Touring Pond Hill Farms & Harbor Springs Winery

Outside Harbor Springs, just up M-119, you’ll find Pond Hill Farms tucked into a Northern Michigan hillside, a city unto itself. If you’re looking for farm-to-table food and quality Great Lakes wine, this farm is worth a scenic road-trip.

Pond Hill Farm features a livestock barn, trout pond, canned goods, wine tasting, pig races, and best of all, a giant squash rocket slingshot where you shoot buckets of vegetable into a field of farm animals who happily eat your shrapnel. Pond Hill farms is family owned and operated, and that includes their 14-year old dog who has free reign over the grounds and the general store. Pond Hill sells all variety of of canned goods, including pickled asparagus and garlic, salsa, honey, and jams.  

Upstairs they’ve opened a new tasting room for the young winery, Harbor Spring Vineyards. The winery is so young, in fact, they don’t yet grow grapes mature enough to produce wine, so they purchase the grapes for their Regatta Red, chardonnay, pinot gris, riesling, cherry wine, sumac wine, and the Cherry Finale dessert wine. There’s also a hard cider and cherry cider, and beers in the works, including an eggplant brew. The award-winning wines are quite good, especially the red, so fingers crossed on the crop. The tasting room was handmade using wood harvested and milled on the farm, which makes for a comfortable atmosphere.

Pond Hill Farms moves slow, which is precisely the pace you’re likely after if you’ve committed to a day of cruising through the Tunnel of Trees on your way to Legs Inn or Wilderness State Park. You may as well stop off at the farm and get a have a nip of wine before you venture down the road. Pond Hill Farm is open from 8am to 6pm daily.