In Our Fall 2016 Issue

FROM THE EDITOR

Moving Here

Raise your hand if you moved to Northern Michigan as an adult, from downstate, from another state or from across the globe. Was it because of food or farming, work or retirement, love?

Raise your hand if you are here because your parents or grandparents moved here, for the beautiful land and water or for work on the farms or in the factories.

Raise your hand if you are here because your grandparents' parents or great-grandparents moved here, perhaps buying land for a farm, or logging, milling and shipping out lumber.

Raise your hand if you are here because your ancestors lived here, drawing from bountiful woods and waters for food, shelter and trade, long before peoples from Europe began to arrive.

That should be about everyone, yes? Now put down your hand, relax. Turn to your neighbors and say hello. Today we are all here together. And on any given day we are joined by others who are moving here, visiting or passing through.

This autumn issue of Edible Grande Traverse tells several stories of people who moved here–how they found this particular place in the world, why they stayed and what they brought along. Of course food is implicated in all those things. Sometimes food is a lure, like an apple on a tree. Sometimes food means work worth keeping, or food builds bonds with new friends. And always when people move their foods come with them–through recipes, ingredients and cooking, and in those flavors of home forever imprinted on their palates.

OK, raise your hand, one more time, if you love the food of this place, the richness of its harvests and the variety of its cuisine. Lift it a little higher if you strengthen the local foodshed by eating from it as best you can. And stretch up one last time if you seek to leave this place in better shape than how it was when you or your family arrived. I hope your hand is waving high now!

Wishing you a bountiful harvest and plenty of apple pie this fall,

-Barb Tholin, Publisher