Hart and the asparagus capital of the world

Hart, the little county seat, sits in the middle of country that grows more asparagus than just about anywhere else in America. Oceana County raises something like eighty percent of all the asparagus grown in Michigan, and the state trails only California and Washington, which has earned this corner of the lakeshore a proud nickname: the Asparagus Capital of the World.

There’s a reason it grows so well here. The sandy, well-drained soil left behind by the lake and the glaciers is just about perfect for it. The catch is that asparagus won’t cooperate with machines, so every spear is still cut by hand, one at a time, by crews working the fields from mid-May into late June.

Hart celebrates all of it with the National Asparagus Festival, held each spring and the longest-running festival of its kind in the country. For a weekend the town of fewer than two thousand people more than doubles in size for a parade, a road race, food stands serving asparagus every way you can imagine, and the crowning of an Asparagus Queen. It’s the kind of small-town tradition that’s easy to smile at and even easier to love. The festival lands on the second weekend in June; you can find this year’s schedule at nationalasparagusfestival.org.