Gee Farms Michigan kicks off this new series — Rooted on the Road — part travel, part plant therapy, and entirely our kind of chaos. It’s for the plant-obsessed, tiny-living crowd chasing greenery wherever the road takes us. Every visit starts with “we’ll just look” and ends with us making space in the bus for something leafy and new.
The Day We Adopted Potatoes Instead of Plants
We woke up to icy dew, the kind that makes your hands sting and your coffee earn its keep. Our ragdoll cat trotted in with a frozen tail and a smug look like he’d just discovered winter. Before anyone panics: he has full access to the bus 24/7. Doors open, heat on, bed available. He simply chooses to be an outdoor adventurer until his tail reminds him he’s domesticated.
Coffee in hand, we pointed toward Gee Farms Michigan with giddy plant-shop energy. It had been weeks since we let ourselves splurge on a houseplant, and their Harvest Hosts listing specifically said “exotic houseplants.” So, yeah — those words were living rent-free in our heads the entire drive. I was already clearing imaginary shelf space in our 200 square feet, practicing the line, “we’ll make it fit,” with a straight face.
The drive in was quiet, paved roads and farm smells — hay and compost, with a side of early morning chill. But before we even made that turn, we could see the rows of greenhouses peeking over the fields like a preview of plant heaven.
We turned onto Bunkerhill Road and landed right in the middle of the farm’s rhythm — retail on the right, working operation on the left. The road was streaked with dried mud from tractors, the kind that clings to boots and tires in solid chunks. It felt alive and busy in that “people actually work here” way.
Zero Houseplants.
Not one pothos.
Not one philodendron.
Hoyas? I don’t even want to talk about it.
A Fall Day at Gee Farms Michigan
Instead of rows of houseplants, we walked into a barn that screamed fall — pumpkins piled in lopsided stacks, mums in every shade of red Michigan grows, a few yellows hanging on like they missed the memo. It smelled like hay and compost and hard work. Tractors rumbled in the background, hauling trees with those root-ball grabbers that look like something out of a Jurassic Park landscaping crew.
Once the “no houseplants” shock wore off, it was actually kind of nice — slower, simpler, the kind of place that doesn’t need to impress you to be worth the stop.
The Little Market That Saved the Day
The little market felt like what happens when a mom-and-pop idea grows up right — fluorescent lights doing their honest best, mismatched shelves, and that whoosh of cold air every time the door opened.
And that’s where it happened. I saw the potatoes.
We’ve been hunting for potatoes for weeks — we don’t do grocery stores for vegetables right now, just farmstands and markets — so a potato sighting isn’t guaranteed.
I said, out loud, “Hell YEAH! POTATOES!” like it was Black Friday and I’d found the last air fryer.
And then Zach spotted the half-peck baskets. He moved like a man who had trained for this exact moment. He swooped in with alarming confidence, grabbed the half-peck, and in that second became the Potato King. I should’ve crowned him with a produce sticker on the spot.
The Wind Chime Debate (An Ongoing Saga)
The store also had wind chimes. Every time we see wind chimes, Zach thinks we’re taking them home. And every time I remind him: we live in a bus. There is no safe place to hang giant metal chimes. They would either:
- Manifest themselves into an epic spiderweb of echoing pipes.
- Become a traveling percussion section we can’t escape.
So we left the chimes. This time.
The Dog That Chose Us
Outside, we met the farm dog — apparently, she greets everyone. She walked straight up, tail wagging slow, like she’d decided we were her people for the afternoon.
I gave her a few head pats and told her she was a good big girl. Zach went full “dog whisperer,” down on one knee, chatting like they’d known each other forever.
We also grabbed a bag of freeze-dried chicken feet for our own two — both absolutely unbothered by how weird they look. They were a HIT!
Golden Hour Out in the Field
Later that evening, we were half-watching Guy’s Grocery Games when I noticed the light outside turning that “oh crap, it’s happening again” kind of golden. We’d almost missed it — just like we did back in Holly, Michigan when we overslept.
We grabbed the pups, threw on whatever layers were closest, and stepped out into that almost-November cold. The light was bright, the air was sharp, and for once, we caught the timing right.
We’re just two weirdos in crazy socks, trying not to miss the good stuff when it shows up.
The Wrap-Up
Bus life has a funny way of making you forget who’s actually driving. One day you wake up in a new spot and realize you didn’t really decide to get there — you just rolled along until the next turn. So we’re trying something different: a once-a-month “where do we actually want to go?” check-in, with coffee, maps, and maybe some mild arguing about mileage.
Gee Farms runs like it knows exactly what it is — steady, practical, simple in the best way. That stuck with us.
The day had weight, too. We’ve been looking for one of our cats for weeks now. She’s chipped, posted, shared — everything. But she didn’t come back. And it’s getting too cold to wait much longer. It’s a weird kind of heartbreak, having to leave without her.
So yeah, it wasn’t the plant-filled stop we thought we were getting. But it still mattered. The dog, the mud, the potatoes — all of it. It was real, and that’s enough.
No new hoyas.
But potatoes? Potatoes we can work with. 🥔
Before We Roll Out
Staying overnight here through our Harvest Hosts membership was a reminder that the simplest stops usually end up being the ones we talk about months later. No gimmicks. No crowds. Just a farm, a dog, and a half-peck of potatoes that turned into a story.
This visit officially kicked off our new series, Rooted on the Road — where we visit nurseries, greenhouses, and plant-related spots that make bus life a little greener (and sometimes muddier).
Want more from the road? Catch our small-town detour at Holly, Michigan’s Water Towers or jump over to Johnson’s Pumpkin Farm — the post that accidentally launched the Hot Cocoa Rating System.