Book Review +Trip Down Memory Lane + Love Letter: NORTHERN HARVEST

Northern Michigan cherry orchard, spring

Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women

       In Food and Farming

by Emita Brady Hill

Detroit: Wayne State University Press (A Painted Turtle Book), 2020

Paper, 327pp w/ index, $24.99

Warning: This book is not a love story! It is 20 love stories, all told in the words of northern Michigan women involved in one way or another (some in multiple ways) with growing, preparing, selling, and/or writing about local food. Emita Hill had the genius to collect and edit these oral histories, and her daughter, Madeleine Hill Vedel, to whom the book is dedicated, took many of the portraits that introduce each section. 

The book is organized into six sections: 

I.         Two Orchards and a CSA

II.       Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate

III.     Pastry and Cheese

IV.     Chefs and Restaurants

V.       Writers and Teachers

VI.     Two Homesteads

It will not take readers long to discover, however, that there is much overlap in the backgrounds, interests, and passions of the women in the various stories. Many, though not all, are first-generation Americans (at least one an immigrant herself) who grew up in urban immigrant communities where food held families and neighborhoods together. Another related thread running through many of the stories is travel, with women exploring world food at all ages of their lives, in various ways, from Peace Corps work to cooking classes with famous chefs. A third commonality shared by almost all is education. Whether educated through on-the-job training, self-taught by trial and error, having studied under experts and/or at colleges and universities – also, teaching at every level imaginable -- these are women passionate about learning.

Before I get too far into my raving about this fascinating collection, though – and I’m so glad to see something like this in print! – I should acknowledge that I have known many of the subjects for years. For example, I met Anne and John Hoyt back when their Leelanau Cheese was still a dream: now, like my Dog Ears Books, their business has been around for over a quarter of a century. Julia Brabanec and Susan Odom are neighbors of ours -- at least, as country people measure neighborhoods. Barb Tholin’s son and one of our grandsons were kindergarden friends back in St. Paul, Minnesota. And so on.

Other of the women I have met only casually, and two or three not at all. Yet, I should add, because part of the joy and great privilege of having a bookstore is meeting in person people whose stories, true or fictional, I have loved between the covers of books. Emita Hill and I met for the first time only in 2019, after all. But right away, when she described her book to me and said that Wayne State University Press was the publisher, I was ready to buy it sight-unseen.

-- Fast forward to spring of 2020, this strange spring of COVID-19, which finds me sheltering in place in southeast Arizona, where my husband (the Artist) and I came for the winter, as we have done three or four times previously. I’ve had Northern Harvest on my to-read stack for several weeks and have picked it up many times to read a few pages. A couple of times I read paragraphs or whole pages aloud to the Artist. But I have been rationing my reading of this book, careful not to read too fast, since our return to Michigan and the re-opening of my bookstore are as uncertain for me as the future is for everyone these days, making these visits with friends back home no insignificant part of my current pleasure in the book. But enough about me. I want and need to tell you about the book itself.

First, the stories in Northern Harvest are not just about people I know and places I love, nor will they be only that for other readers. This is important: they are also stories about the growth and convergence of several social movements in the United States in recent decades and the roles played by women in the realization and coming together of those movements. The particularity and specificity of the northern Michigan setting authenticates the larger social picture, since every large social picture happens first to individuals at a local level.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Cheryl Kobernik and her husband are farmers who grow cherries organically. Cheryl comes from a background in sociology and counseling but says of her Up North life,

Not growing up in agriculture, it’s an honor to be accepted into the agrarian community. I know there are good people everywhere, but … I have never met people with such integrity in my life.

Although Jenny Tutlis, of Meadowlark CSA, and Julia Brabanec, organic apple grower for decades in Leelanau County with her late husband, John, started out life in art and drama, respectively, both take pride in years of growing healthy food for local markets. Says Julia,

This was our life, and we loved it. We worked very hard, and in later years when we would think back and talk about all that we did, we would say, “How on earth did we ever do that?” 

Julia and John began their farming life in late middle age, and part of “that” was planting over a thousand trees by hand and pruning those trees year after year. Jenny came from a different beginning, inspired by stints in the Peace Corps and time at Innisfree Village, a community in Virginia. 

