Horns of plenty

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An unkempt apple orchard in decline is being given new life, this time as home to an American original that once itself was on the verge of extinction. But put aside your visions of eagles nesting in the trees or grizzly bears or the gray wolf wandering between the rows and rows of gnarled apple trees.

Goose Creek Farm in Winterport is instead the pastureland to a growing herd of Texas longhorn cattle, an animal that devotees link with the true spirit of cowboys, trail drives, and economic expansion of the American West.

Their historic pedigree dates back even further than that, to the voyages of Columbus in 1493 by which they were brought in as a food staple to Santo Domingo and later made their way to Mexico. In 1690, the first herd of 200 head trekked into what is now Texas.

Far from the vast plains of Texas where these cattle once roamed by the millions, Goose Creek Farm on Goshen Road is one of a handful of places in Maine that is raising Texas longhorn cattle.

With help from a Web site and word of mouth, the farm that houses about 18 longhorn has gained the attention of consumers in the area, nationally as well as internationally.

Goose Creek Farm owners Urey and Susan Patrick sell their beef to the Natural Living Center stores in Bangor and Brewer and even, curiously enough, to Texans.

The cattle have become somewhat of a local attraction. (For the bovine-challenged among us: Females with young are called cows, steers are neutered males, and heifers are unbred females.)

Urey Patrick calls them Polaroid cattle, a pictureworthy breed of various hues and, of course, long, graceful horns.

“It’s gotten to the point where people drive up into Winterport and say `Where are the longhorns?”‘ he said.

Raising the longhorns started out as an experiment for Urey Patrick, a retired FBI agent, and his wife, a former agent turned corporate attorney turned businesswoman. The two had been raising other breeds, including Hereford, and cross-breeding them on a small farm outside Manassas, Va. But after a while, all the cattle began looking the same.

A car ride with friends led to the discovery of the largest captive longhorn herd east of the Mississippi, which unbeknownst to the Patricks was just 10 miles from where they lived.

The couple eventually traded in the other breeds to concentrate on the longhorns, which they say through evolution have become the hardiest breed. That almost wasn’t the case. In the early part of the 20th century, the Texas longhorn came closer to extinction than the buffalo or whooping crane.

In 1927, the federal government established the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma to preserve the dwindling numbers of longhorns that had lost favor with farmers to imported English breeds. Six families also started breeding the longhorns, often for different attributes such as long horns or size.

But having a farm goes deeper than being a hobby and a source of income. It’s a refuge, a reminder of the past as well as the prospects for the future.

The son of a career Navy aviator, Urey Patrick spent much of his youth moving around; California, Florida, Virginia, Rhode Island, Minnesota. The longest he ever stayed any one place was five years in Jacksonville, Fla.

One thing remained consistent, however. Every summer he would visit his mother’s family farm, where he was born, outside Louisville, Ky. Those summers provided a sense of stability and memories he’s not forgotten.

It’s that wholesomeness that Patrick wants his children and grandchildren to experience at his Maine farm named after a road bordering his mother’s family farm in Kentucky. He wants the next generations to have “a place to come to where they can run loose, chase frogs and ride horses and just have a great time.”

In Maine, Goose Creek farm straddles 170 acres that formerly belonged to the well-known Blaisdell Orchard. From the front porch of their American bungalow-style home, the Patricks can watch thunderclouds storm across Mount Waldo.

The barn, a four-story titan, was built in 1914 – about 10 years after the home – and at the time was considered the largest barn in Maine, the Patricks said.

Despite its deep roots in agriculture, the Winterport farm may at first seem an unlikely place to raise these cattle. When you think of Texas and the massive cattle drives, Maine winters with their buffeting winds and snow certainly don’t come to mind. Yet, the first three winters the longhorns have been here, they’ve spent 95 percent of the time outside. And herds are being tended in other areas with harsh weather, such as Wyoming, according to Patrick.

Surviving in these conditions may be something that is passed on from mother to calf, both in terms of genetics and experience.

In a late winter blizzard, Susan Patrick went out in search of a missing calf. She tripped over it in the newly fallen snow. Picking it up, she carried the calf to the warmth of the barn, only to have the mother bring it back out. This volley over where to keep the calf ended with Patrick giving in, telling the mother and calf, “You’re on your own.”

The steer calf survived for another two years until it was ready for slaughter. The Patricks were also warned early on by Maine cattlemen that they needed to chop down the apple trees as the fruit posed a deadly threat to the herd. The cattle, it was said, easily could eat too many apples only to have the excess fruit ferment in their stomachs, causing them to bloat up and eventually die.

That hasn’t been the case. Unlike other breeds, longhorns for some reason know when to stop, Urey Patrick said.

In fact, apples have become a favorite among the cattle. The orchard produces only a small fraction of what it once did, enough usually for family and friends, and, of course, the cattle.

“When the longhorns hear you picking apples, they come running,” Patrick said. “You have to pick one for yourself and two for them.” The cattle don’t always wait for human hands to pick the apples. Bobcat Logic, a bull whose horns spanned 4 feet and who sired several calves at Goose Creek, was known to stand up on his hind legs and hook a horn onto a branch. His weight pulled the branch down, while his horn would slide down the branch, plucking apples from their stems.

