As far as I know, child labor laws are recent inventions. When I came along (50s-60s), at least in our part of the South, there was no such thing as children's rights. When it came to work, parents used their own discretion as to what their kids would and wouldn't do.

When the weather threatened to freeze off our tomato plants last Saturday night, we took advantage of a slow day at home and went to the back yard around noon to grab the last of the red 'maters from the garden. Unlike the previous sweat-filled harvesting sessions, we were bundled up in warm jackets and hats at first before the sun broke and the heat of our efforts caused us to shed a layer.

Andy came out and helped, too, as my ability to bend and pick has greatly diminished as the months wear on. Ethan again showed laser beam dedication to the cause, easily picking his own weight in tomatoes before asking to go ride bike. Elly was a bit harder to keep focused and I finally had to give her a tangible goal of filling two grocery bags before she was excused to hop on her two-wheeler.

Before we were even half way through the rows (if you can even figure out where the rows are in the photo above), two neighborhood boys came zipping through the alley on their Razr scooters. I'd seen them before. In fact, a few weeks ago, I'd been out weeding while our kids played and they came by, asking if I had any jobs for them to do. I was amused as I had heard about this; people paying local kids to rake the leaves or mow the lawn for them. While our lawn really needed it, we didn't have petty cash budgeted for jobs we could do ourselves. I weighed the value of the work they could do verses our saving money, and in the end I was just too far outside my comfort zone to give them anything to do. As it was, they were happy to play with our kids in the yard while I worked, which benefited all. I have seen them around here and there since that day and each time the boys were very friendly and waved hello or asked what we were up to.

There are a lot of kids around our neighborhood, ranging in age from baby to teenagers. Most of them are pretty indifferent to our family and won't even acknowledge when our overly outgoing kids yell "Hello!" to them. There's a pack of them that hang out at the end of the alley on school nights, all sitting on bikes and chatting idly as the evening creeps in. We call them the Biker Gang and deem them about as harmless as the Apple Dumpling Gang. I'm not sure if these two boys are a part of that group, but of all the kids we've seen zoom past our backyard this summer, they have been the most polite.

I was pondering all of this when the boys stopped on the road and asked what we were up to. Smiling, I said, "What does it look like we're doing?"

"Harvesting tomatoes," said the brown haired boy.

"That's right!" said I.

"Can we help you!?" he asked with such fervor that I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I hesitated. "Well, we don't really have any money to pay you for your time–"

Brown Haired Boy responded before the words were out of my mouth. "That's ok! Just give us a bag and we'll help 'til you're done!"

"Wow, ok! And if your families like tomatoes, you can pick some to take home."

Brown Haired Boy dropped his scooter on the grass and his friend, Blonde Haired Boy did the same. Andy handed them some bags and they began grabbing beautiful ripe tomatoes and filling each respective bag until they had quite the haul. We asked them where they lived. Blonde Haired Boy lives on the very end of the alley, in the house closest to where Biker Gang congregates. Turns out, it's his family that has a small bike repair business in their garage and every time we walk past, someone is working on a bicycle with countless pieces of two-wheelers scattered about the garage floor. (that might explain Biker Gang a bit). Brown Haired Boy lives on the next parallel street to ours and is best friends with Blonde Haired Boy.

Finally I asked them their names. Brown Haired Boy turned out to be Austin. Blonde Haired Boy goes by Carter. Austin and Carter took their cache of tomatoes to Austin's house (down the block) to give to his mother. Andy and I kept picking, thinking that was the end of it.

We were very wrong, in a very blessed sort of way. Within minutes, we saw the boys walking back to our yard with a couple plastic bags bulging with produce. Behind them a woman just a bit older than us came with another bag. It was Carter's mother.

I was closest to the road as they approached and paused my picking to acknowledge her. She asked, "Do you like cabbage and carrots? We just harvested these from our garden and thought you might be able to use them, seeing as the boys told me you only grew tomatoes this year."

"A veggie exchange! How wonderful!" I exclaimed.