It may have been inevitable that certain words and scenes would jump out at me from each story, especially at this time in the world’s history. When Anne Hoyt, for instance, talks about the crucial importance of hygiene in cheese-making, she mentions training workers in her business on cleaning and sanitizing:

From silly things, from handwashing. You would think – everybody thinks they know how to wash their hands, but they actually don’t. It’s understanding what’s dirty and what’s clean.

Today, in the spring of coronavirus, the “Wash your hands” mantra on everyone’s lips, with all of us told to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Happy Birthday to You” as we scrub, I think of Anne as being years ahead of that learning curve – although ‘curve’ is another word that has new and vivid connotations at the moment….

Anne’s story, however, is in for the most part a happy one, that of a dream come through -- by dint of very hard work, of course, which is what it takes for most of us to make our dreams come true and keep them alive. 

Other Northern Harvest stories more often tell of career paths revealed only after a winding trail had been blazed. Carol Worsley of a B&B called Thyme Inn in Glen Arbor says of the cooking classes she teaches, “It certainly wasn’t my plan. I never had a plan.” 

(Sorry. I don't have any photos of sheep!)

Barb Tholin’s original plan, after apprenticing at a Vermont farm affiliated with Sterling College and earning a bachelor’s degree in agronomy, was eventually to have her own farm. A sheep farm, she decided at one point (like Bathsheba Everdene in Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, you must pardon me for thinking). Instead Barb went from working in a macrobiotic restaurant in Chicago for “a couple of years” to managing the produce department at a food co-op in St. Paul, Minnesota, for 19 years, and finally founding the magazine Edible Grande Traverse, which she continues to edit today as partner with her former husband, who manages the advertising accounts. 

Madagascar Vanilla Rooibos

The women who work in and/or have their own businesses in catering, restaurants, and non-farm food production-- developing and perfecting recipes and products, marketing and filling orders, pleasing customers -- fill me with awe. Angela Macke’s story of her Light of Day tea impressed me so deeply that I put the book down, got right online, and ordered tea from her then and there! (Delicious Michigan came to me in the mail!) Angela studied and practiced nursing and traveled extensively before the family settled down near Traverse City, and her herbal teas are the result of 

… not exactly by trial and error, but it was just doing my research first, and then making up a small batch … and tasting it, and paying attention to the effect on my own body.

She worked with food labs at Cornell University and the University of Nebraska, and her tea farm, which she did not initially think of as a “business,” is now the only certified and Demeter Biodynamic tea farm in North America. Still, in order to farm and produce her teas so that they meet her personal high standards, Macke works 80-90 hours a week from April to November.

Mimi Wheeler, born in Denmark, founded Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in the village of Empire and operated it for a decade before she retired and sold the business to Jody Dotson Hayden and her husband, who continue the business today. Mimi’s working life began in social work, fueled by a passion for social justice. Coming to the U.S., she worked in community mental health and school counseling, but the dream of having her own business – something related to food – was always in the background. 

Since I had made chocolate desserts, made souffles, cakes, truffles for a number of occasions over many years and had gotten a lot of praise for this, it dawned on me that chocolate was what I had to start doing as a new career. 

Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate put the village of Empire on the national food map. Appropriately, social justice was a concern shared by the people who took over the business when Mimi decided to retire and focus on her grandchildren. Jody Hayden and her former husband, Chris Streeter, were founders of Higher Grounds Trading Company, a coffee company devoted to paying farmers, in places like Chiapas, a fair price for their crop. Chris continues to run Higher Grounds, and when Jody and her present husband, a Traverse City native from a cherry orchard family, bought Grocer’s Daughter in 2012 they continued in the spirit of the founder, sourcing local dairy products, honey, maple syrup, cherries, and blueberries.

We could make more money if we sourced everything more cheaply. And that’s what a lot of chocolate companies do. But our first ingredient isn’t sugar … we do chocolate first and foremost and then we add really great ingredients to that.

Supporting local community – that is another important belief and practice in the lives of these northern Michigan women.

