Michigan Family Farms and Farm Buildings: Landscapes of the Heart and Mind

Part 5. Mines and Farms

 part 5 Mines and Farms The western side of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) is a land of stunning natural beauty, menacing cold, and bracing short summers about which farmers use the saying “Make hay while the sun shines,” an operative edict not a figure of speech. Farming in this region has been ancillary and supportive to mining—copper to the north, iron to the south—and lumbering. Successive waves of immigrants came to this remote region of Michigan hoping for work and a claim to land. These were hardy people willing to face long winters , accept isolation, cut virgin forest, clear fields, and farm. The French Canadians came first, down the waterways of the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, following the lumber industry . The Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, and Irish followed, escaping poverty in the home country, familiar with mining, and hoping for what was unthinkable in their countries: land to own. Women, as well as men, escaped indentured servitude. The United States, “America,” was a destination of hope. Their tenacity, which made good on the possible, is apparent in these stories. So is the pride their descendants take in the land of their ancestors and the allegiance and commitment they have to the land of their choosing. The first farm family discussed here is of French Canadian origin and made the long trip by water from Quebec to Lake Linden. Next comes a cluster of three families of Finnish origin, two that made their homes in copper country and a third that settled on the far western border of the UP in iron country. To the southeast there settled families of Danish and Norwegian origin, followed later by Poles. People of several ethnicities and cultures learned to live and work with each other yet retained their separate cultural identities. Mining and lumber were the backbone of the economy, and farming was a joint occupation allowing family subsistence. A large burden of subsistence work lay with the women as men had wage jobs in lumber camps and mines. The UP is a land of great beauty, of vast expanses of forest and water. It is a landscape that beckons and intimidates and in which only the hardy and focused survive and thrive. ...