At the Table: Becoming farmers who cook? Or cooks who farm?

For a long time, I wanted to acquire the property behind my house in Suttons Bay. We bought our home in the summer of 1989; a bungalow that turned 100 years old in 2023. Our lot is small, typical for the village, with the back of the detached garage only five feet from the lot line. Against the south side of the house, there was a narrow strip of garden, filled with perennials, mostly herbs. I called it my “kitchen garden.”

The vacant lot behind the garage was part of the property that included the house next door. Our neighbors were a couple who were retired and had lived in their house since their marriage in the early 1940s. Their back lot was a field of wild grass, which they kept mowed and neat. But they did not want to sell any portion of their property.