Who works harder than a chef, pastry or other? Susie McConnell worked in various nodes of the food network the women in Northern Harvest represent. With a start at the Leland Lodge and Sugarloaf, she went on to work at Hattie’s Restaurant in Suttons Bay, for Carol Worsley at Thyme Inn in Glen Arbor, for Martha Ryan at Martha’s Leelanau Table in Suttons Bay, and finally three years with Angela Macke’s Light of Tea tea farm, learning about biodynamic agriculture, before retiring to her own home and garden and kitchen.

Farm market shoppers in line for 9 Bean Rows bread

Then there is the farm-to-table group: Jennifer Blakeslee at Cooks’ House in Traverse City; Jennifer Welty of 9 Bean Rows Bakery (that deservedly famous sea salt fennel bread!); Martha Ryan of Martha’s Leelanau Table in Suttons Bay; Amanda Danielson of Trattoria Stella in Traverse City; and Donna Folgarelli, known far and wide for her family business in Traverse City, Folgarelli’s Market and Wine Shop. As I was reading the stories in this book, just when I thought I’d read about the hardest-working woman in the food world, I would turn to the next and find another. This is certainly not a world for high-maintenance princesses who need to be coddled!

In the “Chefs and Restaurateurs” section, Martha Ryan is the woman I know best, but I learned much I hadn’t known before about her. I knew the Leland School and Stonehouse Bread Café parts of her story but not that she was from Kalamazoo or that she lived in ethnic neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio, or that she attended Michigan State University. And how had I never heard of her 11-week backpacking trip through France, Spain, England, and Ireland, with special focus on France? If Martha and I ever have time in our busy northern Michigan lives to talk about that trip, I’d love to hear more! 

(And, by the way, as an example of how incestuously entwined northern Michigan lives are – in a good way! – Martha’s Leelanau Table has its home in “the red house” on St. Joseph Street in Suttons Bay, which is owned by and was completely remodeled under the direction of architect Judy Balas, wife of the very Bruce who has been my part-time bookstore volunteer [“bookstore angel”] at Dog Ears Books for – how many years now? Maybe two decades? Is that possible?)

Rose Hollander

In the “Writers and Teachers” section, in addition to Barb Tholin and Carol Worsley, you’ll find Patty LaNoue Stearns, Nancy Krcek Allen, and Rose Hollander, and here again a northern Michigan web of many strands connects us all. I first met Patty when I was working part-time for Arbutus Press, publisher of The Cherry Home Companion. I took prepaid advance orders for that book, and we had a fun and successful book signing. Rose Hollander’s late husband, Stu, was our family attorney for years. And one winter Rose and Newbery winner children’s author-illustrator Lynne Rae Perkins hosted a dinner party in their Suttons Bay homes for local booksellers and librarians -- dinner chez Rose, followed by a group walk down dark, silent, snow-muffled streets to Lynne Rae’s house for dessert and a visit to her studio. Memorable evening! 

I loved reading this statement by Patty LaNoue Stearns: “I was a terrible high school student.” I am always amazed by adolescents who have a clear idea of what they want to do in later life. Those of us who stumble into our calling, as Stearns did with journalism, are more the norm, I believe – or the lucky ones. 

And I am eager to try out Nancy Allen’s Thai Coconut Curry Base – because what I neglected to mention earlier, in my excitement, is that each story in the book begins with a photograph and short bio and ends with a recipe. 

CSA field

The final two chapters (in “Two Homesteads: Preserve the Past and Celebrate the Future”) bring us back to farms, which is where we began. Susan Odom’s introduction to 19th-century growing, cooking, and living came with her job as an interpreter at Greenfield Village. Similarly, Emily Umbarger learned old ways when she and her grandmother began as volunteer gardeners at historic Fort Michilimackinac. Odom now makes her home and her living at Hillside Homestead in Leelanau County, Umbarger with her husband and sons at Hearth and Harvest Homestead outside Interlochen. In both these women’s lives, education continues as a passion alongside farming. Says Odom,

I am re-creating the sort of little nineteenth-century farm and trying to do things the way they used to be done on a small scale. I think I’m particularly good at explaining that to [Farm Stay] guests and visitors. … There is limited use for that in life. Being a good interpreter. In museums, yes, but sadly the thing is that nobody ever makes much money in museums. So I’m right at home on a farm because you don’t make much money on a farm either. 

