(no subject)
Hi!
I’m writing from Sacred Bough Farm in Sullivan, Maine. I arrived here four weeks ago today. What adventures these past three months have held! After leaving Lost Valley at the beginning of March, I spent two months traveling around the northeast and Midwest, visiting relatives and friends from many different parts of my life. The trip was great, and a whirlwind; sometimes I feel like I’m still settling back down. But maybe that’s just the constant change of life, especially in this intense, waxing part of the year.
My trip after leaving Lost Valley took me all over the place: Monterey for a few days; Boston and western Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; New York City and upstate; Philadelphia; Madison; Minneapolis; Northfield, Minnesota/Carleton; Chicago; Bloomington, Indiana; and Orono, Maine. I saw lots of family in California and then in New York and Philadelphia, and in the other places I saw a wide range of friends-from high school, college (including professors), my permaculture course, and elsewhere. The trip was wonderful, even magical in some moments. I loved seeing every one of you I got to see. It meant a lot to me to catch up and reconnect-with some people in ways that felt like we’d never parted, and with some people in neat new ways. It was great to see where you are and catch a glimpse into your lives. Returning to Carleton was an important, healing, and very fun experience. I appreciated all the music and dancing of the Midwestern part of the trip! (Madison people, I wish I’d known earlier that you liked to sing.)
I also visited the Conway School of Landscape Design, the graduate school I applied to in western Massachusetts. I loved what I saw, was enthusiastically accepted, and decided to attend. So for ten months starting September 8, I’ll be a student again. I’ve been enjoying beginning to delve into the suggested summer reading list-books on ecology, design, graphics/drawing, natural history, and a range of other subjects. I’m extremely excited about the program, and also nervous about its intensity and the debt that will follow. Funny that the school is so close to another school I attended for a year, Smith. Over the past few months I’ve resumed getting to know the area, through visiting Conway and then going back a few times to visit my friend Pepper from my permaculture course. Spending time with Pepper, tagging along to various sustainability-related groups, and exploring on my own, I’m getting to know the area in a different way from before, and I must say that the last time I was there I felt quite in love with the place-once the trees have leafed out, the deciduous-forested rolling hills of western Massachusetts steal my heart. And there’s some amazing sustainability stuff and community-building stuff going on in the area.
Coastal Maine also has quite a hold on my heart, and I’m really glad to be here for the summer. Sacred Bough Farm is a couple miles inland (which unfortunately means that the black flies and the mosquitoes are TERRIBLE), but I’m getting to the ocean often (where fortunately the sea breeze does a lot to keep the bugs in check), and it’s amazing to me what a resonance I feel with the places where the land meets the water in this part of Maine-the places, I suppose, that are like Vinalhaven, one of the spots I love most. I’m especially loving exploring the Schoodic Peninsula, a part of Acadia National Park that’s quite near here. Pictures will follow soon.
Like Vinalhaven, Sullivan is a town built on top of a vast expanse of granite. Sacred Bough has an old quarry, which I look forward to swimming in when the water is warmer. There are bits of quarried granite all over this land, in some places in huge piles, and in some places arranged intentionally. The most striking place where rocks have been arranged is a birch grove by the quarry with a huge granite table and standing stones; the grove looks like a temple, especially on clear nights with bright moonlight.
The people of this place are Obie, an artist and craftsman who works with quarried granite and beach stones to make sculpture, kitchen utensils, lamps, jewelry, and all kinds of other things, who has lived on this land all his life, and his partner Katie, the resident permaculture goddess. Sacred Bough is really a homestead, not a farm, and Katie and Obie are working toward some form of self-sufficiency and eventually becoming an artists’ retreat and educational center. The rural homestead life isn’t really my goal, but Katie and Obie are doing many things that I want or think it’s important to know how to do, so this is a great place for me to learn. I’m mostly working with Katie-planting and transplanting, harvesting wild foods and preserving and fermenting both wild and cultivated, MULCHING and composting, and raising/caring for animals. Obie leads the construction-related projects, several of which I’ve helped with so far, dipping my toes in the pool of power tools! I’m sure that all kinds of other tasks will arise as the summer goes on, but these are most of the things we’ve been doing for the past month.
