“Houses are great, but I think this is real pretty,” Jacob’s Farm owner Michael Witkop said as he stood outside the hilltop Orchard View wedding barn and gazed north across their 10-acre corn maze to the red centennial barn, where workers scurried like busy ants to open the restaurant, bar, and outdoor music venue by early June. Beyond the M-72 corridor, which connects his destination to bustling Traverse City, the hills of Leelanau County hovered in the distance like low-hanging clouds. We’re featuring Jacob’s Farm as part of our series on innovative solutions to the farming crisis. On May 7, Witkop addressed 65 attendees of Michigan State University (MSU) Extension’s first-ever Agritourism Summit, which included a tour of local agritourism businesses that have succeeded in bringing customers directly to their farms—thereby forestalling the fate that has forced tens of thousands of small farms across the United States to close in recent decades.
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The Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail carries on a great holiday tradition in Northern Michigan with the 2013 Toast the Season wine tour either of the first two weekends of November. Choose your weekend to tour the wineries of Leelanau — either Nov. 3-4 or 10-11. The tour is self guided and participants may visit member wineries each day in any order desired, between the hours of 11am to 5pm Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.