At the time of her interview, Emily Umbarger was working for pay as a counselor at Interlochen Arts Academy and also working as a volunteer in a not-yet-funded program at Interlochen to grow food for its kitchen and compost as much as possible, involving students in the entire process. She was also pretty much running the family farm business, since her husband’s job had necessitated a move to the night shift. In her oral history, Emily said she doesn’t think about the number of tasks she faces each day but rather... 

“What are the cool things that I can do [today] with my kids? What are the cool things that I can do with my husband? That we can do as a family? And how is that going to enrich our life?”

She also notes, “The heart of the educator in me is always at work, even with my own kids.”

Because, for all these women, it is never just about making enough money to pay the bills. It’s about love and respect for earth’s bounty, providing healthy food grown in a sustainable manner, community building and support, stewardship of natural resources, a passion for learning and the fearless daring to make mistakes, educating all ages for a healthy future -- and plenty of uncomplaining, unremitting elbow grease. 

I make no apology for the very personal nature of this post. These are women from my home, and I share their beliefs and principles. And while far from northern Michigan at present, I do believe that "we are -- truly -- all in this together,” wherever we are. 

Author Emita Hill holds a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literature from Harvard University. Her previous work includes Bronx Faces and Voices (2014), oral histories of sixteen men and women who rebuilt community after suffering crime and blight. Dr. Hill divides her time between New York City and northern Michigan.

Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming offers delightful stories, hope for the future, and is a most timely contribution to the literature and history of a beautiful region of our country.

How Long Will It Last?

How long will what last? The pandemic, the staying at home, the anxiety, fear, worry, anger? The arrival of sudden, piercing stabs of fear in the middle of a sleepless night? 

Household food supplies???

Long before the stay-at-home order came to Arizona (where we remain until confident of a safe return to northern Michigan), even before the nationwide toilet paper panic and frenzy, wise and forward-thinking authorities recommended that every household have a minimum of two weeks of food and necessities on hand, in case quarantine became necessary. So I shopped then and found everything we needed and felt we were well supplied. I even bought a two-pack of giant-size containers of antiseptic wipes, wondering if we could ever possibly need that many. Was I overreacting? Flour, yeast, canned tomatoes, pasta, canned milk, onions, soap, yada-yada-yada — all the things you’d need if you couldn’t get out of the house for two weeks. 

But hand sanitizer? I never buy that stuff, just soap. So when I returned to the store for hand sanitizer a week or two later, while other shoppers were panicking over shelves stripped bare of toilet paper and paper towels [actually, no one looked panicked at the Safeway in Willcox: that was literary hyperbole], I was stunned at the sight of an empty aisle where hand sanitizer and other such products used to be. On my next and I hope last trip, there was still none to be had. We are told to keep in the car and use it constantly, but the Artist and I are using those antiseptic wipes I thought I might not need. Not the kind made for hands, but the harsher cleaners intended for household use. Now even those are nowhere to be found for sale! How long will what we have left last?

I chickened out of going to the grocery store again last Friday, as planned, and made a new plan for Tuesday, when the dairy and egg supply would be restocked. And yes, on Tuesday the store had eggs, and I bought another container of yogurt so I’ll have starter to get back to making my own with raw milk from the feed store, but once again there was no hand sanitizer, no antiseptic wipes, and no yeast. I almost wept. I'd been so nervous about going at all, and then these empty, gaping shelves! I think of certain friends in Northport who have for years found it amusing to refer to our grocery store there, especially in winter when the summer people with their big bucks are not in residence, as "Moscow Market." Ha! Eat your words, guys! We always had everything we needed, didn't we?

Catching wild yeast from their air, on the other hand, is something I think I can manage, so before we run out of yeast, I will finally attempt to make sourdough starter. Old dog, new trick. I have read up on it and feel confident. 

But aren't these strange times when a trip to the grocery store or laundromat feels dangerous? How long will these feelings last?

We went to a different laundromat this week, a less frequented washateria with cheaper washers than our usual but busier, more crowded place (hence our avoidance) — sadly, also with dryers that have an insatiable appetite for quarters. But never mind! All I wanted to do was wash the clothes and get back to the cabin and hang them on our new clothesline. Finding almost all the machines in use when we arrived — very unusual! — and four people inside, we made ourselves comfortable in the car with books and cold water and snacks, in a quiet, shady spot, with a nice breeze filtering through the new leaves of a velvet ash tree, waiting for the coast to clear, as it eventually did. So it all worked out.

