Entries by editor

New restaurant Farm Club builds reverence for the land

“I’m excited about eating everything right now. It’s August,” smiles farmer Nic Theisen as he suppresses a giggle. “I’m eating lots of tomatoes. That’s exciting. Now that coolness is on the horizon, one of my favorite things is ratatouille. When there are piles of eggplant, piles of zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and onions, ratatouille will be on the menu. It will be the best ratatouille this side of the mud river. Nic and his partner Sara, who own Loma Farm, have teamed up with Gary and Allison Jonas, owners of The Little Fleet in Traverse City, to open Leelanau County’s newest restaurant, Farm Club, on a southward facing hill in Elmwood Township.

/by

COVID claustrophobia plus summer heat combine for record month at Sleeping Bear Dunes

Nearly 600,000 people visited our National Lakeshore last month (the exact number was 592,404)—sprinting by the previous monthly record of 561,784 from July 2017, like a happy teenager gaining speed as they descend the face of the Dune Climb.

/by

Slow down, stop racism, fight for equity

“We have a geographic implicit bias right here in our county, where the highway was built upon a village,” said Melissa Petoskey on Aug. 19 as cars zoomed by on M-22, seemingly unaware that they were driving through a tribal reservation between Suttons Bay and Northport. Petoskey is the human relations executive for the Grand Traverse Band. “There’s no reduction in speed limit here. We’re the only village in Leelanau County without a reduction in speed.

/by

Sleeping Bear Gateways study shows need for seasonal workforce housing

Each summer, more than 1,000 workers look for seasonal housing in order to take jobs in Leelanau and Benzie Counties, according to a new study funded by the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council. Businesses in gateway communities from Glen Arbor to Thompsonville say the lack of housing for summer employees may limit the services they can offer their customers.

/by

Reporting from the most beautiful newspaper delivery route in the world

What it’s like to launch, edit, and write your own small-town newspaper. This story was originally published in The Boardman Review.

/by

Riding Out the Pandemic

By Kathleen Stocking Sun contributor March is a dead month in Northern Michigan. In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, the snow fell like little gray feathers for days.  I live in housing for senior citizens in Traverse City, a tiny apartment two blocks from Grand Traverse Bay. Older people with underlying health conditions, we were […]

/by

Adapting to COVID: Leland’s Bluebird moves outdoors, reclaims parking lot

As the State-mandated closing of all restaurants eased up over Memorial Day, business owners scrambled to come up with solutions for this topsy turvy summer season, knowing full well that indoor seating would be either eliminated or reduced dramatically in their desire to serve safely. For Skip Telgard, owner of The Blue Bird and The Early Bird in Leland, opened 80 years ago by his grandfather and ever since beloved fixtures in the county, the solution materialized through a phone call from the State Liquor Control Commission.

/by

Using riprap rock to save a lawn on Glen Lake

Michelle and Greg Christensen bought their house on the east side of Big Glen Lake in September 2016, when they still had a sandy beach. Within a couple years the rising water had claimed the beach and threatened to erode and devour their grass lawn. They hired Len Allgaier of Peninsula Pavers in 2018 to install stone riprap to protect their lawn.

/by

Private beach wall could dramatically change Empire shoreline

The Storm Hill Homeowners Association, whose properties are located on the high ground between Empire’s public beach and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s Empire Bluff, applied in June to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to armor the base of their bluff near the shoreline with a 740-foot-long steel seawall along 6 properties—that’s the length equivalent of 2.5 football fields.

/by

Fight COVID. Fight plastic. Wear cloth masks.

Invasive PPE masks routinely defile oceans but rarely the Glen Lakes. “Fight invaders,” says Jack Beam. “Fight COVID. Fight plastic. Wear washable cloth masks.”

/by