OUR COUNTRY HOME

by Lynn Conway

Copyright @ 2000-06 Lynn Conway. All Rights Reserved

 

 

View to the North across our pond in the fall of 2000

 

 

I can remember thinking about eventually having a "home in the country" even many years ago. For me, the experiences of summer camps, trips to family farms and ranches in Texas when I was little, and then later interests in outdoors activities, all these moved me in that direction. Charlie grew up on a farm in rural Michigan, and he too hoped to have some country property someday. So when we got together, it was inevitable that we'd eventually settle in the country. In 1994 we moved into our country home in a rural area near Grass Lake, MI, about a 30 minute drive from Ann Arbor.

Since then, we've enjoyed landscaping the old agricultural parts of the property - planting trees and shrubs, putting in walking trails and roads through our woods, and digging a big pond. We've obtained many plants as seedlings at annual spring "tree sales" of the Jackson County Conservation District, and many others from Gee Farms, a wonderful nursery in Stockbridge, MI. Along the way, we developed an interest in more fully enhancing and diversifying the natural landscape of our property. This is a long-term project to increase the varieties and diversity of the native grasses, wildflowers, shrubs and trees on our property, and to attract lots of wildlife onto the property.

For some references about this concept, see Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Back Yards, by Sara Stein, Houghton Mifflin, 1993 and also, Planting Noah's Garden: further Adventures in Backyard Ecology, by Sara Stein, Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Also refer to the Wild Ones national web-site for more background.

Although our property isn't very large (23 acres), it's located in an area that is topographically quite varied and complex. As discussed in the USGS references below, ours is an area of steep, sandy end-moraine ridges and flat, sandy outwashes from the past ice-age glaciers. Kettle lakes, formed when huge ice-blocks later melted within the outwash, are often bordered by broad wetlands, including marshes, wet meadows, and prairie fens. At the time of European settlement, the uplands supported savannas of white oak and black oak; with fire exclusion, these savannas have mostly converted to oak forest. Our property includes all of these types of terrain. Given the complexity and variety of terrain, and since it is adjacent to a large undeveloped wetland area, the property seems much larger that its 23 acres. (A regional landscape ecosystems map is provided at this USGS link, with our subsection described at this link).

By taking the property back to nature this way, we're able to enjoy year-around recreation in increasing privacy right in our own "back yard" - including taking long nature walks, observing and studying plants and wildlife, riding our mountain bikes and dirt bikes, swimming in our pond, cross-country skiing in winter, target shooting on our practice range, observing with astronomical telescopes under dark rural skies at night, and working on an ever-increasing variety of landscaping and nature preservation projects. The following menu contains links to various pages of photos of our home and landscape:

 

 Our home and landscape:

Some early photos from 1998-2000

 

 

 

Our country home in the early fall

 

 

 

And in Winter:

There are two barns behind the house; one is insulated and heated

 

 

 

A close-up reveals traditional landscaping out in front

 

 

 

 But the 23 acres out back holds lots of promise for natural landscapingwith vistas of ponds, marshes, prairie and woods

 

 

 

We put in this swimming pond in the summer of 1998

120' by 160' in size, it's mostly 7' to 8' deep

It's kept clear using CuSo4, and kept warm on the surface

 and cool on the bottom by using a sun-screen treatment

 

 

Charlie and Lynn

in the covered swing overlooking the pond

 

 

 

Lynn swimming in the pond in August '99.

It's fun to loll about in the pond using PFDs for flotation. 

 

 

 

Elsewhere there are many natural ponds, marshes and swamps

In the center of this photo we see a Canada Goose nesting

on a tiny grassy island in one of our natural ponds

 

 

 

With all the water and cover, there's wildlife

all over the place, including this somewhat confused little Raccoon

We see Sandhill Cranes grazing in our fields,

Mallards & Wood Ducks in the swamps,

and Redtail Hawks catching small critters

 

 

 

Inside the big barn showing some of Charlie's toys:

the big Kabota tractor, the conversion van, and Lynn - -

 

 

 

It's great fun to wander the property at all seasons

Including in winter, when the swamps and ponds are frozen and snow-covered,

 

 

and when X-C skiis can be used

 

 

 

Of course, rural living in snow country requires a degree of self-reliance.

Here Charlie uses our medium snow equipment; in the winter of '98-99

we had to use our 36HP tractor/loader to move the snowdrifts!

 

 

 

Charlie practicing with his .44 Magnum hunting revolver

on our 100 yard shooting range.

 

 

 

Looking downrange as Charlie fires his .44

 

 

 

View of the pond from our gazebo, in the summer of '00

It's about 1/5 mi from our house, in the wooded area of our property.

 

Looking East across our pond, in the fall of 2000

 

 

 

 

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