We're on a farm!
It's been I don't know how many years in the works. But we've finally landed. I didn't want to jinx anything during the process, but Bowdoinham, Maine is now home. It feels like we're just emerging from a haze of paperwork, moving, selling, cleaning, digging, planning... To summarize the last 12 months: Got married, had a baby, sold a house, bought a farm, negotiated an easement, moved an apartment, moved a farm. Hello.
What made the purchase of the farm possible was help from the Maine Farmland Trust. They got me connected with the landowner and ultimately purchased an easement to keep this working farmland. This brought the price within our range and it's providing long term stewardship to a large parcel of land. See that first picture? That back field is always going to look like that. No housing development, no golf course, landfill, etc. Just great farmland. Farm infrastructure can of course be constructed, but we're keeping that in the "farmstead area" (not in that field) which will be an excellent guide to keep buildings in an efficiently clustered design.
Anyway, speaking of infrastructure, what were we moving?
We packed up the chicken coop in Northfield...
...and the coop in Cape Elizabeth
Disassembled the hoop house in Cape Elizabeth
Conscripted friends to coil irrigation pipe...
...and lug giant water tanks.
Crammed perennials into the truck
We had compost delivered by a big yellow dump truck
(Future site of the Cape Elizabeth hoop house)
And hunkered down for winter
Until we had to un-hunker with the Gravely snowblower (check out the distance on that thing!)
There was a bit of XC skiing this winter,
and adoption of Charlie's Tractor!
(1949 Farmall Super A)
All of it brought to home sweet home
Winter has been good.