In fact, the bags were filled with squash, onions, beets, carrots and cabbage. What an incredible trade! They must have brought over three times as much as we gave them. Andy and I thanked her profusely while Austin and Carter began harvesting again. It was the first time we had met her and she and I talked about the gardening year and Carter's friendship with Austin. Soon she headed back home and the six of us continued to work in the garden.

Sooner than I thought, we had found every last ripe tomato. Because of the frost coming, we also picked any tomato that showed the least bit of ripening, including some that were by all accounts green, but yet had a shade of pink or orange on one side.

"Well, guys, I think we're done for today," Andy announced as we hauled our bags to the back of the house.

"Oh, do you have anything else we could do?" asked Austin. He is the more outgoing of the two.

"Actually, if you don't mind, it would help a lot if the tomatoes were sorted by ripeness, so we can process them before some go bad," I stated.

"OH YES! Please let us help sort the tomatoes!" both boys exclaimed. How could we resist that? Andy and the boys put all the harvest in one area of the lawn and began sorting by green, sort of ripe and super ripe. Below, you can see the group sorting together.

When the task was finished, they happily helped us haul the boxes and bags of produce up the stairs into our newly cleaned out back pantry. We're not really sure what the room is supposed to be. It shoots off our kitchen with a single door and is about four feet deep by fourteen feet long. There is a makeshift door to the backyard without a handle on the outside. The whole thing looks like someone put an afterthought into it and just tacked it to the back of the house. It looks a lot like an enclosed porch with very few windows. A few weeks ago, Andy cleaned it out from top to bottom and made it into a very useful storage space for our food, cleaning supplies and other odds and ends. This is where we'll be cold storing a lot of our winter produce as it keeps a solid temp of 40˚– 50˚. Below, just some of the produce Carter's family shared with us, neatly stored in existing boxes and containers left here by our landlord.

When the harvest was in, I asked everyone if they'd like to be in a photo for a blog I was sure to post. :) Of course the kids were super excited, so here are our harvesters from left to right: Carter, Austin, Andy, Elly, Ethan. Not pictured, me. Liam had been napping the whole time. Behind is the alleyway we speak of so often.

As Andy and I prepared a hasty lunch of three left-over soups, we invited the boys to stay and eat. While we worked in the kitchen, they played with our little ones. When it was time to eat, they helped set the table and politely tried each soup, even though they had never heard of two of the three we were serving.

During the meal we were able to get to know Carter and Austin a little better. They are both ten and go to school together at the elementary school just a few block from our homes. When they saw Andy spicing up his soup with some chipotle powder in his soup, they wanted to try it as well. Soon this escalated into a no-holds-barred heat-tolerance-man-show in which each young man at the table tried to up the ante with more and more hot sauces from our fridge. By the end, Austin was pretty red and sweaty, but Carter held his own, going spice for spice with Andy and keeping his cool (we even broke out Might Mustard and had them try it straight up)!

When lunch was over, they helped clean up the table and then offered to clean up all the toys they'd used when playing with our kids. Before I knew it, they had the broom out and my washcloth and were urging me not to leave the kitchen until they were ready for me to see their work. "Almost there! Don't look yet!" I kept hearing from the other rooms.

It really warmed my heart. And the whole experience from harvest to meal time with these two ten year olds got me thinking about the children in our cities. As I washed the dishes and listened to the hustle in the living room, I wondered how many of our children are craving the sort of attention these boys were. They were literally begging to be put to work by us and when they finished one job, they happily moved on to the next. I bet they would have cleaned our bathroom had we asked.

When I was growing up in the country, I had designated chores from early on. Pretty much as soon as I could wield a broom and feed calves, I was officially employed by my parents. I began getting a weekly allowance of a few dollars per week and I was able to save up for toys or art supplies that I really wanted. It gave me a sense of value as well as responsibility in my own home. I went to a country grade school in which most of my friends had farms of their own and had the same home life as I did. It wasn't until middle school when they blended the city kids with the country kids in one big city school (big for a small town I guess) that I began to see how the "other half" lived outside of the classroom. Many walked home, dumped their backpacks in their rooms and ran off to someone else's house to play video games or play basketball or just loiter in the streets in groups until the dinner bells rang. These kids had nothing to do!

