Northern Michigan crops?

I've live at the northern tip of the lower-peninsula of Michigan, 15 miles from Lake Huron. Mostly all state forest around me, or large crop farms. Farms are potatoes, red beans, and/or corn.

This is the first year we tried to establish a garden at our place. About 1/2 acre. Soil was just about like beach-sand. I trucked in 50 yards of compost this spring from a small city department of public works 40 miles from us. Plowed and disked it all in.

End result it - our garden is doing great. MAIN issue up to now was the sort of "invasive species" of weeds be brought with the compost that we never saw here before. A lot orf Pigweed and Purslane. Been a lot of work keeping up with it. Planted corn "three sisters" American-Indian style, inter-cropped with pole beans and pumpkins. Three types of potatoes, beans, squash, beets, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, parsnips, salsify, etc. All doing great except the parsnips.

One slight mistake I don't want to make again. Back when I farmed in New York, I always ordered my seed from a farm supply and knew exactly what I was getting. This year - we bought much of it locally at a small farm store. Their so-called "early corn" is an SH super-sweet and is huge. 7 feet tall right now and ears might yet need another week before we can pick. Not exactly what I'd call "early." But, we'll see.

Now - we're seeing the driest summer I've witnessed in the 10 years I've been coming around here. Most swamps and creeks are now just dried mud. Large pond by my house is down 5 feet. Many local farmers have plowed their crops under, because they dried out and got ruined. Note - that's the ones that do not have watering-derricks. We've been watering all we can, but it's hard to keep up with. We have a patch of Rhubarb (on its 2nd year) that I found has to be hand watered. The large leaves shield the ground from getting wet when we run sprinklers.

Just curious if anyone else on this forum is from northern Michigan and is trying to grow anything.

One kind of neat thing. Since all has dried up near us, and the pond is the only "local" water source - we've seen all sorts of animals coming to it. Coyote, bobcat, badger, black bear, fox, elk, coons, white-tail deer, etc. Mostly with our game camera - except the bear has been out in the middle of the day a few times.

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Northern Michigan crops?