"Flatlander Go Home!"

I have learned a lot about life just living in Maine. You would probably wonder, what could one learn about life-other than just living it? Well, when you grow up with one sort of perspective out of life and see things a certain way-it is a rather wild shock when you have to learn how to live completely different from any way that you have ever known.

I grew up very sheltered when things seemed certain and predictable. It was very nice and comforting. My mother was an art teacher and my father worked for an insurance company. I grew up on a street called Appletree Drive in Plainville-how utterly suburban-and strangely familiar. We had a pretty house with a pool and I would ride my bike over all of the sidewalks in the neighborhood and was inside the house when the street lights came on. It was all organized and happy. My parents were and still are wonderful people. My sister, well, she is all right too! hahaha.

I naturally thought that I would have a life similar to how I was raised. The only other alternative was on TV. With TV, I watched all of the normal sitcoms of the 70's and 80's, and was somehow always fascinated with life on Walnut Grove and Walton's Mountain. Now, who would have thought that life still existed like that here in Cheddahville! Be careful what you wish for, it might just come true in some bizarre way to haunt you! It sure did for me!!!

In Plainville we used to play "Little House on the Prairie" by building a sort of cabin under the pool in the area where the pump was. I was always on the lookout for Indians (as if they ever visited Walnut Grove!)! By looking out for the mean neighborhood boys who would always wreck our forts that we built in the woods-though never reached the one by the pool! They were probably scared off by my parents vicious Llasa Apso- "Buffy!" (little furry suburban dog). Anyways, I had no idea then what I was preparing myself for. Then when I came inside for snack; cool aid and toll house cookies were waiting for me-now-well, that is another story. Needless to say that I have turned to more organic foods (and not my sheep!). Ah, the 70's. We are the product of the chemicals that we ate happily!

That first winter was very scary as I mentioned in prior blogs, and that was only the beginning. There were many lessons learned through trial and just plain stupidness! For example, being my first house, I was all excited to decorated it as I had my other two houses. The house in Attleboro was built in 1880 and was very Victorian in decor and I had filled it the best that I could with elegant antiques complete with an upright piano and a full cherry wood and teak dining room set. My second house was built in 1970 and did not have a formal dining room area and I had to store the table and chairs. I was all excited to put it into my Maine farm house to add a little elegance. Besides it matched the dark woods that I loved. I sold my Norton kitchen table that was white that I felt was too ostentatious for a farm. So I proudly added the formal dining room table to the kitchen. Well, needless to say that the life of a farm and climate of Maine did not like that table-it barely lasted two seasons before I had to find a more sturdy version at a second hand shop in town! The furniture that I had purchased did not wear well to the life of a farm and has blended in to the farm life eventually a little tattered, though with a lot of added memories to them in patches-most literally.

Then there was the story of the curtains. My first house in Attleboro was almost in the center of town and my neighbors were very close. I could look out my kitchen window and knock on it to tell my neighbor that I was calling her! Our kitchens were pretty close-we had fun with that! So, curtains were a necessity. Curtains were not only a decorative statement-but was way of keeping the neighbors out at times! So, when I moved to Maine-I honestly did not even think about it. I set to work choosing the perfect farm curtains to add to my home. Screaming that I was a Flatlander! My neighbor Kamaran came over with her husband and he started laughing. I was so proud of how fast I had decorated my house and I thought it looked pretty good. I could not understand the reason for his laughter. He said to me, "What are you keeping out a here the moose?" What? I had no idea what he was talking about and he pointed out that there was no one to block out with the curtains on three sides of my house but the moose and the woods!

