This little piggy

Homestead Update

The last week has snowed us in, measuring in feet, not inches. Only a couple weeks ago we had our first thaw of 2015, complete with rain, mud and then ice as it froze over again. The freezing rain came just as we said goodbye to our second January guests. Unexpected in the cold of winter, the pilgrimage of city-weary people needing to feel that vital spark from deep forests never stops awing me. Nature calls to us all.

As we said our goodbyes, the rain froze--and left us unsuspecting as we made our way to retrieve our youngest daughters from grandma's.  40 mph into the forest is not an experience anyone would want, but we walked away with only minor injuries, gratitude deeply felt.

On the homestead, we find ourselves falling ever more behind in projects already started and failing to get new, exciting, time-sensitive projects off the ground. Shawn is a steady sort of guy and has managed, even with the constant set-backs,  to finish a new chicken feeder. This enables us to use our barn more efficiently, as now goats and pigs can't get into the chicken grain but can still shelter together. He also did some rearranging of horse stalls, creating a small fresh air turnout attached to each stall. This takes the edge off tight routines for us while still ensuring happy, healthy horses.

We have also begun clearing a room in the barn loft for a potential apprentice. Still, finishing this room, as well as the airbnb cabin exterior ( See cabin interior here ),  decking on the main house (2yrs behind now), and the sugar shack--all still wait, long overdue. It does become stressful as projects pile, with new ones losing magic in the long waiting--pitted against finances and unforseen problems. Homesteading is not an easy path. Seasonal needs always take priority, no matter how long a project has waited. Now here comes firewood and sap,even as we continue to move snow and battling freezing water buckets,  followed quickly by starting seeds indoors, all with the threat of spring (which really we can't help but crave), with its tourists, planting, milking. Milking? Yes! 

Here are some specific updates:

Goats: Our two Lamancha does, acquired last spring, went into a few heat cycles before we managed to find them a sweet buck, just coming into his own. He is small, mostly Lamancha it appears, and really, VERY SWEET as far a Billy's go. He's here on a barter, so in trade, one of our new doelings (fingers crossed we don't get all bucklings) will go to his former owner after weaning. We will begin milking our does a bit after kidding and the new variety of dairy into our diet will be quite welcome. We had many guests ask about goat products last summer and will be looking forward to sharing!

The Meaties (Red-bro chicken broilers) have been disappearing 2x2, extra fattened by the long extension on their expected lives (normally they would have been gone by November). 

Kune Kune pigs: The two original pigs, Agnes and Gideon, are doing MUCH better this winter after a rough start last winter adapting to the cold. The transition to winter this year was very sudden and that was quite rough, however. Gideon even was angry enough about his different type of rations that he bit a chicken, twice, resulting in the quick deaths of said chickens. He responded quite well to severe reprimand and got his act together quickly. Shawn made quick use of the chickens. Sadly, Agnes and Gideon seem to have fallen out of love and we feel sad to say that we have come to believe that we were a bit "taken" as newbies when buying Agnes. Although we paid top dollar for her, expecting her to be able to produce regular, average litters-- she does neither and also does not mother well or engage with us nearly as well as all the other pigs. WE will be honest and find her a good retirement home, maybe at a petting zoo and try MUCH harder not to make so many newbie mistakes. About anything. The girls from Agnes' first litter, Solita and Luna, will likely be on the farm as pets. We have fallen madly in love with them and hope to share their good nature with our many homestead guests throughout the seasons. Gideon and Agnes did have one litter together, which produced three gorgeous boys. We still have two-- they are still for sale and would make really great breeding stock. 

Horses:  Belle and Beauty have become permanent fixtures, cheering us with their antics and mareish hysterics. We have a lot of work to do to make Beauty sound, as it has become clear that the founder she had upon her arrival nearly a year ago could not be healed by regular farrier visits or a solid, healthy diet.  We are looking into some mineral remediation as well as gelled booties to keep her comfortable. We keep hoping to help her become more sound to take advantage both of her amazing ride, but also of Belle's -- Belle won't leave her behind, so even if we just let Beauty tag along, her pain limits the length of the ride. 

Layers: The newest layers, the ones born on the farm last summer, are laying regularly now-- as we come to terms with letting some of our older layers go. There are a LOT of chickens in the barn and with layers not laying and meaties still hanging around, things are inefficient and pricey out there! Getting a handle on this is STILL at the top of the to do list. 

Honey Bees: No good news here. We keep trying, and the saying goes it's insanity when you keep trying to do the same thing expecting different results, but that little thing called HOPE keeps us resilient. . . The first two times we tried bees, we failed due to mice infestation. This time, it was failure to winterize. It was not something we can escape blame for. We just got behind. We worried about mice, but when Shawn tried to check he was stung so badly, especially on the face and he refused to check them for some time after that. And then it got unexpectedly cold. Fast. And that's how quick we lost them. It's a particularly hard blow to us because this hive was such an immense gift from creation --scroll down this blog and check the details of how they came to live with us last summer The Sweet Spot. 

