Fresh local produce! What could taste better? The 2009 Taste the Local Difference guide is a complete list of farms, wineries, and other businesses that offer fresh, locally grown food products in northwest Lower Michigan. Taste the Local Difference promotes local farm foods, helps schools serve them, links new farmers to land and other resources, and [...]
Jeff Smith, editor at Traverse Magazine, wrote an excellent article, “Saving the Family (and the) Cottage“. The subhead of the article states “The cottage that draws a family together can be the very thing that breaks it apart. It doesn’t have to be that way.” Jeff reviews information from the book, Saving the Family Cottage. I [...]
This is a repost, a reminder that “clustering” is not the same as conservation subdivision design (conservation development): “We already have clustering!” That’s the common response often heard from township officials when they consider conservation subdivisions to preserve rural lands. Whereas with clustering preserved land is often an afterthought, conservation subdivisions (conservation development) preserve the [...]
Cedar Valley Ridge, a conservation development eight miles west of Traverse City in northern Michigan, is certified as a Four Stars Green Subdivision by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center. The Four Stars award is the highest level of Green Certification for a development from the NAHB and represents recognition of [...]
I received this nice letter below from Joe Barnes at Bundaron Farm after posting about his wonderful conservation development. I love his comment about the TV reporter. This is how all development should be: “Kirt, Thanks for writing this post about Bundoran Farm. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t visited our website www.bundoranfarm.com to do [...]
It seems Wal-Mart is proposing to build a super store near Orange, Virginia near land that is an important part of the historic battlefield area of the Battle of the Wilderness. Orange County is a rural community in central Virginia filled with beautiful horse farms and vineyards. The article, “Wal-Mart in the Wilderness” in The American [...]
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of [...]
Developers are creating subdivisions around organic farms to attract buyers according to the article Organic Farms as Subdivision Amenities in the New York Times. According to the article, these subdivisions have been treating farms as an amenity. LandChoices’ member Ed McMahon is quoted in the article: “Open space improves the return for a developer,” Mr. [...]