I also noticed that they leave out a lot out on "Little House on the Prairie" like living on a farm in the winter! For example, no one told me how I was supposed to get water to my sheep Freyja out in the barn. I had to ask. I did not have a lot of money to spend on fancy equipment-so I learned to improvise. I certainly did not have the money for a heater for the water buckets or for a tap in the barn. So what did I do? I found some huge kitty litter pails and sterilized them and filled the water from the sink and brought it out to the barn-two times a day. I built up some good muscles with this let me tell you! As the snow piled up-we had to shovel a path to the door of the barn and tread very carefully over a driveway covered with ice-dragging those buckets-we still do this literally today as I write this. And the water freezes in the buckets so completely-I have another set that I bring in when frozen to put in the kitchen to thaw while the other buckets are out in the barn.

As for the hay, well I do not have a team of horses and a "Pa Ingalls" to get it in town- so, I have had to rely on my minivan. If you take out the seats and put a tarp over the floor you can fit in ten bales of hay and the many bags of wood shavings required for their stalls. Then there is the grain. They usually have it in huge bags and I have had to bat my eyelashes to get them to split the bags in half so I can even lift them! They are very heavy!

Now when Spring arrives, there is the matter of the field. In the Sping of 05 Freyja was the proud mother of twins- "Njord" (male) and "Skaadi" (female). They are all named after famous Gods and Goddesses of the land they are from (Viking mythology). The girls called them "Phil and Lil" from the Rug Rats (they could not remember the names that I gave them). We saw them born, which was the greatest wonder that we had experienced so far. We all grew such a pride for Freyja that day and felt like real farmers. When the Spring came we had to make sure the fence in the field was ready for them. I searched the property in the woods and dragged down endless old fencing and put it together with old posts that I had dug up from the far reaches of the fields to make a sturdy place for them to play. NEVER under estimate the power of sheep and their ability to jump fences-like I did! So many times had I received calls from my neighbors telling me my sheep were in the road and in my front yard! (Of course I had found their horses in my yard eating my antique rose bushes on other occasions!). My sheep had even found out where I was in the house and would call out to me-daring me to catch them! I lost a lot of weight that Spring! This is why you will NEVER see a fat sheep farmer! I could not afford the real sheep fencing-so I purchased garden fencing and even had to put tent stakes in the bottom-because when they could not jump over it-they would crawl under the fence! I have tied it over and again with string from the bales of hay. Because of this I have a special box for the fence repairing tools. In it I have wire, tent pegs, bale twine, scissors, wire cutters, nails, and duct tape (you never know!).

That Spring I was also invited to my neighbor Angela's father's retirement party. Harlan was the chief of the Fire Department for years and he had his retirement party at the town hall. I was nervous because I still did not know that many people in town and I was very excited to go. When I first arrived I noticed that some of the vehicles there were trucks and had bumper stickers on them-one of them said "Flatlanders-GO HOME!" and another stated "The only good Mass---- is a dead one!". Yet another boasted "No gas, no a--, no grass, no ride" Well, I felt comfortable here-NOT! I dressed up (my friend is laughing next to me as I write this-because dressing up in Mass for an event is different from dressing up in Maine) I even wore a pair of nylons and a pretty dress. I wanted to look presentable. (I was later told that nylons up here are used to fix the belts that break in cars!) Anyways, I walked in and felt terribly overdressed. Everyone looked comfortable and was dressed in jeans and the typical flannel of the area. I wanted to run back out before anyone noticed me and run home to change (I had bought some flannels at LL Bean before moving up here! And I was all excited to fit in) . But, to my dismay-Harlan spotted me and yelled right out, "Sharon! How are ya!" He brought others around and yelled out, "This gal here's the only Flatlander I eva liked!" I wanted to make a run for it and he gave me a big hug. He really is a wonderful person and made sure that no one tormented me the whole time I was there-at least not to my face!

I have to add that through the whole time and trials of before I moved to Maine and my survival after is certainly owed mainly to the support of my parents. I speak to them on a daily basis. (They have to call me since I do not have any long distance-and still do not!). They spend their winters in Florida and always love to tell me the difference in temperature between the two states and of how they spent the day playing tennis or lying in their pool while I am proudly breaking ice in the barn to feed the sheep! I love them and they eventually moved up for the summers to make sure that my lawn is mowed-because they knew that I would rather have my sheep do it!

