Goodbye and Good buy?

Yesterday we said goodbye to a nice old yankee gentleman. My Great Uncle "Bud" Wagg passed away on Thanksgiving evening, at the age of 89 years old. A WWII veteran, Bud landed on the beaches of Normandy, during the second wave of the D-day attack. I knew Uncle Bud to always be smiling and as such a great guy. Along with my grandmother, June Wheeler, now 90 years old, Bud and June were cast from the same great New England pioneer stock. We will miss him greatly.

On a lighter note, we recently celebrated Gideon's first deer, a button buck, killed with one perfectly placed shot. A quick kill, and hopefully the beginning of a love for hunting and for the outdoors. As his Dad and the "Hunter", I couldn't be prouder.


Well, just when I thought I was busy, we've done it again. We bought the farm! Here are a couple of "before" shots. I think there is a lot of potential here that we'll discover through the next couple of years.


You may ask "How old is the house?", well that is a good question. I'll call it an 1840's bungalow, rebuilt several times, with a touch of Craftsman styling. Now really the Bungalow style dates only to the 1920's, so I think that what we've got here is a classic New England home. Dating to no particular time, but before anyone can remember, and with hints of several styles. There was a house near here in 1854, but the current structure looks like a later reconstruction effort. It appears that the Attorney that owned it in the mid 1970's did some big changes, but there have been none since 1978. Before we rip too much, we're trying to study the whole house including talking to owners that lived here in the 1960's. We intend to restore this great old house to make it more energy efficient and to add some modern conveniences.

What you really can't see from the pictures is the land on which the house sits. At around 25 Acres, more or less, as the deed states, I think that by cutting a field to the west of the house we'll get a view of Maine's western foothills and beyond. That will have to wait for now.

Fall descends on Juniper Hill Farm

The last few nights have brought the first real frost to our gardens here at the farm. The carrots are dug and packed in damp sawdust in the basement, only the brussel sprouts are left in the garden. Overall the growing season was a success, but the tomatoes were cut short by a return of the "blight" from last year. We'll try our tomatoes in a different garden next year.

With the wood stacked neatly into the cellar, we are now using the wood boiler to heat the house and the domestic hot water. The recent trend for many country families has been the outdoor wood boiler. While it keeps the wood, the mess and, of course the fire, out of the house, it also seems somewhat inefficient to my way of thinking. All the "lost" heat in an outdoor boiler goes into wide open space, while our indoor boiler "looses" its heat inside the house, right where we want it. We have an old Memco boiler, but its in good shape, and it works almost as well with or without power. I like to hear the quiet hum of the electric circulator, without the roar of the oil burner. We'll heat our 2200 sq. ft house on six cord of wood, with the domestic hot water as a "free" extra.



The latest building project here at the farm is the addition of our first greenhouse. It is built from 20 recycled window sashes from our church that may date back to the 1830's. The door and vent window are roadside finds that have been put to good use. We may try some winter greens if its not too late to get them started, otherwise the greenhouse will be ready for next spring. You may notice a few young turkeys walking past the greenhouse, we've had as many as 40 birds foraging for acorns in the back woods. Its nice to see a new wild food source here in Maine, although I expect the coyotes like them better than most people do.

More progress in at camp

After several weeks taking care of things here on the farm, we got back to the County to install the metal roofing on our new camp. The tarps that we had put on in August were still holding up fine, but we wanted to put on the steel roofing before winter. We bought the roofing from an Amish shop in Fort Fairfield run by the Miller family. Sam & Norman have a real nice shop there right on Route 1A. The roofing was of the highest quality and the price was good.

We had a large crowd at camp this weekend. Our friends Scott & Terri came to help with the roofing and their son Brian came down from UMaine at Fort Kent to spend the weekend with us. My brother Lincoln and his three boys came up as well. If you noticed, Linc has an identical camp to ours on the same lot. Its sort of a joint venture with our own space. We had also had a moose hunting party set up in their own camper in the backyard. We all had fun.



All day saturday the wind blew steady and the temperature topped out at about 45 degrees. Not great weather to put on steel roofing, but we pushed through and got it done, thanks to the many helpful hands. By Sunday afternoon camp was a little quieter, except for our family and the moose hunters. We put in our camp windows and went for a nce ride on the ATV's. We saw five moose, including a beautiful bull. I wonder if he made it through the week?




The weekend in New Sweden was a nice distraction to the rush and pressure of our regular life. Call me crazy, but I really like it up north.

Back at the farm, breeding season is underway. I usually let the buck run with the does from mid September until the first of November. This takes the guess work out of whether or not the girls are bred. I'm holding back one of my milking does, to be bred in mid November. This should limit the time that we are without fresh milk this winter. I'm trying to limit myself to five does for the spring kidding. I usually feel overwhelmed each fall if I have too many head. It seems that I'll find good homes for a couple of young does. That will be good.

Angela & I are in the process of expanding our holdings again. This is a big leap, I hope it works. All I'll say now is it will be a lot of work, and I hope a lot of satisfaction. Just a hint, its a 1840's home on about 30 acres with a view of the White Mountains. Maybe it's just a way to test myself? I hope we're up to it. We'll post pictures for sure. Maybe we'll call it Oak Hill Farm, sounds good. Take care for now.

OK Back to Work

Well after resting for one, maybe two days, it was back to work for the Wheeler family. While my numb hands were still bothering me from so much building, I went back to milking the goats and doing all the other things that were needed bein' done. We finished the second cut of hay and split some more firewood with the splitter.

