Veggie Box

“I’m Jane Bush. I’m the Manager of Grazing Fields Cooperative, and owner of AppleSchram Orchard. 

Farming started as a childhood thing, really. We’d come up here to my uncle’s farm in Charlotte as a family and, you know, there were just so many good memories. That’s where the ‘Schram’ in AppleSchram comes from - the family name. I bought this farm from my aunt and uncle in 1987, which is just so hard to believe… I had been working for a printing company, a financial printer – we printed checks and bank notes and stuff like that. So, the day after my profit-sharing matured, I quit the job and I used that money as a down-payment on the farm. It was an operating apple orchard farm, and at the age of 27, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. 

So, my first year’s harvest I sold to Cascadian Farms. It was headquartered in Washington, but they would process apples over here in Paw Paw. I was picking these apples – it was wild – picking them in single bushels. Man, I don’t know how I did it. Every morning when I would wake up, my arms were numb. We had to fill a bulk, semi-trailer with apples, and we did it one bushel at a time. It took us all day, but we actually did it! I was so naïve, and I just thought, there has to be a better way to do this. The following year I started the organic production methods. Then I discovered I could do apple cider, applesauce, and apple butter. 

Grazing Fields Cooperative started in ’97. We just really got pulled into the market – which is where you want to be, you know? You don’t want to always be pushing. So, the People’s Food Co-op in Ann Arbor started to say, ‘Hey, do you know anyone up there that’s raising eggs? We could really use some nice, brown, farm-fresh eggs.’ I had some Amish farmers working with me to make the apple butter, so we jumped at the idea of eggs. Boy was it a mess in the beginning; we really needed some stability. But then we got a $20,000 start-up grant from the Kellogg Foundation to create that structure and stability. Things just really started to take off after that. 

Grazing Fields Cooperative basically operates the same way now as it did then – just a bigger truck. It can be really difficult to bring everyone together to make a decision, but we have a democratic process and a delivery contract that says how you’re going to raise the eggs and how much you’re going to produce. Right now, we have seven farmers supplying eggs to the co-op, and we move about 400 cases of eggs a week. At 15 dozen per case, we’re moving 6,000 dozen, or 72,000 eggs each week. Each individual farm is now Certified Humane, which led to people becoming better managers of their farm, and therefore, making the co-op more profitable. Pork is also a part of Grazing Fields Cooperative, all of which comes from Larry Curtiss. We have about 70 retail stores we deliver to, directly; all in Michigan. 

I first got involved in Allen Neighborhood Center back in 2004 when the Allen Farmers Market first started. I was one of the first farmers – that year there were four of us; all women. I’ll never forget that first market – we just got ran over by customers. Holly, the market manager, really battled with bureaucracy to get the Allen Farmers Market to be the first to accept EBT. That was way cool. I’ve also done programming at Allen Neighborhood Center – got a couple of speakers in there like Temple Grandin. And we donate eggs to the BreadBasket Food Pantry. 

We also supply eggs and pork to Veggie Box, ANC’s multi-farm CSA. Veggie Box is really nice, especially when it’s ramped up in the summer and fall with 300 members – it’s matured so much. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me during the market and tell me they got introduced to our product through that program. Now that’s good cross-marketing. 

ANC is a great incubator for small businesses and just does so much programming – it offers so much neighborhood support and has done so much around health; Veggie Box keeps growing; it’s so innovative and has been this whole time. I mean, after all these years, I still don’t think I’ll ever wrap my mind around all that they do. It’s just so stable; it’s a sure thing. 

As for Grazing Fields Cooperative, I think it’s really a model – a model for how to organize small-scale farm production across a region. It’s a way to introduce small farmers to new markets, and increase farm income. 

Grazing Fields Cooperative and Allen Neighborhood Center have been dancing this complicated dance around the intersection of for-profit farmers and non-profit programming for the last 18 years. And I’ve got to say, it’s a dance that’s been danced pretty darn well.”

“I’m Kevin Cosgrove. I’m an Irishman living in Holt, Michigan who makes a living as a craft baker for Stone Circle Bakehouse. 

I think, honestly, so long as you keep the memory of someone alive, they stay alive, right? My father, Gene Cosgrove, would sit on the front porch of the house on 28th and Court Street in Sioux City, Iowa – which is on the Western range of the great plains, prior to the tall-grass prairies of the Dakotas – and he would greet people as they walked up and down the street: ‘Hey, Bill!’ ‘Hiya, Bill!’ ‘Hello, Bill!’ The fellow would oftentimes look at my father in an inquisitive fashion, but would wave back and maybe stop and chat. Now, I watched my dad do this two, three, four, five times, and finally – because I was pretty astute, right? – I told him I didn’t think all of their names were Bill. But he told me it really didn’t matter: it’s that people want to be recognized. You don’t have to know anything personal about them, but if you do, use that knowledge to recognize them as an individual and make them feel like they’re the most important person in that moment…That’s my philosophy, too. So, when I stand at the farmers market and I have repeat customers as I do, I start to know them and their quirks and their foibles and all those wonderful qualities; I start to know what’s good and what’s not; I start to know what they’re going through, and really, their life story. Which all of that has nothing to do with bread, but has everything to do with bread, you know? I start to build relationships. Bread is simply the catalyst by which I have this opportunity. So how did I become a baker? I guess my father made it so. 

