Back For the Holiday

 

Welcome to Hell!!!

Since my last post, I have been through Hell. Literally. The little stop in the road in southeast Michigan, that is, on what was a purely delightful road trip down to Vicksburg and Kalamazoo, over to Ann Arbor, and north through the Pinckney area. But let's backtrack a bit. 

My companion on the trail, Tree Guy, had a medical appointment in Ann Arbor that served as our excuse for the trip. I drove the first stretch, taking my one of my old favorite two-lane roads, M-37, which allowed a pause in Newaygo at the River Stop Cafe.

River Stop Cafe, Newaygo

Good place to take a break

River Stop hasn't changed its look since my last visit, but they now have menus and table service, even to the outdoor tables. (We sat at the back table inside.) Sadly, the bookstore I visited last spring was no longer in operation, and a nearby business that had some used books was not yet open, but we admired a couple of giant sycamores that made the stop memorable.

Giant sycamore in Newaygo, Michigan

Tree Guy had friends in Vicksburg we could stay with for two nights, and then a friend of mine in Ann Arbor invited us for our third night away from home, so we were all set. We were extremely lucky with the weather, too. We dodged all downpours, possible tornadoes did not materialize, and though many trees had come down in high winds, none fell on us or on the homes of our hosts. Sunrise the day after our arrival in Vicksburg was over a lovely pond, a pond large enough to hold an island, a dock, and a couple of pontoon boats.

On the other side of the island live the family's momma pig and her little ones. I did not venture too close, as the quick, unpredictable movements of pigs make me nervous, so none of my pig photos are going to win any prizes, but if you look closely you can see them. The momma weighs 600 lbs. Reason not to get too close! 

Look closely to see the pigs.

There were many other animals I didn't mind approaching. I missed Sunny, so dogs Miles and Louie kept me on an even keel.

There were also ducks and geese and hens and chicks and even duck eggs incubating in the guest bathroom. 

Ducks

Hens

Young poultry

On our one full day in Kalamazoo County, we were able to see grandson Jack's show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, paintings done during his past year's residency there. Jack, as well as my son, Ian, met us at the KIA for a tour of the show.

Self-portrait by artist Jackson Willits

It was impossible to see all friends and family members in a single day, although I managed phone conversations with a couple more, and then we were off to Ann Arbor, Tree Guy at the wheel on I-94 and around that fascinating but (to me) very confusing town. It was a relief to get the medical appointment behind (after three hours at the clinic, mostly waiting for the doctor) and relax with delicious take-out Moroccan food at the home of a dear friend I've known since our kids were in grade school together.

The next morning we drove through Hell and stopped for a brief visit with my former Arizona hiking partner, who now lives in southeast Michigan after 20 years in the Cochise County ghost town where we met and spent so much time together with our dogs. We missed the excitement of the Memorial Day weekend in Hell by going through on Thursday, but that was fine with me. One of the reasons I love rural two-lane roads is that they are generally quiet. We did not visit the Hell Saloon. Stopped for photo opp and continued on our way.

Because the shop in Newaygo was closed and time did not permit exploring Ann Arbor, I did not visit a single bookstore on this road trip, and yet I came home with my car loaded with books--backseat and way-back full!--thanks to friends who remodeled their home and thanks to my son who been storing their de-acquisitioned personal library items for me.  I did some reading on the trip, too, finishing up a Charles Baxter novel, First Light, interesting in its structure, as the story begins at the end and goes backward, step by step, to the beginning of the brother-sister relationship. That might not sound like a novel with a satisfying finish, but I appreciated it more and more as it went along, and closed it with a sigh of satisfaction. And now I'm halfway through Gerald Green's To Brooklyn With Love and enjoying the writing immensely.

Back home in Northport shop, with my newly organized section of Michigan used books (among many other treasures), I was happy to have done the reorganization before the busy weekend.

Used Michigan books, on table and on shelves

Books and dogs: That's my life. So here are the friendly Vicksburg dogs again, one more time. Miles and his antler reminded me of Sunny with the deer legs (bones) she brings home, and Louie, a tidy little Lab-beagle mix, had a head that put me in mind of James Thurber's dog cartoons. Both were very sweet, laid-back company.

Miles

Louie

And what, you may wonder, was Sunny Juliet doing while her momma was away from home for four days? No cold, lonely kennel time for my girl! She had the constant companionship of her Auntie Deborah, who spoiled her rotten with attention and tennis ball play. Sunny is a lucky, lucky dog!

HAVE A SAFE MEMORIAL DAY!!!

“Grandma! I’m Home!”

BEFORE I BEGIN, HAPPY 95TH BIRTHDAY TO MY UNCLE JIM! He's my father's side of the family (oldest of four), but I think he would thoroughly understand today's post. Uncle Jim worked with the CCC and was the tree expert of my childhood, so we shared a great love of nature and the outdoors.

