Javier and Pablo are our donkeys and they love it when I talk about them.
My partner and I were both born in Maine, and started our farm in 2020 with three Scottish highland heifers.
Maine has always been home even when I lived in Milwaukee for graduate school, I knew I was coming back. I am Maine, I love it so much. The way it makes my heart feel is perfect.
I was in holistic medicine and after covid, I needed a change. We found a rundown farmhouse in Buckfield, renovated it and moved in with our three cows. Since then, we’ve bred those cows and acquired more so our herd is up to about 20. We got the donkeys in 2022 from a farm in Aroostook—way up there. They were on a sheep farm. The farm got a large pack of donkeys as livestock guardian animals and the story is they bonded with each other and not the sheep and a pack of coyotes came in and wiped out a bunch of their sheep. The owners were pissed, so they sold the donkeys for so cheap. They all sold within minutes, we did not get any then, but were put on a wait list and at the last minute someone backed out, so we stepped in and grabbed those guys right up.
The guys are the farm favorite animal with everyone, people and animals. We keep them in the cow pasture and they are the babysitter when the mums need a break. Uncle Pabs or Uncle Javi will always watch the calves and play with them. They see anyone that lives here and if they make eye contact, they will usually bray. I don’t know how they do it, but they know the minute I wake up every morning and bray. They are two uncut jacks, one is very possessive of me. He will not let Pablo, the other donkey, get close to me when he is around and as a result Pablo has gravitated to my partner, Mike.
They are so lovable and smart and funny and I love watching their lips move when they eat. Their ears, I could pet them for daaays. They are good boys.
We like to think that they are some kind of livestock guardian animal because they have bonded with everyone, and nothing has come to snatch away anything, so in my head they are doing their job
We have a herd of 40 or so mangalitsa pigs and the untrained tiny piglets will often slip out and they always go into the other pasture and end up with the donkeys and calves.
We are getting ready for our first mangalitsa pig harvest in November. We have been waiting since 2021 for this. Mangalitsas take longer to mature and it feels like we have been waiting for forever. I went to Italy to learn how to cure meats from people whose family has been doing this for as much as six generations. We have a commercial kitchen on the farm and we turned an old reefer truck into a giant curing box. A friend I met in Italy is coming in November to help with it all. We are going to make products like salami, pancetta, guanciale, prosciutto and lardo.
We are on Facebook and that is where I post and update the most brickhouse farm
Our website is brickhousefarmmaine.com
