Hardly a Farm in Sight


We had a marvelous trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior, where we met two faithful blog-readers, Chicken Mama and Mama Pea. Not only are they DELIGHTFUL women, but their spouses are great, and we enjoyed meeting all four of them.

As a blogger I should have snapped many photos, but the camera went AWOL half-way through the trip, and I didn't have the energy to track it down. And then some of the photos I did shoot didn't actually get taken. I seem to be a Digital Dummy.

So here are a few. Basically my view of Melissa was the top of her head as she scrounged for agates and other interesting rocks. The first photo doesn't show that she is basically soaked along the lake side of her body---too busy watching the rocks to watch the waves.





We didn't find anything but small pebble-sized agates, but on the way home we stopped at a rock shop in Beaver Bay, where the guy was selling fist-sized agates (for $400!) that locals find. Melissa and I looked at each other, and the thought passed between us: Let's sell the farm and move up here and become 'locals' that find fist-sized agates!

Okay, perhaps not.

Chicken Mama's little cabin was lovely, and the wood stove was toy-sized, but it could sure kick out the heat. Mama Pea kept us in treats---homemade coffee cake, homemade ginger snaps, and bags of fresh popcorn for the ride home. Yes, it's true: we were spoiled.

One evening we drove 90 minutes to reach Chicken Mama's incredible home in the middle of the Superior National Forest. As I remarked to Melissa as we drove and drove and drove on a narrow, winding gravel road, "there'd better be a damned good view at the end of this trip." I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to live this far from civilization.

I figured it out when we arrived. Boy, was there ever a 'good view.' We could see Canada and river valleys and tree-lined bluffs, and the nearest neighbor was not 10 blocks away, but 10 miles. We had a wonderful dinner, lots of dog time, and some wine.

Then on the drive home in the dark, we kept hoping we'd see a moose along this narrow, winding gravel road. Nada.

But when we eventually hit blacktop, a young bull moose showed up in front of us, loping along, his hooves clicking on the blacktop. We didn't pass him because he'd weave now and then, and we didn't want to hit him. So we'd stop, turn off our lights (we were obviously alone in the wilderness), and wait for him to go into the ditch. Then we'd turn on the lights, start up, and he'd come lumbering out of the ditch to mosey along in front of us. He'd look back at us every once and awhile, not all that concerned. After nearly three miles he decided to stop using our car as a flashlight and moved off into the woods.

The one odd thing? Molly the hunting dog loves the woods, has no fear of guns, and will play in ponds and streams. But Lake Superior? It was Talking Water. It was Shouting-Booming-Spraying Water and she wanted nothing to do with it. She was so scared there was no reasoning with her, so at this beach I finally gave up and found her a nice spot in the trees, where she was content to sit in the shade and avoid the scary lake.



We brought home 47,000 pounds of rocks, a tired puppy dog (who got plenty of running-around-in-the-woods time), and sense of renewal.

Shouting-Booming-Spraying Water does that for me, and I highly recommend it.

Calling all Garrison Keillor Fans....


This isn't a farm tale, but since the Back-Up Farmer (that's me) has been SO preoccupied with this lately, this post is showing up here. (And I'm on the road a lot in September being Author Girl, so I don't have a clue what's going on here at the farm! :-O )

I'm a member of the Board of Directors of the Zumbrota Area Arts Council (ZAAC) , and last year it became clear that the local movie theater, in operation since 1921, was struggling as a for-profit operation and the owners needed to sell it. ZAAC saw that if we bought the theater, we could turn it into an arts center of sorts, a place to hold concerts and recitals and meetings, as well as movies. And thus began our funding drive. Things moved along slowly, especially since we chose to start raising funds last fall, right at the start of the Great Recession.

Great timing.

The movie theater has a radio history because in the 1950s Ray Sands and the Polka Dots (a local polka band) broadcast a live radio show from the theater. And this year the band celebrates its 60th anniversary. So my head started spinning....radio show...small town...arts organization. What if we asked Garrison Keillor to host a really big fundraiser as part of our efforts to buy the theater?