As middle school gave way to high school, the separation between country kids and city kids was far less apparent as many of us got involved in after school sports and spent more time at the school going to games and participating in clubs. As I reflect, however, those of us with chores waiting for us at home were far less likely to be the ones getting in trouble. It wasn't a generality, of course, because those farm kids are very ingenious with the way they spent their midnight hours on a weekend. It wouldn't be a small town without someone having been toilet papered over the weekend and a party in the woods being busted. Still, the sense of purpose and a general ability to face down temptation was higher in those of us with something real to do after school.

As more and more Americans have moved away from the farm or countryside and grow up in pretty little suburbs with everything at their fingers, there is a sense of un-direction in the youth. We've seen it with the Biker Gang down the street. This mindset of "I've got four hours to kill between the last bell ringing and dinner. What do you want to do today?" is perplexing those kids. They WANT something to do. They crave responsibility. How many college students can't handle the freedom when Mom and Dad are no longer there to come home to? How many thirty year olds are back living in their parents' home?

I grabbed a soup pot and began scrubbing as the clamor in the other rooms continued.

An overall sense of un-direction. What a disappointing and depressing way to feel. Austin and Carter, at age ten, showed the initiative and drive that I'm sure most of those kids have to begin with. Humans are designed to feel needed and useful, especially the children. I think it's only from years of being trained otherwise that folks grow into the cog role that most adults fulfill. Work for the weekend and indulge in as much pleasure as possible between 5pm Friday and 8am Monday. 

It seemed to me that part of the reason Carter and Austin were the only polite kids on the block and so willing to help is a combination of desire to be needed and responsibility at home. I don't see them very much on the weekdays like I see most the other kids. I see them out and about on Saturdays, presumably their day off. The fact that they wanted to help us, then hang out with us, then eat with us and clean belied their own unique sense of family.

We seemed right to them. We felt safe. A garden was a familiar start for them to step into our world. We felt just as drawn to them, as if we could offer something for these boys that they might be missing.

"Ok, you can come look!" Austin yelped from the dining room. I was torn from my thoughts and the soup pot in my hands. I grabbed the kitchen towel and crossed the kitchen to the dining room door. "Wow!" I exclaimed, not even a bit exaggerating. They had washed the table, picked up the toys, swept the floor, put all the shoes in order, tidied up the end tables and folded the blankets in the living room. The place looked amazing and I'm not sure I could have done it better myself. Andy gave out boisterous high fives and I offered Mom-hugs to each child.

We sent them off with a bag of home-canned tomato products for their mothers and a handful of chocolate chips for themselves, and the promise that they were welcome to stop by anytime.

I really hope they take us up on that offer because it is genuine. Both of the boys were especially interested in what Andy had to say and followed his every move, whether he noticed or not. I felt very deeply that they needed us in some tangible way and who were we to brush that aside? I wish I had gotten their phone numbers so that I might call them over this week as we process tomatoes and make sausage. I know they would jump at the chance to learn a skill, to be useful. And their enthusiasm would be a wonderful influence on our small ones who are just learning the trades of self-sufficiency at home.

Yes, I'll be looking for those boys next Saturday, zipping by on their Razr scooters. We have so much we can share with them and I'm not really talking about the food.

This is how community starts in your own backyard garden.

PS: The freeze we were expecting never came. There will be another harvest before the week is out!

Since I last wrote you, more than a three monthhave passed. And so many things have changed. 

Let me begin at the beginning...which is actually the end of April when I chronicled the post below...

