Area farmer reads ‘Santa’s Reindeer Hay’
BY GARY GOULD
810-452-2650 • ggould@mihomepaper.com
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v343/FMGruber/2012%20FAll/Santasread.jpg
Fernan Gruber Jr. reads his Christmas book, “Santa’s Reindeer Hay,” to a group of children and adults at the Burton Memorial Library, Dec. 8. Photo by Gary Gould OTISVILLE — Ever wonder how Santa Claus feeds his reindeer yearround when it’s impossible to grow hay at the North Pole?
Otisville farmer Fernan Gruber, Jr., who resembles a slimmed down Santa himself, once heard a mother tell her two children Gruber was indeed the jolly old elf driving his tractor along a road one summer day with a load of hay in the trailers behind him.
“How do you think Santa feeds his reindeer?” Gruber said he remembers her asking the children. “It goes to show you, you never know where you might see Santa Claus.”
That chance encounter 18 years ago prompted Gruber, who operates a cattle farm in Mt. Morris near Otisville, to write a children’s book titled “Santa’s Reindeer Hay.”
He recently read the book to a group of children and adults at the Burton Memorial Library, G-4012 E. Atherton Rd., something he said he’s never done before.
“This will be my first time reading it aloud to anyone,” he said.
Gruber, 76, said the tale is a yearround Christmas story he thinks people of all-ages will enjoy.
Gruber said he wrote the story and did the initial sketches which were later finished and painted by Indianapolis-artist Floyd Yamyamin. The young girl in the story is fashioned to look like Gruber’s own grand-daughter, who is now grown.
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