Stone Circle Bakehouse began on January 8, 2009. We bake many different things: a lot of sourdoughs; baguettes; pugliese; challah; durum wheat; and ryes. We also do a lot of pastry work – which is remarkably popular, and outstandingly delicious, and certainly wholesome. Salted chocolate rye cookies. Galettes, oh my gosh, they are the greatest thing on the planet. And croissants - we take those flavors that aren’t necessarily traditional and stuff them into croissants. My point is, we take lots of liberties in what we bake, because we can…and, because it’s fun. Focaccia is really what got us into that creative mindset. It opens you up to the possibilities of other flavor combinations; focaccia sets you free. 

The Allen Farmers Market was the first farmers market I ever sold at. These markets became a source of community contact for me, which became a central marketing tool. Early on I was at the Dimondale Farmers Market, too, and one of my customers was the mail carrier for Horrocks. One day when she was delivering the mail, she told Kim Horrocks, ‘There’s this fellow out in Holt who’s a baker – you need to see what he’s doing.’ Kim stopped by the bakery to check me out, and by the end of our conversation, he told me that my bread needed to be sold at his store. Then, an MSU chef called me and said that someone they knew was over at the Allen Farmers Market and had tried my bread, and why don’t I bring them some of my samples? We ended up selling to five MSU dining halls. We also sell at Foods for Living, Monticello’s, Capitol City Market, Campbell’s Market Basket, LFA, Good Bites Food Truck, The People’s Kitchen, Picnic A Food Truck, Capital Prime, and quite a few other restaurants. We also do CSA work. 

Veggie Box is just another example of people taking care of people. Kat pulls together a lot of likeminded people to satisfy something as simple as food; and as complex as food; as important as food; so spiritually valuable as food, you know? Veggie Box has offered me an opportunity to reach parts of the community I was not in touch with. It reaches hundreds of people, and now I talk to at least one Veggie Box member a week who will come find me at the market. Plus, the economics of having a guaranteed sale is just really powerful for a producer. 

I feel like I’m a follower in the local food movement. I want to follow the lead ANC’s efforts – it’s truly the point of reference for everything for me – because they lead by allowing the customer to guide them. It’s remarkable, the depth of information that our customers bring to us. The depth of experience, the diversity of experience. From that, we learn and adapt, and are able to give back. Allen Neighborhood Center uses food and its various programming as a vehicle, but really, what they’re doing is imparting an attitude. And if you’re paying attention – if you have the opportunity to listen and to notice, to see and hear and touch this attitude – then you’re blessed.”

“I’m Caley Gunthrope, the sole owner of Apple Blossom Kombucha. 

In my previous career, I was a teacher. Honestly, ever since elementary school I knew I wanted to be a PE teacher, so no surprise I ended up attending Grand Valley State University to study PE and Health Education. That’s actually where I brewed my first kombucha: on top of my fridge when I was in college. My roommate thought I was going to die, of course. Not only did I not die, it turned out pretty good. So, I began to get more and more serious about it. 

In 2018, I started my LCC and doing kombucha by the books. Allen Neighborhood Center was the only place where I could not only use the licensed kitchen to mix all the ingredients for the kombucha, but also ferment and store my product in a safe space. I remember Joan Nelson giving me a tour of the place and just helping me with everything from how to put sanitizer in a sink, to licensing and insurance. The first bottles I ever sold were at the Allen Farmers Market in the summer of 2019. I brought 16 bottles to the farmers market – which is so silly – and I sold out. It was such a joke! But doing the farmers market is really where I figured it out and where it clicked – especially using local ingredients that just taste better and are better for you. 

I also supply kombucha as a Veggie Box add-on. I actually participated as a member of Veggie Box before I was ever a supplier to Veggie Box. I knew that I wanted all these amazing foods – veggies, eggs, and cheese – all year round! It was such a convenient way to support everyone. I thought about what it would look like to have a kombucha add-on, and I mentioned it to Kat. By the time the next season rolled around, Kat was like, ‘So do we want to do this?’ And the rest is history. 

I was still a teacher, but it was when I got pregnant with my daughter that I decided to switch to parttime and started teaching Special Education in St. Johns. I also was also doing personal training – I’ve always done that. What can I say? I had a lot of side-gigs. But then I realized, man, this is even hard to juggle being a part-time teacher, a part-time kombucha brewer, part-time personal trainer, and full-time mom. Could I really drop teaching? I mean, I went to college for it, I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. But finally, I decided to pursue Apple Blossom Kombucha, full-time. And I don’t regret it for a second. I may not be helping students, but I feel like I am helping the community and the farmers, and making people healthier and educating them about kombucha. 

So what is kombucha? Kombucha is a fermented tea that has been around for thousands of years. I use a blend of green and black teas, and also add sugar and a SCOBY, and put it all together with cold water in the fermenter. You use a SCOBY – which stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast – to eat the caffeine and sugar from the tea and create healthy bacteria. 