Caring for the animals has been the biggest adventure so far. When I arrived there was a flock of twelve nearly-year-old laying hens of various antique-and some very funny-looking-varieties (well, all of them lay except Sylvie, who is cute enough to make up for it), and a flock of twenty-one week-old ducklings, Welsh harlequins and Cayugas. The day after I arrived, a flock of fourteen Icelandic chicks were delivered in a little cardboard box. More recent arrivals include two bee colonies, followed by six goats (all six of whom came here via the back of my station wagon). I haven’t gotten too near the bees yet, but I’ve been enjoying the other animals. Mostly! The ducks are a little challenging-between their shyness and their flock mentality, they tend to freak out as a whole group whenever people are near (except if they think you have food for them), which has gotten a bit old at this point. When they get scared, they scramble around in a little stampede, and they peep and quack vociferously. The chickens, young and older, are fun-they’re more social with people and have more individual, hilarious personalities. The goats have by far the most personality. The six came in two groups: Stella, a year-old Nubian-French Alpine mix, with her two not-yet-named kids, a doeling and a buckling, who are mostly Nubians, which means that they have enormous, adorable ears; and Sarsaparilla, an Oberhasli-Saanen mix, her doeling whom we have named Magnolia, and another Saanen doeling a few weeks older named Loretta from the same goat farmer. Stella is, as Katie put it, part sweetheart, part separation anxiety-master, and part stubborn-well, goat. She’s clearly at the top of the social hierarchy, at least for now. Her kids are unbelievably agile gymnasts, and while the boy is shy, the girl is super-friendly. Sarsaparilla has a strong will too but is calmer and very quiet. Magnolia is the shiest of all. And Loretta-the prettiest little goat you’ve ever seen-is unfortunately at the bottom of the hierarchy, pushed around a bit by everybody else, though all of them are cuddly with her too at other times. It somehow made sense to me this morning that when we needed to give the goats their bitter medicine, Stella tried it and spit it out, and most of the kids wouldn’t touch it, but both Sarsaparilla and Loretta chowed it down as stoically as they eat their sweet grain. Anyway . . . the goats fascinate me. That’s a good thing, too, because when you’re milking by 7 A.M., it helps if you like the company!
I’m writing from Sacred Bough Farm in Sullivan, Maine. I arrived here four weeks ago today. What adventures these past three months have held! After leaving Lost Valley at the beginning of March, I spent two months traveling around the northeast and Midwest, visiting relatives and friends from many different parts of my life. The trip was great, and a whirlwind; sometimes I feel like I’m still settling back down. But maybe that’s just the constant change of life, especially in this intense, waxing part of the year.
My trip after leaving Lost Valley took me all over the place: Monterey for a few days; Boston and western Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; New York City and upstate; Philadelphia; Madison; Minneapolis; Northfield, Minnesota/Carleton; Chicago; Bloomington, Indiana; and Orono, Maine. I saw lots of family in California and then in New York and Philadelphia, and in the other places I saw a wide range of friends-from high school, college (including professors), my permaculture course, and elsewhere. The trip was wonderful, even magical in some moments. I loved seeing every one of you I got to see. It meant a lot to me to catch up and reconnect-with some people in ways that felt like we’d never parted, and with some people in neat new ways. It was great to see where you are and catch a glimpse into your lives. Returning to Carleton was an important, healing, and very fun experience. I appreciated all the music and dancing of the Midwestern part of the trip! (Madison people, I wish I’d known earlier that you liked to sing.)
I also visited the Conway School of Landscape Design, the graduate school I applied to in western Massachusetts. I loved what I saw, was enthusiastically accepted, and decided to attend. So for ten months starting September 8, I’ll be a student again. I’ve been enjoying beginning to delve into the suggested summer reading list-books on ecology, design, graphics/drawing, natural history, and a range of other subjects. I’m extremely excited about the program, and also nervous about its intensity and the debt that will follow. Funny that the school is so close to another school I attended for a year, Smith. Over the past few months I’ve resumed getting to know the area, through visiting Conway and then going back a few times to visit my friend Pepper from my permaculture course. Spending time with Pepper, tagging along to various sustainability-related groups, and exploring on my own, I’m getting to know the area in a different way from before, and I must say that the last time I was there I felt quite in love with the place-once the trees have leafed out, the deciduous-forested rolling hills of western Massachusetts steal my heart. And there’s some amazing sustainability stuff and community-building stuff going on in the area.
