Cherries, Apples, and the Fruit Belt

The orchards rolling across these hills are part of one of the great agricultural accidents of the Midwest, the Northern Michigan fruit belt. It seems impossible that delicate fruit trees could thrive this far north, but the secret is the water. Lake Michigan is so huge and so deep that it acts like a giant thermostat, staying cool in spring to hold the blossoms back until the danger of frost has passed, then holding onto summer warmth long into the fall.

That lake-tempered climate, combined with well-drained rolling soils, makes Charlevoix County prime cherry and apple country. It was not always orchards. The land was first stripped bare by the logging boom of the eighteen hundreds, and when the great pine forests were gone, homesteaders replanted the cleared and eroded hillsides with fruit trees.

Michigan grew into a national powerhouse for tart cherries, especially the bright red Montmorency used in pies, and apples became one of the state's most valuable fruit crops, grown all the way north to Charlevoix. In late summer the roadside stands and pick-your-own farms around town fill with cherries, apricots, apples, and fresh honey, a sweet reward from land that the loggers once left for dead.