Pure Michigan Travel - Farms & Mills Highlights

Fall for Mazes, Orchards & Hayrides

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:52:32 GMT

Spiraling corn mazes have been cropping up in farming communities across Michigan--just for the fun of it--since the early 1990s. Most mazes boast elaborate designs that can only be seen from an aerial vantage point. The trails that form the design are actually wide footpaths that have been cut by hand or machine through the field of 10-foot high corn stalks.

To make navigation more challenging, many mazes are built around themes and incorporate puzzles with hidden clues and checkpoints along the route. Visitors flock to corn mazes, usually found on family-run farms, for a challenging and entertaining outing suitable for all ages and abilities. The larger or more intricate mazes can involve wandering miles of twists and turns and may not be suitable for young children, so many farms also offer smaller mazes formed by hay bales for little ones.

In addition to multiple mazes, you'll often find entertainers, pony rides, snack bar, games, crafts and other activities to round out your visit to the farm. You might hop a hayride to a pumpkin patch, or join a pumpkin-carving contest.

For an eerie excursion try a maze that is open at night. Be sure to bring a flashlight as mazes aren't lit and can get very dark and spooky, whether they are "haunted" or not. Mazes generally operate Friday through Sunday during September and October, but some close in early November. Make sure to check for hours, group rates and special events. Izzi Farm in Ira Township is known for its clever annual themes.

Here's a run down on some other really neat corn mazes that you'll want to check out:

Many farms and mills around the state host fall harvest festivals, cider-pressing and craft demonstrations and a potpourri of kid-friendly activities that promise great family fun. For a complete list of Michigan farms and mills, click here.

For a complete list of locations to find that perfect pumpkin or where you can go to pick your own produce, check out our Farm Markets section.

Pure Michigan Apples

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:23:05 GMT

You might not know it but you probably have been enjoying Michigan apples on your dinner table for years since 60% of the crop is used for commercial products like applesauce and pie fillings. With a projected harvest of 26 million bushels of Pure Michigan apples, this year will be one of the largest in recent history.

It’s time to visit Michigan for Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Gala -- the top three favorites of the 14 varieties grown. Farmers can barely keep up with the demand of the newest apple in the barrel, Honeycrisp, with a sweet, juicy and crisp tantalizing flavor. It’s no wonder that the Apple Blossom is Michigan’s official flower. Plan your apple picking visit by checking the Michigan Farm Market & Agricultural Tourism Directory for where to go and when.

All those apples make for great apple cider, pressed fresh at cider mills across the state with many open through early November. Most mills offer on site bakeries and activities for the entire family – u-pick orchards, hayrides, corn maze fun and more. Take home a gallon or two, and load up on fresh apples for pie and applesauce-making, or for just plain good eating.

Dazzle friends, family and guests with these all-time favorite apple recipes from the Michigan Apple Committee.

The Omnivore's Detroit: How to Find Kinder, Gentler Meat

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

A New Yorker cartoon shows two sharks in the water. One has a foot dangling from his jaws. "I'm eating more locals," reads the caption.

When it comes to eating, lots of Detroiters are going local, too. Yet, while veggies are in abundance much of the year (OK, unless you totally love root vegetables, maybe not so much right now), what about meat? After all, this is not just the vegetarian's dilemma; it's the metro Detroit omnivore's puzzle, too.

The good news: It's actually quite easy to consume locally grown meat, raised on small farms and often in methods that would make folks like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" author Michael Pollan smile.

More good news: Local farmers say they are seeing an increase in demand for meat and eggs grown locally, and especially those raised with more natural, eco-friendly methods.

What's it matter?

There are many good reasons to seek out producers of local food, and not all of them suggest you wear cork sandals, eat buckwheat, or have named one of your children after an act of nature.

In fact, some of the best reasons sound almost -- gasp -- fiscally conservative.

Maybe you want to support the local economy and Michigan farmers. The "buy local" movement tells us that if we spent $10 a week on Michigan products, the state economy would gain $36 million every week. If the real payoff is even half that, that's still not too shabby.

And maybe you want to decrease the country's reliance on petroleum. If your blueberries have to get a passport stamp before hitting your cereal bowl, it's obvious the energy cost of that meal is significantly more than eating berries grown down the road. (Maybe it's time to think about the real cost of eating fresh blueberries in Michigan in January, but I digress.)

There are other reasons, too, that skeptics may find too granola-ish to consider, but basically boil down to this: Is there a better way than a food system that is so automated and impersonal it's nearly impossible to trace the origins of the sandwich you ate for lunch back to the field where it grew?

But that brings us back to our dilemma: What's a girl who likes a perfectly grilled steak now and then or her eggs with a side of bacon once in a while to do?