Community: You may have read in (blog link here) that we have been working to get a new community center off the ground Bald Mountain Community Center. It's slow going with everyone kept so busy in ordinary, extraordinary lives. We have also been in a big fight against corporate wind. And the town officials who are inviting them in on false pretense. It's a hard battle because in many ways its 3 battles-- we battle to protect our families and environment against health and ecosystem damages, we battle the nearsightedness of money-minded, right-leaning working-class who haven't researched the deal enough to understand the corporate grabbing and loose-lipped promises won't bring about thicker wallets, and most difficult to change, the hopelessness of earth loving liberals who can't accept that big wind isn't an answer to the hot mess of destruction we find ourselves in. We are protecting, calling out bad form and bluffs, educating and all but begging others to care about our cause. A hard go when the news is full of pipelines, disease, beheading, economy woes and climate battles. If you, reading this, find yourselves confused about wind turbines, I urge you to research it more fully before assuming that it is a good direction for earth stewardship. Support small wind, solar advancements and better research for a sustainable future.

Homeschooling (unschooling):  Our approach, a sort of combo of unschooling and homeschooling, continues to amaze me. We have 2 self-motivated learners who manage 95% of their learning themselves. No lessons, no "teaching" in the classroom sense. Coming in from outdoors one morning, I opened the door to find one completely engaged in yoga poses while the other took a hand-drumming lesson on YouTube. The girls follow some loose guidelines that keep them focused each day. This has led to deepening Spanish skills, feverish reading, mastery of most countries in the world by location and shape, a good start on US geography, all sorts of history, biology, physics and (with less enthusiasm) the memorization of math facts and long multiplication/division.  We have been hugely impressed with our variation of the unschooling model, finding that it inspires a love of learning, self-motivation & self-knowledge. 

The Sweet Spot

We were in the garden, Maizey and I, last Sunday.   Tension seemed to be mounting as we fought off the cucumber beetles-- the little newly transplanted squashes and melons were succombing quickly. Already riddled with holes after only a few hours of lapsed attention, we squished the bugs between our fingers and dug around the little plant stalks looking for the ugly squash bugs (which are too big for finger smooshing, so they are placed with a little prayerful thought, under our shoe).

 

Agnes Nancy Place Litter #2,
Double-wattled Kune Kune boar Jenny x Mahia Love

To temper this violent scene, I should let it be known that we are a pretty non-violent family. We let the squirrels nest in our eves. The birds return each year to their mud nest on the side of our home. The bats have a huge family just under some trim boards. We remove all spiders to the outdoors, or more often, just ignore them. Snapping turtles dig our gardens to lay their eggs.  Still, we make an exception with cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and tomato hornworms (we even typically remove slugs rather than squashing, which I think is pretty generous of us)-- so we sat there, in the evening sun, as the black flies swarmed our heads, the mosquitios buzzed our ears, and the no-see-ums chewed visciously at our ankles--  we sat there squishing bugs.

 

Then we were both looking in the sky, craning our necks into the glare of the setting sun. We could hear them before we saw them-- a redemptive flock of geese overhead--we called to Shawn and Ella to witness this beauty, this perfect V, flying over our perfect life. How often we let the little things ruin an otherwise wonder-filled day, failing to be amazed by irritations and imperfections. Amid this unhappy chore of protecting plants and being a meal for others, there was stunning beauty, holding the balance amid the unpleasant, creating the sense of deep perfection-- made only better because my girl knew it-- looking at me in awe, she said, "THIS has been the best day!" 

 

My girls playing midwife on the homestead-- learning is everywhere!

 

And it WAS a great day-- and aren't they all??  This one, punctuated by our first baby-bat rescue (to be followed by many more), an anticipated skit at church, some family down time in Bar Harbor, the doula experience of newborn piglets and then, the geese overhead!

 






How awesome is it that Ella is out here doing her non-fiction
homeschool reading for the day while covered in piglets?



Our summer days have been filled, thus far, with long days in the garden, work that is exciting, lounging with farm friends (including the newborn piglets), visiting with, and sometimes living with all manner of wild creature--to TODAY, when a swarm of bees flew directly to our home, swirled above our barn, then next to it, and then, like a little tornado, swarmed right into the empty bee hive from last year's attempt at bees. This, only 1 hour after ordering new bees-- and a day before sending payment. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is our little tornado-- I told Shawn that I ordered money to fall from the sky on Father's Day, just for him.

 

 

The world is amazing. The small miracles that fill each day abound, if only we are there to honor them. When each day is filled with a sense of  gratitude, when awe and wonder become normal, when each day we search out the thread that weaves love, light, and abundance-- that is the sweet spot. We are so lucky to have found it most days-- and we will keep striving to find it in each moment.

At one week old-- outside sniffing the earth at the Nancy Place Homestead

 

 

Layers of Here

To be part of here is to become intimately aware of the intelligence of the tiniest of individuals, of the patterns of relations and seasons, and of how it all works together. It is a process, never ending, of observation, realization, and letting go. Letting go? Letting go of all of our assumptions, of what we’ve been told is true, of what we should feel or not feel.  Learning is layered, change is layered, growth; time; truth. . . all layered.

