That pie you ate at Cherry Republic last week wasn’t the fruit of a local tart cherry farmer’s labor — not this year, at least. The Glen Arbor retail company’s quick-thinking president Bob Sutherland imported those pie cherries from Poland after extreme weather this spring all but wiped out northern Michigan’s tart cherry crop.
During the night trees snapped and limbs crashed around my house, but Saturday was characterized by an uncommon quiet. Even the snowmobilers that regularly race the nearby road were nowhere to be heard. I suppose they too were home digging out from the overnight snowfall — 29 inches in some places, I’m told — and attending to basic survival.