Traveling at home: A bike ride through farmland

This summer, Matt and I signed up for a farm share through a community-supported agriculture programme. We started receiving our shares from Needle Lane Farms, from Titpon, MI, a couple of weeks ago. I feel fortunate to have access to such a wonderful programme. If you aren't providing yourself with food, knowing where something as basic as where your food comes from can go a long way in envisioning a different future for our neighbourhoods and communities. I truly believe that. So, I wanted to go and check out the farm, to actually see the food that I eat be grown and cared and tended for.

Matthew (different guy) and I decided to bike out to Tipton, which is around thirty miles from Ann Arbor. Matthew is from Tecumseh, which is just on the way to Tipton, and so we decided to see his family and check out the farm on Saturday, and bike back Sunday. On the way there, we of course got sidetracked and ended up in Milan, itself twenty-plus miles from Tecumseh, where we stopped for a beer and a root beer and a grilled cheese sandwich at Original Gravity Brewing Company.

The taps at Original Gravity Brewing Company

We eventually ended up in Tipton, and there met Beverly, my farmer, her partner John, and Zane, an energetic six year old who lives on the farm and helps out. Beverly, who is five months pregnant with her first, said that Needle Lane Farms is a third-generation, seventy acre farm, with all organic, non-GMO produce. Beverly, who graduated from Michigan State University, knew from a very young age that she wanted to take care of the farm, and so recently, she bought it from her father. She showed us around the farm, talked about the various kinds of soil, the plants, and her philosophy. I pick my share up from Morgan & York in Ann Arbor on Tuesday afternoon, and she mentioned that she wakes up at five a.m. that very day to pick the vegetables to make sure that they are as fresh as possible. One thing she said struck me - "When I go to bed at night, I feel really good." I sincerely appreciate her efforts, and could not ask for a more thoughtful person to be responsible, truly responsible, for the food that I eat and feed to others.

Matthew

Zane

Beverly, John, Zane, and Matthew

An important piece

 

The ride to Milan to Tecumseh and back to Ann Arbor was on the order of seventy-five miles - seventy-five miles of small towns and open farmland and barns and horses and azure sky. For miles at a time, we were the only people on the road; we biked down the middle of the road. We biked through Cone, Britton, Morseville, Clinton, Macon and a bunch of other little towns, quaint and idyllic. It is really nice living in Ann Arbor, where nature and pasture are never too far away.

Barn along the way

Downtown Tecumseh

Guest Blog #5: Sarah 'GiGi' Herman - My Leap into the World of Local Food

"I first learned about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in graduate school, during a class attempting to navigate the science and sociology of climate change.  This notion of buying “shares” of food from a local farmer to invest in his business, while reaping the nutritional benefits of farm fresh produce, while ALSO drastically reducing your carbon footprint seemed too good to be true.  Even more, it seemed like one of those crazy ideas that only hippies bought into – how could such a system be sustainable?  I wrote it off as a nice idea, one I’d consider once I was older and had more time for such pursuits. Then I went home that weekend and learned that my parents had recently become CSA members.  My parents?  Buying into a local farm share?  Eating farm fresh veggies?  These were extremely practical people buying into what I thought was a crazy idea, so I decided to reassess my opinions and see what I had missed the first time around.  What a surprise I found!

Community Supported Agriculture is so much more than a fringe idea only capable of supporting a small group of people.  When I relocated to Austin, Texas I did some research to find some local farm share programs.  Not only did I find several different options in the area, but the farm I ended up joining had a thousand members buying into the farm, receiving farm fresh veggies every week.  Even more impressive, this farm started out of the owners’ backyard and expanded until they had to buy an entire plot of land several miles outside of town!  This was obviously not a small group of people trying to make this idea work – it was a successful business.

I quickly signed up for my 10 week share subscription ($30 a week for two reusable bags chock full of farm fresh, just-been-picked produce)  I am 30 weeks into my experiment with local food and I can happily say that this experiment has turned into a lifestyle.  There are so many benefits and perks of being a part of the farm share community, but the most important, in my opinion, are listed below:

• Food is Fresh.  I don’t really know what I used to eat before, but now the sight of most processed foods repulses me, and I really think about what I’m consuming in ways I never had before.  You can truly taste the difference between farm fresh veggies and those that made their way from thousands of miles away.
• Food is Green.  A majority of my food comes from nearby.  This means more nutrients for me, less carbon spewed into our atmosphere during transport, less waste generated (nothing is packaged), and less fertilizers and pesticides clogging up our waterways. (My CSA is all organic)
• Food is not Meat (most of the time).  Too scared to take the vegetarian plunge just yet, joining the CSA has made my meat consumption go down to only once or twice a week, which leads to significant carbon and water waste reductions. And now that I’m more aware of the world of local food, I’ve started to make decisions about eating only meat that was raised outside of the horrors of the American Meat Industry.
• Food is Community.  When I go to pick up my farm share, I get to chat with the farmer.  He tells me all about the crops, and suggests some new ways to prepare the veggies currently in season.  I know where my food comes from now.  I know who grows it.  I go to pick up my food with a sense of excitement and happiness, not the typical dread that I used to have when I’d go to the large grocery store.

Local food has changed the way I live, and how I perceive the community around me.  The mantra “Think Globally, Act Locally” is my new personal slogan.  I join you to take the Local Food Leap with me, you’ll never look back!"

~Sarah