Springing to Life
On a mission at Maple River Farm
By Beth Anne Piehl
Photography by G. Randall Goss
Paul Keiswetter says he’s on a life-sustaining adventure at his Maple River Farm, and when he says that, you can tell he isn’t talking solely about his property.
Dedication to land conservation and wildlife management amid his 1,400-plus acres, bounded by the Maple River and rich with its diverse ecosystem, is in his blood.
It’s obvious when you hear him talk about banding woodcocks in the springtime and how the beaks of the newborns grow 2 millimeters a day; listen as he explains the art of aging meat culled from animals on the acreage; and pick up on the passion when he talks about his plans for bringing Maple River Farm full circle, to sustaining the life that lives there, harvesting the animals and tilling the land.
“We’ve always enjoyed coming here and spending time here,” Keiswetter says. “There’s a purpose now. Why it’s taken us 25 years to figure it out, I don’t know.”
Take away the buildings, the barn, the house, Grouse Hall – about 15-20,000 square feet in all — and caring for the land would be just fine for Paul and wife Melissa, the owners of Maple River Farm, just past the bridge where the Maple crosses under Pleasantview Road north of Harbor Springs.
“I think the farm represents the last vestiges of what Northern Michigan was in its origins. It represents the last of the indigenous environment,” Melissa opines. “I have great respect for the land. We could take the buildings off and know this is still something so special.”
The couple purchased the original 600-acre property in the mid-1980s, when it consisted of a small home and barn and enough land to satiate Paul’s love of hunting and the outdoors. “I turned it into a little hunting camp where the boys could come,” he recalled.
At the time, he and Melissa were building a new home in Petoskey, and they needed a place to live while construction continued. An updated home had been renovated on the farm property. “I promised her I would get her back to town within five years,” Paul muses. “And we stayed here five years.”
Once they moved full-time to their Petoskey home, additions began to the cozy house on the farm property, and through the years they’ve purchased additional acreage as it became available. Paul even had an underground tunnel constructed that connects the home with the stables, to make it easier to get over to feed the four horses when winter’s wildness blows across the property. (Plus, the tunnel’s a lot of fun for the kids that visit, Melissa notes.)
They enjoy hosting fund-raisers and entertaining inside cavernous Grouse Hall, where the Buck Head Bar is a point of pride for the many hunters and guests of the farm. There, the mounts of the top 15 deer shot on the property, 8-pointers or larger, are displayed; if a new one comes in that is bigger, a smaller one gets booted to a side wall.
Indeed, deer and a variety of wild game take a central focus at Maple River Farm. Next to Grouse Hall in the stable, four horses idle out in the pasture while Paul shows where the meat carved from animals taken on the property is stored. It’s a commercial-size cooler, where wild game like deer is aged for four weeks at 35 degrees, hide-on for freshness.
“We do all our own butchering and we eat everything we shoot here,” Paul notes, adding the Woody Grill is a favored spot for preparing the food inside Grouse Hall.
“How much more sustainable can you get?”
He’s about to answer his own question.
Paul and Melissa don’t exactly look like farmers. Melissa is refined and elegant, more like Anne of Green Gables than Annie Oakley; and when you have a conversation with Paul at his high-tech office in downtown Petoskey, where he oversees Petoskey Plastics, the company he founded with his dad nearly 40 years ago, it’s easy to picture him as international businessman.
But get Paul out to the farm, to his land, and that changes, particularly when he starts talking about the work ahead.
He envisions first the creation of agricultural food plots in the fields to provide feed and nutrition for resident wild life. In turn, the wild life is hunted and butchered on the farm by hunters, providing food for family and friends.
Secondly, to generate commerce for the farm to offset expenses, the current plan is to plant hay fields, providing food for the animals and also for sale.
Thirdly, Keiswetter envisions restoring production to dormant fields and learning about agricultural grass products that may have a future in energy, such as corn and switch grass.
By operating under the allowable “carbon footprint” for the size of this acreage, Keiswetter will also be able to sell some “carbon credits” on the stock exchange to larger businesses or others who are exceeding their limits.
“Every inch of land is going to be identified and analyzed,” he emphasizes. “Our intention is to protect the land. We’re creating our own self-sustaining chain of production here.”
It will be a four-season effort, in each Keiswetter finds particular pleasure, from the does dropping their fawns in the summer; to fall’s harvest and Thanksgiving’s feast; to winter’s cross-country trails and crisp beauty; and once again to spring’s renewal of life in the wildlife and fields — and within the caretakers of this scenic and significant section of Northern Michigan’s landscape.
“Twenty percent of the uniqueness of this place is the outbuildings,” said Paul, “and 80 percent is what Mother Nature has done here.”
Life on the farm
The owners: Paul and Melissa Keiswetter; Paul is the founder and president of Petoskey Plastics (pronounce their last name like “key sweater”).
Family: Daughter Kristin (Sam) Clark and grandson Charlie; son Jason (Erika) and grandson Taylor; sons Zander and Thomas; English setter companions Lily, 12, and Dune, 3
The property: 1,400-plus acres (more than two square miles) north of Harbor Springs on the Maple River; structures, totaling 15-20,000 square feet, include the main house, stable, kennels, bunkhouse, Grouse Hall and a new business office building under construction.
Also calling Maple River Farm home: Deer, bear, grouse, woodcock, wolves, coyotes, duck, fish, waterfowl and variety of birds.
Tillable acreage: 224
Future plans: Hay sales and veneer-quality maple production from the 200-plus acres of maple hardwoods on the property.
The river runs through it
The Maple River Farm is named because it encompasses over 1 mile of the west branch of the Maple River. This significant portion of the Maple accounts for approximately 15 percent of all private river frontage on the west branch, and what happens to this property directly impacts what happens downstream, including Burt Lake, Indian River and Mullet Lake.
The property has been mapped out as an ideal ecological corridor by the Conservation Resource Alliance, which notes the importance of the river not only for supporting fish habitat, but further impacts. While creeks, rivers and the forests along them account for just 5 percent of a total forest ecosystem, they typically contain 75 percent of the forest’s plant and animal diversity.