NORTHERN NUT GROWERS ASSOCIATION, INC.

Cadillac Chestnut Harvest Festival
City Park on Lake Cadillac,
October 18, 2003, 9 - 5 pm
by Dennis Fulbright

The Third Annual Cadillac Chestnut Harvest Festival will be held in Chestnut Town, USA--otherwise known as Cadillac, Michigan--about 40 minutes south of Traverse City on the edge of the Huron-Manistee National Forest. This quaint town of about 12,000 people transforms itself for a day into a gala for chestnuts.

Why Cadillac? In the 1970's, Mr. Jim Comp began mapping chestnut trees that had been planted in the Cadillac area. Many of these trees were 80 to 100-years old and had been planted by pioneers from New York and Pennsylvania who settled in western Michigan. These trees naturalized into small stands of American chestnut with a Chinese chestnut added here and there in more recent plantings. Jim was incensed when he read somewhere that the US Forest Service said there were only few mature American chestnut trees left in the USA. Jim himself knew of more than 1000 American chestnut trees right around Cadillac and many of them were producing nuts. He started writing people and began a mapping program with the help of a Hope College student, Larry Brewer, Holland, Michigan. Other chestnut researchers, using these mapped locations started studying Michigan's chestnut trees because some were surviving chestnut blight. Jim and a few of his retired buddies began collecting the nuts with the help of other organizations including the Boy Scouts. This eventually turned into the American Chestnut Council who still collects, grows and distributes American chestnut seedlings to non-quarantined areas in the USA.

The more recent series of events that initiated the Festival was at the turn of the last century (three years ago) when Austrian-borne Chef Herman Suhs decided that he wanted chestnuts roasted in front of his gourmet restaurant, Herman European Café, for the millennial-eve celebration. It might be assumed that he came up with this idea after he discovered that Dennis Fulbright, a Michigan State University professor was teaching Cadillac 7th graders about chestnuts (his son happened to be in the class) with the support and help of the Cadillac-based American Chestnut Council.

From that small start, chestnuts have appeared at all New Year's eve functions (First Night celebration) in Cadillac, at various tourism events, even for the opening of the new US 131 freeway by-pass; if it's a community event you can find chestnuts roasting somewhere in Cadillac. The festival was just a continuum of these earlier events.

Beginning in October 2001, and continuing in 2002 and again this year, the Cadillac Chestnut Harvest Festival is a place to learn about chestnuts, but more importantly it is a place to eat chestnuts. The chestnuts at the festival come from Michigan chestnut growers. You can taste roasted chestnuts, chestnut soup, chestnut cheesecake, hot dogs with chestnut sauce. Chef Herman puts special gourmet chestnut meals on his menu at his restaurant. You can purchase all the fresh chestnuts you wish to carry home.

Besides chestnut food, you can do the Bake College 5K run/walk, try your luck at chestnut raffles for chestnut crafts, vote on next year's poster for the festival (high school student competition) and the favorite event of all is to pick up a free American chestnut seedling from the American Chestnut Council, and many other events including the Wexford County historic homes tour. Entertainment during the day includes the Heinzman School of Irish Dancers, the always entertaining black smith next to the old Shay locomotive, how to cook with chestnuts demonstration, and an evening concert, part of the Cadillac Gopherwood Concert Series beginning at 8:00 pm. that night. The Irish band Millish, will be performing.

For more information and a list of events at the festival go to: http://www.cadillacmichigan.com/chestnuts/. For places to stay and more information on Cadillac, Michigan go to: http://www.cadillacmichigan.com/.