 Here are some snippets of discoveries over time:

Cucumber beetles: The dreaded beetle, so destructive, brings out our powerful crushing fingers in full force (all hands on deck!), but did you know that this beetle is super smart?? It knows to “play dead” it senses the human predator coming from afar (leading us to learn to “sneak “up on it!!), and it hides well in spite of its bright colors.

Aphids and ants:  Through observing the ants and aphids on our tall sunflowers we could see that it appeared that the ants were “farming” the aphids. We could see that there was a large any who appeared to be protecting the aphid eggs on the underside of the large sunflower leaves. The ant acted aggressively toward us as we tried to smoosh the aphid eggs, so we started watching more closely.  We watched over a period of time, and could never quite figure out the motivation. The ants were obviously protecting—and appeared to maybe even be ‘raising’ the aphids—even ‘babysitting’ the newly hatched aphids. Wild. Farming by most definitions! Just recently, as I searched for more information about gardening in the Costa Rican mountains, I came upon the unlikely answer:

 Side by Side: Animals Who Help Each Other.

“Tiny green garden insects called aphids make honey in their bodies from the plant juices they drink. Ants “milk” honeydew from the aphids almost like a farmer gets milk from a cow. Using it’s antennae, an ant gently strokes the back of the aphid. Out oozes a drop of delicious honeydew for the ant to sip.” The benefit for the aphid for putting up with being milked all the time is that the ant will protect the aphid from predators.

Songbirds: Returning from Alaska in May gave us a late start at the farm. Our feeders had been empty for months and the songbirds had already been returning long before we set foot at the Nancy Place. Have you ever been stared down by a songbird? It’s very guilt inducing. The little purple and gold finches would sit at those empty feeders diligently and stare directly into our kitchen. Sometimes they even clung to the windows to stare more directly at us. Believe it or not, sometimes the little birds would look at us, then look at the feeder, then look at us. . .a very clear message!

Farm animal love: Its often where you don’t expect it! The guinea guy who loves the rooster, the ducks who’s rather be with the goats, the chicken who roosts on the Highland Cow, the pig who follows the gelding everywhere (even on trail rides! RIP Fiona Rainbow) or the turkey hen who is only two steps away from her little farm girls.

Sex: There is no end to the sexual lessons in nature. We have seen true love, indifference, fear, rape, gang rape, homosexuality, sexual oblivion, masturbation, dripping wet lust, and intricate mating rituals. Each animal, from the smallest of insects to the large farm animals to the wildest of birds has its own unique style to add to the world’s composite of sexual energy. Dance, song, patterned rituals. . .  dark & fearful; loving and beautiful; purposeful and brief. From the goat who sucks himself, to the mare who can’t contain her infatuation, to the rapist duck who holds her down for the next drake, to the intimate love of the wild geese or the crazy dance of the woodcock. . . its all here, even the cucumber beetles are oblivious to the crushing fingers as they lose themselves in the dead and dying zucchini leaves.  Sex becomes normalized for children growing up on a homestead. It’s not taboo or this silly gossipy thing to spread rumors about. It’s just part of everything—and that’s ok.

Children and nature: Being outside from a young age undoubtedly nurtures a different child. Away from television and video games, children notice the environment—even relish its changes, both bold and subtle. They learn to nurture the wild, cultivate the tame, find adventure at every corner, and overcome boredom.  Our girls hear the peepers, remember the nesting geese, look forward to June’s turtle visits, ask for seeds to plant, run home from school just to see chicks and goats, and, most importantly, notice changes in their environment—often even ones that we adults have overlooked.  Ella finds the random nest of duck eggs and is the first to notice the newly bloomed flower.  Maizey finds new caterpillars everywhere and applies what she reads in books to her outside experiences. She’s even explained to us that to leave the farm to all the children will only ensure its ultimate demise. She explained that she’d rather give up her share than see it divided. What an amazing little mind!

New things: Every year we find a species never before seen (for us) and often ones that we can’t find online or in books. Sometimes I’ve even contacted experts who have been totally stumped. Sometimes it’s a flower, once I saw a worm as thin as a strand of hair (and about as long), sometimes it’s a new insect.  Once it was a new mushroom that eventually the mushroom guy agreed must be portabellas, (they don’t grow in Maine— EVER) — so we took a risk and ate them (yum!).  We have new birds come each year, so our feeders are alive with color and surprise. We also have new plant species that appear here randomly—this year we have elderberries that have sprouted everywhere and one year it was an amazing rose bush.  In short—there is always something new, and if you let it be, its amazing. 

Even the cycles that you come to expect each year, will be new after a long winter or a hot summer. We look forward to the ripening of the apples, the first snow, early spring’s dripping trees, the tinkle of the thawing brook, and the return of the peepers, wild geese, and nesting turtles. Life is so full.