Empire holds its fifth annual Artisan Marketplace on Saturday, Nov. 24 from noon-5 p.m. at the Township Hall. This is an excellent opportunity to shop local for your Christmas gifts.
Beat the winter doldrums by joining Empire, Mich.-based Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate for a fun and educational tour to Ecuador. In March 2013 Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate founder Mimi Wheeler and experienced trip leader Jody Treter will lead a group of chocolate lovers to Ecuador for an 11-day tour focused on chocolate growing, fermenting, processing and exporting as well as indigenous entrepreneurship.
Just in time for the holidays, Cedar merchants have made changes that will bring comfort and joy to area shoppers this season. The most noticeable difference in the village, as of last month, is the creation of additional parking at Bunting’s Cedar Market. Manager Bill Bailey said owner Greg Bunting decided to raze a rental home on property he owned next to the grocery store and use the space to increase the store’s parking spots to approximately 35.
Leelanau County property owners looking to rent their homes each summer have a new alternative, thanks to Northland Vacation Rentals, a new Glen Arbor-based business.
Tim Barr and Bonnie Nescot, who own Glen Arbor’s world famous Art’s Tavern, were honored with this year’s Leelanau Peninsula Chamber business of the year award. The award was presented at the Chamber’s annual dinner on Oct. 25. This is the third year in a row the award has been issued. Previous winners include the Bahles in Suttons Bay and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians’ Economic Development Corporation.
Graeme and Judy Leask, with daughters Chelsea and Gemma, have resuscitated an old county landmark and gathering place: the Little Traverse Inn. Most recently the restaurant North, and for many years before that the Leelanau Country Inn, this cozy glass-porched B&B and eatery has, as the menu recalls, “an incredible history.”
Check out this great video from Detroit Public Television’s traveling “Under the Radar” series. You can stream the owners of Cherry Republic and Art’s Tavern, the Deputy Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and Glen Arbor artists Becky Thatcher and Beth Bricker into your homes, thus satisfying your wanderlust.
Cherry Republic will host a fall celebration at its Glen Arbor location on Saturday, Oct. 13 from 2-5 p.m., as it hosts acoustic folk rock guitarist Eric Nassau and The Lord of the Gourd carving colorful pumpkins and gourds. Children’s activities will include pumpkin and cookie decorating, spit the pit into the giant pumpkin, pumpkin ping pong ball toss, donuts on a string etc.
When you walk through the dining room at the Cedar Rustic Inn (by the blinker just north of Cedar) on a warm evening, you pass through the back door into a cozy and charming courtyard that is shaded with umbrellas amid young maples and birch trees surrounded by tomato and lima bean plants, peonies, hydrangeas, and flower baskets mounted on the wood walls. If it’s a Wednesday night you’ll probably see Bob Smith of Glen Arbor sucking on his fingers as he polishes off the full rack of ribs. (He claims that some of his charter-fishing customers from Florida recently brought some of those leftover ribs out on the Mariah for their lunch. When they threw the bones over the side it must have attracted the salmon, because the next several fish they caught had rib bones in their mouths! But that’s a fish story.)
Katy and Matt Wiesen, owners of Crystal River Outfitters, the Cyclery and the M-22 Store in Glen Arbor were named among the region’s 40 most influential people under age 40. The honorees were treated to an exclusive fete hosted by Northwestern Michigan College inside its Dennos Museum Center, as reported this morning by the Ticker.