I had been hinting that we were looking for a place of our own and while our first choices were Omro or Winneconne, there was nothing affordable that truly fit our needs. That being said, we found a great old house to rent in downtown Oshkosh. It's the lower half of the home, with the upper being completely chaotic in the midst of renovation, so we don't have upstairs housemates and likely won't for a long time. The yard is roughly 1/3 of an acre, right here in the heart of the city. There are three bedrooms, a large farmhouse kitchen, one bathroom, a huge dining room and living room. Also of note is the sizable front porch and ample space in the lawn for a garden. The ceilings are 14' and the original hardwood floors and woodwork make this home full of character and style. For Andy and I, it was the next best thing to a home of our own on a farmette. As part of the rental deal, the landlord renovated a room in the basement to serve as Andy's work-from-home office, which he is utilizing daily.
   

Here is a view of the front from across the street. Elly is flying past on Ethan's balance bike. The yard on both sides is ours. There is an alley in the back since our street is a one way and our garage is in the very back. We love the porch and cannot wait for warmer weather so we can have meals out there. 
   

Also came with a tree swing in which Ethan here demonstrates his floating run. You can see the back alley and the kids toys to help you figure out what direction you are looking.

Inside, the home also came with a free set of bunkbeds which we needed for Elly and Ethan and a 1947 baby grand player piano. Andy is currently learning how to tune it himself. He's amazingly good at it since he can hear the notes perfectly. We've always wanted a piano!

Below, Liam and Ethan read books in one corner of the Elly and Ethan's room. Liam has his own space again, complete with crib (not a pack-n-play like he had for the last nine months) and rocking chair. It's the smallest of the three rooms and just the right size for him. (sorry, no photos yet).
  

I love the counter in the kitchen. The home came with two tall and stable bar stools that we fit into the corner when not in use. But we can fit the kids up there to help learn cooking and baking, or just watch us work in the kitchen. They love it and consistently fight over the two. Early on, Liam learned he could sit there too like the big kids and now he feels he has just as much right to a stool as anyone else. So...we figured out that if we scrunch the two stools together, we create a bench of sorts and then...

...Everyone can see! And, everyone can participate, just like they always wanted. Whew! 

 
Above, you see another angle of the kids' room, with their new bunk bed. Below, you see their door. Yes, its a big beautiful pocket door and our bedroom has one too!
  

 
Above, this is a view of the living/dining/kitchen rooms. Complete with kid messes! :-)
 

Here Ethan works on some playdough while I blog and Liam naps. This is a shot of our kitchen with the 14' metal ceiling and farm kitchen cupboards. We had to put our canned goods and Grandma's cooking utensils on center stage. It just felt perfect. What you can't see is that we also had room for a "kitchen couch," thereby inviting guests and family alike to hang out in the kitchen when the cooking is being done. Let's be honest, it's where everyone gathers most the time anyway!

Fast forward to the month of June and there have been even more changes in our life...

1. I got a hair cut (ok, not that big of a deal, but it's still a nice change to mention). Before, then after!

 
2. Andy and I celebrated 6 years of marriage on May 6th! (and the reason I cut my hair; a gift to Andrew as he loves short hair on me)

3. Elly turned 5 years old on May 9th. (so soon!?)

 
4. Elly completed her first dance class with a single recital for all the kids in the Omro grade school gym. She was very excited about it, but after three months, she was definitely done with dancing.

5. I got a full time job.

6. We learned we are pregnant with our fourth child!

The last two combined caused me to be utterly spent at the end of each day and the thought of even checking my email made me want to curl up in a coma and sleep for a week.

My job was a temp job with a local corporation doing layout design and typesetting. Very agreeable work, but long hours. My longest week was 70 hours and the shortest was a typical 40. I say was, because the job ended last week. I had about 5 solid weeks of hard work and good pay to help us bank up a little reserve for the summer.

During that time, Andy took over being the head of the domestic arts and excelled at being father, chef, house-cleaner, home schooler and playdate maker. At any given moment, I'd receive an email at work with a photo of the kids' current events. It was very heartening for a newly working mother to know that all was safe, sound and very well at home. He put in a large garden in our back yard and nice looking fence row of raspberry transplants across the front of the yard. It was three weeks of intermittent labor, but it all looks amazing now!

