Northwest Michigan is well known for its abundance of lakes and unique bays off Lake Michigan. It’s truly a boaters paradise in the summer. It’s also well known for its cherry crop and is the self proclaimed “Cherry Capital of the World”. And right now, the cherry trees are in full bloom.
Michigan produces 70-75 percent of the nation’s tart cherries with over 36,000 acres of trees. Northwest Michigan has roughly half of that acreage. The West side of Michigan is very conducive to cherry growing because of the proximity to Lake Michigan. It has a moderating effect on the temperatures keeping it warmer in winter and cooler in summer than neighboring States. Michigan’s little finger area, which is primarily Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties, is the center of the cherry growing activity and home to the National Cherry Festival. It’s held the first week of July and is a huge event for this area. The crop ripens in early July and this region harvests 100-120 million pounds of tart cherries. They produce sweet cherries too but it’s about half the tart cherry crop.
So recently, on a warm spring day, we decided to play hooky from working on the boat and took a drive to check out the trees. We’d heard that the bloom was in full swing so we headed up to Leelanau County which is also known as the little finger of Michigan. It’s also home to scores of cherry orchards.
As we drove around there were lots of orchards in bloom but many were younger trees and they were spaced fairly close together. From what I understand this is the new practice as they now have harvesting machines that can work in these tight spaces. Good for the farmers but not so good for us photographers. It just looks like a sea of white blossoms. Very little visual structure to find a composition in. Mostly just a chaos of white. So we kept driving in search of a “better” orchard. We finally found one that resulted in the image at the top of this post. Nicely spaced rows with green grass in between for visual contrast. These were big, mature trees and they were in superb condition. This orchard was well taken care of. It was a very peaceful scene and the warm sun was a welcome relief from some of the chilly weather we’ve had of late. We even had some freezing temperatures the previous week which made for some tense nights for these cherry farmers. From the looks of these buds and blossoms, this orchard made it through fine.
Once I was in among the trees I became very aware of the honey bees hard at work gathering nectar for their hives. They were everywhere and you could hear their faint buzzing as you walked through the orchard. They didn’t pay me much mind. They were too busy trying to visit the thousands and thousands of blossoms in all directions. It was wonderful to see Nature at work pollinating all the trees and making honey at the same time. Local bee keepers contract with the farmers and place bee boxes throughout the orchards during the bloom. It’s a win-win arrangement.
Karen and I are very attached to this area and have called it home for a number of years. There is such a wide variety of outdoor activities and with the natural inland lakes combined with the Great Lakes makes this a very special place. As we travel around this continent on our continuous road trip, it will be interesting to see how often we find ourselves back here for a visit. But only in the summer.
