If you shop farmers markets – especially Farmington’s – you know that farming is a tough business. It takes long hours and hard work to fill those market tables with beautiful, nutritional fruits and vegetables.
Recognizing that sharing these risks and challenges could help them all prosper, three businesses in the Ann Arbor area – the Ann Arbor Seed Company, Green Things Farm and The Land Loom – combined forces in 2020 to form the Green Things Farm Collective, a USDA-certified organic program committed to sustainable, cooperative, and responsible farming.
We are extremely pleased to welcome them to the Farmington Farmers Market this summer. They will join us on July 9 for most of the Market’s second half (subject to change).
The Collective optimizes soil health through methods shared by most of our farmers: minimal tillage, building organic matter through cover cropping and compost applications, and developing an ecosystem that attracts beneficial insects.
“We formed our collective because we believe we will be better farmers by working together,” says Jill Lada, who, with husband Nate, is one of the collective’s owners. They started Green Things Farm in 2011. “Running a diverse operation takes a diversity of skills – by having more stakeholders in the business, we can each focus on our strengths and work as a team to make the farm the best it can be.”
Other owners are Michelle Brosius, who is the nursery and flower manager; Hannah Weber, who for five years ran The Land Loom, a small-scale farming venture, and now handles sales and customer service for the Collective, and Eric Kampe, who started the Ann Arbor Seed Company in 2012 and has since moved on from farming.
For more information, including Farm Memberships and CSAs, click here. For more information on what it takes to be a certified organic farm, click here.