What is Hoot Owl Manor?

Hoot Owl Manor is 10 acres of vacant land in Michigan. (You are welcome to camp on it, but please contact me in advance for permission.) I can tell you where it is, and also give you an idea of the lay of the land.

Hoot Owl Manor used to be a Christmas tree farm. The Christmas tree farm grew Scotch pine, which are the dominant trees on the property at this time. Other trees on the property include quaking aspen ("popples") and pin cherry. Both the aspen and the cherry trees are known to be some of the first tree species to start growing on disturbed sites (such as after a fire, or after a Christmas tree farm has been harvested).

There are a couple other trees. I saw at least one maple, three apples trees, and my friends and I planted 100 white spruce and 100 red pine. Unfortunately, most of the white spruce and red pine died. You can still see a few of the little guys around, mostly around the perimeter and on Coyote Hill. The apples presumably grew from seeds left by previous visitors, and are therefore sour (since commercially-grown apple types are more-or-less clones of one another, a branch of a "scion" grafted onto rootstock).

There are some cute signs on Hoot Owl Manor that say things like "Coyote Hill" and "Bear Den" and "Hare Hideout." There were signs about deer and snakes, too, but the lettering has worn off and I don't remember exactly what they said. These signs were put up by the previous owners. I have never seen a bear, or a coyote, or a rabbit on the property. I have seen a wide variety of birds, and some white-tail deer. Oh, and bugs. Insects and spiders galore.

One of the more interesting aspects of Hoot Owl Manor is the prolific lichen that covers much of the property. Deer lichen is the most common, although there are some matchstick lichen there as well. Lichen is a mutually beneficial sybiosis between a fungus and an alga. Supposedly they grow at a rate of only 1-2 mm per year, which means some of the lichen are easily 25-50 years old.

There are several sites on Hoot Owl Manor good for camping. One of them already has a fire ring set up. This was probably used by the previous owners, who used to park a camp trailer there in the summers.

There is a man who lives across the street from Hoot Owl Manor named Erv (or maybe Irv), which I'm pretty sure is short for Ervin (such was painted on the plywood bed of one of his Dodge pickup trucks). He's probably about 50 or so. He's a hard-working man with a fondness for storytelling, and he is a wealth of stories about the area. He was born on Hoot Owl Manor, and is happy to point out that he knocked down the house there that his father had built, and that when his daddy died he knocked down every building his father ever built. This grudge apparently stems from a fight they had in 1975, when his father was armed with a piece of pipe, and he with a two-by-four. He has stories about cooking porcupine, cutting rolling tobacco with maple leaves to make it last longer, going half-blind from bad moonshine, and eating cattail pancakes. He's often wearing a hardhat, under which he keeps a little bit of hair and a pack of cigarettes. Erv is a great guy, but some may find his manners a little rough.

I have often daydreamed of putting something permanent or semi-permanent on Hoot Owl Manor, such as a yurt or a private 9-hole miniature golf course. Before you go camping, you should know that there are no amenities: there is no running water on site, and there are no restrooms.