The poor man had emailed me a few years ago with the blurb he provided for my memoir, and I still had his email address. I'm sure he regrets not mailing the blurb to me in a plain brown envelope with no return address. So I emailed him, told him about our idea for a show, and he agreed to host.

Holy Smokes! What now?

'Cause it was my idea, I ended up in charge. (This has taught me a VALUABLE lesson.) So in three weeks, Garrison will show up in our little town and follow our script and not follow our script and introduce musical acts and interview Ray Sands about why they turned down an offer to appear on A Prairie Home Companion years ago and then end the show with a sing-a-long. It's going to be a wildly enthusiastic and unrehearsed show because GK is just going to show up and I'll hand him a script and say "This is what we were thinking," and he'll do what he wants because he knows what he's doing.

So if you're in the area, and want to contribute to a great cause (arts organizations in small towns are SO important because we're too far away from the large cities...kids need arts events, and these events contribute to local economic development...oops. Sorry, I'll get off that soapbox.)....

Visit www.redshoesandpolkadots.org for more information. Event is October 11. It's called Red Shoes and Polka Dots because GK wears red shoes, and to honor 60 years of the Polka Dots.

The animals are all still alive, so the Farmer seems to be managing fine without me as I flit from event to event, and from Red Shoes meeting to Red Shoes meeting.

We are taking a short vacation this weekend to the North Shore of Lake Superior, where I'll do a booksigning, and we'll unwind by the lake and visit with two readers of this blog, Chicken Mama and Mama Pea. I'm so excited to meet them.

I may not post until after the October 11 event. Will be too busy pacing and worrying and harassing my volunteers to make sure everything goes just right for the Garrison event. I should be more relaxed, since working with Garrison has GOT to be easier than working with sheep.... :-)

Bird Dog




Molly is a Wire-Haired Pointing Griffon. This breed is considered a 'versatile' hunting dog, so can be trained to point, flush, retrieve on land, and retrieve in water. The one thing this sort of dog isn't supposed to do is kill and eat a bird.

Yes, well. Molly missed the memo on this one.

Earlier this summer Melissa's pet duck Ping got on the wrong side of the backyard fence (Dog Territory) and Molly killed her before we knew what had happened.

That was not a good day on Rising Moon Farm.

Then a few weeks ago Melissa was in the barn, I was in the house retrieving something, and two friends were sitting outside on our deck.

Lori came running inside, eyes wide. "The dog...the chicken...We couldn't stop..." She waved toward the backyard and I headed in that direction.

I could see through the long grass that Molly was chewing on a pile of orange feathers. Damn. I called her into the house. The pile of feathers didn't move. Damn again.

I tracked down Melissa and gave her the bad news. Wearily, she let herself through the gate and toward the pile of orange feathers. She bent over, then exclaimed, "She's still alive!"

Since Molly had been chewing on her, I wasn't so sure this was a good thing. Melissa took the hen into the barn and ministered to her. The hen was a little soggy, but otherwise there were no visible signs of damage, yet the hen couldn't walk.




The next day the hen, tucked safely into a nest box, was perky and interested in food and water, but could not walk. She stayed in the box for a few days, but then every morning one of us would take her out and put her in the sun on the barn floor with food and water. After a week, Melissa thought she should probably end the chicken's life since there had been no change. I agreed.

But Melissa kept putting the chicken out every morning and every night bringing her back in.

After two weeks of this, and still no improvement, I was sitting on the deck working, and noticed Melissa had put the hen in the shade under the hay wagon. Ten minutes later I looked up and the hen had moved 5 feet. Ten minutes later she'd moved another 5 feet. She flopped more than walked, but she'd moved.

A few days after that, I did chores in the morning and couldn't even tell which hen had been injured. She was just fine.

Nerve damage? Shock? Muscle problem?

Don't know. But I haven't seen a chicken in the backyard since.

As for having a bird dog and free-range chickens, yeah, we know---not such a good idea. Still, I think the birds will be better at respecting that backyard fence, and we'll be more vigilant when Molly's outside.

Besides, it's hard to be angry with this face....