Friend's Work Day Sabbathday Lake Maine Shaker Village

Donna and Sheila went to Sabbathday Lake, Maine to The Shaker Village for Friend's Work Day. The Friends of the Shakers gather together each Spring and Fall to help the Shakers prepare for the coming season. Tasks at hand were sorting herbs in the herb room, planting spring bulbs along the Shaker Cemetery stone wall, picking pears and pumpkins, cleaning floors and windows and general tidying up and buttoning down! Sheila chose to strip summer savory and pluck bright orange calendula petals,(to be made into tea and potpourri), while others ground basil. The herb room smelled delicious enough to eat. Donna planted over 500 tulip bulbs, that will remain lovely secrets under the snow until early Spring!!
We visited the sheep that we had not seen since Summertime, and they had grown. Surprise and Oh No were the spring lambs born in April. The Shakers were given three Icelandic sheep this year from a farmer who no longer wanted them. One of the sheep, who was not thought to be pregnant went into labor. When the lamb was born the Shakers named her Surprise! Then the next day the other sheep went into labor. When they told Sister Frances she cried out, "Oh No!" And so she received her name. Oh no loves people and spent most of the Summer escaping from her pen to follow Brother Arnold and visitors to the Village. The lot of Icelandic sheep broke out of their pen(Surprise and Oh No included) and ate their way through the herb garden! They smelled lovely, like a pantry where somenone has just opened herb tins to prepare a feast! They also gorged themselves in the apple orchard on apples the October winds had brought down to sheep level!! Of course when the theivery had been discovered everyone shouted Oh NO, who looked as innocent as only a lamb can, tilted her head and appeared to query, "Who me? Well don't forget to shout out Surprise!