Dan and Linda Downs had an easy time scheduling this year’s Christmas open house at Pine Acres Reindeer Farm for Dec. 22 — turns out, it’s the only Saturday before Christmas that their reindeer weren’t already booked. “We’re busy taking reindeer to events throughout Ohio from Thanksgiving through Christmas,” Dan Downs says.
Successful individuals often amass museum-worthy collections reflecting their interests — works of art, luxury cars, fine wines, even historic structures. While Libbey’s glass earnings launched the Toledo Museum of Art and Ford’s automobile funds built Greenfield Village, Pure Oil Company President Beman Dawes pursued a more down-to-earth passion: He collected trees.
While driving to an alpaca show in Kentucky a few years ago, Debbie Patonai and Spencer Reames decided to listen to music on their cargo van’s radio. Among the alpacas they were transporting that day was Phlint, a male who spontaneously started singing along with the radio. “Phlint sang all the way to Louisville,” says Patonai. “He kept making his humming noise, and whenever we changed the station, Phlint hummed differently.”
Not many people get excited upon seeing a rat, at least, not in a positive way. But there is a group of folks in southern Ohio who go absolutely giddy when spotting one. They are wildlife researchers, and the object of their ardor is the Allegheny woodrat, a state-endangered species.
I had the opportunity to tag along with this group of dedicated wildlife biologists on a perfect early-fall day. The prior evening, they had set more than 50 live traps in a steep, heavily wooded valley in the sprawling Edge of Appalachia preserve in Adams County, near the Ohio River.
Belgians — those big draft horses with gentle dispositions — are beautiful. Just ask brothers George and Ted Barhorst of Fort Loramie. The Barhorst family was honored at the 2017 Ohio State Fair for 75 years of showing Belgian horses. Their grandfather, Bernard Barhorst, started the tradition, which continues today.
“I don’t ever remember a time when we didn’t raise, breed, and show Belgians,” Ted says. “We have 12 of them right now.”
North America’s prairies once stretched from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains east into western Ohio, a staggering 1 million square miles or more of native grasslands that covered a third to nearly half of our country.
But what took millennia to develop disappeared in only half a century. The transformation began in 1833, when John Lane Sr. created the polished-steel, self-scouring plow, which could penetrate heavy prairie soils. A fellow blacksmith then improved upon Lane’s original design and marketed the new plow aggressively. That second blacksmith was John Deere.
Some of the best birding in all of North America takes place in the marshes, seasonal wetlands, and swamp forests bordering western Lake Erie. At the heart of that region sits Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), home to everything from huge trumpeter swans with 8-foot wingspans to tiny, colorful wood warblers weighing mere ounces.
I admit it: I’m hooked on fishing. Like most addicts, I like to believe I can quit at any time — just walk away. But deep down I know that’s not true. We fishermen even have an expression to explain our illness: “The tug is the drug.”
Last April, for instance, I was fishing the Detroit River, which is always cold in early spring. Even though the air temperature was in the low 50s that morning, high winds had 2-foot waves white-capping the 42-degree water, and it felt like winter.
