally put to bed, past midnight on New Year's Eve, and after a nice shower in my own bathroom, to sleep in my own bed. Today I got up and did my own chores in my own dooryard, and was a very happy man. I don't know what is such fun about feeding sheep and moving snow and firewood, but to me, it's infinitely preferable to traveling.

I also had a number of car and truck repairs to begin this morning, the partial result of a comedy of errors that took place the night we left. I had loaded our ancient Camry with all the luggage, but once wife and baby were also duly loaded, the headlights wouldn't come on, even after changing the fuse We switched the luggage to the Matrix and took that to the airport, but not before backing the Camry into the pick-up and smashing the bumper cover. Not a great way to start a trip. Additionally, I'd managed to back the truck into a tree at the daycare place, smashing a lamp unit, which was ordered and arrived while we were away. Then there's the small matter of our "new" but slightly broken Honda Insight hybrid, but that interesting wee beastie can wait for a post all of its own.

For today, after feeding sheep and moving the snow that had fallen while we were away and digging out the firewood pile so we could switch off the oil furnace (we don't allow our house-sitter to run the wood stove, for fire safety reasons), I switched out the lamp unit on the truck and got that vehicle working legally again. The Camry, whose engine had been running all this time to warm up the icy snow that was attached to it, had meanwhile somehow fixed its own headlights. Go figure, but they now work. I'm going to check the wiring diagram to see if there's a headlight relay and switch that out for a new unit, if there is one. That's the best explanation, other than a faulty switch unit. But I was happy to have this vehicle serviceable again too.

Tonight, we will celebrate with family homemade pizza night.

There now follows an interlude of a couple weeks before the semester in which my attendance at work is not strictly required, but after the New Year's weekend is over I'm going to go in anyway, just for the pleasure of it. Several colleagues and I have a new building to move into, for research and teaching, essentially a purpose-built sustainable energy demonstration laboratory, and am greatly looking forward to moving in, as well as rationalizing, repairing, and sorting all my teaching demonstrators and research and other equipment before the new semester.

I have high hopes for this new building. Essentially I want to make it the cool, go-to-place for sustainable energy information in Maine and even New England, and am very excited about the prospects.

There'll be more, much more, on this new era in my professional life later, here and on my teaching and research blog.

No comments:

Post a Comment

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