 

I only had one incident at work in which the morning sickness overcame me but I was able to make it to the bathroom in time. JUST in time. Thankfully, I have come out of morning sickness stage and though I am still drained at the end of the day, I can eat most foods set in front of me. We think I'm due about New Years.

Because we weren't planning this fourth addition, we are now in need of a mini-van again. While the Plymouth Breeze has served us well, it won't fit another car seat in the already crowded back seat. :-)

That was our past two months. Really, really nutshelled that one, but I need to move on with current events. And naps are ending in T-minus ten minutes, I just know it!

In a couple weeks, our family has the privilege to travel for the Wisconsin Farmer's Union to North Dakota. This is for their FUE (Farmer's Union Enterprise) Young Couple's program. We applied to be this year's couple and were chosen to represent Wisconsin amongst four other states: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. We will have the opportunity to travel to five locations across the nation in the next year starting with this leadership retreat in Medora, ND. The kids are welcome and we are making a family vacation out of it.

After the three day retreat we plan to visit some friends of ours in Colorado Springs from our CO days. However, with the wildfires causing so many homes destroyed, our friends may be evacuated! Our prayers are with them...

On our way home, we hope to visit our favorite editors at Grit and Mother Earth News!

Happenings at home and at work with the animals.

Since we live on a major highway, our yard is fenced to keep the dogs safe. They love swimming in the ponds when it's hot, but that means someone has to take them, and we don't always have time. So, a couple of weeks ago, when the temperature hit 90 degrees, we went to the local hardware store and bought them a baby pool.

They couldn't wait for it to fill. They were in it before we even got the hose in and turned on.

This is our 9-year-old Lab, Maggie. She looks old, with lots of gray hair, but she doesn't act any older than our 2-year-old, Boone. Her favorite thing to do is dig in the pool and splash water all over herself. Then she takes her nose and dips it in the water like she's retrieving something, even though she's not.

Here's Boone digging at the bottom of the pool. I wonder where he learned to do that!

They were enjoying the pool so much, even though it's not really big enough for two big ol' Labrador Retrievers (Maggie weighs 109, Boone 118). Since we didn't have much planned for the day, we decided to really make their day, so we took them down to the pond. When Maggie hits the pond, she loses herself in her own world. She sees nothing and nobody, and she hears nothing and nobody. She would swim for days if we'd let her. Once she gets in, she is in until we manage to trick her into getting out, which normally takes about 30 minutes. We've timed her swimming adventures, and her longest swim was just shy of an hour. Now, when I say she swam for almost an hour, I mean she swam. She didn't get out once. She absolutely loves swimming, and since she has arthritis now, the vet says swimming is the best exercise for her - and she is more than happy to exercise.

Boone, on the other hand, loves to swim, but he also loves to run in the pasture. One of his favorite things to do is run around for a few minutes, then run full speed and splash into the pond. Once he's in the pond, he swims over to where Maggie is and asks her to play. However, she turns tail and swims away. He's finally (after two years) realizing that when Maggie is swimming, he is on his own.

In other animal news, we have three geese at work that have been making regular appearances for the past few weeks. Our back parking lot slopes, so when it rains, it creates a nice pool for them. They started out just bathing in the pool after a rain, and within a few days, they began making themselves at home. They seem friendly and will walk right up to you.

Here is one of them standing tall on the company truck in the back parking lot. It looks like he's checking out our shipping department through the dock door. Maybe he's planning a trip to tour the building in the near future.

A few days later, our visitors helped themselves to some goodies in the community garden in front of the building. Provided with food for the taking, as well as a nice watering hole for bathing, I think they just might be here to stay.