The thing I’m most prideful of that I don’t think people truly understand, is supporting hyper-local. Not only are my glass bottles local, but it’s someone in Michigan who actually prints them – even my designer lives down the street. But I also source my ingredients locally as well. I’m not using juices or doing forced carbonation, I’m buying sustainably grown, seasonal, Michigan produce from people I know. I want to support Tony and Sarah, Steve and Emma, Nate and Aliza. Sure, it’s not the most cost effective, but you have to think about the magnitude of what it all means… 

You can find me all over Lansing: the three LFA locations, Foods for Living, Horrocks, Tom’s Food Center, Capital City Market, Old Town General Store, Abundance Café, Menu Bubble, Oh Mi Organics, Campbell’s Market Basket, Ham Sweet Farm, 517 Coffee, and ANC’s Veggie Box. 

Once you’re in with Allen Neighborhood Center, you’re in with the community. With the Allen Place development, they’re making it so people in the neighborhood will have housing, a grocery store, Veggie Box, a health clinic, a farmers market, and so many social programs. All right here. Because ANC sees how people can benefit – they hear their stories, and they make it happen. I couldn’t be here without all the help I had from the people at ANC. I know I’m just one little blip in all that it does and is – one small blip in Joan’s, Kat’s, and Julia’s lives. But that’s the point! I’m just one small blip, and I was so cared for. ANC is able to help so many people because it recognizes that every person has a story; this is mine.”

“My name is Matthew Romans, and I’m the Farm Manager at CBI’s Giving Tree Farm. I work alongside Luke Cole, the Assistant Farm Manager, and our other farm staff, Jake and Amanda. 

Back in 2014, I studied with MSU’s Student Organic Farm Program and afterwards started working here as a farm staff in 2015. In 2016, I went through the Lansing roots Incubator Farm Program trying to start my own business, which is an experience I’m still grateful for – it’s not easy to understand some things apart from experience, and attempting to start a farm supplied several good lessons. What’s the Mark Twain quote? “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” Then in 2017, I was hired on as the new Farm Manager at Giving Tree Farm. 

CBI – Community Based Interventions – is a nonprofit organization in the Greater Lansing Area that runs group homes for people with traumatic brain injuries or cognitive impairments. So, this site, the Giving Tree Farm, is a campus of CBI where these community members get to come during the day to receive vocational training and enjoy the farm’s natural beauty. Giving Tree Farm started as a community garden for the cognitively impaired back in the 90s; as more people volunteered, the site just kept growing and more land was put under tillage. Today we are working to create a beautiful, therapeutic space for our clients, while growing food that goes back into the group homes. The farm is, in its entirety, about 22 acres. We actively farm about 2 acres of that. 

We have a variety of markets: LFA Farmers Markets, Old Town General Store, Red Haven, the CBI Group Homes, individual buyers, and Allen Neighborhood Center’s multi-farm CSA, Veggie Box. We actually had our own CSA that we managed here for years. But in 2020, COVID gave us a good opportunity to shift things over to online sales. The reason being that we want to focus more on being a rehabilitative space than being production-orientated. What we’re trying to do on these 22-acres is implement more permaculture design and create more shade for our clients to enjoy, as if they had a lovely state park to walk through. Luke and I were both nerding out about permaculture, but the more we pursued it and the further down this path we have gone, it has become so clear that it’s actually a really good design system and holistic orientation for a rehabilitative farm like this. Rehabilitating the land and rehabilitating people – the two are tied together. 

CBI’s Giving Tree Farm first got involved with Allen Neighborhood Center back in the early 2000s. We wanted to make pickup of our CSA more accessible, and asked if members could pick-up at ANC on Lansing’s Eastside. It happened to be the same day as BreadBasket, ANC’s food pantry – which at the time was only bread – and so there was both sliced bread and these beautiful shares of produce. The juxtaposition of these two things being offered to two different populations is what pushed ANC to start a neighborhood farmers market: the Allen Farmers Market. Sue Houghton was one of four farmers who made up the Allen Farmers Market that first year in 2004 – they were all women. 

It was a natural progression to then start selling in bulk to Veggie Box - it’s pretty attractive to a farm like us. It provides opportunities for us to make significant sales and revenue all at once. I mean, in general, wholesaling can be nice; there’s this simplicity in large, bulk orders. But even more than that, Veggie Box is the only wholesaler who helps us crop plan the year before through their crop bidding process. Veggie Box gives farmers the opportunity to plan their growing year with preplanned, specific orders in mind. That security is nice. 

I really appreciate Allen Neighborhood Center’s vision and commitment to uplifting the Eastside, and helping local farmers. It feels really good to know that I’m selling food to an organization that has taken care of a lot of logistics to get food onto the tables of hundreds of people, including underresourced folks. Those logistics can be difficult for a farmer to navigate, but Allen Neighborhood Center is built to do just that. In partnering with ANC, we get to see this amazing vision grow to maturity.”

“My name is Sarah Geurkink, and I am the Farm Manager of the Student Organic Farm at MSU. 

