Early Summer 2017 – volume 15 issue 1

Published May 5th, 2017

editor Jim Lundstrom

assistant editor Alissa Ehmke

art & literature editor Alyssa Skiba

production manager David Eliot

creative director Ryan Miller

photography director Len Villano

sales managers Jess Farley, Stephen Grutzmacher

contributing editors Myles Dannhausen Jr., Jess Farley, Gary Jones, Katie Lott, Roy and Charlotte Lukes, Jackson Parr and Andrew Phillips

distribution manager Angela Sherman

courier The Paper Boy, LLC

distribution experts Michael Brooks, Steve Glabe, Michael Hyde, Matthew Smith, Susie Vania, Drew Witteborg

publisher David Eliot

office manager Ben Pothast

marketing & office assistant Abigail Thornton

chief technology officer Nate Bell

owners David Eliot

Total copies: 40,000

Mailed Copies: 5,066

Door County Living, celebrating the culture and lifestyle of the Door Peninsula, is published five times annually by Peninsula Publishing & Distribution, Inc. 8142 Hwy 57, Baileys Harbor, WI 54202.

To order a subscription please mail a check of $15 to Door County Living, 8142 Hwy 57, Baileys Harbor, WI 54202. If you would like to advertise please visit doorcountymarketing.com.

Bring On the Bubbles: Champagne Drinks

Ah, May. Just the word suggests sweet breezes, peonies in the garden and bare feet. Birds proliferate. Boats hit the waters. Kids spring from schoolhouse doors, liberated at last. What better way to celebrate spring than toasting it with a glass of something bubbly? Beer is good, but champagne is better. If nothing else, drink […]
Saving Our Shores: Dan Diederich, Diederich Farms

While some farmers are getting a bad rap for expansion, some are taking an active role in being a part of the solution to clean water instead of the problem. Dan Diederich of the century-old Diederich Farms LLC in De Pere thinks farms need to be active in finding solutions to help both the watershed […]
A Raucous Bunch of Marines: Son Uncovers Story of His Father’s 40 Thieves

You only have to look at Sturgeon Bay newspaper archives of the 1960s to learn that Frank Tachovsky was a mover and shaker in the city. He was on his second term as mayor when appointed to serve as the city’s postmaster in 1966, which forced him to give up his mayorship and his day […]
Saving Our Shores: Gallagher Continues Save the Bay Initiative

“Dead zone” was an oft-used term by area media the summer of 2013 when scientists announced that Green Bay had developed hypoxia in an area approximately eight miles northeast of the city of Green Bay and extending more than 30 miles. The bay, which represents seven percent of the surface area of Lake Michigan, receives […]
Door County Musicians on Their Favorite Instruments

We asked some of Door County’s best-known musicians: if you had to pick just one instrument from your collection to play, which would it be? Dorothy Scott: Custom-Made Model T35 “The wood comes from Palmer Johnson’s and it’s custom made by Tony Louscher in Green Bay. There’s only about four or five of these bad […]
On Your Plate: Cooking For A Crowd? Pulled Pork Sammies

It’s the time of year people come together to celebrate — the weather is warming up and new life is emerging from the soil. Open your windows; you can smell sweet spring flowers on the breeze. Twilight stretches well into the evening. The chorus of spring peepers sings loudly, yelling into the stillness of […]
Saving Our Shores: Dan Brick, Brickstead Dairy

Dan Brick, fifth generation dairy farmer at Brickstead Dairy in Greenleaf, just south of Green Bay, said his community isn’t seeing the kind of public pushback against farming that Door and Kewaunee counties are seeing but that doesn’t mean he won’t act as a steward of the environment. “I can’t say we have any contaminated […]
Joel Gunnlaugsson: Washington Island’s Advocate and Everyman

Joel Gunnlaugsson sat at his living room table explaining his frustrating love for the island he calls home. But the Washington Island native spoke softly, like talking about his own four children as he told his youngest boy not to hang on the drawers in the kitchen beneath endless stacks of folded clothes. It’s a […]
Editor’s Note: Nothing But Bluebirds All Day Long

Normally I have no truck with all those SAD sacks suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Seems to me like a pathetic excuse made by weaklings who have to take a winter vacation in warmer climes because all the grayness makes them feel icky. Maybe even a little woozy. Shine a light, I say. But this […]
A Woman with Stories to Tell: Behind the Byline of Patty Williamson, PhD