Still, we were relieved to be home again, even though a single clothesline and limited supply of clothespins meant that I spent the remainder of the day hanging up as many items at once as possible and whenever a few were dry, pulling those dry items off the line to make way for more. It really did take all afternoon, too, despite sun and a stiff breeze, and the last towels were still on the line when meatballs for dinner went into 
the oven.

Funny how one's perceptions change with changed circumstances. Familiar sights evoke new thoughts. These days when I’m out walking and see dried cow dung, I think, fuel. When we’re driving, wild rhubarb along the roadside says to me, food. Prickly pear still poses a question: how does one harvest and prepare that to eat? So far, however, we have not retreated that far back into the past.

I’m not exactly living the life of my grandmother’s, she who had to pump water to heat on the stove to do her laundry outdoors in washtubs. (One of those washtubs was my first “swimming pool” when I was a toddler.) She also milked her own cow and slaughtered her own chickens, and my grandfather had an enormous vegetable garden, huge raspberry patch, and their entire backyard was given over to growing fruit.

My mother on her parents' country "farmette"

My parents' first home in South Dakota

My mother, with indoor plumbing, had a wringer washer in the basement and lines both in the backyard (for summer) and in the basement (for winter). When my sisters and I were young, we had three apple trees, one pear tree, and a raspberry patch (that last, thanks to our grandfather who brought the canes from Ohio for us). My mother baked her own bread, put up homemade jam, and made her own perfect piecrust from scratch, so these days I’m kind of living my mother’s life — without the little children, but it’s still amazing how cooking and baking and cleaning have expanded to fill the days, now that we are staying at home.

And I ask myself, how long will these new habits last? As long as the pandemic or longer? When these times are “over,” and we can return to something resembling “normal life,” will we continue to bake our own bread and hang our laundry out in the sun?

Well, I routinely hang laundry on the line back in Michigan, though I do not bake bread in the busy months when I'm running a business fulltime and doing my share of keeping grass mowed around our old farmhouse and barns. Anyway, truthfully, I wonder more about other changes in our lives these days, too, the way we are considering and treating one another, not only within our households but in our communities and across the country and beyond. 

How long will we continue communicating with loved ones on our present, new, more frequent basis and, in addition, find time to reconnect with friends forgotten or neglected for years? How long will we keep up the habit of thanking family members, friends, and strangers for each kindness, large and small? How long will we remember to give thanks, each and every day, for each and every day we’re alive?

Call Them What You Will

These are not rutabagas.

I’ve been told that one late fall when a boat named the ‘Rising Sun,' a boat that had been carrying a load of rutabagas, went down in Good Harbor in a particularly nasty Lake Michigan storm, rural residents near the shoreline in an area now part of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore lost no time in harvesting the beach.“We ate rutabagas all that winter,” an old-timer reported years later. Lacking variety, certainly, the meals of that lean season were nonetheless filling and nutritious. 

What you call Brassica napobrassica depends on your heritage and where you live. Those Good Harbor foragers called them rutabagas, but the poetically evocative name ‘root of scarcity’ would definitely have been apt, too, as one does not eat rutabagas all winter unless there is not much else available.

Some Finns in the Upper Peninsula call them ‘beggies’ (though I cannot find the nickname online so cannot vouch for the spelling). In the U.P. a pasty is not a pasty without cubed or grated rutabaga added to meat, potatoes, and onions (fruit at one end, for dessert, optional). These are the traditional pasties as the miners’ families brought the recipe from Cornwall. 

Agatha Christie called them mangels in one of her novels, I believe, and if memory serves, Hercule Poirot was hit in the head with one thrown over a fence. I puzzled over that term for years and now find (quickly, online) that the name is short for Mangel-Wurzel. I suppose it’s natural that a German name would transfer to England, imported no doubt by Saxon immigrants. 

Another name for the tuberous root vegetable is swede. Did Norwegians come up with that last? I’ve looked up several details today but am speculating wildly about others. Caveat lector: this blogger has never claimed to be a journalist!

