"A-Ga-Ming has the most spectacular views in the state." Golfing in Michigan magazine wrote that about the resort's four courses years ago, and it still shows up in every visitor guide to this stretch of US-31. It's the version of Kewadin most people carry around in their head: fairways cut into ridges above Torch Lake, a shuttle driver named Randy who somehow remembers everyone's tee time, a clubhouse that smells like new turf in April.
That's the postcard. It's not the clock.
Kewadin doesn't have a Main Street. It's an unincorporated stretch of Milton Township, a few miles of US-31 between the north shore of Elk Lake and the hills above Torch Lake, with no village center to organize a day around. What actually organizes a day here, if you live nearby instead of visiting for a weekend, is a produce calendar that has nothing to do with tee sheets or shoulder-season rate cards. It runs on fruit.
The Order Hasn't Changed in 45 Years
King Orchards sits about ten miles north of Elk Rapids on US-31, a family farm brothers John and Jim King started in 1980 with their wives, Betsy and Rose. More than 45 years later, the operation has grown past 140 acres and into a second generation, but the sequence it runs on is the same one it's always run on, because fruit doesn't negotiate with a marketing calendar.
The order goes like this, every year, roughly in this arrangement:
- Strawberries, starting in June
- Sweet and Montmorency tart cherries, along with Balaton cherries, through midsummer
- Apricots and nectarines
- Peaches
- Plums and Bartlett pears
- Apples, running from the first early varieties into October, closing the season with unpasteurized fresh cider
That list is the actual civic structure of Kewadin. It's why the two roadside markets King Orchards runs, one on US-31 and one on M-88, change their bakery case and their bushel bins on a schedule that has more in common with a farm almanac than a business calendar. There's no grand opening weekend the way a golf resort has one. There's just the next thing coming ripe.
Late August Is the Hinge Point
Right now, in the last days of August, King Orchards is sitting at the point in that sequence where two seasons overlap and neither one is finished. Peaches are winding down, the way stone fruit always does in this stretch of the calendar. The first early apple varieties are starting to show up in the bins. Across the Midwest, this is the normal shape of the transition: orchards typically open their earliest apples in August and don't hit full fall mode, with the wider mix of varieties and the cider donuts, until September. King Orchards runs the same pattern, just with its own crops attached to it. The plums and Bartlett pears are usually close behind the peaches, filling the gap before the apple varieties that carry the farm through October, including the McIntosh crop that anchors the busiest weeks of the season.
None of that shows up on a resort website. It shows up as a shorter line at the fruit stand, a different smell walking in the door, and a countdown that has nothing to do with Labor Day.
Two Clocks, Compared
| A-Ga-Ming Golf Resort | King Orchards | |
|---|---|---|
| Season opens | Mid-to-late April (Sundance opened April 24 this year) | June, with strawberries |
| What defines peak | Tee sheets, group outings, wedding bookings | Whichever fruit is ripest that week |
| What shifts the calendar | Weather, group demand, fall rate cards | The fruit itself |
| Season closes | Late fall, once weather ends play | October, with the last apples and cider |
The resort's calendar is built around a start date and a set of rate cards. The orchard's calendar is built around biology. They run in parallel for most of the year, and this particular stretch, late August sliding into early September, is one of the few windows where they're close enough to overlap: golf season still in full swing, stone fruit still hanging on, and the first apples already showing up before either one has actually turned the page.
The Golf Course Keeps Its Own Rhythm
A-Ga-Ming is genuinely worth the reputation. The resort runs 72 holes across four courses now, Sundance, Torch, and Antrim Dells on the original property, plus Charlevoix Country Club after it joined the portfolio in 2017. Golf Digest gave Antrim Dells and Torch four stars apiece and once named Sundance the third-best new course in the country. Torch, in particular, sits high on the ridges above the lake, stretching close to 6,700 yards with water in play on eleven holes, which is where most of those postcard photos come from.
The dining side runs its own small circuit too: Duffers at the main clubhouse, Sundance Brick Oven at the newer pro shop, Antrim Dells Restaurant at its own clubhouse, and Shanahan's Pub over at Charlevoix Country Club. It's a resort built for people passing through, and the people who actually live near it tend to know that best. One longtime reviewer, describing a fall visit, mentioned paying twenty-five dollars for eighteen holes and a cart once the shoulder-season rates kicked in. That's the kind of detail that doesn't make it into a brochure but shapes how residents actually use the course: not in July, when the rates and the crowds peak together, but later, once the resort's own calendar has turned toward the quieter half of its year.
The Quiet Loop Behind the Orchard
There's a third stop in Kewadin that doesn't get the same traffic as either the orchard or the golf resort, and that's mostly the point. WaterFire Vineyards sits about six miles north of Elk Rapids and a mile off US-31, on land that used to be a 26-acre cherry orchard before Chantal Lefebvre and Michael Newman bought it in 2008 and replanted nine of those acres in white wine grapes. They released their first vintage in 2012, opened a small tasting room in 2017, and that same year became the first vineyard in the Midwest certified through the Sustainability in Practice program, the same rigorous standard used across California. The grapes still get hauled to Left Foot Charley for crushing, and the tasting room pours mostly Gruner Veltliner and Riesling, varieties that are still unusual enough in Michigan that most visitors haven't tasted them anywhere else.
Lefebvre has described the setting simply:
"It's secluded, peaceful and serene with no road noise."
That's not a line built for a tourist brochure. It's an accurate description of a working vineyard on a quiet road that most of the Torch Lake wine crowd never finds, which is exactly why it functions as a local stop rather than a stop on somebody's wine trail itinerary. It's open six days a week from May through October, then drops to weekends through the winter, on the same general rhythm as the orchard down the road, tied to the growing season rather than a tourism calendar.
What This Week Actually Looks Like
If you're already living around Kewadin, this is roughly what the next few weeks look like: the last of the peaches at King Orchards, the first early apples starting to fill in behind them, a resort golf calendar that's about to shift into its fall rates, and a small vineyard up the road quietly finishing its growing season before the harvest itself even starts. Two very different clocks, running the same few weeks apart, for exactly as long as it takes for one season to hand off to the next.
That handoff is the actual rhythm of the place. The golf course gives Kewadin its name recognition. The orchard gives it its calendar.
If you're curious about more of what's happening around Kewadin, or want a local read on nearby Elk Rapids and the Torch Lake shoreline it borders, Seth David knows this stretch of US-31 well. If you ever want to talk through what's happening in the area, or anything else about life here, Let's Connect.
