Majestic Outdoorscapes

About Majestic Outdoorscapes

Kouts sits on ground that used to be marsh — the old Kankakee wetlands, drained and ditched a century ago into some of the flattest, blackest farmland in Porter County — and that same open horizon is what Majestic Outdoorscapes works against all winter. With nothing to break the wind for miles, a snow that falls an inch deep in town can pile into a two-foot drift across a rural lane before the plow ever gets there, so the routes here run early and often. The muck soil that grows onions and mint so well in summer freezes iron-hard by January, holding a clean plow edge better than sandier ground ever could. There's a specific kind of quiet out on those drainage-ditch roads before dawn, headlights the only movement across miles of stubble field and frozen black dirt, until a driveway appears clear at the end of a long lane. By the time the sun clears the flat horizon, the farmsteads and small-town streets of Kouts run clear and white-edged, black dirt fields stretching empty in every direction beneath a sky still heavy with more weather on the way.