9 Bean Rows

Oct. 9, 2015

The Poet, the Farmer, the Baker and the Cook

THE POET

The historic structure that has been home to since 2012 was built exactly a century earlier as the Suttons Bay firehouse. Nic and Jen Welty had originally launched the restaurant in 2010 in the tiny former Cooks’ House in Traverse City as an extension of their eponymous farm, bakery and CSA operations, but they soon outgrew that venue. Luckily, the old firehouse – which had long been their "dream location" – had come on the market in the meantime.

9 Bean Rows derives from a line in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by Irish poet W.B. Yeats: "Nine bean-rows will I have there"¦" As Nic explains, he chose the name because it gave him quite a bit of width in what he could do with it: "Our mission has always been to increase the availability of local food, and that mission has a lot of things that fit underneath it, including the restaurant."

THE FARMER

Nic Welty grew up on a farm in Ohio. When it was time for college, he chose not to continue in the family business, instead earning degrees in economics, molecul