Like winter squash, these large turnip relatives keep well through the winter. Thus in less desperate times, when farm families had plenty of other food put by, stockpiled rutabagas-mangels-swedes, cheap and easy to grow, could be fed to cattle or hogs to get them through the cold season. Hence the name fodder beet. 

Nor are these.

What on earth put rutabagas into my head this morning, when it’s an apple harvest occupying my time away from the bookstore? Procrastination comes in many forms. Why not the form of a rutabaga? Meanwhile, the apple-drying project proceeds in fits and starts, five trays and one day at a time. Little by little wins the race.

Part III and the End of Our Wandering (For the Time Being)

Pine River Motel, Cheboygan, Michigan

Cheboygan with a ‘c’ is in Michigan, Sheboygan with an ’s’ in Wisconsin. Both are white European spellings of an Ojibway word, but which one? Does the name come the word for "passage between lakes," "sewing needle," or "place of ore"?

The Artist’s memories of a long-ago night spent on the edge of Cheboygan were unlovely, and so when the two of us had subsequently passed the same way we did so quickly. This time was different. To begin with (and it was a happy beginning), we found the motel pictured at the top of this post, where we had a clean, comfortable, roomy but cozy room and there was plenty of space outside, well off the highway, to walk a dog. We had our choice of restaurants in close range. If only we’d had in-room coffee, I could have stayed for a week, before even seeing the town itself. Initially the Artist was not so sure. He didn’t remember there being “much to see” in Cheboygan. But he agreed to give it a chance. 

We found a long Main Street lined with businesses, many of them open even on a quiet September morning. Alice’s Restaurant fell somewhat short on its “best coffee” claim; breakfast, however, was nothing short of delicious. You already know we visited the bookstore, because I gave that away in Part I of my story. What really captured our hearts, though, was the Lake Huron shoreline at Cheboygan — like a shoreline in a dream, it was, all reedy and undulating, with parks and open space and a long boardwalk out to a viewing platform.

Cheboygan, like Alpena, is confusing to navigate, since its shoreline and river mouth conspire to make a regular prairie grid impossible for more than a few blocks. For true wanderers, of course, irregularity of layout adds interest. So did the town’s houses, churches, and other buildings, both historic and modern. We were glad to see the original Carnegie Library now being used for cultural events and to find a big new library not far away.

Old Carnegie Library

New public library

warning!

My guess is that the old church now called “Huron Street Tabernacle” is the old St. Charles Catholic Church. Just a guess, but an active Catholic Church we saw as we were coming into town, with the name St. Mary’s above the door, is now St. Mary’s/St. Charles, so — . In any case, the Tabernacle is in rough shape.

Huron Street Tabernacle

St. Mary/St. Charles

I did not photograph any of the old mansions or the fabulous old horse chestnut trees we found. Sometimes I need to let my eyes and mind make their memories unaided. But we wandered and circled and poked around until we found ourselves on a road leading out of town, past what looked like an old schoolhouse.

Outside town --

When I consulted the map, I saw that we could stay on that road south until we reached an east-west road that would take us over to Alanson, so that’s what we decided to do. Back on familiar territory, we were happy to stop for coffee at the Dutch Oven Bakery in Alanson (now that was the best coffee anywhere on our trip), and I went a little nuts making purchases before we left — bread (David’s choice), plum bread (out of this world!), jams, and a terrific little spice cookie made there called dry bones, which are very delicious and quite addictive. Beware!

Dry Bones from Dutch Oven Bakery, Allison, Michigan

We made one last exploratory stop down the road at King Orchards for apples, and if I hadn’t been so unrestrained at the Dutch Oven Bakery I could have spent much more than three dollars at the orchard store. There’s not much better than a Michigan apple, though, unless it’s a whole bag of apples, and that bag was all we needed to get through the rest of our last day of travel.

Small glimpse of all that's outside

Little taste of what's inside

So we did not get over the Bridge this time. But getting away doesn’t have to mean going terribly far or staying away for a long time. Four days can suffice and did for us this September. Besides, close to home, a couple of hours are often enough to refresh our spirits….

Road to Cedar -- always a good county cruise....