Our Growing Practices
We spent our first few years on the farm using nature and science to build healthy garden soil.
We began vegetable production in 2017 adding two more greenhouses We also implemented egg laying chickens to our farm to increase the biological activity in the compost we make here on the farm.
The process we use to make and cure the compost we use around the farm, ensures that all weed seeds and potentially harmful pathogens are fully, and evenly, decomposed at the proper temperatures for the proper length of time
We TEST our WATER, garden SOIL, and COMPOST for pathogens and bacteria such as E.coli.
We also TEST our garden soil and compost for NUTRIENT LEVELS AND PH to ensure only the proper amount of natural fertilizers are being adding to grow all the delicious fruits and vegetables, eliminating accidental fertilizer run off from our farm, contributing to the balance of our surrounding ecosystem and all of its living creatures within.
Our farm is not certified organic; however, we do garden organically on previously uncultivated ground. Our farming methods utilize the symbiotic biodiversity of nature by reproducing the ideal conditions for growing healthy plants that are capable of their own defenses and packed full of nutrients and flavor!
Implementing techniques such as, not rototilling also known as no-till gardening, using cover crops, inter species planting, and integrating management practices for controlling pests and weeds, allows us to farm without the need for herbicides or other harsh synthetic or chemical additives.
2020 Green Pole Beans
No-till gardening is mostly just what it sound like. It's gardening using methods that don't require conventional rototilling. In recent years it has been discovered that conventional tillage permanently damages soil and the surrounding ecosystems in many ways.
The nutritious top layer of natural soil is only on average a couple of feet thick and took millions of years to build, one life cycle at a time. Contained within it are intertwining ecosystems of mostly microscopic organisms doing their very necessary, diverse and balanced jobs, from the dark safety of their well established and astronomically dense under ground "cities."
Our methods and continued research make our farm part of the food system moving the whole industry in the direction of sustainable and regenerative agriculture, to feed the human population by 2050.
By using techniques that feed and build healthy soil from the top down, we can grow nutrient dense plants faster, in less space, with less water and in less than ideal conditions.
Our farm follows the guidelines for food safety practices published as FSMA, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. And, the Michigan's Produce Risk Assessment Program. Inspected practices are consistent with the current U.S. Food and Drug Administration Produce Safety Rule.
We are in the process of obtaining certification from MAEAP Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program to prevent or minimize agricultural pollution risks.