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier,  
not that the nature of the task has changed,  
but our ability to do has increased."  
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

It never fails that people often wonder how I know how to do so many different things.  It's not that I was born with the skills to do everything I do – I've spent a lot of time and effort learning.  Just like you, when I started doing many of them, I had no idea what I was doing.  It took much longer and I made mistakes.  Sadly that's where many people stop.  They meet one failure or think that it will always take a lot of time and they abandon their efforts.  The thing is, if you persist, eventually it will become second nature.  It's not that you won't ever make mistakes, but you develop a proficiency for that task and you will be able to complete it with less effort, fewer mistakes and a better final product.  

Cooking is a prime example.  I've been cooking for so long that it's second nature to me, I don't have to think about what spices to add to the chicken I'm roasting.  I know that thyme and lemon will be really great, or sage and butter would also work well.  When I make beef, a healthy dose of freshly ground pepper and salt is usually all I add if it's good pastured beef.  When I'm cooking tougher cuts of venison, I usually braise them in wine or bitter beer to enhance the flavor.  When I make bread I know what how the texture of ciabatta dough differs from regular sourdough or a sweet roll dough.  It's not that I always possessed these skills.  I baked a few sourdough bricks and ciabatta with no holes until I got a feel for the dough.  I had some OK chicken until I discovered what ingredients work best.  It takes time, it takes persistence, it takes the willingness to try again and again after defeat, and it takes observation to notice the small differences.

The longer I persist in doing these things, reading and trying to learn how to do them better, practicing and learning from my failures, the better I will get.  I will most likely never: take a photo with the skill of Ansel Adams, cook a meal as delicious as Ina Garten, paint something as beautiful as a Monet, bake a loaf of bread as good as Peter Reinhart, have a garden as beautiful as Longwood, or write as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson – but that's not going to stop me from taking photos, cooking, painting or writing.  I won't let the fear of not being great steal the joy of the creative process, the growth that comes from learning and the contentment that comes from being proficient.  I believe that our minds are like a pool of water, if we keep them active they stay clean, clear and able to support life, if we stop learning we become stagnant, murky and devoid of life.

What new skills have you been working on or what are you planning on learning soon?  

I can also be found at Chiot's Run where I blog daily about gardening, cooking, local eating, maple sugaring, and all kinds of stuff. You can also find me at You Day Magazine, Not Dabbling in Normal, and you can follow me on Twitter and on Facebook.  

Rarely has a book so engaged me as Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft, which is a fresh look at the intrinsic value of work. When I first picked up the book, (hardcover $25.95 list; The Penguin Press 2009) I had hoped it might continue where Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Jerome’s Truck left off. What I found instead was a refreshingly accessible and beautifully composed, treatise on the philosophy, psychology and sociology of work – good, honest, real, physical work.

Crawford’s book takes a heartfelt, intelligent and authentic look at the true human cost of outsourcing manual labor and craft of all kinds, while dicing the remaining white collar toil into ever smaller cubes used to feed a new kind of assembly line. Carefully crafted arguments teased from masterful works of philosophy, sociology, psychology and economics provide a sound framework for Crawford’s artful and compelling narrative. The bottom line is that humans crave physical work and associated creative processes for a reason – and it has everything to do with human vitality.

If you ever feel compelled to repair your own tractors, or wonder about that compulsion to keep an old pickup truck on the road. Or if you wonder why it is that you rush home after a grueling day on the line or in the cubicle to build some fences and tend to your garden and livestock. Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft will help you understand why. If you have never thought about work as play or as inner fulfillment, now’s the time to take the plunge.

I try to read a few books each month. I naturally gravitate to titles relating to animal husbandry, farm and ranch management and the care and feeding of old agricultural machinery. Sometimes it’s a novel that catches my eye. I am not generally prone to reading sociology or philosophy, but like some instantaneous addiction, after the first sentence of Shop Class as Soulcraft I only hungered for more. Matthew Crawford is every bit a masterful wordsmith as he is a mechanic – exercise caution while opening his book because once you pick it up you will mourn having to put it down.