And then I joined the Grange. But that is yet, another story.

The beginning of the dark days

So I woke up this morning, feeling a little bit better. I have been coasting the flue or something-I feel like it is more like the Bubonic Plague though. Horrid. I work at a place that does not allow sick days-so we show up and spread the germs. Anyways, loaded on what I thought was Day-Quil (Turned out to be Ny-Quil!-had to follow it with my third cup of coffee when I figured that one out!)-I drudged outside to find my car in the almost two feet of powdered snow! It is Maine you know! Anyways, I did eventually find it way out in the front of the dooryard (driveway) by the side of the road. I had learned to park my car there from last winter when we had over eight feet of snow and I had to shovel out by hand! This year-I treated myself to have someone plow it. They usually have to come by twice-due to the duration of most storms up here. Well, after finding my car under the mound of snow-I noticed that I had left the back window open! I smoke and since my front driver window does not open-I open the back window on my side-and as usual-I forgot to close it. Well, after shovelling out the outside of my car-I still had to shovel it out on the inside! Just my luck. If I could put my luck in a bottle (and I could sell it)-and it could be reversed-our country would have no problems at all! So loaded on Ny-Quil followed by the coffee to reverse the affect-I left for work. I navigate on the most beautifully archaic country roads and need to keep a constant eye out for moose. Today I was lucky-they were probably at Wal-Mart in town buying shovels for the next storm. So on my way to work I was thinking of what to write about tonight. With my life, there will never be an end to this blog....

In order to understand my daily adventures, I thought there should be some more history on what I have endured in this great Maine Adventure. When I first arrived, again-as you probably figured out-I really had no clue what I was in store for. The first winter was scary in just the pure nature of it all.

Sure enough, after the winter followed the Spring. It arrived in all of its pure beauty untouched seemingly by any modern forces that I was ever used to. Yes, we had electricity and running water-though from a well (I had grown up on a steady supply of town water and could identify the towns by the taste of the water), and cable. However, our high speed Internet was forever lost due to the size of the town-or lack of it. I had to go back to dial up. Sure I wanted a farm and all. I just forgot how rural all of it truly was until confronted with the realities of true rural life. I had always been a farmer at heart, though very high tech and had a career to support it all. I left it all behind for many reasons.

Before moving up here I used to own my own business as an independent paralegal and had a staff. This was active for over seven years. I left it for political reasons which will make another story on yet another day. I also was living in my second house. In Massachusetts, the first house you buy-is the "starter home" the one that you will fix up to gain the equity to purchase the house in the town where you plan to settle. One that has a better school system to send your kids to. My first home was in Attleboro and I sold it four years later for the profit on which I put down for my second house in Norton. This second house I had planned to live in until I died. It was in the perfect neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac. The neighbors were my age and their kids played with my daughters. Everything was perfect! That was how I grew up. I was finally able to provide for my own for my daughters what my parents had done for my sister and I.

However, I did not plan on two horrible marriages. The second one was worse for so many reasons and I had struggled to appear normal and found it more and more difficult. After leaving my business I went back to work as a claims examiner at an insurance company in Quincy. My youngest daughter is special needs and no day care could keep her. I had to give the insurance company my notice that I had to leave. My husband at this time caused a lot of trouble and I was forced to return to work and found a job in a law firm as a paralegal in Taunton. Again, I had to leave due to the daycare issue and at this time he was not living in the house and had owed several years in child support. With that as an issue as well as a mortgage that had turned from fixed in four years to variable and had increased monthly by several hundred dollars- I had to make a decision. To stay and fall or to leave and to completely start fresh. I knew what was ahead of me with either decision. I obviously chose the latter and begged my husband to move back in so that we could move up to Maine. I could not have made the move without him!

