Mail Call: January/February 2012

By Grit Staff
Published on December 7, 2011
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George found this tool in his uncle’s garage, and it has the family stumped. Readers, send us your best guess, and we’ll reward the first correct answer we receive with a GRIT ball cap.
George found this tool in his uncle’s garage, and it has the family stumped. Readers, send us your best guess, and we’ll reward the first correct answer we receive with a GRIT ball cap.
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The children love exploring the farm.
The children love exploring the farm.
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Checking cash at the pumpkin stand is very exciting for children on the farm.
Checking cash at the pumpkin stand is very exciting for children on the farm.
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Proceeds from corn sales are going toward the preservation of the Starke Round Barn.
Proceeds from corn sales are going toward the preservation of the Starke Round Barn.
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Proceeds from corn sales are going toward the preservation of the Starke Round Barn.
Proceeds from corn sales are going toward the preservation of the Starke Round Barn.

Taste of country life

I have always lived in suburbia, so my interactions with any sort of “farm life” were pretty limited. I think one of my childhood friends had horses, and my grandpa had a big strawberry patch, but that was about it. So, when my husband’s parents announced in 2007 that they were going to move from the outskirts of Detroit to a big stone farmhouse surrounded by fields of corn in Southwest Michigan, complete with a barn and a few acres of land, I didn’t know what to expect. My only impressions of a farm were that they were isolated and smelly, and that I would have to invest in a good pair of boots.

Boy, was I off the mark. Isolated? Not a chance. Smelly? Sometimes, if the wind is just right. Boots? I still haven’t bought myself a pair of boots, even though they might be worth it one of these days for tromping out to the workshop, the pumpkin patch or the chicken coop.

Yep, you heard me correctly. In the last four years, my in-laws have taken their big stone farmhouse, barn and land, and turned everything into a multifaceted operation. They turned a back field into a pumpkin patch where they grow pumpkins, decorative gourds and ornamental corn. As I write this, they’re in the middle of selling their crop out by the road, and my children get the biggest thrill out of “checking the money” to see if anyone has slid money into the box next to the pumpkin stand.

But it’s the chicken coop that has made the biggest impact on my youngsters. My in-laws started with their first batch of chicks in 2009, and the children were absolutely enthralled with watching them grow from fluffy balls of feathers into teenagers with scraggly feathers into full-grown hens with bushy tails. And once they started laying eggs, it was fascinating for the children (and me) to go “check the eggs.” Every visit, we learned new things about chickens. Did you know that different varieties of chickens lay different-colored eggs? Or that the first eggs a chicken lays are teeny-tiny? Or that when chickens molt, their feathers grow back looking first like gigantic pins sticking out of their backsides? And that while they are molting, they stop laying eggs?

My in-laws have since added another coop and an expanded yard for the chickens to hang out in, as well as two more batches of birds, bringing their total number to 40. That means my in-laws are gathering probably around a dozen and a half eggs a day, packaging the blue, green, brown and white eggs into cartons and selling them to neighbors, friends and passersby who see their “Eggs” sign out by the road.

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