I graduated from college in 2008, which was terrible timing. I had gone to school in West Michigan at a small liberal arts school and studied International Development and Business. I had originally thought I wanted to do microfinance or something like that – help people start small businesses. I was looking for some kind of nonprofit job, but there wasn’t much of anything since the economy had crashed. So, I became an AmeriCorps Member with the Red Cross as the International Programs Coordinator. It was a lot of fun and I had a great boss who really helped me learn how to be an adult human. Anyway, while I was doing that, on Fridays I volunteered at a farm. Just for fun. Well, my AmeriCorps term was expiring and there weren’t really a lot of jobs still, and I was like “I’ll just work at the farm full-time for the summer. It will be a good story someday.” And then I really liked it. And I was like, “Well, I’ll just work at the farm for another year and then I’ll get a ‘real’ job,” right? And so, I did a second year at that same farm and they hired me on as a manger – which felt really good as a newly established adult. And then I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to do it for one more year.” I didn’t consider farming a real, legitimate career for myself, and I thought that eventually I’ll get a ‘real’ job. It took me a long time to understand that, no, this is something I want to do. I want to keep doing this. 

Then, I met my partner. He was going to move to Seattle to get his PhD, and I decided to go with him. Shortly after I got there, the University of Washington was looking for a farm manager for their student farm program, and I threw my hat in the ring and got the job. That was hugely impactful. Again, I had a great boss and advisory group that were very supportive about the farm, its students, and me. I learned a lot. It had started as a vibrant community of students and faculty members who started a garden at the university's Botany Greenhouse grounds. They had just been awarded a larger, half-acre plot of land, as well as the grounds of a large apartment complex on campus. They hired a UW Farm Manager – me – to develop and maintain the sites, as well as to create programming and connections to academics in the three departments that financially supported the farm. It was really fun for me to do farming, work with young people, connect with professors, and try to connect the things happening at the farm with classroom learning. But then we were looking to come back to Michigan to be near family. I had heard of the SOF, and I just applied and got a job here in 2017. 

The SOF has the Organic Farmer Training Program – OFTP – which is a nine-month program that offers a mixture of classroom and field education to aspiring farmers. Katie Brandt teaches the course. They’re learning about organic certification and crop rotation, marketing, fertility, pest management – all the things about farming. But also, the deliverable at the end of the nine months is that they are each developing their own farm business plan. 

I also work closely alongside Daniel Seggebruch, who is the Assistant Production Manager. He’s such a talented farmer. We have a CSA with around 140 members, and we sell to MSU dining. Oh, and we have an online store, too. But I think one of things that we do that is the most impactful is offering employment to undergraduate students. The undergraduate crew learns the ins and outs of running a diversified organic vegetable farm. It’s really awesome to see the students grow into their time here. That’s actually my favorite part of the job. 

We sell to Allen Neighborhood Center’s Veggie Box program. I think that ANC providing a market for local produce and helping to aggregate it into a more holistic sales model is fantastic. Because that’s labor farmers don’t have time to do, so it’s just really supportive. Veggie Box is a convenient market that offers this localized, communal system for local food production and consumption. 

Farming is just so much harder than it looks. Getting that Veggie Box always looks so nice, but there is so much involved in getting that put together and looking nice. I think it’s really easy to judge quality of produce, the mood of the farmer, and the compromises farmers have to make. But there is a lot of physical fatigue, decision fatigue, natural forces trying to make you fail… there are a lot of natural variables that make farming hard, but there are the basic variables of life, too: like childcare, healthcare, and student debt. Of course there are a lot of great things too, but I hope that people understand that when you want to support local food, it’s not just about getting the perfect vegetable. It’s about supporting the system. Supporting the farmer. 

ANC’s understanding that a farm system can’t always be controlled, and their ability to be flexible and dodge inevitabilities along with us is great. ANC takes the risk alongside the farmer – with dozens of farmers. So yeah, it’s really nice to have a customer who is so understanding of farm systems. And through Veggie Box, we are able to expand who can get our high-quality food. Plus, Veggie Box offers a great, unique way for farmers to team up and support one another in ways that would be so difficult, otherwise. Farming is an industry where it doesn’t feel as competitive or cutthroat as other industries – like, we’re all in this together. And ANC, Veggie Box, exemplifies that.”

“I’m Fred Monroe, and my wife Michelle and I own Monroe Family Organics in Alma, Michigan. We’ve owned this farm since 2011, but I’ve been farming for pretty much my entire adult career. This is my passion. 

I grew up just a few miles south of here, and when I was a kid, my family had a bunch of animals and a garden. Well, when I was fifteen, I had a big garden of my own – I just really enjoyed it. The next winter I read-up a bunch about how to grow things for market, so by the time I was sixteen, I was able to take the big family van and load it up with vegetables and sell at the Alma Farmers Market. I decided I wanted to do this as a career, so I applied to MSU and got into their horticulture program in 2001. It was interesting because at the time, everyone in horticulture was doing it for landscaping – that’s where the money was at – but I was one of the handful of people who was into vegetables. I interned at Angelic Organics, which was one of the largest CSAs at that time, and also at MSU Student Organic Farm. Then, after I graduated, Michelle and I moved out to Northern Ohio and I worked at Chef’s Garden, which serves the high-end restaurant industry with all sorts of weird vegetables. When I went to Chef’s Garden…well, they are not certified organic. They use some chemicals and different things, and I felt kind of uncomfortable with the chemistry of it all. And you can see it in the environment around you – these chemicals change things. I did that for five seasons, and then this land became available for us to rent from some friends of ours; so, we both quit our full-time jobs and moved back home. 

