Here it is, the middle of May—a run of days with sunshine and warming temperatures and we are optimists again. All up and down this side of Antrim County the farm markets are opening for The Season, flags flying.
There is asparagus. There are eggs. There is pie. Rose King was a blur at the King Orchards Creswell market. I stopped to say hello and came away with one of her famous honeycrisp apple pies and a good story or three. That Rose is a wily one.
I can’t show you the pie because it’s long gone, but the stories are still fresh.
- In case you haven’t heard, Rose’s husband Jim and his brother John, not ones to sit around and mope over the way this year’s cherry and apricot crops are shaping up, about which the less said the better, went fishing one night. I don’t know what John caught, but Jim landed a 29-inch walleye. He was feeling pretty good about it. Rose opined that if you’re going to go fishing you should bring home something to eat, not something to hang on the wall. But she was laughing when she said it. (I will tell you exactly where Jim caught that trophy fish: just offshore from where he finds morel mushrooms.)
- Rose had been off gallivanting herself, taking Boy Scouts from Troop 46 up to Mill Creek Discovery Park to do some trail rebuilding. There hasn’t been a lot of money for park maintenance in Michigan’s budget—don’t get me started—and such volunteer efforts make a huge difference. The park rangers told the Scouts that they had finished as much work as had been done in the whole previous year. The boys really earned their badges. There ought to be a badge for the community volunteers who make scouting possible but I don’t think there is. Next time you see Rose, tell her thank you.
I know, I digress. Back to your US-31 May Tour. Let’s stop at Altonen Orchards in Elk Rapids, where blooming baskets and lush tomato plants fill the hoophouses.
There was plenty of tender asparagus by the register the day I was there, and best of all, there was rhubarb. I am very, very fond of rhubarb.
Just up the road the Guntzviller market has its own special character. This week you’ll find asparagus and eggs in the self-serve coolers, right next to the honor system cashbox and the sign inviting you to Find us on Facebook. How’s that for blending tradition and the ever-moving target of Now?
Just in case you were wondering whether the eggs are from free-range chickens: Yes.
So off we went home, where we ate asparagus and scrambled eggs for supper—with pie for dessert. And it’s just beginning. I will try to help you keep up with the embarrassment of riches.
Torch Lake Views 
Heather
May 16, 2012
Asparagus, rhubarb, AND eggs? An embarrassment of riches, indeed. Time for some farmer’s market tours. I await strawberries with excitement!
Gerry
May 16, 2012
Sue Swain says the strawberries are in bloom at Verdant Ground and she expects them to be early this year . . . always assuming they don’t freeze, of course. Maybe I will go camp out next to the strawberries, tuck them in at night, read them storybooks.
Heather
May 16, 2012
My back yard is full of blooming wild strawberries that produce but a hint of a fruit. I’ll be right there with you next to the strawberry babies 😉
tootlepedal
May 16, 2012
Did you have the rhubarb in a crumble or just stewed?
Gerry
May 16, 2012
The rhubarb I bought was stewed and eaten right up. That was last week. This week I, um, happened by Royal Farms and discovered that Sarah’s excellent bakers had been making rhubarb pie . . . Honestly if it weren’t for having to hare all over the place after the dogs, whose spring fever is in full bloom, I would become a blimp in no time.
shoreacres
May 16, 2012
I came across just such a roadside stand in Illinois last fall. It was so lovely – pleasant people, nice produce, and some of the prettiest dried beans I’ve ever seen. Unusual, too: Hutterite Soup, Christmas Lima, Eye of the Goat.
That’s some good-looking rhubarb. Lots of folks seem to prefer the strawberry-rhubarb mix, but we always took ours straight. And the leaves make great hats for little girls and their dolls!
I brought home four flats of strawberries last weekend. They just were so pretty. They’re frozen now – in the good way.
Gerry
May 16, 2012
See that’s just what Antrim County is like: pleasant people, nice produce, excellent dried beans. OK, and then there’s the occasional Eye of the Goat in the metaphorical sense, not to mention the south end of the northbound horse. We are only human.
