One of our “off season” activities is seeking out grants. As we get farther along in the restoration, many of the projects have greater resource requirements. We’re also trying to improve public access and interpretation — having teams available to give tours and provide signage when we’re not present.

Two grants have been submitted recently. One is our near-annual DNR Partnership grant that pays for most of our restoration materials, to be matched by volunteer hours. We’ve had good success with this grant in past years. We submitted an America250 grant this past week for interpretive signage: a set of signage to interpret the station that would reside in the lantern room of Grand Traverse Light and a second set of signage for each of the station’s buildings. This is a very competitive grant; the outcome is highly uncertain.

Transportation remains our largest expense; we contract a landing craft out of Leland. It eases the delivery of materials, gear & equipment but is considerably more expensive than our prior volunteer boat arrangement. Contracted labor is also challenging. While we have and continue to investigate grants, the difficulty finding contractors willing to work in the island environment and uncertainty of transportation timing adds complexity to both estimating and project delivery.

Please join us in welcoming Barb Falkenhagen to our Board.

Barb is a dedicated lighthouse volunteer with experience working on multiple offshore lights. She began volunteering with South Fox Island Light Station in 2023 was part of the lantern room restoration team. She also assists in restoring Frankfort’s North Breakwater Light.

Her academic experience includes attending Skive Gymnasium, a Folk School in Skive, Denmark, and Saginaw Valley State University. She and her husband own Don’s Welding, LLC in Saginaw.

Please join us November 9 from 1 – 3:30 at the Leland Library for our annual meeting. Public welcome.

Hear about our season and plans for the coming year. Learn about volunteer opportunities and meet some of our team members.

The antique apple trees continue to do well. They got a minor trim from the closing team this week. While the ideal time to trim is late winter, they seem to survive our delayed pruning. Look at all that fruit!

A number of years ago, curious about what variety they were, we took a sample to Kilchermans Christmas farm, Northport, MI who specialize in heritage apples. They identified it as a Caville Blanc d’Hiver, a rare variety considered to be the classic dessert apple of France.  Here’s the explanation they provided us.

Most of the apples will go to the birds and deer this year as our “on island” season ends as the closing team heads home today.

It’s impossible to capture the feeling of having a 360 degree view in the lantern room again. This is truly a milestone project.

The original glass was mostly shot out by the time the DNR enclosed the lighthouse with plywood in the 1980’s. FILA upgraded the plywood in 2006 to protect the lantern room from further damage. A few years back, we inserted Lexan in some of the panels to give light and a tiny view. Over the past two years, the team of Barb, Marty & Tom have carefully removed the astrangals (vertical supports) and top and bottom stops, then cleaned and replaced them. Some were sufficiently damaged that they fashioned temporary wooden stops while taking samples back to to recreate proper metal ones. Almost every screw that had to be removed put up its own unique battle! For now, we’ve used Lexan panels, each custom fit since even though the openings may have been exactly the same back in 1867, they aren’t now. Our eventual goal would be to install original glass but in the interim we’ve made a huge improvement and learned a lot.

Here’s a sample from a couple different directions….

Photos: Barb Falkenhagen (taken from a video)

Many thanks to the lantern room team!