Coastal Maine also has quite a hold on my heart, and I’m really glad to be here for the summer. Sacred Bough Farm is a couple miles inland (which unfortunately means that the black flies and the mosquitoes are TERRIBLE), but I’m getting to the ocean often (where fortunately the sea breeze does a lot to keep the bugs in check), and it’s amazing to me what a resonance I feel with the places where the land meets the water in this part of Maine-the places, I suppose, that are like Vinalhaven, one of the spots I love most. I’m especially loving exploring the Schoodic Peninsula, a part of Acadia National Park that’s quite near here. Pictures will follow soon.
Like Vinalhaven, Sullivan is a town built on top of a vast expanse of granite. Sacred Bough has an old quarry, which I look forward to swimming in when the water is warmer. There are bits of quarried granite all over this land, in some places in huge piles, and in some places arranged intentionally. The most striking place where rocks have been arranged is a birch grove by the quarry with a huge granite table and standing stones; the grove looks like a temple, especially on clear nights with bright moonlight.
The people of this place are Obie, an artist and craftsman who works with quarried granite and beach stones to make sculpture, kitchen utensils, lamps, jewelry, and all kinds of other things, who has lived on this land all his life, and his partner Katie, the resident permaculture goddess. Sacred Bough is really a homestead, not a farm, and Katie and Obie are working toward some form of self-sufficiency and eventually becoming an artists’ retreat and educational center. The rural homestead life isn’t really my goal, but Katie and Obie are doing many things that I want or think it’s important to know how to do, so this is a great place for me to learn. I’m mostly working with Katie-planting and transplanting, harvesting wild foods and preserving and fermenting both wild and cultivated, MULCHING and composting, and raising/caring for animals. Obie leads the construction-related projects, several of which I’ve helped with so far, dipping my toes in the pool of power tools! I’m sure that all kinds of other tasks will arise as the summer goes on, but these are most of the things we’ve been doing for the past month.
Caring for the animals has been the biggest adventure so far. When I arrived there was a flock of twelve nearly-year-old laying hens of various antique-and some very funny-looking-varieties (well, all of them lay except Sylvie, who is cute enough to make up for it), and a flock of twenty-one week-old ducklings, Welsh harlequins and Cayugas. The day after I arrived, a flock of fourteen Icelandic chicks were delivered in a little cardboard box. More recent arrivals include two bee colonies, followed by six goats (all six of whom came here via the back of my station wagon). I haven’t gotten too near the bees yet, but I’ve been enjoying the other animals. Mostly! The ducks are a little challenging-between their shyness and their flock mentality, they tend to freak out as a whole group whenever people are near (except if they think you have food for them), which has gotten a bit old at this point. When they get scared, they scramble around in a little stampede, and they peep and quack vociferously. The chickens, young and older, are fun-they’re more social with people and have more individual, hilarious personalities. The goats have by far the most personality. The six came in two groups: Stella, a year-old Nubian-French Alpine mix, with her two not-yet-named kids, a doeling and a buckling, who are mostly Nubians, which means that they have enormous, adorable ears; and Sarsaparilla, an Oberhasli-Saanen mix, her doeling whom we have named Magnolia, and another Saanen doeling a few weeks older named Loretta from the same goat farmer. Stella is, as Katie put it, part sweetheart, part separation anxiety-master, and part stubborn-well, goat. She’s clearly at the top of the social hierarchy, at least for now. Her kids are unbelievably agile gymnasts, and while the boy is shy, the girl is super-friendly. Sarsaparilla has a strong will too but is calmer and very quiet. Magnolia is the shiest of all. And Loretta-the prettiest little goat you’ve ever seen-is unfortunately at the bottom of the hierarchy, pushed around a bit by everybody else, though all of them are cuddly with her too at other times. It somehow made sense to me this morning that when we needed to give the goats their bitter medicine, Stella tried it and spit it out, and most of the kids wouldn’t touch it, but both Sarsaparilla and Loretta chowed it down as stoically as they eat their sweet grain. Anyway . . . the goats fascinate me. That’s a good thing, too, because when you’re milking by 7 A.M., it helps if you like the company!