South Berwick Woman Looks to Restore Backyard Farming
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Cathy McLean in South BerwickSPECIAL EVENT: Hay Loft is holding an open house 8:30 am to 5 pm Saturday, March 31 and Sunday, April 1.

THE STORY: When Cathy McLean was 9, she cross-country skied through the Blizzard of ‘78 to feed and care for the horses at her neighbor’s farm in Rollinsford, horses she often rode. When she wasn’t riding, McLean often passed hours in the barn at Hob Nob Farm in Dover. (Continued below)

 

The owners, Walter and Mable Franklin, didn’t have kids and McLean’s parents didn’t have farm animals, so it was a perfect marriage for a child whose heart was in the farmyard, and for the Franklins “who loved the little girl next door.”

“When I was a kid, I would do anything to be around animals,” said McLean. But it wasn’t until many years later at the age of 20 that McLean finally got her own first farm animals – two horses named Wahoo and Diamond Jim.

Cathy McLean in South BerwickToday, after 23 years as a health care professional, McLean has a home on Knights Pond Road in South Berwick with two dairy cows, three beef cows, 20 hens, four roosters, two sows and four horses, including Itchy, a wild mustang from the plains of Nevada. And just down her driveway, she and her fiancé, Tom Tetu of Fife’s Lane, own and runs the Hay Loft, a farm supply store.

But her dream now is to help bring backyard farming back to many more families in her community and Maine.

“Restoring backyard farming to Maine is definitely what I want to be part of,” said McLean, scratching behind the ears of Mother, the one cow she vows will not become meat.

As part of this effort, the Hay Loft is holding an open house 8:30 am to 5 pm Saturday, March 31 and Sunday, April 1.

One of her heroes in the backyard farming department, Barry Person of Emery’s Bridge Road, will be there to talk about raising pigs. He will have his own pork for sale and a small group of piglets with him for a hands-on demonstration.

In addition, McLean will bring some hens – perhaps a few Ameraucana’s, New Hampshire Reds or Barred Rocks – to encourage people to take up chicken farming.

“It takes six to seven weeks start to finish for roasting chickens,” she said. “And free range chickens eat ticks in the yard.”

The SPCA of Stratham is scheduled to bring kittens, puppies and baby goats for adoption. Anyone who adopts that day will get a free bag of food. And for every $50 in sales, McLean will give a bale of hay to the SPCA.

Finally. McLean will be offering local farmers a place to recycle grain bags. These bags are actually #5 plastic and not accepted at the dump. The Hayloft sends them to Maine Harvest for Hunger, which uses them to transport food around the state. Farmers will also be able to have a hay analysis on that Saturday.

McLean first moved to South Berwick in 1998 and began building her farm. She left her nursing job at Frisbee Hospital six months years ago to spend more time at the store and with her sons, Curtis, 13, and Camden, 11. Tetu, who does all the haying, also gets help from his son, Hunter.

For McLean, working with animals is about more than creating food. Her care of the animals reflects her respect for them. Just the night before, she said, she gave a cow a bath because she couldn’t stand to look at it covered in manure.

Mother, her pet cow, was on death’s doorstep a year ago when she nursed it back to health, against the advice of many consultants.  Today Mother acts as a mother to new babies that come in. Although she lost a quarter of her udder to the mastitis, she still produces enough milk to nurture babies.

Asked if she doesn’t became attached to the beautifully kept animals, McLean said she finds peace “knowing the animals have a lot better life than those sold at the grocery store.”

McLean notes that Maine has always been a farming state, but today farms are listed daily on auction sites.

“It used to be everyone had animals in their backyard and supported themselves,” she said. Today, in a crisis, people would starve. They don’t know how to be self-sufficient.”

Closely connected to her commitment to backyard farming, McLean tries to buy from local independent businesses.

“The local places keep getting absorbed by the bigger guys, who are dictating everything,” McLean said. “We have no control over any of it.”

The Hay Loft sells lobster rope mats made by Sue Volger of South Berwick; whoopee pies made by Creekview Baking Co. in Eliot and beans from down the road. She also sells eggs from locals, and said she never turns anyone away who wants her to carry their eggs. She will be selling meat from her cows, chickens and pigs as soon as she gets the state’s OK.

As McLean continues with her dream of raising and living with animals, she carries with her the message originally given to her by the Franklins at Hob Nob Farm.

“Mable told me,” she said, “If you take care of the animals, they will take care of you.”

The Hay Loft Open House will run 8:30 am to 5 pm Saturday, March 31 and Sunday April 1. For more information, call 207-384-5554.

 

 

 

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