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Gourmet Michigan products in unique gift baskets. Great tasting jams, dried cherries, chocolates, caramel corn, Michigan fudge, and much more.
Picking blueberries with your kids can be fun and challenging all at the same time. Our goal for today was 30 pounds of fresh-picked Michigan blueberries, but we fell short of that by just under 9 pounds. The picking was excellent out at Locke's Fruitful Acres near Decatur, Michigan and should last another three weeks or so according to the owner.
Read MoreI noticed an uptick in the number of people finding our humble little blog here when they searched for "picking blueberries" or "u-pick Michigan blueberries" and the like. So, I figured it must be that time again when one of the tastiest Michigan fruits were ripe for the picking. A quick call to our favorite local blueberry farm, Locke's Fruitful Acres, confirmed that the picking has indeed begun. One huge local blueberry producer here in southwest Michigan, Leduc Blueberries, will not be having u-pick this year due to "due to extreme winter conditions." My goal this year is to pick around 50 to 60 pounds of blueberries. I had joked about it earlier this spring with my wife as we ran out of frozen blueberries that we had picked last summer that this year we needed to pick at least enough to have one pound of blueberries a week all year long. So, that's the goal anyway.
Locke's said their picking season will last about three weeks so we'll be making a couple of trips over there. It's too hard to pick 60 pounds in one morning with a couple of kids running around. Picking about 30 pounds per visit is much easier. I'll post our results later in the week :).
The blueberry picking season got me thinking about my favorite fruit produced here in Michigan. I would say that blueberries are my absolute favorite. How about you? Vote in the poll for your favorite Michigan produced fruit.
[poll id="30"]
There's nothing quite like a small town celebration on the 4th of July. A parade where you wave at the participants, not just because they are waving but because you know them. Cookouts with families and kids staying up so late they are almost asleep by the time the fireworks begin.
As dusk begins to gather you slather up the kids with bug spray, grab some blankets, and stake out your favorite spot for a simple, yet beautiful, show. This year, there was added beauty due to a nearly full moon. As the fireworks show continued, the smoke from the fireworks drifted in front of the moon and gave it a reddish hue. See an example of the red moon.
I'll be putting up pictures from the parade later in the week, but here are the rest of the 4th of July photos.
I received a link to this commercial on twitter via MSUGreeen. While watching the commercial I saw that it featured Brian and Gary Walthers of Walther Farms. Their sign for Walthers Farms in the commercial looked familiar and I knew I had seen it before. Turns out it's a forehead slap moment for me as the farm is just up the road outside of Three Rivers, Michigan. Now I know why their sign looked SO familiar ;).
Read MoreOkay, so after a week and a half of summer weather we are back to the 60s and low 70s for a few days. This really reminds me of a book I read by Steve Hamilton called “A Stolen Season.” It's a mystery book set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the title speaks of a summer so cold it felt like someone stole the summer season.
If you enjoy reading mysteries and you haven't yet stumbled upon Steve Hamilton, do yourself a favor and pick up this book or any of his other books featuring the Alex McKnight character. All of the Alex McKnight books are set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Paradise, Michigan to be exact. At least that's the hometown for Alex. "A Stolen Season" was published in 2007 and is the most recent Alex McKnight novel.
Alex and his friend, Leon Prudell, rescue a trio of men from a boating accident on Lake Superior only to have the rescued men accuse them of stealing a lock box from their sinking boat. This opens up a can of worms that leads to Alex investigating the traffic of prescription pain meds from the Bay Mills Indian Reservation and the dangers Alex faces that eventually meet in a twisting and turning end.
Alex's travels in his mysteries take him all across the U.P. And occasionally down to his former hometown of Detroit where he served as a cop before getting shot in the line of duty. He still carries that bullet as it is lodged dangerously close to his heart. Too close for surgery to remove it.
There are seven Alex McKnight books with another one currently in the works. Steve Hamilton really captures the essence of the Upper Peninsula in his books. The beauty, wonderful people, and harsh elements are laid out for you in a way that makes you feel like you are right there. I would say that the Upper Peninsula itself is a character in each of the Alex McKnight books. A number of times McKnight battles the elements in addition to his foes in the stories.
Steve Hamilton had his novel Winter of the Wolf Moon honored by placement on the annual Michigan Notable Books list in 2000. The list honors the top 20 fiction and non-fiction titles that either take place in Michigan, are about Michigan, or were written by someone from Michigan. View the most recent lists of Michigan Notable Books. In 2006 Steve Hamilton won the Michigan Author award based on his “contributions to literature, based on an outstanding published body of work.”
Here's the complete list of the seven Alex McKnight mystery novels:
Note: This is the Third and Final post about our vacation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula We had a great time traveling around the Upper Peninsula for a week (which is far too short a time to see all of it). My one real regret is that we ran out of time to see Pictured Rocks. We'll just have to save that for another trip, I guess.
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