Posted by: Erin Mittendorf

Sorry for the long bout of radio silence on the blog. Lisa spent a week ailing at home, and Meghan and I were staffing the office ourselves. After that, I spent about a week up home, helping my sister with the details for her upcoming wedding in Suttons Bay.

It’s always great for me to get to spend some time with family where I grew up. Ann Arbor is great, but I miss Lake Michigan, birch trees, and dunes about as much as I miss my mom, dad and sister. To a smaller degree, it’s great just to check in on the backyard I grew up exploring. I managed to make a little time for that during the week, between tasting cakes and picking out flowers for the bridal bouquet.  The black raspberries should be ripe by the next time I visit in July. The red pines have finally muscled out the path my dad used to mow between the trees. The orange hawkweed I used to pick for my mom’s birthday bouquets, long before I knew its name or that it was invasive, still whips at my ankles like it does every year.

My dad pointed out all the autumn olive he wants to cut this fall and asked if there are any plans for a Stewardship Network Cluster in Northern Michigan.  

Yes and no. We’ve been talking with a lot of different areas about forming Clusters, including Northwest Michigan, and some are closer than others to having an organization in place to launch. Between the logistics and the funding, there will be no Northern Michigan Cluster this year.

We have now officially wrapped up the Need Water to Grow campaign, and we raised about $30,000. We greatly appreciate all of the support we found during the campaign, both in terms of money raised and morale boosted by all of the positive things people had to say about the Network.

Now we have the difficult task of figuring out to which of our many projects we should apply the money we’ve raised. We’re considering which of our new Clusters will launch this fall and which will wait for another day and another dollar. Given their stages of development, Mid-Michigan (which has already held events before its official launch) and Northern Indiana are the most likely candidates.

I’m looking forward to the day when we can launch our north and south Lakeplain Cluster spin-offs, the Waterloo Area Cluster, and a possible Northern Michigan Cluster. It would be great to have a work-related excuse to visit home.  

Though the campaign has finished up, we will continue posting to the blog about the happenings in the Stewardship Network office. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading, and that you’ll continue to do so!