Last Monday was a holiday. Presidents Day. My wife’s employer gave her the day off, and my employer, me, decided I also needed a day off. Being self employed has its benefits. But when I arranged said time off, I did not realize there was a plan for that holiday Monday — chicken house cleaning.

Sleepy Hollow is home to six humans, three dogs, four cats, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 chickens. The ladies (or dinosaurs, as I call them) can produce up to two dozen eggs per day. Generally the eggs we put out for sale pay for the cost of their feed, meaning we get our eggs for free, a huge win in this economy.

But, as anyone who has had the opportunity knows, cleaning the chicken house is an awful job.

I was fortunate to be the one in charge of carting the wheelbarrows full of manure to the frozen garden beds. My wife had volunteered to do the actual shoveling in the chicken house. I swear I offered to swap half way. My mom, as the matriarch of the farm, supervised, and changed out wheelbarrows. It’s good to be the elder.

She commented to me about the number of animals whose “leavings” had contributed to the rich garden soil over the years. (She did not say “leavings”.)

And there have been a few, even if only counting the 48 years that I have known this old place. Goats, pigs, cows, geese, turkeys, chickens, and one pony. All left their mark in the garden. The house dates back to 1870, so who knows what other critters made their home here.

This town would be unrecognizable to the original builders of this old place.

Lincolnville is a place in transition, like most small towns on the Midcoast. We are trying to determine who we want to be, now and in the future.

I have been closely following Lincolnville Heart and Soul, the two year project to reach all town residents to determine what matters most as we plan for the future of our town. The Facebook group has been very active, and I am encouraged by the new members that group administrator Susan Silverio announces, a solid mix of people I have known all my life and unfamiliar names. This project will only be successful if everyone in town is involved.

Andy Young, of the illustrious Young clan, who date back to the town’s origins, has been particularly vocal. He posts about the reality that Lincolnville has always rolled with changes. I have heard about how only 100 years ago, the forested landscape we know was barren of trees, and rolling fields would have dominated. The Frohocks, who built this house, probably had a stunning view of Penobscot Bay. 

Andy writes about how the proliferation of milking machines decimated the dairy industry in town. So large scale chicken farming took over. This too was taken out by bigger industries elsewhere. For me, the end of chicken farming in Lincolnville is marked by the night John Pottle’s chicken barn burned on Youngtown Road.

When my parents bought this place in 1970, farming in any meaningful way was largely gone from this town. When my dad bought his first cow in 1973, no one remembered how to milk by hand anymore, so he had to figure it out himself.

My parents, low key back-to-the-landers (my mom is from the North Shore Chicago suburbs, but my dad is a hardscrabble Augusta native), decided that they would use this old farmhouse for its intended purpose: a subsistence farm. Which meant I grew up with food heavy on eggs and milk, as well as vegetables that grow well in our climate: beets, potatoes, and carrots….

My mom shared a story about showing up to Town Meeting in her barn jacket one year in the 1970s, and being told, discreetly, that this was not a good look. Even then, Lincolnville had moved past farming.

In 2023, there are few who make their way as farmers. 3 Bug Farm and Sewell Orchards come to mind. The blueberry barrens have mostly been taken over by the woods, as have the strawberry fields my mother assures me used to be a major cash crop before the Boston steamboat stopped running in 1935.

Andy Young says it well on the Heart and Soul Facebook group, in reference to what we want Lincolnville to be: “…we have never been a snapshot. We are a movie, in transition all the time. We must be careful not to fixate on the on the frame.”

Sure, I miss the Lincolnville of my youth — walking to Burn’s Buttery or Henry Boivine’s store, dropping quarters at Bill’s General Store arcade room, the old bell at LCS. But I am so happy to have so many new neighbors, and a town that keeps changing and adapting and finding its way. A movie, not a snapshot.

Library News

Kris Landi, director at the Lincolnville Community Library sent me this press release: “Lincolnville Community Library, located at 208 Main Street in Lincolnville, is thrilled to offer Bones, Baleen, and Whale Ecology, the most popular program at College of the Atlantic, on March 8 at 6 p.m. Designed for people of all ages, this hands-on program is sure to engage participants as they assemble the skeleton of a 17-foot minke whale and learn about the behavior and anatomy of whales while looking at baleen, krill and other marine mammal artifacts.”

College of the Atlantic’s program is offered free as a gift from Dorr Museum of Natural History and College of the Atlantic in memory of Ginny Yarnell, dedicate board member, volunteer, and dear friend of the library.

Space is limited. Please call 207-706-3896 to let the library know how many participants will be attending and a phone number which the library can call to confirm.”

Sounds super cool! 

Pen Bay Iced In

Jon Emerson, over on North Haven, shared this story on social media, about the days when the Penobscot Bay used to freeze over.

“The old timers always said that February was the ice month and then only if January was cold enough to start making ice around the shores. We've had some very cold February days this year, -15º at my house on the 4th, and about 12º last night, but we didn't have either a cold January or prolonged cold in February, so it doesn't look like we'll be walking across the Thorofare this winter.

“This photo was taken in 1979 when I was preparing to walk across to Vinalhaven to visit my friend Ed Smith. The rope is the painter to a small, light rowboat which I borrowed for the occasion. On the way over I towed it behind, just in case I came to a thin place. The ice was easily a foot thick as we were having a long, bitter cold winter. My plan was to walk over and meet Ed who was waiting on the other side, ride down to the town of Vinalhaven, see the sights, and have a visit. 

“After returning to the Vinalhaven side of the Thorofare, I was surprised to see that the icebreaker, Snowhomish, had made a pass through shortly after I had walked across. The resulting path of broken ice she had opened was about 50 wide and, from the shore looked like it consisted of a jumble of broken ice of varying sizes. I couldn't tell if it had re-frozen together yet. 

“For the return trip across the ice, I decided to push the little skiff ahead of me ready to quickly jump into as a mini lifeboat. I started out slowly to examine the broken ice and decide whether it might be passable. When I reached that ice, it looked like it was beginning to knit together, though definitely not frozen hard. The ice cakes were about three feet to six feet in diameter, with lots of smaller chunks mostly packed close together and lying fairly flat.

“Knowing that Ed would be watching from the shore, I had confidence that I could sprint across that divide (think summer time crate races these days), so I did. It was over in a flash, the skiff bouncing ahead of me, each ice cake holding me up long enough for me to make it to the next ones. I recall being energized but not afraid of falling through. Now I chalk that up to youth, knowing I was fit from running five miles a day, accustomed to a certain amount of danger from scalloping single-handed those days...and not knowing as much about the dangers of ice as I do now. I'm glad I had that adventure and glad to still have that old photo.”

Lincolnville Mystery

Anyone else noticed the beer cans adorning trees on lower Slab City and Ducktrap Road? For some reason, this fascinates me. Cans hanging from tree limbs… an environmentally conscious walker, leaving the cans where they can be easily collected? A beer drinker with a strange sense of humor? An offering to the gods of Pabst? Eh, people, don’t drink and drive. And dispose of your cans properly. Not by hanging them off trees..

As ever, reach out to me at ceobrien246@gmail.com, and take care of yourselves, and each other.