It will be weeks before I can bring home flats of strawberries. The only comfort is that in the dog days of summer, I will be right here listening to the breeze in the maples and the waves on the lakeshore. I can wait for the strawberries. Barely. (And none of them will go into a rhubarb pie if I have anything to say about it. Although if they happen to fall into a pie together, I will eat it up anyway. I have no pie resistance.)
Martha
May 16, 2012
What’s going on over there in MI that you have all this and we are still sleepy here in Door County?!
Gerry
May 16, 2012
It is probably cooler out on the Door Peninsula than it is in Antrim County. Your day is coming any minute now, you know it is. I hear a rumor that you actually have a cherry crop over there. Can this be true?
kiwidutch
May 16, 2012
Yeah! They use the Dutch flag for the “open” sign… a Dutch family by any chance? LOL
… AND I just learned a new word : hoophouses! (I know them as “polytunnels”.)
Both items put a smile on my face.
Gerry
May 16, 2012
The flags and the hoophouses put a smile on my face, too. There are a lot of people of Dutch descent in Antrim County, but I doubt that the Open flags are a Dutch reference. Red white and blue are pretty popular colors in the U.S. too. 🙂
sybiln
May 16, 2012
Love the word “hoophouse” … very descriptive. I love the scent of greenhouses in the spring.
Gerry
May 16, 2012
There is nothing finer than the smell of growing things in spring.
Belinda
May 16, 2012
Yummy! My grandma use to make rhubarb pie and sauce. What a pie baker she was. She made pies for her church to sell at the fair in Petoskey.
Gerry
May 16, 2012
You are a lucky granddaughter. My grandma did many wonderful things, but she was not a pie baker by any stretch of the imagination. In this, as in so many ways, this particular little apple did not fall far from the family tree.
Joss
May 17, 2012
Lovely post today! I too have learned a new word, ‘hoophouses’. Plus, a new phrase, ‘the south end of the northbound horse’! Tell me, did you invent that yourself or is it from round there? I’m wishing more and more I’d studied American Literature instead of English at university. Never mind the wealth of rhubarb you have there, it’s the words…
Gerry
May 17, 2012
‘Morning Joss. I am so glad you enjoyed the post, and the American English as mangled Around Here. I did not invent the horse remark. It’s a fairly common phrase in certain circles – mainly circles in which a person wishes to make a rude remark without being actually profane. That suits me to a T.
The lovely thing about discovering things we wish we’d learned more about before is that we can go ahead and learn about them now. Except physics. I think it’s too late for me to learn physics. But economic history – that’s become a compelling subject. So if you want to study American literature . . .
Adventures of Tom Sawyer – http://www.gutenberg.org/files/74/74-h/74-h.htm
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – http://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm
shoreacres
May 17, 2012
I can remember my dear, sweet, pie-baking grandma saying these very words: “She’s as pretty as the south end of a horse going north”. Iowa, circa 1956 or so.
P.j. grath
May 17, 2012
Love it all–chickens, rhubarb, asparagus, forget-me-nots, and I’d have said so earlier if I’d not been on that slow home dial-up connection, which gives me an opportunity to practice patience. A virtue, right? Hope the pie was delicious! KNOW it was!
Gerry
May 17, 2012
I am sorry PJ – I resized these photos for optimum page-loading time, too. I’m going to do some other blog-keeping chores. Maybe we can get it working better. Meanwhile, I thank you for your patience.
Dawn
May 19, 2012
Oh wonderful! Did not know you could make a pie out of HoneyCrisp…but of course you can. I have rhubarb in the back yard. Time to harvest and bake a pie. Will mail you a slice. Neighbor lady brings me eggs occasionally. Sometimes we forget how good we have it.
Gerry
May 19, 2012
I will tell you a deep dark secret. I am not fond of the fabled Honeycrisp eaten out of hand–I like to munch on Macs and Galas–but Honeycrisp pie is an excellent treat. It makes good applesauce, too, with lots of cinnamon.
I look forward to the rhubarb pie. Isn’t it amazing how a sense of well-being springs from a sense of food abundance?
Dawn
May 19, 2012
I”m not fond of Honeycrip apples either…I thought I was the only one
Gerry
May 19, 2012
It will be our little secret. I promise you that made into pie with plenty of cinnamon . . . Honeycrisps are very good.