Its oven offered fresh bread and muffins, homemade pasties. Even more, the small restaurant on M-69 provided a place where loggers, truckers, students from neighboring North Dickinson County School and others could gather for food and conversation.

But that ended April 24, when owner Karen Stephan closed the doors after 46 years.

Stephan said she decided to retire rather than renew her food service license that was due at the end of April. Insurance requirements and regulations had also made it more difficult to do business these days, she said.

But mostly at age 71 she wanted time for other parts of her life, such as her four grandchildren, her home and garden.

Karen Stephan, left, and Jessica Harwath with a batch of pasties at Nordic Trading Post. Harwath, now a Bay College student who graduated from North Dickinson County High School in 2025, had worked at the restaurant for years and did much of the baking, including preparing pasties in the mornings before heading off to classes. (Contributed photo)

“I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to do,” Stephan said.

Both Karen and her husband, Jeff, grew up in the area, he graduating from Felch High School in 1965, she from only the second class to leave North Dickinson High School in 1973.

After marrying in 1974, they lived in Anchorage, Alaska, for four and a half years before deciding in 1980 they wanted to return home and be closer to family, Karen said.

Wesley and Arlene Oman had operated Arlene’s Country Kitchen on M-69, but it had been closed for several years. Learning the Omans wanted to sell the business, Jeff decided it would be a good site for selling and servicing chain saws, hydraulic equipment and other machinery used by the local loggers, along with small engines and lawnmowers.

They named the business Nordic Trading Post, because “in Alaska, everything was a trading post,” they said in an October 2018 Daily News interview. In another nod to that tradition, they also stocked a few groceries and other items to help area residents avoid a drive into town.

Karen Stephan, center, gets a hug from her grandchildren as the grade school students from North Dickinson County School, where they attend, visit during the final week before she closed Nordic Trading Post on April 24. (Contributed photo)

Karen admitted then she didn’t initially want the restaurant part. They didn’t have room for it, anyway, initially, with Jeff’s shop in the same space. But when they added a new building better suited for Jeff’s business, they decided to bring back the restaurant in 1984.

The menu included Swedish pancakes made from scratch, omelettes and the “big” breakfast sandwich of sausage, egg and cheese on homemade bread. Lunch featured soup, chili, roast beef and porketta, all Karen’s recipes, plus sandwiches such as grilled ham and cheese.

She’d bake almost every day, whole wheat and white, as well as rye once a month. But the favorite by far was her cinnamon bread. She’d also make blueberry and chocolate chip muffins and oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies.

For awhile the restaurant was open until 6 p.m., regularly drawing students after school. They later cut back to 4 p.m., so kids still could take orders home for dinner.

In recent years, however, they’d dialed back to having the restaurant open until 1 p.m. and the store closing an hour later. Two years ago, they started taking Mondays off.

Jeff Stephan plans to continue operating his machine shop, visible to the left, for now despite the restaurant and store closing at the Nordic Trading Post in Felch Township. (Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo)

But the early morning openings remained, with regulars coming in at 6 a.m., some even earlier, to have a cup of coffee before heading to LP in Sagola, out to the woods or into town for jobs, perhaps before school started at North Dickinson.

Many made it part of their daily routine, said Dick Lindholm, a former English and biology teacher at North Dickinson who has been part of the morning crowd for decades.

Some might sit for only a few minutes, Lindholm said. Others, like himself, might spend an hour before heading home to start chores.

They’d catch up on news, how the Nordics teams did the day before and “stories galore,” Lindholm said. He joked that he got his bachelor of science degree in 1959 at Gustavus Adolphus College, his master’s degree in 1964 from Northern Michigan University and “my advanced BS degree at Nordic Trading Post.”

He added, “We’d start the day off with a good laugh.”

Attendance at the weekly Toast at the Post on Thursday mornings — a gathering of women that teachers started about 25 years ago to share news and experiences over toast made with Karen’s white, wheat and cinnamon bread — has thinned as the group aged. They still showed up at Nordic Trading Post on April 23 to wish Karen a happy retirement. (Contributed photo)

Attendance at the weekly Toast at the Post on Thursday mornings — a gathering of women that teachers started about 25 years ago to share news and experiences over toast made with Karen’s white, wheat and cinnamon bread — has thinned as the group aged. They still showed up April 23 to wish Karen a happy retirement.

The place was a fixture for the area’s youth as well, with a path from the school to the post. Several students would work for the restaurant over the decades.

One of the most recent was Jessica Harwath, who graduated from North Dickinson in 2025. She can’t remember a time when Nordic Trading Post wasn’t part of her life.

Her family had birthday breakfasts at the restaurant before school. She’d come with neighbor and adopted “grandmother” Sue Anderson to help make pasties. Eventually, when Anderson had to step back, Harwath took over preparing pasties for Karen to bake before heading to high school next door.

“She (Karen) just knew how much I enjoyed baking,” Harwath said, adding they had “great conversations” while working with the ovens.

“It’s just been something Karen and I bonded over,” she said.

She’d start her mornings at the restaurant while still managing to be a three-sport athlete in high school. “It just became my routine,” Harwath said.

Even after graduating last spring, maintaining a job at Queen City Running store in Iron Mountain and attending nursing classes at Bay College, Harwath continued working Thursdays at Nordic Trading Post.

She, like Karen, calls the closure “bittersweet,” though she said it makes her realize, too, “how special that time was.”

The rush of people who came in during the final week — including most of the elementary students — to say goodbye “speaks to the compassion Karen had in serving the community,” Harwath said.

They both said they’ll miss the people the most.

“It’s been a real blessing, to meet all these people and get to know them,” Karen said. “It’s been very rewarding.”

In retirement, Karen said she plans to be more involved with her grandchildren, who now number four since son Cameron and his wife, Elizabeth, moved back in 2019: Soren, 11; Freja, 8; Ivar, 5; and Jari, 2 1/2.

They will be able to visit their daughter, Carmen Farmer, more often in Texas. Karen can focus on the guitar lessons she started in September. Scheduling Bible study with her cousins will be easier.

Jeff Stephan for now is keeping the machine shop running. They haven’t decided yet what to do with the restaurant and store space, Karen said.

They’re grateful to the community for how long they were able to keep Nordic Trading Post going.

“The people were great around here. It’s almost like they’re family,” Karen said, adding “I want to just thank everybody for all the times they’ve come to my store, all the years they’ve supported us.”

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Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 85240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.