Back-to-earth movement gets bigger by one.

Byline: Sid McKeen

COLUMN: WRY AND GINGER

Mother Nature being the jokester that she is, the news came through last Tuesday - April Fools' Day. Suddenly, just like that, we were first-time great-grandparents.

I'm sure it didn't seem all that sudden to my granddaughter Bridget, who had spent the customary nine months getting ready for the birth of her first child. The result is a healthy and beautiful (I haven't yet seen her) girl with a headful of dark hair, who weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds, 11 ounces.

Nothing I know of can make you feel more of a senior citizen than learning that your son has become a grandfather.

This baby will be a second generation back-to-the-lander. She will be raised on a farm in a mid-Maine rural community, and grow up among the children of others who began flocking to the Pine Tree State in the turbulent '60s and '70s to get away from the hustle, bustle and commercial and corporate influence of urban America.

Her mom and dad G.W. are both throwbacks to an earlier time - when people raised their own animals and produce, worked the land, made their own clothes, bartered rather than shopped and enjoyed life's simpler pleasures. They are among the fast-growing group known as "locavores" - folks who propose that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius.

None of this is new for them. I recall a trip we made a few years ago from Vermont to Maine, with Bridget in tow, and the three of us needed to stop and eat. Each time we encountered a McDonald's or Burger King, she stoutly refused to go inside, opting to wait for a mom-and-pop restaurant, even if it meant going hungry. She would have balked just as strongly at a Wal-Mart.

In preparation for the blessed event, Bridget has spent much of her time collecting pieces of used cloth from friends, relatives and thrift stores and sewing them into baby clothes and cloth diapers. She ought to write a book, and she may at that. In December, she finished up college with a major in environmental writing. For the last year, she has been writing articles about country homemaking for a newspaper edited by G.W. that is circulated to homesteaders, and illustrating them with her own patterns.

Mom and dad are literally surrounded by horses, mules, cows, goats, sheep and chickens, all of whom are counted on to pull their share of the load in keeping the household productive.

Typical of the little family's lifestyle, the baby was delivered at home at 1:20 in the afternoon by a pair of midwives and a midwifery intern. And not in bed, but with mama ensconced in a huge tub of warm water - a tub normally used to feed livestock, fitted out with a plastic liner - and cheered heartily on by nearly a dozen family members and close supporters.

A few weeks earlier, well over a hundred men and women had gathered in a nearby grange hall for a potluck supper in honor of the parents-to-be. They brought musical instruments and joined in a rousing afternoon and evening of celebration. The performers included Mom herself, huge with child, belting away on her button accordion.

If it truly does take a village to raise a child, this one is off to one heck of a start. Good luck, babe!

Sid McKeen can be reached at [e-mail].