So we left all that we were used to for a land far away. I had researched all I could about the town and had them even mail me a copy of the town map. It is a huge area geographically with a very small population and there are still many areas of town that can only be reached by a four-wheel drive (which I still do not have) and are unpaved. Being from Massachusetts the dirt roads were always private and it took awhile for me to unstand that I was able to travel on them here in Maine and that I had no choice on many occasions in that they were the only access to where I wanted to go.

So, with the very short version of what bought us up here mentioned-I will continue....

Spring arrived and I was more than eager to start my farm. Unfortunately, not being raised here I was a perfect target for all sorts of weird people. My neighbor's husband who continued to hang with with my ex-husband thought it would be funny to send over all of the town drunks telling them that I was looking for a man! Oh, my word! I was a pacifist and went out real fast to the local Wal-mart to purchase my first gun and decided to practice in my back yard. That seemed to deter them for a while. My dog, I taught to warn me of any stranger as well.

I had found out from asking around- another farmer down the road- who offered to give me some egg laying hens and a rooster to start out a small farm. Naturally, I had no idea what he had in mind for payment. I eventually found out that he wanted custody of his six children and was looking for a new mom for them to home school them as well!! Yikes! I kept the chickens and ended up weeding his garden in a payment that I could agree on-not his idea!

In the early Spring my neighbor Pete came over to help me make a home for the chickens that I wanted. He came over with his friend-Junior (who I later found out was the local peeping Tom-harmless they tell me). They both had brought over logs that they had sharpened with axes and put them on the ground outside the wall of my garage. We all worked on making a small house for the chickens outside. Then I got nervous about them freezing and not being able to get to them in the winter when I found another way. My dog Loki (who I purchased at the local shelter) loved to watch us build it and run around the yard. She was another project. She was already two years old when we got her and had all of the bad habits of an abused dog. With love and patience, she got rid of them all and is now the best dog ever. Though at that time she would growl and bark at any man with a beard and baseball cap-which was pretty much all of my male neighbors!

By this point my next door neighbor on the other side of my field-had brought over her sons. She knew that I was alone and needed some help. Her youngest son was very nice, but it was her second son that I had fallen for. He was the hippie who worked at Sugarloaf. His name was Tom. He and his younger brother Jacob came over to help me build a chicken coop in the old work area behind my garage. We all strung up chicken wire all of the way to the twenty foot ceilings of the room and made a make-shift door with hooks. It worked and was the new home for the chickens. Another neighbor came over and gave me some chicken feeders that he had found in the old abandoned chicken farms down the road. I felt like a real farmer! Every morning we would feed the chickens their grain and scratch and pick up their eggs before noon. I learned to cook a lot of meals with eggs! I was even making each person who came to the house take home some eggs with them.

I also had my garden! I had tilled the side of my yard by hand (since I was afraid to ask about the prices-still thinking of Flatlander prices). It was huge and done completely by hand! I was very proud of my skill in providing food for my children. Literally blood, sweat and tears went into that garden! I was still owed a lot of child support by then and was not working. Since I owned my home outright-I had purchased it with the profit of my home in Massachusetts-I did not have a mortgage and very little bills. And that summer was when I had also planned on resurrecting the old fields around my house for livestock. I was told that there had last been a sheep farm on this property forty years ago. I surveyed the land and planned the next project.

I had also started my divorce in Maine. With my free time, I had found services for my youngest daughter and started writing the novels that I had been planning for years. (I have since finished those two novels and am working on my third).

I had considered myself divorced from my second husband years ago and had been using my birth name for years legally on everything. I just had to make it formal through the courts.

I had started dating Tom and he became a regular feature in my household. He had gone back to Seattle to take care of some business and flew back to join us in the fall of that year when my divorce was finally done-however, soon after it went into appeal!

