Before immigration and settlement by European stock, Northern Lower Michigan was inhabited by native people who, as far as we know, did not keep a written history or have the concept of deeds. The idea of ownership showed up here in the 1700s, and around 1920 Dayton and Leora Willard acquired the land from Dayton's father and farmed until the late 1960s.

In 1969, Jim and Eileen Kelly in partnership with Jack and Marge French purchased 400 acres from the Willards and set aside ~100 acres for residential development. The remaining ~280 acres was eventually acquired by Jim and Eileen's son Dan in 2020 and 2023 with the intention of rebooting the farm with a wilds resonant aesthetic.

Dan Kelly, that's me. I mention the whole ownership thing because who really owns anything?

The farm's LLCs pay rent twice a year to the county in the form of property tax. If we stop paying rent on the land we "own" then, (eventually) our ownership will be forfeit. That doesn't really feel like ownership to me.

From a more spiritual perspective, the land was here before me and will still be here when I'm gone, (600 or so years from now, if I keep up the yoga, saunas and water fasts). So do I own the farm, or am I merely the latest visitor? Maybe I just love the land and the all the rest flows from that. Love Farm... huh.

Love Farm is a wilds resonant agricultural operation. That's a fancy way of saying that nature is smart. A tiny chunk of the farm has buildings, electricity, water and even internet. On the rest of our 284 acres, nature runs the show. 

Mudgrade

Near the end of 2024 I started an upgrade of the farm's water system... and tore up the place in the process. For a month or two the farm was an authentic World War I movie set, what with all the trenches, piles of dirt and frozen mud. The backhoe uncovered concrete megaliths and unique artifacts from before the ubiquity of plastic. The trenches are mostly filled as of February 2025, but we've still got plenty of mud.

The trench from the 4" well head to the barn

Six feet deep and over one hundred feet long. On the left is the remnants of a glazed brick wall

One takeaway from this project was never rely on MISDIG. They were supposed to mark the primary electric lines and... they MISsed. So I ended up turning off  the power via backhoe. About 5 guys and 3 trucks from Consumers Power showed up within 30 minutes to get us electrified again. Great work!

Antique bottles buried and amazingly intact

Thanks to Dave and the team at Glen Lake Electric and for sure Joe and his lads from Demerly Well Drilling for services way beyond the call of duty.

We'll have to wait for a full thaw to restore the rolling meadows, for now we're prepping for the 2025 maple syrup season. Love Farm's Dark Energy, the most expensive maple syrup in Benzie County! $50 a pint, that's more than twice what you might pay in the store. How come?

Making Leaves

In the spring, sap flows up the maple trees to make leaves. Leaf construction requires both the energy provided by sugar and a structural lattice of minerals.

Commercial maple syrups are highly filtered and clear, so less minerals. When Love Farm boils the sap from our maple trees, we keep the mineral rich "sugar sand", which eventually settles to the bottom of the jar. The sand can be stirred back into the syrup or spooned out for a mineral supercharge.

I believe the sand and syrup are synergistic, and are supposed to stay together. Somehow, the conventional aesthetic has fixated on clear maple syrup, basically empty sugar. Which was probably why some folks are ok with maple flavored corn syrup at IHOP, (except in Vermont). They've never tasted maple syrup with sugar sand. Yet another conspiracy to supress our wilds resonance, methinks.

I've seen folks experience powerful upgrades from eating foods that contain Dark Energy, specifically Sarah's Sleeping Bear Granola. That's not science, just my story.

A few thoughts on filtration. Filtering out sugar sand exposes hot syrup to who knows what. Commercially produced, (even organic) maple syrup could have encountered highly reactive aluminum, plastics that release toxins when heated or dioxins from bleach. Even the most benign filtration strategies include significant interventions. Gravity filtration uses Orlon, a synthetic (plastic) developed by Dupont around 1950 that is reportedly stable at high heat. Filter presses use pressure and the addition of DE, (diatomaceous earth) to the syrup which is later caught by cellulose (paper) filters. Why filter at all? Depleted maple syrup comes from a legacy culture that is no longer relevant, IMHO. I am enjoying the realignment of 'Merica with health and vitality, and away from convenience and facade.

The creation of Love Farm Dark Energy maple syrup emphasizes virtuosity over convenience. We don't use "labor saving" techniques like huge networks of plastic tubing or reverse osmosis. Each tree is tapped with a stainless steel spile and 3 feet of food grade polyethylene connected to a 5 gallon plastic bucket. We consolidate all the sap in 250 gallon totes and cook down the sap in stainless steel caldrons over a wood fired biochar generator. We never allow hot syrup to encounter plastic of any kind, just stainless steel and glass.

We burn only standing dead or fallen timber from our own land or slash donated from local tree service companies (Advanced Tree Removal, Milarch Tree Co, Treetop Tree Service, Gerhart Tree Service, Smitty's Tree Service, etc.) Biochar is an amazing soil amendment, so we get two different products from the energy liberated by the fire.

Sequestering carbon in soil is said by some to prevent climate catastrophe, but my motivation is boosting soil fertility and growing nutrient dense plants, full stop. Atmospheric carbon has been wildly variable regardless of human activity according to 800k years of Greenland ice cores, but if anthropogenic climate change is an axe you enjoy grinding, then there's no shame in adding Dark Energy to your pancakes 🙂

Biochar is the basis for developing Benzie Terra Preta, a wilds resonant technology from the ancient people of the Amazon. Dick Burris of Beaver Island set me on this path during the first Around Lake Michigan expedition, (his video doesn't play on Brave currently, try Firefox or Safari.)

We're gradually amping up our production of Dark Energy each year. Inventory is limited and we're in no hurry to sell what we've got. Now you know why Dark Energy is, (proudly), Benzie County's most expensive maple syrup.