Organic farming is what I had wanted to do from the beginning - most of the reading I had done had been from Elliot Coleman and some other like-minded authors. Plus, my mom had always been into healthy eating and natural eating, so I kind of took that perspective as well. For me, it was just a very natural transition. So, we were certified organic right from the start. 

The first year, we farmed on just the front field, which is about three acres, and had just one hoophouse. We didn’t even have electricity out here, and had to use canopies to wash and pack under. We are now actively farming on eleven acres, and have a one-and-a-half-acre blueberry patch. We have seven of those hoophouses, we have a greenhouse, and we have this barn – with electricity. We have two full-time, and four part-time folks. Some of our specialty crops are spring mix, onions, potatoes, and carrots; our carrots really are the best carrots around. We run a 300-350 person CSA that runs for 19-weeks, and grow vegetables from mid-February through mid-December to fill orders of other kinds of buyers: co-ops, the Argus stores, a few restaurants, and other CSAs like Allen Neighborhood Center’s Veggie Box. 

ANC’s Veggie Box supports a community of producers. It’s a great match for the work that we’re doing. It allows us to sell a variety of different crops, and sell in meaningful amounts. It’s a sure way to get our fresh food out to families we wouldn’t otherwise be able to. These families, I mean, you are eating produce that was grown right here in your climate - in your soils, by people who live in your community. It’s just overall a much better and deeper relationship with your food and your community versus going through a checkout line and never speaking to another person there. 

I feel like most people have no relation to or understanding of what goes into this business. There is a major misconception of what farming is, based on subsidy farming from back fifty years ago. And this is just far different. It’s so physically demanding, and so difficult to find people to work in this kind of environment. It demands, between management, physicality, and mental endurance, far more than what the vast majority of people are used to. Every year it feels like a marathon. When we get to the end, we’re exhausted. We take time to heal. And then we come back for another year. It’s a really pushed, pressed existence, and I think people should know that. 

In our society, so much money and so many resources get funneled to those who are already wealthy. Well, this – this is a movement against that. This is about funding people who are honest and straightforward. I mean, small-scale farmers, we’re really down-to-earth. We’re just regular families in your community. And that’s what Veggie Box is supporting.”

“I am Rusty Plummer, the Cheese Maker at Hickory Knoll Farms Creamery in Onondaga, Michigan. This is Michael Metzger, my partner on this farm for the past thirty-four years. He does all the milking, and I make all the cheese. 

I’m a lifelong farmer. I was born right here in Eaton Rapids, and my family had a farm north of town on M-99. We raised fifteen Holsteins, about a dozen Berkshire sows, and my mother had about four hundred laying hens and had an egg route in Lansing. My favorite part of farming was always the baby animals. As a farm kid, you partake in the farming operation as much as you are capable of – at eight years old, I was driving tractor; that’s just the way it’s done in the farming community. But there was a time when my family had to leave farming – in my teens, I was a city boy. My mother became so concerned about the commercial industry and the foods she was buying in the grocery store. So, she started a food co-op in Owosso – all organic foods. She would take monthly orders from people in the community, and coordinate a delivery to the People’s Food Co-op in Ann Arbor. Finally, when I was a senior in high school, I talked my parents into buying another farm and moving back out of the city and onto a farm in Owosso. So, at the age of eighteen, I started experimenting with making cowmilk cheese. But then I started having trouble with consuming cow milk, so I got a couple goats and started a small goat herd. That’s kind of where it all started, back forty-five years ago. 

Michael and I moved here in 1989. Shortly thereafter, the goats got out of control as just a ‘hobby herd’ – when you’re milking forty-five goats, they have to start paying their own bills. So, we became a Commercial Goat Dairy in 2001, and then in 2011, we decided to put in this creamery. Our first farmers market we ever sold at was the Allen Farmers Market back in May of 2011. We showed up with a cooler and one type of cheese – plain chevre. Throughout the season, we started adding flavors and expanding what we offered. Now, we are farming on twelve acres. We have right around two hundred goats, eighty-five being milking goats. We have seventeen cows, and four are milking cows. Chevre is still our number one product. 