Okay, all day Wednesday I looked forward to six o’clock and the MSU Extension program on “Chickens in the Backyard.” (Actually, I’d looked forward to it all day Tuesday until I learned I had the date wrong.) After closing the bookstore in Northport, I touched down briefly at home, long enough to grab a piece of toast with almond butter and tell David what was in the refrigerator that he could put together for a dinner. Surprise! He decided to come with me!

Why is this so surprising? Because my husband has been seriously bird-phobic all his life. The first time we went to a fair together, he waited outside the poultry house while I toured the chickens. The first time we camped together on the shore of Lake Superior, before he brushed his teeth in the morning at the shoreline he handed me a towel, saying, “Flap this if any birds come near.” I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. The last thing he ever wanted in his life was chickens, the scariest (to him) bird of all.

I, on the other hand, have wanted chickens for as long as I can remember, thanks to one blissfully happy month spent with my maternal grandmother when I was six years old. Grandma had chickens. She had a cow. Grandpa had an enormous vegetable garden and an acre of raspberries. Their backyard was an orchard: apple, pear, peach and plum trees, with a grapevine-covered trellis over the brick path that led from house to outhouse. Yes, outhouse. No indoor plumbing. But to me it was heaven. And I’ve been standing outside the gates peering in longingly all my life.


It was a pretty big crowd at the MSU Research Station on Center Highway last night. Pam Schmidt introduced speakers Heather Bardenhagen and Chad Jordan and kept things moving along. There were lots of questions, more than one funny observation, and a high degree of enthusiasm tempered with a certain amount of anxiety. The more information we got, the harder it was to believe the claim that “chickens are easier than dogs.” Incubating, watering, vaccinating, and on and on. Still, as one participant pointed out, the discussion by that time had gotten pretty far away from four chickens in the backyard. My grandmother had 100 laying hens and sold eggs from home and at the farmers’ market. Regulations (don’t get me started on that, either!) are much tighter these days, and I wouldn’t want to try to replicate my grandmother’s flock, but hat doesn’t mean that to have a little backyard flock you also have to have a doctorate in animal husbandry.

Near the end of the presentation at the Research Station, before we adjourned to Chad’s Delight of Life Farm down the road, Heather Bardenhagen addressed the question of meat breeds. She and her husband were very happy with Red-Bro, a breed developed in the U.K., but when Cornish crosses came into the discussion she said not to ask her because she couldn’t say much good about them. Everything she did say I had already heard or read elsewhere: bred for quick weight gain and heavy breasts, they are ungainly birds with a lot of leg problems. “They didn’t even look like chickens to me,” Heather said. “I told my husband, if that’s what we have to have, I don’t want to do it.” The Cornish cross is today’s industrial meat chicken. But there are plenty of other breeds—older, hardier chickens that have stood the test of time.

Down the road were Chad’s chickens, and he likes having different breeds. He also has four or five roosters and enjoys letting the birds mate across breed lines to produce hybrids. This farm was not a factory in any sense. I couldn’t stop smiling. Earlier, at the beginning of the presentation, when Chad opened with the question, “Why do you want to have chickens?” I thought that the most honest answer I could give, one I kept quietly to myself, was, “Because my grandmother had chickens.” There at the coop, as we went in five or six at a time to see the chickens’ housing, another woman sighed and said to me quietly, “This smell takes me back to when I was a child and my grandmother had chickens. It’s just like being back there again.” You, too! Me, too!

The real miracle of the evening, though, was that David went into the chicken house. He didn’t flinch, and he didn’t cower. He stood tall and took it all in with interest. He especially admired the largest rooster.

“What about coyotes?” someone asked, and another woman (Mary from the Business Helper) said, “Get horses. Horses will kill coyotes.” I completely loved that answer!


Back beyond the chickens and the seedbeds, Delight of Life Farm had four new little pigs, and they were the most appealing, drollest creatures imaginable. David liked the brown one best. The black one had a deformed ear but was still darned cute. One of the little pink guys, however, seemed to have the most curious, outgoing personality.





There are probably not pigs in my future. I’ll be more than satisfied if there are chickens.

When we got home, Sarah couldn’t stop sniffing me. When we went outdoors, she sniffed everywhere I stepped. Have you guessed? Yes, there was a little manure on the bottom of one of my shoes. Well, Sarah, I thought it smelled pretty great myself!

This morning when I woke up in our old farmhouse, still smiling, David and I were under the covers, and Sarah the Bed-Hog had scooched up between us on top of the covers, making it a tight squeeze in the little old double bed. Man by my side, dog on the bed, manure on my shoe, chickens in my future—what’s not to smile about?

I’ll be ordering a lot more books on homesteading topics this spring, for sure....