When it comes to work clothing, I look for items that are comfortable, perform well and offer good value to boot. When it comes to cold-weather-work, my Dickies model TV239 insulated cotton duck coveralls get the most use. I’ve worn Dickies insulated coveralls for everything from building a mudroom to haying the critters to loading sheep to cutting holes in the pond-ice so the cattle can drink; the coveralls kept me warm and offered protection from close encounters with manure, muck and hog slobber.

Over the years, I’ve worn out coveralls from plenty of different makers. Some sets of coveralls have been heavier-duty than others – some were insulated and some were not. I find that the 10-ounce high-performance 100 percent cotton duck used to create the outer shell on the Dickies insulated coveralls offers excellent abrasion- and snag resistance, while remaining sufficiently flexible to not be cumbersome. The polyester-fill/nylon-taffeta lining keeps me warm and makes the insulated coveralls easy to slide into and out of. This lining is sufficiently well attached to the shell that it tends not to catch the heel of my boots when I put the coveralls on without unzipping the legs. Of course, the entire operation of pulling the coveralls on is made much easier when I stop and open the legs up clear to my waist.

The Dickies insulated coveralls also seem to have a pocket wherever I need one – and they don’t require any sleight of hand to get my hands into even with gloves or mittens on. The coveralls are also available in my tall and rather large size. In fact, I can zip the Dickies coveralls over a sweatshirt or hooded chore jacket when it’s really cold.

At less than $60 for the pair (in my super-sized size – less than $50 in standard sizes), the Dickies insulated coveralls are less than half the price of some brands with similar quality. Do I expect my Dickies coveralls to be the last pair I’ll ever own? No. Do I expect them to last for years – I sure do. Check them out here.

Photos courtesy Karen Keb.

In 2003, “Take Your Daughters to Work Day” expanded to include boys, becoming “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day.” “Take Your Dog to Work Day” was instituted in 1999 by Pet Sitters International, and is now celebrated around the globe. On June 26 of this year thousands of canine companions accompanied their owners to work. Fortunately, the ill-conceived “Take Your Cats to Work Day” never got off the ground; plans of hostile business takeovers where discovered early on, and in a worldwide effort to prevent company break room pantries from being stocked with only Fancy Feast, the event was cancelled immediately. “Take Your Blog Readers to Work Day” isn’t as well-known as “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day” or “Take You Dog to Work Day”; in fact, I’m pretty sure there is no such event. But it certainly can’t be as dangerous as “Take Your Cat to Work Day,” so I figure, why not give it a try?

Welcome to Huntree Nursery and Garden Center, my place of employment for the past nine years.

The nursery has been around long before I was even a twinkle in my parents’ eyes. It began in the 1930s after the lumber industry had clear-cut most of the white pines and other evergreens in Michigan. Walter Studley started raising seedlings in 1932, and his tree farm became the first private nursery in the state to grow large quantities of evergreens.

The nursery changed hands in 1954, when Howard Hunt purchased it from Mr. Studley. Howard and his wife, Sally, gave the nursery the name it still has today: Huntree. Along with the tree seedlings, the Hunts began to sell azaleas from their front porch. One azalea led to another species of plant, and soon a retail garden center was added to the nursery. In addition to still growing seedlings, the Hunts started growing ornamentals in a newly added greenhouse, using discarded tin cans from the Michigan Fruit Canners and Lloyd J. Harris Pie Factory as containers.

In 1971, shortly after graduating from Michigan State University with a forestry major, David Landry and his new bride, Jan, started working at the nursery. They purchased it nine years later, and are still the current owners.

Hop on board the Gator; I’ll give you a little tour.

David handles the landscape end of the business. He and his son, Matt, head up the landscaping crew. Plant and hard-scape installation are services Huntree has provided for over 40 years for private residences as well as for commercial properties.

The women’s crew works right alongside the men on landscape jobs, and also provides maintenance and spring and fall cleanup. The crew is in high demand, and no weed is left standing when they’re done. They’re headed up by Elvira, who started working at the nursery for the Hunts when she was just fifteen. That’s over forty years ago! The wisp of a weeping willow she and her mother (who also worked here back then) planted by the pond when she was a teenager is now fully mature. Underneath its branches is Shelby’s favorite spot at the nursery, and Shannon loves to swing from the rope swing over the irrigation pond.