We offer five flavors of chevre: Plain; Cranberry Pecan – that was my mother’s favorite, so I continue to make that as a tribute to her since she is the one who backed me and supported me in starting this business; Sundried Tomato, Basil, and Garlic; Basil, Garlic, Pine Nut Pesto; and finally, Rio Grande, which is smoked jalapeño peppers, tomatillos, cilantro, and roasted red peppers. We also have cheddar cheese in both cow and goat milk. We have fresh cheddar cheese curds in three flavors. The first cow-milk cheese we ever made was our French-style Tomme; we named that LouNell because the first two cows we had were Louise and Nellie. We do a goat-milk Tomme as well, which is called Charbonnel – it’s the only cheese I ever exhibited at a national cheese show, and it ended up ‘Best in Class’ in its division. We also have a half-goat, half-cow Tomme called ‘Deux Laits’ – ‘Two Milks.’ We have a cow-milk gruyere called ‘LeaMin,’ which is named after two cows as well – Leana and Minnie. That’s my favorite cheese. We make a Feta, a Swiss, Mozzarella, Asiago, a Romano, a Pepper Jack, Monterey Jack, Gouda, etc. I could go on, but a lot of the cheeses that I make are cheeses that you would traditionally find in Europe - in France and Switzerland. 

I really appreciate Allen Neighborhood Center’s Veggie Box program. When I was approached on whether or not I was willing to participate – willing to sell my product through this program – I mean, heck yeah. Veggie Box is such a great option for us. Kat’s job managing this program – it takes a lot of time. A lot of time and a lot of effort to coordinate all these moving parts: the food, the suppliers, the members, and everything that can go wrong in-between. Veggie Box puts good quality, local food onto the tables of people who may otherwise not have access to this kind of stuff. It makes supporting local, easy. And it introduces new foods into the diets of hundreds of people. 

I want people to know how much goes into all of this. I mean, the dairy farm itself – we can’t just go out there and get milk. It takes 24-30 months for a calf to grow up to the point where she’s producing milk. We harvest the milk and we make the cheese, but then it’s in the aging room for 6-24 months before it is ready to go to market and be consumed. With the goats, we have to milk our goats twice a day, every day, Sundays and Christmas. They don’t take a day off. There is so much planning ahead. But then there are so many factors outside of our control: weather conditions, the production of the animal, competing with Big Ag, and the market. But in all this unpredictability of farming, at least there’s Veggie Box. It’s a great support system to have.”

“My name is Mark Kastner, and I’m a pretty sophisticated individual; educated, but prefers to go under the radar as ‘Farmer Mark’. Hillcrest Farms is a chemical free, four-season farm in Eaton Rapids. And just like my wife Gayleen and I, it’s evolved over the years. 

I was raised by nuns in the catholic school who led me to believe that there were no problems in life. Well of course, I had a pretty tough life. I was the oldest of ten kids, and my father was on the road all the time, so I didn’t have a lot of guidance there. He died when I was 17. But I did have a wonderful grandmother – she was a very compassionate person, and a chef in her own right. I got loaned out to her farm between Okemos and Williamston every year, and it’s her who taught me about chemical free, fresh food. 

I went to MSU to study Business – a major in Accounting with a minor in Economics; I also had a scholarship in Food Science, but I gave that up after Organic Chemistry – life’s too short. My first job at Michigan State was growing plants in a small greenhouse behind Ag Hall for the Plant Pathology classes. My boss gave me a little section of the greenhouse to do my own experimentation, and I learned a lot from that. It reinforced my instinctual belief that chemicals and plants were not to be mixed, even though that was the wave at the time. In fact, my boss ended up dying from all the chemicals he used in that greenhouse. So, I got the hell out of there. 

Well, the worst thing that ever happened to me was also the best thing. When I was a Junior at MSU I ran out of money, so I took a term off to work and get some funds together. I was drafted to Vietnam. That experience…it made me humble. And pretty remorseful at some of the things that I did. That as a soldier, I obviously had to do. But it still didn’t change the fact that the enemy was somebody’s father; husband; brother. When they flew me back, they herded a shitton of us into a cargo transport with no heat. My seat was a lawn chair that was strapped to the floor. Thirty-two hours later we landed in Oakland, and I was out of the Army in thirty-six hours. I didn’t want to go home and see my family because I was kind of messed up. I was traumatized. When I finally went back, my mother loaned me the car for one day to try and get re-enrolled in MSU, find a job, and get a place to live. And I did. 

I ended up living – little did I know – in the drug district of downtown Lansing. I rented an apartment and got a job as a taxi driver. Didn’t know Lansing, so that was an education. A few months later, I found myself working for General Motors. MSU didn’t want us returning vets co-mingling with those kids; they didn’t really want us around. I still needed a foreign language to graduate, and well, my job at General Motors was hanging fenders on cars; I had my notecards and between hanging those fenders, I conjugated French verbs – I did two years of French in one year. And to this day I cannot parlez-vous. 

I got into the corporate world – I did real estate and had some of my own rentals. But even for all those rentals, I landscaped them. Working with plants just stuck with me. When Gayleen and I ended up in Haslett, I had four gardens on one acre of land. Built a greenhouse there, and that’s how I learned how to grow in an unheated structure like that. I really started farming in 2008 during the recession when we didn’t have any money. I had seen Dr. John Biernbaum at an organic conference, and that translated into protecting the soil –sounded like hoophouses to me. I had some guidance with these six hoophouses when I got started, but a lot of it was done with trial and error. And of course, reading. 

