Making bread and new friends
At least two things are special about Carla Drake's bread recipe: olive oil instead of shortening and honey instead of sugar.
After I wrote a column about my love affair with bread, David Drake wrote: "My wife bakes whole wheat bread with extra grains. ... We would love to share a loaf. ..."
"I'd rather have her teach me," I said in a phone call.
I ended up, as you may have read in Tuesday's column, with not only a baking lesson, but a tour of the North Jackson farmlands they call home.
The Drakes inherited their 100 acres from Drake's parents. In a small room in their home, there is a picture of his father.
"He was a big man, 300 pounds," Drake, 74, said. "His parents fell on hard times and left him at a farm in Michigan when he was 11. At 15, he came back to Jackson, but they sent him back to Michigan. At Christmas that year, he came back again and said he wasn't going to leave. His father told him he didn't have room for him, but he would make room. That night he spent at the YMCA for 50 cents."
Other memorabilia
Also on the wall of the room are pictures of their three children and grandchildren, and memorabilia including a certificate. "I was one of the co-founders of the Jackson volunteer fire department," Drake said. "I was with them for 30 years." The same number of years he was with Republic Steel.
Also in the room is a yellowing, brittle photogravure section from an antique Vindicator, which featured their maple sugar camp. Later that morning, Drake would take me out in his pickup and show me the maple trees where it had been held.
He also showed me other sites in his "neighborhood" as the bread dough rose.
Our first stop was the hay barn, which I wrote about in Tuesday's column. In addition to its 50-foot hand-hewn beams, it has a strange cutout in the side of its hay bin. "My dad cut that hole," Drake said. "He said, 'I'll be darned if I'm climbing over the wall all the time.' He used to say, 'A fat guy uses his head,'" Drake said with a laugh.
Friendly neighbors
Up the road, we met his neighbor Earl Steadman, whose stable holds racehorses, one of which recently placed second. There were six or seven of the beautiful horses, only one of which was "a biter." Even so, Steadman revealed a bruise on his upper arm from earlier in the week, when a nonbiter gave him a squeeze. "Be careful."
Three of the horses had foals, spindly legged little things whose mothers gently hovered over them when Steadman showed them off to the "stranger."
Back in the pickup, we passed fields and homes and Drake gave me the lowdown on his neighbors. "Over there is a pony farm," he said, pointing out the window. Those are loafin' sheds for the cattle. Those are in-ground silos."
We drove up to "the Grahams' place" where Ted Graham led us along soggy paths into a barn to see rows and rows of cows -- more than 500 head, a sea of black and white heads and necks -- eating hay. They'll produce about 33,000 pounds of milk a day, in addition to a smell you want to be upwind of.
We hopped back into the pickup, but not before seeing a golden retriever sprawled on the front seat of a golf cart, his paws and legs muddy from a busy morning.
Trust
Up the road, Drake showed me the land he leases to a neighbor. "We lease it, not even on a handshake. They know me and I know them and that's the way it should be," he said.
Other things have changed, like the farmlands he used to "roam as a boy" which are now the manicured lawns of an industrial park. "Now you hear the trucks backing up and beeping all night long. All I ever heard growing up was a cow mooing or a dog barking. That's gone."
The rest of the afternoon was spent chatting, and pounding down dough, letting it rise, enjoying a healthful lunch (Drake's recovery from cancer has influenced their menu, perhaps) and finally, baking.
And, lo and behold, I did it. The loaves did not survive a single evening in my home -- that's how good a teacher Carla was.
murphy@vindy.com