Update: This spring, a bald eagle was spotted catching a fish on Barton Pond.   In June, 2013 this bald eagle was photographed on a canoe trip from Baseline Lake to the Dexter-Huron Metropark.

Last year my wife saw a Bald Eagle fly north over the cornfield across from our place on Sutton Road.  Bald Eagles have been spotted three times in the southwest corner of the township.

Meanwhile, earlier this spring on Northfield Township's eastern border, a Bald Eagle was found fatally shot in Salem Township.  Late last year another Bald Eagle was found shot in Marion Township, on the northwest border of our neighbor, Hamburg Township.

This webpage tracks Bald Eagle sightings in Michigan.  If you've sighted an eagle, please mention it in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

Another large raptor, the Osprey, has been reintroduced to the Huron River.  This is the 2014 report of an Osprey tracking organization , with photos and nest locations.  There is at least one identified nest here in Northfield Township and I saw one June 9th flying over the Whitmore Lake Tavern.

What got me wondering about eagles was photographing apple blossums in my orchard.  I wanted a record of when each variety flowered.  The blossums varied in appearance, inspiring vague speculations about whether differences in coloring and patterning of mature apples mirrored differences between the blossums of the apple varieties.  Anyway, I was standing in a field holding a camera.  It had a telephoto lens already attached.  From behind me I heard the unmistakeable sound of a pair of Sandhill Cranes announcing their flight.  They flew directly overhead.  I aimed the camera.  I tried to locate them in the viewfinder.  I could not.  They were too fast or I was too slow.  Then they were past the treeline.  This reminded me of the bald eagle that my wife saw flying north over the neighbor's cornfield last year.  When that happened I didn't have a camera; I didn't even have my glasses.  I ran into the house for binoculars.  When I returned, the eagle was out of sight.  But one of you may have been quicker or luckier.  So...

 If you have a photo of local eagles and wouldn't mind sharing it with your neighbors, please send it to me, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Fortunately, apple trees can't fly:

Winter Banana

Read more: Eagles Sighted in Northfield Township

The Family Peach Farm That Became A Symbol Of The Food Revolution - NPR

"Epitaph for a Peach" was Peach Farmer Mas Masumoto's elegy for the kind of peach that "tasted great, like a peach is supposed to."   He later expanded this essay into a memoir of one year of life on his family farm.

"It hurts," he wrote, to see "flavor lost along with meaning."

Read more: Epitaph for a Peach

 Dear Mr. President,

"It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. ...

"With a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

"Rich or poor, countries struggling with soaring food prices are being forcibly reminded that food is a national-security issue. When a nation loses the ability to substantially feed itself, it is not only at the mercy of global commodity markets but of other governments as well. At issue is not only the availability of food, which may be held hostage by a hostile state, but its safety: as recent scandals in China demonstrate, we have little control over the safety of imported foods.

“In America, ... we have only about two million farmers left.… Farmland is being lost to development at a rate of 2,880 acres per day…. Nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil do.

"But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.”

- Michael Pollan, October 9, 2008, The New York Times

"Ann Adams and Liz Brensinger of New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, know a lot about tools. They both left careers in public health and nonprofit consulting to farm about 20 years ago, and it was through that experience that they began to see some gaps in the world of agricultural production — gender gaps, that is."

“At the farmers markets, we got together with other women producers or couples farming, and the topic of tools constantly came up,” says Adams. Women farmers said they felt they were too weak to work with certain tools and regularly expressed frustration with everything from roto-tillers to tractor hitches. But Adams and Brensinger decided weakness wasn’t the problem. “Some of the tools didn’t work because they were designed for men,” Adams adds. “We saw a need for a place where women could go for tools that work for their bodies.”

- Deborah Huso, Modern Farmer

Green Heron Tools.

Green Heron's alternative Tractor hitch system.

"Major land–use changes have occurred in the United States during the past 25 years. The total area of cropland, pastureland and rangeland decreased by 76 million acres in the lower 48 states from 1982 to 2003, while the total area of developed land increased by 36 million acres or 48%." - JunJei Wu, Choices  Read More...