Allen Neighborhood Center is good for the community because it spreads the word about good, local farming. It’s a subject that corporate America just does not want to get out, and it’s important information that I believe in. I first got involved with ANC in 2012 or 2013 when I started selling at the market. I also started selling to Veggie Box, the multi-farm CSA. Veggie Box is a wholesale outlet where we get credit, and where there’s transparency about where things are sourced. It’s morphed so much over the years and is hugely successful. Every time there was a new idea at ANC, I was the first in line – I’d do anything that would promote that market. My philosophy is that if you take care of the market, the market will take care of you. 

I’ve had a bunch of teenagers work here over the years – eighteen or twenty of them – and they’ve all moved on to successful lives. I’ve had a few of these kids say I’m like their grandfather, so I took on that role. I get on them about making smart decisions and taking initiative. We do payroll here – file the quarterlies and all that – and I try to instill in them the importance of setting aside some kind of savings for their future. 

My kids are respectful: they respect one another, they respect me, and they respect what we’re trying to do. And they’ve got creativity. Teenagers, I mean, they’re just fun to be around. They come here, and they know everything. And then a year later, well, maybe they know something a little bit different. It’s fun to see them grow, and they teach me a lot – I can’t wait for them to come back next summer. For all of these kids, and hell even for me, working here is like therapy.”

“I’m Adam Montri from Ten Hens Farm. I am a vegetable farmer, a dad, a husband, a writer, and a friend. 

I went to MSU and graduated with a BA in English, then came back to study Horticulture with the intention of pursuing public gardening. I was taking a required greenhouse production class, and John Biernbaum was the professor for the class at that time. He was building some hoophouses out on a research plot that later became MSU Student Organic Farm (SOF), and he offered that anyone in the class was able to come learn and help build if they were interested in them. That experience quickly shifted everything to vegetable production. It was a great experience to be involved with the early years of the SOF and the planning for the first year of their CSA. Honestly, if the SOF wasn’t getting started at that time, I think I would have gone the track of public gardening and might be working at Frederik Meijer Gardens or somewhere similar to that. 

My wife, Dru, and I met as undergrads in Horticulture at MSU, and then we went to Penn State together for grad school. After we graduated with our Masters in Horticulture, we WWOOFED, which is Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. We worked on one farm in Wisconsin, then headed to Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Oregon. We stayed and worked on vineyards, in animal agriculture, mixed-crops, and the original wood-fired pizza farm. At each location, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we going to try and learn here? What are they doing that we would like to, or not like to, do on our own farm someday?'’ During this time, Dru was accepted to a PhD program at MSU, and at the same time, the Michigan Farmers Market Association (MIFMA) had gotten some funding. So, while she got her degree, she also started MIFMA. After completing her PhD, Dru continued working for MIFMA, eventually transitioned into a position in the MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and now works for Feeding America. Meanwhile, I worked at both Michigan Food and Farming Systems and MSU. My role with MSU was to work with farmers around the country, specifically in Michigan, on building hoophouses, looking at economics, soil management, crop planning, marketing, really just everything across the board. Now I’m farming full-time. 

The first year we built a hoophouse right away – we knew we wanted to do that. It was a little more than 3,000 square feet. The following winter, the township connected with Dru about ideas they had for starting a farmers market, and wanted her helping thinking through the planning process. By working with a number of people in the township as well as holding open meetings that were attended by many township residents, we were able to be a part of starting the Bath Township Farmers Market. We now grow mixed vegetables on three acres, in 20,000 square feet of hoophouses, and in one heated greenhouse. Our main markets are: our CSA; Allen Neighborhood Center’s Veggie Box; the Bath Farmers Market; an on-farm stand; Dusty’s Cellar; and Burcham Hills Retirement Community. So that’s where we’re at this year, though in the past we’ve sold to a lot of restaurants, other cooperative CSAs, and a wholesale tomato processor. The farm is changing some this season so that our markets are a lot closer to home than they have been in the past. 

We first got involved with Allen Neighborhood Center back in 2006. MIFMA was starting, so Dru worked very closely with Joan right from the get-go. MIFMA has always had access and food security at the heart of its work and ANC was one of only three markets in the state that were accepting SNAP benefits at that time. Understanding the lessons learned as more markets were interested in accepting food assistance benefits was really important. In 2015, we started selling to the Veggie Box program. It was only 16 shares that first season, but we believed that it would grow over time and become a profitable part of our business. Veggie Box is now up to 100 members in the Spring, and 300 in both the Summer and Fall. Plus, we are now able to do crop planning and bidding for it, which helps with the profitability and impact on our farm. As the Veggie Box grew, we were able to grow alongside with it knowing we had a guaranteed market. 

What motivates us, what drives us to do the work we do? It’s a good question – one we ask ourselves pretty regularly. Most importantly, it’s a way for us to be part of our community. Part of it is that although we’re small, we’re able to preserve some green space. We do it because we enjoy growing food we like to eat. But also, it’s a good place for our kids to grow up. I want them to be able to go out and eat things right off the plant, to see how things grow. When their friends come over and they’re outside playing and we find them eating tomatoes or in the peas – without romanticizing it too much, it’s a good way to grow up. 

