Bushel of locally grown apples: $9 from the farmer's market. Ida Red and Macintosh.
You can get a $4 half bushel of honey crisp seconds. But I prefer the classics.
I'll dry them. Can them. Applesauce them. Pie them. Eat them straight up, plain or with cheese. Find them under the couch as my one year old takes a few bites and deposits one wherever he happens to be. Half eaten apples will show up all over our house. That's okay. We have a bushel. For $9.
Apples.
Michigan is the third largest producer of Apples in America. We're the leader in cherry production. Blueberry production. Third largest in peach production. West Michigan is known as Michigan's fruit belt. The Muskegon--Grand Rapids area, known as the Fruit Ridge. And for much of the same reason the West Coast of the US is a major fruit producer...
A vast body of water to the West moderates the temperature and lengthens the growing season, which is ideal for fruit production.
Yessir. Michigan is sitting pretty with THIS industry. No taking this one away. Unless the crazy unlikely happens and the climate mysteriously changes out from under us...
Michigan's Fruit Ridge is an aberation. A freak of nature. A confluence of conditions that make ideal fruit growing conditions...at all seasons the farmers market is crammed with many varieties of the fruit for that time of year: cherries, plumbs, pears, peaches, blueberries, strawberries, pears, apples, apricots, raspberries, blackberries...we once made a jam of seven varieties of cherries procured from various vendors at the usual weekly farmers market.
The fruit is harvested and exported nationwide. Worldwide.
Approximately 8 miles wide by 20 miles long, the Fruit Ridge is regarded as one of the prime fruit-growing regions in the world. Elevations greater than 800 feet and its location (about 25 miles from Lake Michigan), creates a unique climate (ideal growing and moderate winters) for fruit production. The Ridge supplies 40 % of the states (Michigan) apples. An estimated 66% of the Ridge lies in Kent County, all within 20 miles of downtown Grand Rapids.
"The Ridge" is an area of 158 square miles (8 miles wide and 20 miles long) covering 7 townships and 4 counties: Kent (Alpine, Sparta, Tyrone), Newago (Ashland), Muskegon (Casnovia) and Ottawa (Chester and Wright).
-- Article
Ah.
This little pocket of fruit growing perfection. A major supplier of the fruits that reach America's pies, pastries, jams, sauces, and tables. It's been cultivated for over a century, orchards passed through generations.
Part of a larger fruit belt spanning the shores of Lake Michigan that has given rise to vinyards and wines...though I admit a weakness for cherry wine.
Vineyards, wineries, fruit and agriculture...these have been some of the few expanding and thriving industries in the crumbling Michigan economy.
And they're hanging by a fragile climatological thread. Thoroughly dependent on the oddity of placement and ideal climate.
Western Michigan University has been granted 1.5 million dollars to research the impact of climate change on the tart cherry industry...
The National Science Foundation recently awarded a $1.5 million grant to an international research team to study climate change and the tart cherry industry.
The aim of the study is to provide tart cherry farmers with a global perspective on their industry. Farmers in northern Michigan and in Eastern Europe will see how climate change affects their respective orchards in a way that reflects the growing international nature of their industry.
The grant to Michigan State University follows a 2003 award from the Environmental Protection Agency that the university used to assess climate change and Michigan’s tart-cherry and tourism industries.
Used in desserts and drinks, about 70 percent of the United States’ tart cherries come from Michigan. Nowhere else in the world produces more of them than the Traverse City area in the northwest of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
It is a good industry to study because cherry orchards are sensitive to weather and require long-term investment – about a 20-30 year commitment. Growers have limited options to adapt when compared to annual cereal grains where they can plant something new the next year.
It's just more reason why climate legislation is so critical and urgent. Climate change doesn't exist in an academic vacuum. It is causing real world damage, and stands to strip whole regions of their unique bounty, but to destroy jobs producing industries.