How the Culvers Found Their Niche

The early morning scene in the Middlebury, Indiana, farmhouse, just 10 miles from the Michigan border, could have been painted by Norman Rockwell. While Marilyn Culver, 61, bustles about her modern kitchen, whipping up a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, and coffee, her 65-year-old husband, Herb, chats in the adjoining room with son Burt, 39. Herb is talking about a proposed new ultrasound device that could take the guesswork out of duck farming: “The day will come,” he says, “when you can hang ducks on a line, point a machine at them, and it'll tell you which ones have the best ratio of meat to fat.”

Burt mentions a new truck driver they've just hired for the farm: “He plays classical piano!” The Culvers' son-in-law, 33-year-old Tim Rouch, arrives to announce that a heifer on his farm is having difficulty giving birth, which means that Tim may have to make the 23-mile run back home before the morning's out. On this muddy, early spring morning, both Burt and Tim are dressed in heavy work clothes — and stockinged feet, in keeping with an unspoken Culver household ritual: Family members arrive in pickup trucks, enter the house through the garage, wipe their workboots in an entry passageway, and then remove them in a second passageway before entering the living quarters proper.

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