A lot of the money that comes into our local business goes right back out to other local businesses. It keeps money circulating in our local economy. But I think the bigger reason for supporting our farm is that there is a lot of joy and life in it. If our farm brings 50 people together who would otherwise not come together and they connect, that’s substantial. I think small-scale diversified farming has some of those intangible, person-to-person, soft benefits. And that’s worth supporting. 

At the root of it all, Veggie Box is guaranteed economic income for our farm. If we go to market and it’s a rainy day, we won’t have as many sales. But Veggie Box is a nice, stable thing. We if we grow the crops we bid on, they are sold. I love interacting with our CSA members, but it’s nice to not have to manage and coordinate a whole other CSA to see the benefits. ANC takes on the logistical role of managing a multi-farm CSA and all those member interactions, emails, payments from members and to suppliers, and working with all the farmers – it’s a lot of work that our farm doesn’t have to do, but can benefit from. 

I think because of our long history with ANC, we are in a fortunate and privileged position to truly understand the bigger picture of what all they. We believe in the in the work that happens beyond what we’re involved in. Allen Neighborhood Center – it’s is an inspiration, a model to others. Their transparency and encouragement says: ‘This is what we did, this is how we did it and what we learned, and this is how you might be able to do it too.’”

“I’m hippie, cosmic-farmer Steve. I grow food for people when I can, and live with Chela here on Green Eagle Farm. We have 20 acres in total, and farm maybe 4 or 5 of those acres. We also enjoy woods, swamps, and a lot more of the natural world than just a garden. 

I grew up in Jenison, Michigan. My parents always had us on the very edge of towns, so I spent so much of my upbringing out in nature. My mother had started out as a nurse, became a homemaker, and then went back into nursing when all the kids were gone. And my dad worked a white collar job at a steel company in Grand Rapids. 

I started at MSU studying horticulture and psychology in 1976, and I remember one of my humanities professors at MSU – he was very radical, and quite an interesting character –had a lot of the hippie students at a big bash at his house at the end of the semester. He called it “Seekers and Sought,” and we’d have discussions about a lot of different things, including consciousness raising. Anyway, this professor gave me a choice at one of his bashes. He came out of the house and said, “Spaghetti’s ready – with or without?” I said, “With or without what – hash?” “Meat!” I had never even thought about it – I even ate a Whopper on the way to the party. But that was just a crescendo for me. I realized I didn’t have to eat animals, and so I just stopped. I had to learn a whole lot of things from there. You know, about agriculture about how to feed myself on a plant-based diet. I started studying what my body actually was. And that was a huge part of what led me here. 

I dropped out of MSU when I got more interested in going and seeing the world. I stuck my thumb out and travelled around for a little bit; went to a lot of Rainbow Gatherings. I found this farm at an auction in 1987, so I’ve been here for 35 years now and Chela has been here for 27 of those years. Before she came to the farm, she had waited tables, had done bartending, and also some substitute teaching and taught some art classes. So we started from scratch; we weren’t trained or brought up on a farm family. 

We sold to different places like ELFCO, Travelers Club, and Wolf Moon, but started selling to the Meridian Market back in 1996. And then we started selling at the Allen Farmers Market in 2005. Before I lived here on the farm, the last place I lived was Allen Street, kitty-corner from the market. Even Chela lived on Foster Street and her grandmother went to the old Allen Street School. So, we have a connection to this place, to the Eastside. It felt right and comfortable, and it seemed more personal at this market. 

Then we started selling to Veggie Box. Sometimes we have more things than what we can sell at a farmers market, and Veggie Box is a great choice for helping to distribute things. I don’t have to deal with stores, and Kat is flexible and fair. It’s really nice to have this opportunity, this outlet, to get food out into our communities, and it lets you support a lot of us farmers all at once. With Veggie Box, you’re directly supporting the local economy. But more than that, small-scale farms. And that’s important. Us farmers, we live here in your community and our money is spent here in your community. And this program gives you a real nice sampling of what can happen in Michigan. One farm won’t have as much diversity as what Veggie Box can provide, so I think that’s really neat. 

Everyone knows in their heart what feels good to eat. If they have choices and they’re not struggling financially or dealing with other factors, I think most people know what the nurturing choice is, and want that. I love going to markets and seeing neighbors meeting and talking…over the years, you see people passing but also babies being born; you’re seeing people struggle and seeing them celebrate. You know, food isn’t separate from all this. Food brings us together – that’s the emphasis. 

We’re not sure how much longer we will be doing this to the extent we have been, so we hope people have learned from us over the years and we can still share information. This year we are redirecting our focus a little. We’re doing a little less production so we can get back and tend to and deal with things we’ve had to let go over the last several years. 

Anybody can grow food, and you could grow a lot if you had the land and the proper cooperation. Really, I think a lot more people should get involved and make it a priority to work with the land. It’s an enjoyable endeavor, and you’ll be healthier for it. It’s much needed to counteract how imbalanced we are on the Earth. Habitat destruction and so much pollution in order to haul food across the planet to someone else. We are more separate from the food system than we ever were, and we need to change that. We need to integrate and not live separately from nature. Get involved in your own food procurement and growing. Together, we can heal this land.”