Elvira may have the most seniority, but most of Huntree’s employees have a long tenure with the nursery also. Our staff is very experienced. Some of the members on the men’s crew have been at the nursery for over thirty years. Carmen, our landscape designer has twenty-seven years of design experience; over twenty of it spent at Huntree. The majority of the rest of the employees have been with the nursery for nearly a decade or more.

Jan is in charge of Huntree’s garden center. She works right alongside Paul, Koko, and me maintaining the retail area. The garden center encompasses approximately four acres of the nursery’s total thirty-some acres consisting of growing fields, and acres of tree, shrub, and perennial restock.

The garden center offers aisles of shrubs; we have fruits, rose, ornamental grasses, and fern sections also. We have trees from aspen to zelkova. Each department is clearly marked, and the different species and varieties within that department are alphabetically placed in rows, with each plant tagged with price and growing information. Signs placed in front of each row of plants further detail the information, providing customers with what they need to make a good choice for their site conditions.

The same goes for perennials – we’ve got over 500 species and varieties of perennials, and over 100 hosta and 60 daylily varieties. I do most of the ordering for these three departments, and I have to admit sometimes I get carried away. These past two weeks I’ve spent pouring over our perennial supplier catalogs, agonizing what to order for spring.

Daylilies are the hardest for me to choose; I’d love to carry them all, but we simply don’t have the space. Who can resist something that looks like this? I can’t; 'South Seas' is one of my favorite varieties, and, as well as carrying it at the garden center, I’ve got it in a few of my gardens at home.

We carry seasonal items too. Annuals, bedding and vegetable plants fill greenhouses in late spring and early summer; mums, bulbs, and pumpkins come in fall. Inside the store, we have everything for your birding, landscaping and gardening needs, from a full selection of organics to unusual garden décor.  

We’ll get you loaded ... not with drinks, of course, although a cocktail hour might be nice. (I’ll have to bring that up to Jan.) Mulches, topsoil, stone, and mushroom compost are offered in bulk, as well as in bags.

We set up vignettes throughout the retail area with informational signs giving “how-to” tips. Xeriscaping, prairie gardens, deer resistant gardens, shade gardening, and butterfly gardening displays have been some of the most popular among our customers. My favorite had to be “In the Garden of Good and Evil”, a fun display that combined plants with names such as Crocosmia ‘Lucifer,’ Salvia ‘Vatican White,’ and ‘Pope John Paul’ roses with ‘Bela Lugosi’ daylilies. Our planted display gardens show what plants will look like at maturity, and our Children’s Garden is a fun place to visit for kids of all ages, even the full-grown ones.

We have birds, bees, and butterflies, and smiling frogs. There is no shortage of furry creatures either; some of our regular visitors are of the canine variety. Dogs are welcome, (but leave the cats at home please; I have no desire to open the cupboard in the lunch room and find it fully stocked with Fancy Feast). Some of the not-so-welcome visitors are the deer, rabbits, and groundhogs. To them, it’s as if we had a neon sign out front stating, “Open buffet; all you can eat! Invite your friends!” (We much prefer the frogs – they eat the mosquitoes; we have them too.)

You name it, we’ve got it ... and if we don’t have it in stock, we’ll work to get it for you. One thing we never seem to run short of is customers after closing time, and that means I better cut this tour short, and see to their needs.

Many changes have occurred since the nursery’s early days. The total acreage was cut in half when Interstate 196 was built in the sixties, dissecting the property. Despite the decrease in size, Huntree expanded to a garden center, landscaping service, and wholesale nursery with an experienced staff dedicated to providing quality service and plants. To think it all started with evergreen seedlings, which are still grown here today.

Because at the nursery, we like to keep in touch with our roots ... and branches, and leaves, and flowers ...