Traverse City is Home to Michigan’s Only Tea Farm

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It’s a blustery day at Angela Macke’s organic farm as she carefully makes her way up a ladder. Biting winds swirl around her as she tries to fix a vent that’s stuck open atop one of her hoop houses. After several minutes of wrestling with it while trying to resist the bitter cold, she finally loosens it and gets the vent closed. Hopping off the ladder, she makes her way inside to warm up with a reviving cup of hot tea. Because what else would she do?

It’s life as usual for the owner of Light of Day Organics, a mostly one-woman operation west of Traverse City on M-72. Macke’s sprawling 50-acre farmstead is the only tea farm in the state, and one of just a handful of biodynamic operations in Michigan. Furthermore, Macke says she’s the only tea farm in the country that is both certified organic and Demeter-certified biodynamic.

Macke says Light of Day was a calling, a way to combine her passion and reverence for all life in a way she hadn’t before. She was working as a nurse and saw growing and providing tea as a means of restoration for people apart from visits to a hospital or doctor’s office. “I wanted to create a healing space where people would leave feeling better than they did before they arrived,” she says.

The farm’s name comes from the poem and song “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” by Henry Van Dyke, written in 1907 and set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” It comes from the last line of the opening verse: “Joyful, joyful we adore thee, God of Glory, Lord of Love. Hearts unfold like flowers before thee, opening to the sun above. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away. Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day.”

Macke has embraced that spirit since the farm’s opening in 2003. “For me, it’s the [history of] ceremony around it that sucked me in,” she says. “Beginning with a ritual of removing your shoes, entering into a sacred space in silence while ducking down through a low doorway, then kneeling down as a gesture of humility. Then proceeding to forgive yourself, everyone else, and celebrate the divinity within.”

She sees tea as a way to encourage people to realize their full potential and believes the tea farm is a way to uplift herself, her customers and her community. “Tea was a nondenominational, non-political, Switzerland-like medium in which to approach this message,” Macke explains.

Today it’s not just a tea farm, but a biodynamic operation. Biodynamic farming combines principles of organic and sustainable farming with the rhythms of nature. Think macro, not micro: The biodynamic philosophy views the entire farm as a single organism—a closed-loop system that avoids the use of chemical fertilizers, collects seeds from the crops raised there and utilizes crop diversification. In Macke’s case, she rotates crops among her land and hoop houses, growing everything from tomatoes to berries to herbs alongside the tea.

While honing her own tea-making style, Macke realized that for her, “the best” tea is tea produced without contaminants. “I kept reading articles about the heavy metals in China,” she says. “That’s why I was so hellbent on this being the best tea ever.”

As an RN, she appreciates and extolls tea’s anti-inflammatory benefits, and especially that of matcha, the finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves. Macke touts the properties of matcha that help the body heal various gastrointestinal issues. While matcha is higher in caffeine than black tea due to its concentrated form (though still lower than coffee), typical green tea is low in caffeine, high in antioxidants, and rich in vitamins B and C. Macke says that rooibos, often called red tea, helps relax the central nervous system. The other ingredients in her various teas—berries, cinnamon, peppermint, cacao—offer their own benefits as well as flavor.

As with many other businesses, the pandemic dealt a huge blow to Light of Day. Plans for a retail site in Traverse City evaporated, and Macke closed down the store on the farm as well in March of 2020. “Everyone wants to put their noses in the tins to smell, to decide what tea to purchase,” says Macke. “To my nursing brain, masks off to sniff and to taste, plus hands touching everything, seemed like a very bad idea.”

So, she turned to the web, embracing online sales to a degree she hadn’t previously, plus working with wholesale accounts throughout the region. Light of Day tea is available at a host of local restaurants, such as Oryana Café, the Omelette Shoppe and NoBo Market, and it’s also a star ingredient in Bailey’s Farms kombucha, Grocer’s Daughter chocolates in Empire and Patricia’s Chocolates of Grand Haven.

This year, Macke has embraced a return to her full-on retail model, with year-round store hours. (Current winter hours are: 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 12–5 p.m. on Sundays. Be sure to check her website for the most up-to-date hours.)

“We are permitted to host any events that include tea such as festivals, live music, weddings, rehearsal dinners, engagement parties, anniversary parties, graduation parties or farm-to-table dinners,” Macke says. “We’ll also have some ‘Love our Locals’ tea classes in our yurt beginning in May, before the summer rush.”

And new this season will be the addition of “Weed Dating”—a monthly event to help singles meet new friends in a fun, comfortable setting; pulling weeds together while chatting it up for 15-minute intervals. “Afterwards, there will be nourishing food and the opportunity to linger and relax around a bonfire. This is the most magical place ever for a first date, or any date,” Macke shares.

But the biggest change for this tea maven is just ahead: She recently completed work on a building at the farm, adding another commercial kitchen. That will allow her to begin a new endeavor, one she’s resisted for years: Entering the tea bag market.

Though it’s much more cost-effective for customers to buy in bulk, the cost of a tin—typically $30 and up—can be off-putting. And selling boxes of tea in bags provides an opportunity to get into grocery stores like Meijer. Macke says she’ll start slow, but it heralds promise for future growth.

That’s important as she looks forward to Light of Day becoming a true family business. “I’ve been the sole owner since the beginning,” she says, though there was always some family involvement. “I’ve had nieces and nephews pick and plant. Kids always thought it was cool.”

Five years ago, when her then-husband was nearing retirement, she looked into getting the business appraised so she could sell it and retire as well, only to learn her sons had other ideas. “The kids said, ‘No! That’s our future.’ I’ll keep going until they’re ready to take the baton.”

Her sons’ commitment means that this blessed and beautiful lifestyle will grow on. “My dream is to have grandkids pick blueberries I’ve planted.”

Getting Into Tea

There are so many ways to embrace tea beyond the traditional cup, Macke says. Here are just a few:

• I add it to stews, quick breads, in my oatmeal; mill it up in the coffee grinder and sprinkle it on eggs or other proteins; and infuse it in ganache in chocolates. I add floral teas to brown rice, or use brewed tea instead of water in recipes, like in cake.
• I like to run it through my hair—it makes it really shiny.
• Tea is great for your skin—white or green teas have natural SPF 15. Use it instead of rosewater on your face. It’s antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial.

Ross Boissoneau is based in Empire and writes about culture and business for a number of print and online publications. rossboissoneau@gmail.com.

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