We had very little money. I was not formally working and had some money from child support and had made most of the money for the house from the sale of some wood out on my property-it was due to be logged in the forestry plan. Tom had spent a lot of time at Sugarloaf and I recall being alone with the girls a lot facing hardships we never thought possible. We had to block off the upstairs and sleep downstairs for us to be warm enough. The house was very drafty and old. We seemed to have to put plastic everywhere and still the pipes would freeze regularly! By this time I had met a couple named Eleanor and Lloyd who have helped us to survive in the harsh conditions of Maine with very little money. I had learned to cook very filling meals with very low cost and how to keep the house warm with lots of plastic and duct tape. They and my neighbors down the road- Angela and Pete taught me how to work the wood furnace. The loggers had left a huge stack of wood and I helped to split it in the side yard. We all worked to get it into the basement and stack it for the winter on sleds in the fall. When the creosote built up and poured through the house one day-that happened to be twenty degrees below zero-my neighbor sent over her husband Pete and her father Harland (The former Fire Chief of the town-he told me that I was the only Flatlander he ever liked)-and they showed me what to do. We took out the pipes and brought them outside to clean them in the snow. That was only one of the of many valuable lessons I learned that year. In a climate that can be so harsh-the people will help you-you only have to ask. That is a concept that I still have trouble with-though had to learn literally for our survival.

I was heating the water with oil and it was running low and had to duct tape the hot water faucets to make sure that no one used them-since I did not have any money to buy more oil for two weeks. So, for two weeks, I boiled the water on the stove and put it in a huge tub in the bathtub in the bathroom to take sponge baths! I made it fun for the girls and told them to pretend that we were settlers in cute bathingsuits-they didnt laugh. They did not buy it and have probably washed it from their memory. It certainly made us stronger though! All of our windows were covered in plastic and we were still cold-but we survived. I think that the chickens might have been warmer in the barn! This was the winter of 04-05. My oldest daughter, Alex was just getting started with her revenge on moving up here. She had already ran up my long distance phone bill by going on the Internet-she told me that she thought Augusta was local! So, we had to get rid of our only connection to the outside world and go local! Since Cheddahville is in the middle of nowhere-it seemed like every town possible was long distance to us! This was the beginning of the days of darkness. Though, like us-we had to make it fun and I am glad we did. It was also the beginning of many more adventures...

My first winter in Maine

Since we arrived at the end of June, the only idea that we had about winters in Maine were that they were cold and had lots of snow. Now, as a Flatlander we had vision of the photos in the LL Bean Catalogue, complete with adorable puppies and us snuggled by a wood stove eating steamers or something! Well, were we in for a treat!

When I first saw the house it was on the Internet depicting the farm set on a small hill with pretty wild flowers framing the front of it. Our first visit was in February of 2003. We were captivated by the drive up. The farm was two hours north of Portland and it seemed to us in the middle of nowhere. A far cry from the screaming overpopulation of Southeastern Mass. We saw snowmobiles everywhere and could not believe how high the snow was on the side of the road and the endless woods that surrounded us with beautiful mountains reaching out to the sky. We felt now, as I still do that it is truly heaven.

When we arrived at the real estate office the broker took us down the road-the main road in town in her four wheel drive Subaru. After miles of monster hills and a winding road surrounded by the most awe inspiring farms and country landscapes, we arrived at the house that I fell in love with on the spot! The farm was built in 1787 on land that was not even Maine when it was built, but a territory of Massachusetts. The farm consisted of 114 acres (which turned out to be 120 after the aerial survey was done in later years). We could not believe the amount of land and the farm that sat upon it.

We went back home and since the house we were living in at the time was mine before the marriage-it all fell on my shoulders. I decided that it was well worth it to give up all that we had ever known to embrace a new life in Maine.

