Farm Life
Durance Farm is a family-owned and operated Michigan Centennial Farm established in 1889 by George and Mary Isabel (Cook) Durance. It is located in northwest section of Michigan’s lower peninsula in Charlevoix Township adjoining the city of Charlevoix. Lake Michigan is one-half mile north of the farm, and Lake Charlevoix is about a mile south of the farm.
Small family farms of the 1800s and early 1900s were almost self-sufficient, raising chickens, pigs, cows, growing fruits, vegetables, and cattle feed, keeping bees for honey and fertilization of crops, and selling the surplus locally.
From 1889 through the 1920s the principal farming activity was a dairy operation, gradually changing to strawberry farming from 1908 until the 1980s.
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