All around Detroit, thankfully, we have many options for eating locally produced meat. Your best bet? Find a farmer. How? Easy: a farmer's market or the Internet.

Online bounty

Flash back to a few days before Thanksgiving. A local woman -- let's call her Clare Ramsey -- decides she wants a locally raised, free range, happy turkey on her table. Eastern Market Saturday has passed, and may not have helped, so she turns to Google. She finds far more producers of turkey within 100 miles of the Motor City than she's ever imagined.

And many farms actually have Web sites. (Those of you who knew this already, sorry, but it was news to a city kid who can't come up with answers to her young daughter's questions about agriculture, like, "Do chickens eat flies?")

Getting back to that turkey: She likes the sunny, bucolic farm pictures posted by Sunshine Meadows Farm in Ortonville in northern Oakland County. It's a small family farm. She thinks she sees the animals smiling. The problem: The turkeys have been reserved since October. No dice.

She finds the same "try us next October" response at several other farms, including Harnois Farms near Pinckney, where John Harnois lets his turkeys roam around the wooded farm until the big day gets near.

She ultimately finds a turkey, this one raised at Roeske Farms in Hartland, about an hour northwest of Detroit, near M-59 and US 23. Patricia Roeske's farm is blanketed in snow, and in cold months when the local farmer's market is closed, the family runs a store out of a huge unheated garage attached to her house, complete with industrial walk-in coolers to keep the meat fresh.

Patricia hasn't always been a free-range hog and turkey farmer. It just kind of happened. It's actually such a beautiful supply and demand story it'd make an Econ 101 a little misty eyed. "We had a lot of people requesting some of our meat, because that's how we always raise our meat for ourselves," she says. Then Hartland started a farmer's market, and the Roeskes, whose kids are big into 4-H, decided they could make this into a business. "We've got the property, and we're already doing a few, so we thought we might as well do more. It just got little a bit bigger," she says.

The turkey was huge -- over 19 pounds – and cost about $50 -- maybe about twice as much as an average store-bought one, but not too much more than an "organic" or "free-range" bird at a fancy grocery store. The results were divine, and the fresh bird had less icky gooiness than a previously frozen fowl. Clare slept well that night.

The T-day scramble also revealed this fabulous site -- Eatwild.com. It features all kinds of purveyors of grass-fed meat, many in this region. It's a great resource, especially if you can't for some reason go the super easy-peasy route for finding local meats: farmer's markets.

The markets

Todd Wickstrom, owner of Heritage Foods USA (a web site that supports small farms' products) and part owner of Corktown's new Mercury Coffee Bar, is as picky as it gets when he buys meat for his businesses and his home. His best suggestion for home chefs is to find a farmer, and visit the farm if possible, but at least talk to them at the market.

"People are dying to know the source of their food and where it comes from, and the farmer's market allows people to have a direct relationship with the people who are growing their food," Wickstrom says.

Detroiters are blessed with a farmer's market that's open year-round. And even on the coldest of cold January days, Eastern Market has many, many options for the discerning carnivore.

One eye-catching vendor is Johnny Gyergyov of J & M Farms in Allenton, MI, in northern Macomb County. He says he raises "happy hogs," and his signs portray cartoon swine looking quite chipper.

It turns out Gyergyov's another accidental farmer. A former autoworker and city kid, he had moved his family to the country in the '70s. They started raising animals -- just a few -- and then got "the farming bug." Gyergyov invites people to stop by the farm and see where the hogs grow. He keeps them free of antibiotics and hormones. He takes his meat to a USDA facility for processing. At Eastern Market, he sells other products like sausage, chickens and beef. The prices are competitive to what you'll find at a meat counter at the grocery store, and sometimes better.

At Eastern Market, you'll also find a great number of egg producers -- many of whom regulars may only know as the "bee guy" or the "potato guy." But don't be afraid to ask them how they raise their birds -- or their real names. And if the eggs look multicolored and multisized, that's a good thing, people.

A scan of other area farmers markets also shows some good producers (staunch Detroitists cover your ears). Royal Oak's Farmers Market, for instance, offers a handful of meat vendors.

Gary Otto hauls his free-range chickens from Middleville on the west side of the state about twice a month. He sells many different cuts, and even smoked chicken and a particularly tasty chicken breakfast sausage that beats out most pork versions I've sampled from local vendors.

Otto is a fourth generation poultry farmer. He used to run a more standard, tightly packed factory farm as a producer for a big U.S. company, but it never sat well with him. He says he won't go back to that type of production. "I decided if I was going to do this -- raise chickens -- I was going to do it differently," he says.

