A homespun girl
Piano Lesson
In recent years Lacie Craven has been very busy. She has started her own business, learned to play the violin, helped to run the family farm and composed a litany of poems and stories, one of which won her a national prize.
The 14-year-old will start at Washington Academy in East Machias this fall, but the education she has received during years of home schooling with her parents has given her an intimate knowledge of many things besides the basics. How to plant a garden. How to spin yarn. How to shear sheep. How to care for lambs abandoned by their mothers.
These rural skills have fired the Bucks Harbor girl's imagination and found their way into her more scholarly pursuits. After reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "The Yearling," Lacie was inspired to write a related essay and entered it - unbeknownst to her family - earlier this year in the Library of Congress "Letters About Literature" contest. To her surprise, she wound up winning the competition's national seventh- and eighth-grade category. Her essay was picked from among 15,000 entries representing every U.S. state.
For the contest, participants write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre, explaining how that person's work changed their way of thinking about the world or themselves.
In "The Yearling," the main character, Jody, cares for an abandoned fawn that eventually dies. Lacie identified with Jody, having lost of one of her own sheep - a lamb named Mattie, which she bottle-fed after it was abandoned by its mother.
"I always loved the book, and I read it before I even had Mattie," she said. "It affected me in a totally different way after Mattie died. I love it because I can relate to the different characters in the book. Jody is my favorite because he went through the same things I went through, and he and I made some of same the conclusions."
Cathy Gourley, who oversees the "Letters About Literature" contest, says Lacie's letter was particularly well organized.
"She hooks the reader with vivid details in the second paragraph and then beautifully links the story of the orphaned lambs to the themes in Rawlings' book," Gourley remarked. "[It's] succinct and well-expressed."
"I live near the ocean, under a mountain, on a farm. We raise a lot of different animals, but mostly sheep. We also hunt for our food. These things made me feel very close to the characters in The Yearling. If you have sheep, you have orphaned lambs. If you have orphaned lambs, you have true friends. They get into a lot of trouble [a lot like Flag!], but it's all worth it to have a little lamb that follows you and is dependent on you."
As a prize, the Bucks Harbor youngster won a $500 gift card to Target and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for her and her parents in September, where she will receive her award and meet first lady Laura Bush at the National Book Festival.
"I knit her a sweater," said Lacie, smiling to herself. "I can't wait to see the Smithsonian."
While Lacie loves to write, and composes poems and stories for family and friends, her main goal is to become a veterinarian. She wants to work with livestock - mainly sheep, of course.
"I love sheep," she declared, barely able to contain her enthusiasm. "I'm like a fiber fanatic. I love the wool. I love the way it smells and the way it feels."
The Craven family lives in a farmhouse overlooking Bucks Harbor. The Cravens built and have worked on the house over the past 20 years. They named the property Wild Wind Farm after moving in.
On the farm, the Cravens grow vegetables, and also raise chickens, pigs and cattle for meat, but the official family business is sheep management. They tend 200 of their own sheep, as well as hundreds of others belonging to various Down East farmers. Income from the sale of wool and meat helps sustain the family throughout the year, though David Craven, Lacie's father, also works for the Maine Warden Service. Some of the flocks are on the mainland, while others are scattered on islands off the coast, which the Cravens visit every week.
"She's my right arm. She and the dogs," said David, referring to Lacie and the four highly trained border collies the family keeps.
Youngest sister Candace takes care of her dairy goat, which is stationed outside with the pigs and chickens. Oldest sister Cassie has a few head of cattle. Older brothers Travis and Barrett now live elsewhere, but remained involved in the farm throughout their childhoods.
There's some friendly sibling rivalry between Lacie and Candace over sheep versus goats.
"Sheep are a lot better than goats, because they don't get into trouble all the time," Lacie said. "I have a special bond with them. I just understand them. I can tell the difference between each one."
A musical family, the Cravens all play instruments, which they practice every day, in between morning lessons and farm chores. Cassie plays piano, Candace plays the bagpipes - a set of small pipes, because at 12 she's not quite ready for a full set of Great Highland Bagpipes - and both David and Lacie play the fiddle. David even serenades the neighbors with his renditions of traditional Scottish and English tunes. Lacie, though sometimes shy in conversation, performs at weddings and for the congregation at her family's church, Laramie Baptist in Bucks Harbor.
"I took lessons for classical, but I didn't like it as much as Celtic music," said Lacie, who practices jigs and reels with her dad.
A few miles up the road from the family farm, there's a long, sloping, green pasture with a couple hundred sheep in it, where Lacie keeps the lambs that she sheared last month. The wool she sheared will wind up as yarn, which, in turn, may end up in one of the sweaters, scarves, socks, hats or gloves she knits and sells to locals.
A spinning wheel costs anywhere from $400 to $1,000. How does a preteen get that kind of money?
Lacie's pet pig, an enormous sow named Big Mama, had a cameo role, along with her family's other farm animals, in the PBS series "Colonial House." Her father was hired as an animal consultant for the segment shot in Machiasport in 2003. In the show, 24 people inhabit four tiny cottages designed to mimic the experiences of early colonial settlers in 1628.
"The animals you saw on the show were our animals," said David Craven. "[The producers of the show] saw Big Mama, Lacie's sow, and they paid her so they could use her for the show. They leased her, and when Big Mama had piglets, they paid for those, too. At the end of taping she sold the sow and the piglets, and with the money she bought her spinning wheel and carding machine."
Lacie is also now making a profit from her knitted goods. This summer, her energies are focused on the farm before she embarks on her next big project: high school. Is she nervous about starting at Washington Academy, after home school?
Lacie Craven's handmade sweaters and other creations can be purchased by contacting the Craven family at wildwindfarm@gwi.net. The full text of her winning essay can be accessed online at http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/2006-LAL-nationalwinners.html. Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net.
Lacie Craven's father David uses an electric shearer. His father and paternal grandfather both raised sheep.
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