Patty Williamson has told many stories in her eight-plus decades on earth but there is one whose memory prompts a smile from Patty greater than the imagination of her fellow Marceline, Missouri, resident Walt Disney. It didn’t involve an interview with a famous local figure and it certainly didn’t follow standard journalism protocol in format […]
The Space of Possibility: Abstract Painter Shan Bryan-Hanson

If you ask artist Shan Bryan-Hanson, there is no better place for spontaneity to come alive than on a blank canvas. In her world, it is the blank canvas that gives voice to the “visual language” that is abstract art. It’s a language the Sturgeon Bay artist is fluent in, and when given the time […]
New Duty for the Kevin C. Kane: NYC Fireboat Being Converted In Baileys Harbor

Mike Cole had been keeping his eyes on a retired New York City fireboat that was offered for sale in a marine periodical for about 18 months when he finally bit. “A guy bought it from the city at auction,” said Cole. “I contacted him and he wanted a lot for it. Apparently, nobody wanted […]
On Your Plate: Go on the Hunt for Asparagus

I am a lifelong asparagus hunter. I started when I was still riding on my mom’s or dad’s back. Every spring of my childhood, we would head out to our asparagus haunt and come home year after year with paper bags filled to the brim. I took a break from picking during my rebellious teenage […]
7 Tips for Cycling Safely in Door County

Door County’s quality roads and scenic vistas lure cyclists from throughout the Midwest. A good grasp of the rules of the road for cyclists and drivers will help you enjoy them safely as you share high-speed back roads and distracting stretches of scenic beauty. Always ride in the direction of traffic. For one, it’s […]
Waking Sleeping Beauty: The Sister Bay Inn

Vilius Vaicekauskas of Sister Bay had driven by the Voyager Inn on Highway 57 hundreds of times. But one winter day, he thought to himself, “This place has potential.” He began telling his wife, Alma, that they should buy it. “After 10 years in the hospitality industry, we wanted to have our own hotel,” he […]
Saving Our Shores: Kevin Kiehnau, Organic Valley

Kevin Kiehnau knows both sides of the water pollution story. The Sevastopol native went from being a conventional dairy farmer in 1979 to becoming certified organic in 1994. Now he manages farms across five states for Organic Valley. He knows farmers are stubborn when they have been using certain practices for decades. “It’s really hard […]
Saving Our Shores: John Jacobs, Green Valley Dairy

For John Jacobs, a first-generation farmer in Krakow, Wisconsin, farming is all about achieving balance. “Nutrients need to be in balance in the soil, in the cattle and in the people,” he said. “You only get one chance a year and I’m not going to live forever. I want this stuff to happen now. I […]
How Chambers Island Got Its Name

When I mentioned to a member of the Chambers Island Association that we were featuring island namesake Col. Talbot Chambers in this issue, she jokingly suggested we create an alternate history. Why? Because Chambers’ life is a sad story of the rise and fall of someone who might have gone down in American history as […]
Family Vacation Traditions Changing in Door County

John Zywicke remembers vacations to Door County through the photos he’s taken. Seated around a table in the lounge of The Rushes Resort, he can pull up memories of this place from two, three decades ago. There was the time he and his son, Jacob, played atop a huge pile of sand that had been […]
Door to Nature: Flowers of the Buttercup Family

Editor’s note: While Roy Lukes died at the age of 86 on June 26, 2016, his nature articles will continue to live on in Door County Living with the help of Roy’s wife, Charlotte, who has agreed to continue providing work from Roy’s extensive archives. For that reason, the article includes both their names. […]
An Excuse to Buy A Tractor: Couple Rehabs Migrant Worker Shack

Paul Heim and his wife Julie Watkins would agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation, “If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.” The restoration of the migrant pickers shack on their property has been a labor of love. Heim, a native of Wisconsin, now lives in Houston, where, until […]
Golf Course Dress Codes Are Dying

“Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.” — Dave Barry What was it that gave golfers the reputation as bad dressers? Does it go back to the early days of tweed coats and knickerbockers? Surely it can’t be the innocuous Arnold Palmer-era of […]