We arrived in June and could not wait for our first Maine winter. I saw LL Bean dreams in my head of what it was going to be. In the fall were were busy preparing the farm from what our neighbors told of of the winter that was ahead. They told us of the ice storm in 1998 and told us that we should have a generator in case it happened again. They also mentioned lots of other things to have us properly scared of the ravages of nature. My husband at the time travelled in construction and he was away a lot. That left me and the girls to prepare for all of the tales our neighbors told us. We did have some wood in the basement for the wood stove and a full tank of oil. You need two sources of heat in Maine-just in case.

I purchased the necessary winter items for the girls and snow pants and plenty of wool clothing. First the leaves changed which was breathtaking as New England is. The area in which I live is extremely impressive in that in its natural rural state seemed locked in the past. The colors seemed more majestic and took on a life of its own. It was hard not to be captured in its spell. The town I live in has a population of around 800 people and has only a town hall and two markets (only one market is open at the present time-the Cheddahville Mall). When we moved in there was the Village Market and the Corner Store. Everybody knows everybody in a town this small and they all seem to end up eventually in the local gathering spot-the Super Wal-Mart in the next town. But then I did not know anyone, but the people across the street.

My husband started to hang out with the husband of the neighbors and I would hang out with the wife. It was wonderful in the beginning. The neighbor had a strong accent and taught us a lot about the life here in town, the farm life, guns and duct tape. We would go over there and drink coffee and Twisted teas on the yard swing and stare out at the glorious stars that blazed in the blackest of night skies imaginable. You can even see the Milky Way on a normal night. It is completely untouched from any urban lights. It was so dark that I was afraid to walk across the street to my home alone. I was used to some type of street lights that were comforting and now completely gone. From current count, I believe that there are only 5 or 6 street lights to date and not on the part of the hill that I live on!

After the fall set in and the nights grew shorter, the first signs of frost arrived-at the end of August! I was amazed that I had to put the heat on one evening in August! Eventually even the days grew cold and the foliage dropped off to my first winter storm. This occurred in September and after two days we were left with over three feet of snow! I could not believe it! The drifts were over four to five feet! I took loads of pictures and emailed (only dial up here-and currenly as well!) them to everyone back home. Then the snow kept on coming! Unlike in Southeastern Mass, when the snow would melt and then snow again. It just piled up deeper and deeper! It was a lot to get used to. My minivan had also become a victim of the weather and I had snowbanked it countless times to find out that the rear brakes were bad! I just thought that I just did not know how to drive in snow like this. By then I had gotten rid of the full coverage on my van. So, I wore the badges of my first winter bravely on that van and had even duct taped the front bumper up to show how much I really wanted to belong!

During that winter, my marriage had took a turn for the worse and I kicked him out (another long story). Unfortunately when he left, he cleaned up my bank account and left the girls and I with no oil in the tank! I had to idea how to how to even light a fire and had to somehow manage to figure out how to use the wood furnace in the basement-or we would literally freeze to death!
I only knew those neighbors across the street and did not know what to do. My other neighbors from a farm down the road helped us out with some oil. Somehow the girls school found out and the principle came over with a Pointsettia plant and a bag of sweaters and socks and the teachers had taken a collection! It was so wonderful I could not imagine how people could be so loving and kind. In the suburbs it is each person for themselves and you might be surrounded by tons of people-but you are truly alone. In this desolate landscape with several feet of snow and temperatures of weeks on end where it is 40 degrees below zero-I have found more warmth than anywhere I had ever been in my life!

My children soon learned to adapt to this strange new climate and embraced it in full vigor. My youngest daughter even found a way to hook up our two adopted dogs to her sleighs to whisk her about the yard. So many times they had slid down the hills in the back yard to have me frantic and to breathlessly dredge my way to save them to have them laugh and zip back down to be rescued again! It is so cold the girls even walk on top of the layer of ice over the several feet of snow. I had tried and have fallen in to almost up to my shoulders. I have learned how to snowshoe since then. You literally cannot go out in the back yard at all with out snowshoes if you are an adult!

