Families spend Mother’s Day down on the farm

By Doug Carder, dcarder@miconews.com

Cy Aiken inspects his blackberry plants at Cy and Dee’s Blackberries U-pick farm southeast of Louisburg on Rockville Road. The Aiken farm was one of eight stops on the Miami County Farm Tour last weekend. (Photo by Doug Carder /dcarder@miconews.com)

This little lady’s big doe eyes turned the heads of more than one infatuated boy this weekend. She wasn’t all curls and frills, but the pet Hereford, of sorts, on the Silver Lining Hereford ranch southwest of Louisburg stopped youngsters in their tracks every time.

“She’s very gentle. I knew she would be a big hit. Kids love to pet her,” said owner Gerald Silvers. He and his wife, Marlyn, entertained dozens of guests this weekend as one of the eight stops on the annual Miami County Farm Tour.

“Her name is Little Lady. She was born last Feb. 23 during an ice storm,” Silvers said. “She about froze to death, so we brought her inside the house and kept her warm, and we put her out with her mom the next day. The tips of her ears froze, but that was it ... she’s kind of like the family pet.”

The young Bond brothers, Spencer, Carter and Colin, laughed as they fed handfuls of hay to the contented Hereford, who would swirl her long tongue around the hay like an anteater.

“The boys are having a blast,” said their dad, Michael Bond of Spring Hill. “It’s nice to come out here. We hope to move to the country someday.”

The Bonds were treating mom, Lynda, to a Mother’s Day on the farm on this blustery Sunday afternoon.

The family leaned against a cattle pen as they watched several pairs of cows and calves at feeding time.

“When do they take a bath?” Carter asked of the young calves.

Lynda laughed and affectionately put her hand on Carter’s head. “You can’t tell we live in town.”

Over on Rockville Road on the eastern edge of Louisburg, Cy and Dee Aiken were serving blackberry cobbler and homemade ice cream to visitors at their U-Pick farm, Cy and Dee’s Blackberries.

Clad in denim overalls, the retired Cy Aiken explained how the drip irrigation system feeds a half-gallon of water per hour to his 800 blackberry plants.

Each plant produces four or five quarts of blackberries during picking season from mid-July through August, Aiken explained as he dipped up a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream from the churn and plopped it onto a generous piece of cobbler.

South of Somerset, visitors were enjoying a different kind of fruity concoction at the award-winning Somerset Ridge Vineyard & Winery. Tour-goers stood five and six deep as they milled about the retail space — selecting bottles from the luxurious wooden shelves or stepping up to the polished bar to sample a variety of red and white wines.

John Wuelzer of rural Paola hefted a case of wine while his wife, Kris, looked over the cheeses on display.

“My favorite is the Oktoberfest wine,” Wuelzer said.

Bill Jonte, a first-time visitor from Kansas City, Mo., also bought a bottle of Oktoberfest along with three other wines. The winery was one of several stops his family had already made on the farm tour.

“We’re having a great time,” said Jonte, who found out about the farm tour from a friend who works in Miami County. “We’d do this again.”

As the Jonte entourage headed down the landscaped pathway outside the winery, they were greeted by another carload of visitors.

“The tour is great for us,” winery co-owner Dennis Reynolds said. “It really is the first event to kick off the new season.”

Dee Martin said the tour has been wonderful for the Martin’s 4 D Acres emu farm, perched on a hillside overlooking grassy pastures southwest of Louisburg.

“We had 140 visitors on Saturday; that was the best single day we’ve ever had on the farm tour,” she said Sunday afternoon. “And we were in a tornado watch most of the day. We even had one family out here in the rain yesterday. They said, ‘The brochure said rain or shine, so here we are.’ The little girls walked around with their umbrellas.

“People were worried about having the tour on Mother’s Day, but I wasn’t,” Martin mused. “It gets the kids out of the house to have some fun. And if the kids are happy, Mom is happy.”