Visiting Bill and Shelley

I had SUCH a nice day on Saturday... after sleeping late (yay!), I headed down to Grand Rapids to visit Bill and Shelley.

They are such warm and friendly people... very laid back and casual... I felt very much at ease and at home with them. We hung out, talked, played music, talked some more.

Shelley raises meat rabbits... She gave me a tour of her small rabbitry...the spotted one in the picture is her breeding doe. The dark one is one that they're keeping and not eating. Her motivation is about eating locally, organically, and that meat should come from animals that have been treated humanely. She used to get chickens from a local supplier... who stopped supplying and so she decided to do this. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it myself... especially the butchering... but I respect the choice and the motivation. I think that those of us who eat meat ought to be more aware of what that actually means. And she cooked rabbit fajitas for us for dinner, and it was delicious.

Bill has a wonderful collection of instruments, and it was so much fun to sample and pass and play many of them, and to share my own as well. He plays guitar, mandolin and octave mandolin, like me. Shelley plays flute and pennywhistle and bodhran. Both are quite good. And both sing some too. I had a grand time. I hope they did too... and I certainly plan to visit them again and spend more time there. They are really good folks, and even though I was there for hours, we still did not get to say or play all of the things we wanted to.

They also have a sweet golden retriever named Clara... I miss my own dogs so much, it was nice spending time with her too.