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P f i e f f e r ' s  O r c h a r d

     This extensive orchard is located a mile east of the East Side Drive near Kilty's Point. When Sybil Larsen was a young woman her husband, Big Art, was hired to pick up apples from Pfieffer's at the dock at Nomad, and she rode along; it was her first trip to the south end of the Island on which she had been born.
     This orchard was very productive until Pfieffer made a fatal mistake.  He asked the experts at the Michigan Agricultural College (now MSU) for advice.  He followed their recommendations, which killed many of his trees and impeded the yield from the rest..

     Now the property is owned by Mark LaFreniere and his wife Jacque, the schoolteacher and noted author on the Island's ornithology. We drove down on a beautiful early-summer day, examined the ruins of the old homestead, and found several interesting scenes, such as a convocation of butterflies and grapes untended for fifty years (from which a handful of Island gardeners have taken clippings) that have grown wild into the branches of bushes that towered over our heads. But we could find no trace of the trail that once connected the east end of this field to the west end of Burke's Orchard a half mile away

butterflies

 

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