Sometimes it is difficult since I am a single mother I cannot afford the LL Bean Winters as advertised and watch the snowmobiles drive way in wonder. We have a magical winter here and have learned to have fun on the limited budget and to enjoy it the way it should with good old Yankee ingenuity!

Bought the farm....

This was a photo taken just this morning before I went to work.

Now, living in Cheddahville these past five years has certainly been entertaining, to say the very least :) I smile now-because I have survived it!

When I first saw my house, it was on the Internet. So after throwing my children in the Ford Windstar, we all saw it for the first time. I saw paradise! A new world, far from all of the over population of Southeastern Mass. A new frontier. They saw; nothing for miles and miles. What I thought of as heaven, they saw as pure h---(no malls or Chucky Cheeses). Well, to make a long story short (the best that I can anyways,)... We arrived in late June with a large U-haul and a smaller one in tow. Everything of value was in the minivan. My computers, the cats and the kids (notice the order...). Hahahaha. My now ex-husband was driving the large U-haul. his brother was driving the smaller one and I, naturally headed the expedition in the trusted Windstar.

When I arrived at the house, I dropped off the kids with my brother in law and noticed my husband was not there with all of the furniture. So I went to the closing and signed all of the paperwork and the house was mine-finally. I went back to the new house and he was still not there. It turned out that he was arrested on route and the moving truck was impounded. My first ex-husband (I have only two!) had to bail him out so we could move all of the furniture in! (He had an outstanding speeding ticket and was not allowed to drive in the state that we had moved to!).

That was not all! It just happened to be the warmest day in history in both Massachusetts and Maine! It was 98 degrees in both states (probably the only time in history that happened!). So we had the air conditioning hooked up-with the doors open to move in the furniture and three refrigerators! It was even too hot for the blackflies-which we still blissfully did not know about!

Once all was moved in, I set up my farm. We arrived on June 23rd. When we moved in someone from our old hometown of Norton, Mass-gave us some baby chicks and gave us a cute little cage for them as well. Our proud new editions to the new farm. Well, no one told us how cold it got at night-even in rural Maine and those adorable little chicks died of frost. They were our first farm casualties. Then, someone gave me a rooster and ten chickens, which eventually ended up as victims to the local predators. I did manage to have many wonderful meals of fresh eggs. Naturally, I did not eat my newest members of the family (chickens that is!)-I had to bury them out back instead-next to the frozen little chicks. It was horrifying! Our first lesson on the brutality of nature! We still kept replenishing the chickens, though eventually gave up. I still had not found out how they died, only they would be taken out of the cage at night and I would find them in my yard. Even the roosters fell victim as prey.

My neighbor loved to scare me and told me of the wild fisher cats and mountain lions out back. I was so afraid, it took awhile for me to go outside in the dark without my bat (this was before I bought my first gun at Wal-Mart). (Bats are what suburban people have beside their bed) I never knew what was lurking out back. I did find out about the local peeping Tom who was outside my window one night! The police just told me that he always does that and he is completely harmless. Could he have been the one to eat my chickens!

Then, I decided to look for larger livestock. Not something larger than me or scary like a cow! My Mainer friend is laughing as I write this. So I looked in the Maine bible- "Uncle Henry's". I learned that it is more sacred than even duct tape! I found my first sheep-Freyja! She is Icelandic, hence the name (and still alive!). We took her home in the back on my minivan (we had to take out the seats in the back and hold on tight to her-she really did not like it very much!)

When I bought her, I also bought her a sheep husband named Thor. However, Thor did not make it home since he was little and got kicked by the other sheep. So, I brought my poor lonely, and pregnant Freyja home to the farm in Cheddahville. I had divorced my carpenter husband by then and my new Sugarloaf hippie boyfriend was not that great of a carpenter. So, I decided to make her stall on my own. I had no idea what I was doing and could not figure out the skill saw and had major troubles with the old fashioned saw. So, I took the wood and made it fit (old barn boards left behind) and hammered them together dreadfully. It did last for a little while. I could not again figure out how to make a gate. I somehow managed to figure out how to put on the hinges (Don't ask) and then for the latch-I tied it skillfully with telephone cord. I thought it was very artistic looking. Freyja liked it. She was probably planning on her great escape in the Spring.