The female longhorns had a simpler plan. They waited by the tree, and, when the apples fell, they quickly gobbled up the fruit of Bobcat’s labor.

`The X-Files’

In his office, among the many family photographs – including one of his father in flight in a Skyraider, the last of the prop planes launched from an aircraft – is a poster of “The X-Files” television series, a gift from his daughter. A fan of the program, Urey nonetheless stresses that show is pure entertainment when it comes to reflecting the operations of the FBI.

That is not to say that real-life investigations aren’t without their unexpected twists and turns.

In 1979, five years into his FBI career, Patrick was called in to investigate the attempted assassination of an assistant U.S. attorney. The prosecutor had been wounded in a hit-and-run shooting as he was walking to a Washington, D.C., courthouse. He had been investigating a heroin drug trafficking ring in the capital.

The assistant U.S. attorney could remember little of his assailant; that is, until he was put under hypnosis where a police sketch artist developed specific details into a near-portrait. It was like a Rockwell painting, Patrick said.

The man believed to be the shooter was already wanted on a fugitive warrant and was picked up.

“We arrested the guy who he described, but it wasn’t the guy who shot him,” Patrick can now recall with laughter.

Further investigation led Patrick to Robert L. Stuckey, a member of the extensive heroin ring who had learned that higher-ups considered him a liability and had planned to kill him off. Stuckey had decided he could ingratiate himself to the ringleader, Linwood Gray – a man Patrick described as one of the most dangerous people he’s ever met – by killing off the prosecutor.

Patrick retired from the FBI in 1997 after 25 years with the agency, including 15 years at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., where he provided firearms training. It was on the firing range that he met a cadet with whom he started corresponding when she became an agent, and later married her.

Patrick rose to be the No. 2 man in the academy’s firearms training unit. During that time, the FBI changed the way it looked at ammunitions. Patrick called it a revolution.

Concerned about the effectiveness of the commercial bullets the FBI was using, Patrick and the firearms unit developed specifications and requirements for the bullets they would use. Marking a departure from the norm, the FBI had the manufacturers make bullets to FBI standards rather than settle for what the manufacturers were producing.

Patrick isn’t letting his years of training in ballistics and tactics lay idle. A year ago he started a consulting business out of his office in his home. It now accounts for about half of his workweek.

Considered a national expert on firearms and use of force, Patrick has been asked to review case histories and render an opinion where police actions have come into question in New Jersey, Ohio, San Diego and Maine. He’s been called to testify in court cases and in Rhode Island was asked to provide a neutral tutorial on the use of force to a grand jury investigation into an accidental shooting.

Patrick gets calls from defense and prosecution attorneys, and says that his “opinion will go where the facts lead me,” and may not be the conclusions that those who have retained him or queried him want to hear.

Prosecutors in the case against four New York City police officers involved in the shooting last year of the unarmed West African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, called Patrick but the Winterport man said the case didn’t go further than that.

“I was willing to offer them an opinion, I’m not sure it was the opinion they wanted,” Patrick said.

`Chicken Run’

Goose Creek Farm is also home to an assortment of nearly four dozen chickens and a peahen, that add visually and audibly to the aesthetic feel of the farm as they strut around the yard. Speckled Sussex chickens share scratching and clucking space with Japanese Phoenix and golden Campines, among other breeds.

Some chickens have the added responsibilities of laying eggs, used for the Patrick family meals and for production in the Goose Creek Farms bakery where Susan Patrick makes specialty breads and cookies for local stores such as Hampden Natural Foods.

A former assistant general counsel for Fairchild Industries in Washington, D.C., Susan Patrick traded in the more hectic life of corporate law, although running the bakery and serving as attorney for the farm still keep her busy.

But there’s also in-house competition for the eggs, as 6-year-old son Conner has learned the intricacies of egg blowing – extracting the insides through a small hole so that the hollowed eggshells can be painted. It’s an art he’s been practicing with fervor, prompting the occasional trip to the store to buy eggs for the bakery.

“He was blowing out every egg he could get his hands on,” Urey Patrick said.

The chickens, like some of the cattle, have names, and in the case of one speckled Sussex rooster a personality that has become endearing to the neighbors. Ensuring he won’t be roadkill any time soon, Big Red waits for traffic to clear before crossing the road to get to the other side, where he fills up on food that neighbors have set out for wild birds. Susan Patrick said she puts enough feed out on her own lawn for Big Red, so she’s not sure why this chicken crosses the road.

The Patricks do almost all the work involved in raising and selling the beef, leaving the preparation of the meat to a small abattoir in Albion. The procreation of new calves is also left to others.

“We let the bulls do that,” said Urey Patrick, noting that as the farm expands they may look to artificial insemination as a more productive way of adding stock.

While Texas longhorns haven’t garnered the attention that buffalo and wolves have attracted, Patrick believes they hold as much right to.

“They have as much a history as any of them,” he said.

The Web site address for Goose Creek is www.longhornsdowneast.com.