E-I-E-I-O

We began with a dream to find a house in the country, sitting on at least 15 acres of good "deer property."   Yep.  I was in trouble and didn't even know it.  Deer property turned into "farm property" (to plant deer plots).  While I looked in every cabinet and behind every door, my husband searched high and low in the woods for sign...deer sign.  He signed the papers without going inside first.  You see, he has swamp buck disorder and it permeates every fiber in his being. 

Over the past 20 years this idea of sharecropping with wildlife has morphed into a small hobby farm and then exploded into a true farm operation with a few hundred acres, some super cool green and yellow tractors, and a couple of barns that cost more than our house did.  Really.  Our main crops are soybeans (i.e. deer food), wheat (i.e. pheasant food) and corn (i.e. deer food and big buck hide outs).  Did I mention pheasant hunting?   I have a small egg business on the side...really small.  Okay, six hens and we eat most of the eggs ourselves. 


Most of our equipment has been purchased used at farm auctions. Each spring and fall there are several of these come one, come all auctions in our area. I love to go to them to “see what they are giving away” and especially to marvel at the human sea of brown caps bobbing up and down at the auctioneer until the bullhorn screams out, “SOLD!”  

Our farm is always changing. Brown fields turn green and back to brown again as the seasons roll past.  More land means bigger equipment like real semi trucks instead of play trucks.  Each spring, as the snow melts and the air yields to warmer temperatures we get busy.  There are fences to repair, fields to prep and plant along with a lot of oil to change. Things quiet down during the summer. We measure, fertilize, spray and compare. That's right--there’s a lot of old fashioned comparing going on between farmers as knowing winks or nods flash back and forth.  No one wants to grow a “dirty crop”…one that is chuck full of weeds.

Cooler fall nights show off a big, harvest-orange moon that gives way to heavy, foggy mornings--especially by the lake. Our woods begin to burn blaze orange, canary yellow, and ruby red. Grey and black squirrels get busy cracking and storing hickory nuts and acorns. The deer lose their reddish summer coats and bustle up in winter greys and browns. There’s no rest for any Michigan farm in October and November. We work as soon as the dew is burned off of the fields until long past sun down.  "That's why they put lights on them tractors."  Sometimes we work in between raindrops, or snowflakes. 

I love to pull up the driveway and see chickens on the front porch.  The chicken poop, not so much.  I toss all my kitchen scraps out into the side yard just so I can yell out, “Here, chick, chick, chick,” in my seasoned farm wife calling voice.  Then all heck breaks loose as my white, buff, and black speckled fluff balls half-run and half-fly across the yard to my feet.  My two little dairy goats stick their nose through the fence and dig in my pockets.  They are just plain sweethearts.  There's Ruby With the Eyes that Sparkle and Stella. Each can smell an apple or a carrot a mile away.  Nothing gets them moving, though, like the sound of grain hitting the bottom of a metal pail.

We work hard every day to enjoy what we have and share it with others.   Having a hobby farm has enriched our lives in every way and it is my hope that you'll join us on this journey.