I was a good mama. I made sure she was not lonely and visited her often. I put in a small black and white TV-and watched Mr. Rodgers with her, she liked PBS, and even Oprah. Sheep are a part of a herd and she had not created hers yet-So it was up to me. In the Spring she had twins; Njord and Skaadi and the rest I will write about later.

Greetings from Cheddahville, Maine-ayuh!

Today is the first day of blog-land and I have no idea what to write... Only that people who know me tell me that I should write about my life-in that it somehow entertains them. Well, here goes. Today-no extra snow-just very, very cold! I have a farm as if you have not guessed yet and yes, there are sheep as well. 8 of them in fact and they are Icelandic. They are warm outside in the barn curled up with their electric blankets. I on the other hand have to break the ice just to use the outhouse! they just asked the other day for high speed Internet-and I only have dial up! Those sheep!

As you can see life here is certainly interesting. Just today I found out my ex-boyfriend stole all of the tools from my garage! And that he was married-not to my sheep! Anyways, he left behind the same sheep previously mentioned.

I also have a daughter in college. I woke up this morning to do the laundry and not only was the laundry basket missing, but the fabric softener as well! Now the cold here requires soft clothing since the sheep wont let me snuggle with them. I was very upset and called her and left her a message that she had to call me to deal with the family emergency (I really just wanted to blame her for this horrible theft)! She called four hours later to ask for ten dollars! Imagine if someone had died! Well, after that when I went food shopping (I have to take the dog sled into town 50 miles out) I discovered that the dogs were unusually soft in that they had found the frozen fabric softener in the trunk of the Chrysler sled-the fabric softener was left there the week before from my last shopping expedition.

There is always something happening in this small tundra town of Maine. I have lived here five years now and will never be considered a Mainer. I am told that you have to be here at least three generations. I am not only from "Away", I am a dreaded "Flatlander" or "Mass----".

I did what most 'Flatlanders" have done and wanted to get out of, well Mass. I searched on the Internet and found my farm in a town that I never heard of. "Perfect!" I screamed and sold the house and dragged my three daughters and two cats up to Maine. Now here I am two dogs, 7 cats (minus one), 8 sheep later --and still cold!!!

I have learned the strange local language here like; dooryard, skiddah, sideboard, ayuh, lobstah, chowdah. I have learned that you can pahk the skiddah in the dooryahd, but not on the sideboard. I had learned the other day when my tires were stiff, that cah tires freeze at -25 degrees-ayuh! Also, they call it a Maine accent-but it really is a twangy Boston accent (my Mainer friend sitting next to me is ready to beat me up right now!!!-ayuh). I have gotten lost in my backyard many times and am still hoping for someone to map it out for me-with out getting me lost further! I also found out that here, if someone is mean-I have a really big yard to lose them in-permanently! And have threatened to get pigs! See, here no one would notice, they would just think I like a lot of porkchops! You see I am the dreaded Flatlander and they love to torment me. But, I am tough now and I am learning how to live up here.

There have been so many adventures since I have been up here and I have learned a lot! I moved up here in the preverbial "soccer Mom minivan" and now have used it to transport my sheep (held securely in the back by whomever I can bribe with free chowdah) and hay-you can fit 10 bales in the back of a Ford Windstar! Yea!

I also had to mention that the the realtor never mentioned the Maine State bird to us. We had no idea about the "BLACK FLIES". Now my front porch is safely screened in with duct tape. I had learned from my neibah two valuable lessons. 1) That it is duct tape and not duck tape and 2) "If you can't duct it chuck it!".

Ayuh for now