we got oustanding feedback because of excellent Betty MacDonald fan club newsletter May with so many fascinating info.
Betty MacDonald fan club newsletter June includes new oustanding info on Betty MacDonald's very mysterious and strange lady Dorita Hess.
If you are interested in joining this Betty MacDonald and Dorita Hess project you are welcome.
Send a message to our contact
address, please and you'll hear from Lars, Mats, James, Britta and the
other members of this very successful Betty MacDonald fan club research
team.
Great Betty MacDonald fan club news!
We are going to publish some new Betty MacDonald fan club interviews by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.
Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography.
Good luck dear Wolfgang Hampel and team!
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli will be back soon with some more huge surprises for his fans in 5 continents.
Don't miss a new breakfast with Brad and Nick at the bookstore, please.
Good luck dear Wolfgang Hampel and team!
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli will be back soon with some more huge surprises for his fans in 5 continents.
Don't miss a new breakfast with Brad and Nick at the bookstore, please.
It's a tragedy.
Yours,
Michael
Don't miss this very special book, please.
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald fan clubBetty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles
ath: HOME » NEWS
In the footsteps of Betty MacDonald: New owners take on rural life with Egg and I Farm
Phil Vogelzang takes down cattle fencing on the Chimacum farm
where "The Egg and I" author Betty MacDonald lived in the 1920s.
Vogelzang purchased the property with three family members in mid-March
from Pat and Jess Bondurant, who raised beef cattle. -- Photo by
Jennifer Jackson/Peninsula Daily News
By Jennifer Jackson, Peninsula Daily News
Print This |
Email This
Most Popular this week
CHIMACUM — If you had asked Phil Vogelzang a year ago if he'd ever heard of Betty MacDonald, he'd have said no.Ma and Pa Kettle?
Rings a faint bell, he would have answered.
So when Vogelzang, 49, saw a listing for a 20-acre farm for sale on Egg and I Road, he had no clue where the name came from.
"I thought, 'That's a funny name for a road," he said.
Vogelzang is now a lot more familiar with Betty MacDonald, having purchased, along with family members, the farm where the author of The Egg and I lived in the late 1920s.
The new owners have named their purchase the Egg and I Farm after the book, and in some ways, are following in the footsteps of its former owner.
The daughter of a mining engineer, she was born Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard on March 26, 1907, in Boulder, Colo.
After graduating from Roosevelt High School in Seattle, she moved with her mother to the Chimacum Valley after her father died.
In 1927, she married Robert Heskett with whom she had two children. They divorced in 1935, and she married Donald C. MacDonald in 1942.
The couple moved to Vashon Island, and starting with The Egg and I, published in 1945, MacDonald wrote three other books based on her life, plus the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series for children.
She died of cancer in Seattle in 1958 at age of 50.
Flash forward 50 years to 2008 and the new owners of the homestead that inspired MacDonald to write The Egg and I.
"We're rank beginners," Vogelzang said of farming. "We have no experience."
Located on a ridge between Beaver Valley and Center Road, the farm was a homestead with 40 acres when 19-year-old Betty Bard married Heskett.
Heskett's dream — to become the egg czar of Puget Sound — crashed and burned along with the marriage, an experience his ex-wife turned to humorous account in a novel 20 years later.
The goal of the new owners — Vogelzang and spouse, Katy McCoy, her sister, Melinda McCoy and husband, Peter — is less grandiose.
They want to grow as much of their own food as possible.
They're thinking vegetable gardens, fruit trees, maybe even a cow.
And of course, chickens.
"Certainly eggs and chickens will be in the mix," Vogelzang said.
The house that Betty lived in is long gone, but Egg and I fans continued to knock on the door of Jess and Pat Bondurant, the farm's former owners who lived there 32 years.
The book is especially popular in Europe — Germany has the largest Betty MacDonald fan club in the world — and Pat Bondurant has had phone calls from Heidelberg, inviting her and her husband to fly over and help celebrate the author's birthday.
Last fall, BBC Radio 4 sent a program staff member from England to Chimacum to tape interviews with Pat Bondurant and longtime Chimacum residents, Aldena Bishop and George Huntingford.
Family members moving
Members of the family who has purchased the farm will move there this summer, when Peter Walchenbach. a special education teacher at Ocosta High School, finishes the school year.
He'll be moving with his wife, Melinda McCoy, daughter Flora, 7, and son Oscar, 5.
Vogelzang, a radiologist, and wife, Katy, a physician-turned-artist, plan to come over from Seattle as much as possible, he said.
"Peter and I have been looking for property where we can farm on a small scale," Vogelzang said.
"It's sort of our dream."
Vogelzang said he never considered that their "quiet little parcel in the country" would have a theme other than local, sustainable food production.
But since learning that the farm had a literary history, he has been learning more about Betty MacDonald, and he has been thinking about ways to work with the heritage she left.
"Peter and Melinda are the kind of people who will embrace it, and welcome people," he said.
MacDonald connections
Vogelzang was also surprised to find a connection between MacDonald and his wife's family.
Both lived in Laurelhurst, a Seattle neighborhood where the McCoy family settled.
And on his side of the family, who are Dutch, he does have some agricultural background — he comes from a long line of pig farmers, he said.
The son of a Dutch Christian Reform minister, he spent his high school years in Sheldon, Iowa, where he did menial labor on farms, mostly with livestock.
While Vogelzang has not seen "The Egg and I" movie yet, he has read the book with an eye to what kind of vegetables and fruits the family grew in the 1920s.
"If you read what they produced on the farm, it's quite remarkable," he said.
"If they can do it, we can do it."
Vogelzang said that, in the end, the farm is a legacy for his niece and nephew, who he hopes will get involved in 4-H, as well as take an active role in the farm's operation.
In the meantime, he and the adults plan to enjoy the peace and quiet, the fresh food and the sense of accomplishment that comes from growing your own food.
In other words, they plan to find the peace and happiness that eluded Betty MacDonald when she came to the farm as a young wife with no idea of what she was getting into.
"We've thought it out," Vogelzang said, "and we plan to be here a lot longer than Betty."
The legacy of The Egg and I on East Jefferson County extends beyond the homestead in Chimacum into the Victorian storefronts of Port Townsend 12 miles north.
Last modified: March 25. 2008 9:00PM
