According to the Farmer’s Almanac, there are three key indicators that sweet corn is ready for harvest: “kernels fill the ear,” “silks turn brown,” and “ears begin to angle.” Driving around the peninsula these past couple of weeks, the farm stands are stacked with freshly picked sweet corn on the cob. Some varieties are golden yellow and others are a bi-colored “peaches and cream,” both are sweet, tender, and delicious. “Requiring a delicate balance of timing and technique,” the sweet corn season lasts only a nanosecond, so it is one to savor and appreciate. As the summer crop season comes to a close, these crops could be thought of as meal courses. The bookends of the summer crop season are strawberries, the appetizer course of summer, and sweet corn, the dessert course. The magic of sweet corn is in the first bite. Aside from burning mouths due to impatience waiting for the sweet corn harvest, the initial bite releases a snap of the corn kernels and the sweetness of the juice. Heavenly. Fourth generation Leelanau Peninsula farmer and sweet corn magician Curtis Kelenske and I walked through the 10-acre sweet corn field located off French Road as he offered his favorite recipe for sweet corn: boiled+salt+butter. Simple is better when eating freshly harvested sweet corn.
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On Sunday, Sept 10, Holland, Mich. resident Jon Ornée completed what he believes to be the first-ever unassisted swim from North Manitou Island to South Manitou Island. Ornée started from Donner’s Point on North Manitou Island at 7:45 am and reached shore at Gull Point on South Manitou Island at 9:24 am. The 4-mile swim took him 1 hour and 39 minutes to complete.
Two Weeks in a Hammock is an education and outreach initiative by Cedar residents Vince and Stacie Longwell Sadowski to inspire regular folks to get out into nature. “As two middle-aged people with average fitness levels and more time than money,” they write on their blog, “we model an active lifestyle of adventure. The Sun recently interviewed them about their “Voices of North Manitou Island” project, a series of videos launched this year that explore the history of the North Manitou Island in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore through the people who have lived, worked, played, and been a part of island life over the years.
On calm days this spring when Sleeping Bear Bay resembled glass, some Glen Arbor residents with homes on Lake Michigan heard what they described as periodic burps, or the sounds of water gurgling in a pipe. On days with wind and waves, they heard nothing. The sound may have come from two “propane cannons” on the North Manitou Shoal Light Station, commonly called “the Crib” which lies 4 miles from Pyramid Point, the closest spot on the mainland. According to Dan Oginsky president of the North Manitou Light Keepers, which acquired the Crib from the federal government in 2016, the canisters are used to scare away cormorants, large aquatic birds that nested on the lighthouse and covered it with “guano” poop after it was decommissioned by the government and sat empty for decades.
From nearly abandoned and forgotten, the historic Katie Shepard Hotel, formerly known as “The Beeches,” on North Manitou Island is being preserved by Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB). The hotel was constructed in 1895 and has been given a chance at a productive new life. The non-profit group, partner of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore since 1998, has been busy at the hotel preservation from 2009–2019, and returning this year to resume its work on this historic hotel. “It is our vision to reopen the hotel that drives our passion,” said PHSB executive director Susan Pocklington.
On Saturday, Aug. 27, at 7:20 a.m., a whaleboat—the likes of which hunted the world’s largest mammals in the mid-1800s in the North Atlantic Ocean—left the public dock in Glen Arbor as its crew rowed, then sailed across the Manitou Passage. The crew’s goal was not to catch a whale but to reach North Manitou Island. Leelanau local Pam Houtteman spotted the crew at the dock and took photos. She took down captain Shane Brosier’s phone number in order to send him the images, but when she asked for his name, he offered the famous opening line from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, “Call me Ishmael.”
Here’s the story of Leland Public School reclaiming and reviving its school on North Manitou Island, which Abby Chatfield wrote in our August 11 edition of the Glen Arbor Sun. The first school on North Manitou was made of logs in 1895 and held 36 students. A new school was built in 1907 with a wood frame and front porch but was shut down in the 1940s as the island’s permanent population dwindled. Decades later, when Leland Public School discovered they owned this one-acre property, considered the home of Leland School District’s first school, all that still existed was the decaying framework of a one-room schoolhouse. Fast forward more than 25 years. Nick Seguin, a first and second grade teacher for Leland since 2009 who graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Natural Resources, spends his summers working as a guide for Manitou Island Transit. While hiking on North Manitou Island, Seguin came across the old school site, recognizing it by a crumbling foundation. Intrigued, he began to study plat maps and rediscovered the property deed, realizing that the land still belonged to the Leland School District.
Five years ago, when the North Manitou Light Keepers won the bid to acquire the North Manitou Shoal Lighthouse— commonly referred to as “the crib”—they set an ambitious goal to restore the lighthouse and begin to offer tours by July 4 of this year. The group accomplished their goal with two weeks to spare.
The North Manitou Light Keepers announced today that they have been awarded a Michigan Lighthouse Assistance Program grant from the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to help restore the North Manitou Shoal Light Station between the Manitou Islands and mainland Leelanau County—otherwise known as the “Crib”.
It was the year of high water, as Lake Michigan water levels nearly eclipsed their all-time record—just six years after setting their all-time low. That made beach walking difficult; it exacerbated conflicts over beach-walking rights along riparian-owned property; it made the reality of Climate Change even more dire, and it contributed to flooding in Leland’s historic Fishtown.