True salt of the earth!
My truest pleasures of parenting, is watching my kids while they are doing what makes them so happy! Gil is 16 this year, he spends alot of time working his oxen, (they are now 6 years old and 1800lbs a piece he has owned them since they were 1 week old). Gil and his oxen have been growing shoulder to shoulder at the same rate for as long as he has owned them, Gil is now 6’1″ and those boys are right at his shoulder. Each day he dumps the ox cart filled with manure and compost, then there are days that he works them in the woods, bringing in wood for us to burn, he twitches the logs and the boys bring the wood up to our wood yard.
Something new for Gil is Last summer he started a cabin project here on the farm in woods. He hand cut 20 something logs with his crosscut saw. Hand peeled them with a draw shave, and now he is notching them out with a hand made scribe and then hand stacking the lower logs and using the oxen to roll the logs up to make the cabin walls. Watching Gil work on this cabin is pure please.. Then come’s July, and I start driving this land lover boy to Pemaquid harbor every 3rd day to check is Lobster pots.
This all started many years ago, with our week long family vacation to Pemaquid every August and I encouraged Gil to scour the rocks for wild creatures, then as the years went on I would bring him over to the commercial dock and beg a lobsterman to take Gil out on there boat! well at age 9 he built himself a lobster skiff and I would drive him and that 12ft skiff to the harbor every 3rd day to check 12 traps, he would row that little skiff through all types of water, rough and smooth alike. Then he learned about the lobster apprentice program, and now he has 50 traps set, a much bigger lobster skiff with a motor that he purchased with the profit of the lobsters he caught and sold in the little rowing skiff. and his boat is now moored at the coop in Pemaquid. and he has a mentor and if he has 1000 hours by the age of 18 he will be given a zone to lobster in Maine. and when we are driving home each time after he has been lobstering I think I have the happiest human alive sitting next to me. The salt air draws this young boy almost as much as the woods of our farm and silence of working his oxen in the them. Now Gil is starting a new chapter, he has his drivers permit and he will be driving to Pemaquid with me in the passenger seat for the first year, but then he will be on his own. I think I should start preparing for that emotional transition now… Im already sad… my boy is growing up!
Momma Mary