animal lover's profile
Loving Life on the Farm
Eleanor & Franklin
By Nancy Dewar
Six years ago, Virginia and Chris Roosevelt of Newfields, New Hampshire made a life-changing transition and have never looked back. Having spent a great deal of their adult lives in New England, they’d always thought of themselves as “water and beach people.” The couple lived in Newport, Rhode Island for the past several years, and spent four to six months a year in North Carolina where Chris pursued his life-long passion as a commercial fisherman. As the industry became more regulated and overloaded with paperwork, it was time for a change; and make a change they did by becoming homesteaders here in New Hampshire! The modern-day definition of homesteader is “someone who seeks a lifestyle of self-sufficiency.” Disillusioned with commercial fishing, Chris started thinking about things he could do back in the Northeast and began reading about farming. His extensive reading piqued his interest in compromised food sources. The idea of a farm was beginning to take root, and they started gravitating to New Hampshire where Virginia had spent her childhood summers at the beach. When they came across Windroc Farm in Newfields, a meticulously restored 1794 home in a pastoral country setting, Virginia said, “That was it. We discovered this farm, and we just went for it. We really didn’t think it through at all.” Though the property had been a vineyard complete with a restored barn that functioned as a tasting room, the land needed
a lot of work. There were three acres of cleared land and according to Chris “lots of dust and little pasture.” To improve the soil, they started with pigs to loosen it and then brought in goats and sheep to fertilize and clear it. Pigs use their snouts to work the soil, tilling several inches into the ground. Over the past few years they’ve cleared four more acres and created 1 ½ miles of walking paths around the pastures built by Chris.
Windroc Farm now has sheep, chickens and of course, family dogs; and the animals have wound their way into Virginia and Chris’ hearts. They started with eight lambs, and this year they have five ewes, one ram and nine little lambs. “We’re more into animal husbandry. We love the animals and sell the babies that we don’t keep to other homesteaders for pets or for utilitarian purposes (grass or wheat
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cutting). Initially we raised them for meat but had such a hard time taking them to slaughter that we decided to try husbandry instead. This is why we began referring to ourselves as failed farmers,” Chris and Virginia declared with a chuckle.
