Venting won’t solve the long list of challenges facing the cherry industry, but it was a start.
Some 60 growers, mostly from Leelanau and Antrim counties, Monday took up an invitation issued by a Suttons Bay resident and fifth-generation orchardist to come together, chat, and start a process aimed at putting the cherry industry back in the black.
“Some were afraid that it was going to be a complaint session,” said Leisa Eckerle Hankins, owner of the cherrybased Benjamin Twiggs retail store in downtown Traverse City. “That was never my intent with the meeting. In talking over the last year with people in the industry, we needed to move away from the negativity and toward solutions. We needed to move toward a starting ground for the future, and that’s what we did.”
