MARGARET KNIGHT
508-627-8894
Chappaquiddick doesn’t have many places for people to gather, and mostly we’re fine with that or we wouldn’t live here. Much as we tend toward being reclusive, we do like to talk to other people every now and then. Before the community center was built, the ferry line was the most regularly social place on Chappy. Now we also have Slip Away farmers Lily, Jason, Christian and Collins welcoming us at their Wednesday and Saturday markets at the old Marshall Farm across from Brine’s Pond. They plan to be open Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m. until they run out of vegetables.
Last Saturday they had chairs set up around an outdoor fire, hot coffee and cider for sale and lots of fresh vegetables. Sidney and I walked over the hill from our house with our goats, who hung out and grazed while we visited. People who came for vegetables lingered around the fire and walked up behind the farmhouse to check out the new chicken house (in the process of being shingled), and to see the pigs borrowed from the Farm Institute. It’s exciting to see plans for the renewal of the old farm taking place.
Last weekend, the Slip Aways used Tom Osborn’s tractor to mow the fields around the house. Then the lime truck came to spread lime in order to sweeten the acidic soil. Their plan is to grow vegetables on the property to sell at the farm stand, which will be inside the old school house as soon as it’s fixed up.
On Monday, Lily and Jason joined Matt Dix of the Land Bank, Dick Knight and I to meet with Brian Lawlor and Bob the Burn Man (otherwise known as Bob Bale) of the Nature Conservancy. Brian, along with Chappy’s Nika Slade, has started Martha’s Vineyard Habitat Network, the new Nature Conservancy program to help landowners maintain wildlife corridors and rare and endangered species habitat on their property. They visited our land and provided a wealth of ideas and information specific to our land, and to the Island in general, including their burn projects. You can check out their web site at nature.org/vineyard.
As a result of Brian and Nika’s work, Bob the Burn Man came to look at our family’s pasture land and the Land Bank property adjoining it along Cape Pogue Pond. The Nature Conservancy and the Land Bank are interested in burning in order to encourage sand plain grasses and plants. Bob thought that the land offered a good opportunity for burning, which may or may not happen partly depending on the number of burn days in the season.
In light of all this talk about rare species habitat, it was interesting that my neighbor stopped me on the road near our pasture the other day to ask if I’d seen something that looked like a baboon — I hadn’t. He’d been out walking at dusk with his German shepherds, who always bark at deer but kept quiet when this creature, the size of the bigger shepherd, walked from the pasture into the nearby woods. It didn’t walk like a deer but it was on four legs and not in any hurry to run away. Has anyone lost a baboon?
The On Time II was hauled at the shipyard in Vineyard Haven on Monday. Peter said lots of barnacles were scraped off and the rudder, propeller and other steering gear were taken off for replacement of the through bolts.The Coast Guard was expected to inspect the boat today. Peter thinks the maintenance and preventative work will take two weeks, so he figures double that and add a week.
So you can expect ferry lines. The derby seems to have occupied many of the people who might have otherwise started building projects before the second ferry was hauled. Cement trucks caused lines on Monday, after the derby ended, as work began on foundations for the new house being built where the Cressy house used to be. Lee and Helen Oliver’s house, now owned by the Beams, is being torn down and replaced as well. Also, the former Knoll house on North Neck has been torn down and will be replaced. The former Self house on land bank property along Cape Pogue will be taken down or burned at some point. With all of the removal of houses, we seem to be headed in the direction that I foresee the Island going: large houses surrounded by protected open space.
I heard a story about a contractor who was building on Chappy some years ago. He’d gotten most of the foundation poured and just needed a little more cement, so he left Chappy to get a few trash barrels full at Goodale’s. When he arrived back at the ferry there was a line up Daggett street. Since his cement was only going to be viable for so long, he tried to convince the first car to let him go ahead. Of course, it wasn’t just the first car that was affected. Chappaquiddickers can get vociferous about people cutting the line — and the captains don’t like it either — so the situation soon escalated to the point of requiring a policeman. The police gave the contractor a ticket for obstructing traffic, but still he persisted, the cement slowly hardening in the barrels in the back of his truck. Finally, after 20 tickets, he gave up and was banned from Edgartown for the rest of the summer. He took the cement back to Goodale’s, where he had to pay to have it taken back. Not surprisingly, it was the last time he’s been willing to build over here.
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