After being in beautiful Aroostook county for a eight days, I've been feeling a little "treebound" around our home lately. The wide open sky at the camp simply cannot be beat. We can see the early morning sun as it rises over New Brunswick, Canada and we can see the sun as it sets in the evening. At home, the trees that have been spared my wrath have grown well over the last 16 years and are now stealing the sky that I want to see. I do however have the cure, I'll simply gas up the Husky and start dropping next year's firewood. I hope to tackle about another two acres, I know a big task, but I want more field, I want a view of the eastern sky, and that is what we'll soon have. I am really a tree hugger in a way, I love to hug a big arm load of dry oak firewood and throw it into our indoor wood boiler on a cold winter evening.

Building season for the Farmer

Hello followers. The hot dry summer days seem to have given way to a rainy weather pattern. The fields and gardens were getting very dry, but now there is renewed life with the recent rain. The second cut of hay is all baled and packed away in the barn. We, I mean the Gatherer, has canned green beans, made pickles, blackberry jam along with freezing corn and many other garden items. The squash and pumpkins seem to be ready and most are picked and are stored away for later. We have had some of our new potatoes, a poor crop to say the least, along with some carrots. Overall we have largely avoided the grocery store this summer, except when we run out of peanut butter or toilet paper.

As you may have read in my last post, we were preparing for a building trip to Aroostook County, well it happened. In the middle of August, the Farmer, Gatherer and our four little farm hands headed North for a week of relaxation and oh yea, building our new camp.
Slowly at first, then a little quicker, the camp begun to take shape. With beautiful weather and a spectacular view, we worked from dawn until dusk, and sometimes later.


Everyone helped, when they could, but the Farmer really had to push to keep going. Hey this isn't a blog about the Builder, what do you expect? Well, let's go forward eight days, and look what we built. What a marathon build. The camp is a well built 12'x16' closed building, plus an 8'x12' covered porch, including a 12'x12' loft. We hauled about 8000 pounds of lumber north with our truck and trailer and left it there hooked together with about 5000 pneumatic nails. Tired, sunburned and unshaven, we made the 6 hour trip "down state", back to home and the farm. On the next day we rested.

Through the Mill

"This is the story about being through the mill, well my brother and I have been and always will, we gave up guitar playing and riding the range, to go to work in the sawmill for a change." (the late Charlie Ryan)



Unlike Charlie Ryan's 1955 song (B side of "Hot Rod Lincoln") I've never worked for a paycheck in my father's sawmill. From my earliest memories, I was crawling over the mill, climbing on piles of logs and sawed lumber. My grandfather Ervin Wheeler bought the mill, in the 1950's and ran it for many years after that time. My dad, Stanley ran the mill, as a commercial enterprise from 1972 until 1979. He added a slab chipper, a board sorting chain and a multitude of conveyors. Many of the features that dad added are now gone, but the mill still saws true.

This summer we are sawing lumber for a couple of farm building projects, an addition to the sugar house and a roadside produce stand, and for our camp in Aroostook County. This day we are finishing up the last of our logs, now we just have to put it on sticks to dry in the mill yard. I've taken the controls of the mill as of late. I want to know how to make the mill work down the road when I may help our children saw the lumber for their own houses. What a great tool this is as we try so hard to be self-sufficient.


Stanley & Gideon (2nd and 4th generation mill hands) wait for the next board.

Dog days of Summer - Farmer reflects

Farmer takes a knee on way to the office.
With the long days of summer I find myself outside more and at the computer a lot less. That is the best I suppose, there are so many things that have to be done around here. The gardens are doing quite well it seems. After a few days of vacation away from the farm, the weeds were making a good showing. But with a few hours of care, the Gatherer has got the weeds taken care of for now. Now that the vegetables are catching all the sun, the weeds don't stand a chance from here on out. The peas are all gone by, for a couple of weeks now I guess. Its time to till them in and ready the patch for another crop.

Our June strawberries were a treat for the first time this year. Just enough here for cereal and eating fresh. With one early morning picking at a local strawberry farm, we have got enough for a few batches of jam. We're trying to add more fruits here on our little farm each year. Last year we added blackberries, a couple of apple trees and the strawberries.

We had some hard showers tonight and we got 1.5 inches of rain in about 4 hours. It was needed as the garden and lawns were looking dry. Mother Nature is really smiling on us here in Maine this summer, we've had some real nice weather. The corn is shooting up in all this heat, and the cucumbers are beginning to bear their fruit.

The potatoe bugs have found the new potatoe patch in "Ike's Field",at the old homestead, and so have the deer. I'll try the potatoes there again next year, and I'll fence them in if I have to. The old farm has a lot more potential for agriculture. There are about 5 acres of empty fields that need to be plowed and seeded. Dad has always kept them "bush hogged", but they should be growing a crop, something we can use.

"Back 20" at Juniper Hill Farm



I've started clearing about another acre of woods here at Juniper Hill to make more fields and maybe a real orchard. Oh how I would love to have a big farm with acres of fertile fields. But our twenty acres is home to us and our kids, so we'll improve our ground right here. My family has worked the old homestead since about 1820, we've always made do with what we had and worked hard to make it better. I'm real proud that our home and land are paid for, in full, and except for the yearly property taxes, its really a true blessing.