Elmer Miller also drives a ways to sell at the Royal Oak market. The farmer from Up North in Marion offers grass-fed beef -- something not easy to come by. (Most U.S. cattle is "grain-fed," meaning usually fed corn, which according to Pollan's book, is not the preferred bovine diet.)

Miller also sells pasture-raised chickens and "natural" pork. Asked what natural means, he says free of antibiotics and hormones, and with pigs given the freedom to do what pigs are meant to do -- wallow in the mud, move about as they please, etc. If you think this is what every pig gets to do, you might want to read the aforementioned book.

When cows, chickens and pigs are allowed to grow in a more natural setting, and given the freedom to exercise and move about, it "changes the flavor of the meat" for the better, Miller says. I believe the guy. He wears suspenders. I bought a big roast and it was great. I slept well that night, too. Some of his beef prices are higher than grocery store averages -- about $6 a pound for most cuts, including ground beef.

Miller says he sees more customers seeking out his products. "The public awareness of the food system has made people look around for better options," he says.

And in Detroit, options abound. Finding them is as easy as taking a few minutes, going to the Internet or market, finding a farmer, and asking a few questions. Oh, and if you are looking for a Thanksgiving turkey, it's probably not too early to get your order in.

Clare Pfeiffer Ramsey is editor of Model D. Send feedback here. If you have more tips on Michigan made food items, send those along too.

Photos:

Gaier Farms, based in Armada, MI, offers quite the variety.

Daniel Bucu is a second generation pig farmer. The Bucu's have been selling their meats in Eastern Market for over 45 years.

Brown eggs from J & M Farms in Allenton, MI

Turkeys - courtesy photo

Johnny Gyergyov of J & M Farms

Hog - courtesy photo

Unless noted, All photographs by Detroit Photographer Marvin Shaouni
Marvin Shaouni is the Managing Photographer for Metromode & Model D.

Story Courtesy of http://www.modeldmedia.com/

Rent-a-Farmer concept started by Ferndale resident

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:00:00 GMT

You can rent a table and a car and a pony so why not a farmer, too? Thanks to Ferndale resident Trevor Johnson you now can. Through Rent-a-Farmer, the business started by Johnson, he hopes to change the way we think about food, keeping it local and less stressed, and ultimately healthier.

Unfortunately, there is no rent-to-own option.

Excerpt:

That's where Johnson comes in. He's looking to carry a new food revolution on his 24-year-old shoulders, educating people about the food they eat, where it comes from, why it's grown the way it is.

He wants to help people to "foster that food revolution in their front and back yards."

To that end, Johnson has started his own business called "Rent-a-Farmer," which offers clients the chance to use the expertise of real farmers to help them grow fruits and vegetables in their back yards. "This is not about going back to the farm," said Johnson, who graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in horticulture. "It's about bringing the farm back to us."

Read the entire article here.

Story Courtesy of http://www.metromodemedia.com/

Holland Tulip Time

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:12:41 GMT

My husband and I made a quick weekend trip to Holland Michigan during 2008 Tulip Time just to view the beautiful farms and fields of tulips. The weather was beautiful on Saturday, and we got lots of great photos at the Veldheer Farm. We also ate at the Queen's Inn Buffet where there was both old style and modern Dutch food. The food was great and a great value too. On rainy Sunday we ate another great lunch at the Wild Hog Barbeque before heading for home. We had bought a few bulbs to plant and definitely loved our trip. Holland Tulip Time is a wonderful Michigan destination!

Grand Rapids Women's Chorus takes a Michigan Apple break on the front porch of Khardomah Lodge

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:02:30 GMT

The Michigan Apple Growers "Check In to Michigan Apples" campaign interested Khardomah Lodge management enough to purchase HoneyCrispe apples from the Grand Haven Farm Market and invite it's September 29-30 guests - the Grand Rapids Women's Chorus - to participate in this "guests eating Michigan Apples" photo op. The GRWC traditionally kicks off its season with a practice session/business meeting each year at Khardomah Lodge in Grand Haven, Michigan. GRWC Director, Lori Tennenhouse is 2nd from left in back row. Gayle Gerig, Khardomah Lodge Manager, took the photo "in celebration of apples, music, and guests who enjoy the lodge".

fantastic farm

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:36:52 GMT

I used to live outside of Iron Mtn, MI when I was a kid. We lived on over 460 plus acre farm. The name of the farm was the E-BAR-D Ranch back in the 60's and 70's. It was about 5 miles from Lake Antoine. There was so much fruit to be had. Hundreds of apple trees of different sorts. Raspberries, blackberries, choke cherries. We had deer by the hundreds and many people from the town that would drive out just to feed the deer. If the place still exists you need to visit it. It was an place to visit.