Hello! We are Joel & Alyssa. We purchased our 50 acre farm on M-72, just 10 minutes west of downtown Traverse City, in September of 2021. This will be the home of Great Lakes Botanicals, with a large focus on lavender while also offering a variety of herbs that will be grown on the property. We will start planting lavender this spring with hopes to begin welcoming visitors and selling lavender and other products in the next couple years. We met at Western Michigan University and spent most of our time together hiking and camping throughout west Michigan, with most of our time spent in Traverse City. We both were frequent visitors of Traverse City growing up and quickly realized that this is somewhere we would want to end up together eventually. Having business backgrounds, we always knew we wanted to start our own someday but also wanted to incorporate our love of nature into the final plan. With Joel spending summers at his grandparents small farm in Allegan County, what better way to continue the legacy and start our own family farm in the place we love. Alyssa started to get into essential oils and continuously diffused lavender, which gave us the idea for our crop. After many months of research on the lavender plant, we were set on the idea. We loved the many ways you could use it at home but also how beautiful the plant is. We eventually plan to have around 200 rows of lavender and add on other herbs and products to our offerings. In the next couple years, we hope to build a roadside stand along with participating in the Traverse City Farmers Market. Long term plans will be to build a large shop and allow our visitors to walk through the rows of lavender and small forest. The vision for the first few years of Great Lakes Botanicals will be to offer a range of products to the local community along with being an agritourism destination. We also want to get involved with the local community as much as possible and give back in any way that we can. We are excited to bring our dream to life in the area and be a part of the Traverse City community!