State of the Soil

White O Morn Farms, Inc was incorporated in Michigan on January 1, 1990 by my father, Jim Kelly. The company operated a cow farm and hay operation on 60 acres of property at the top of Highland Drive in Lake Township. Prior to the cow farm, the property had been an apple and cherry orchard from the early 1900s to the 1980s.

During the early 20th century, orchards were routinely sprayed with DDT and lead arsenate pesticides. This means that the soil on the farm has accumulated lead and arsenic at levels high enough to require reporting to the state of Michigan.

Fruit trees do not uptake heavy metals, so the apples and cherries were safe to eat. Cows do not generally ingest soil, so the cows were healthy. Lead and arsenic are not mobile in the soil and stay within 1-2 feet of the surface, so they are not migrating into the watersheds of Crystal Lake or Long Lake. This has been confirmed by testing the springs below the farm in 2019, spring water from the farm contains no heavy metals. So what's the problem with the lead and arsenic in the soil?

Vegetables, grains and legumes shouldn't be grown in soil that contains heavy metals. The current state of the soil limits what can be produced and brought to market.

In 2019 I negotiated with my family to acquire the farm, in spite of the lead and arsenic contamination. I was determined to restructure the farm to be both synergistic with the surrounding wilds and eventually, an exemplar of regenerative agriculture.

In my experience, when businesses flow from inspiration, profitability is a natural side effect. Love Farm is inspired by the possibility of undoing the damage done by a culture fixated on poisons. Bioremediation is a technique of using plants and fungus to safely remove contamination. In the meantime, Love Farm will raise healthy, organic vegetables by making brand new soil from scratch - a unique mixture of charcoal from our dead ash trees, organic cow manure, local clay and mycelium - the Love Mix. This is a riff on terra preta or black earth, an ancient soil technology (human created) found along Amazon river in South America.

Effective bioremediation at Love Farm would be a boon financially, the techniques we'll be exploring could clean up old orchards all over the region, perhaps even housing developments built on old orchards. A farm that figured out how to repair and regenerate native ecologies could become very profitable indeed. That's a peak at the long range plans for Love Farm.

In the spring of 2021, after much testing we found clean soil on the site of original post and beam barn that burned down in the 80s. We built a temporary fence so our spring plantings will be protected from deer and yes, bear! Digging post holes felt like archeology, we excavated giant chunks of concrete and scrap metal buried by my ancestors 😉 We mixed up Benzie terra preta, laid out new beds and started planting a market garden.

Beyond the market garden, we planted a test bed of sunflowers, which have been shown to uptake lead. The roots, stems and leaves of the sunflowers will be harvested and dehydrated. The reduced organic matter can then be processed to extract any contamination.

Because of the legacy soil contamination on Love Farm, we are opposed to contemporary poison plans, including application of herbicides or aquatic herbicides in or around Crystal Lake. Join Crystal Lake Community and keep our wild waters poison free.