Kite aerial photography by JamesSchaberg.com
2022 Season Summary
Harvest time! Here's what the Love Farm tribe learned in the summer of '22 and where we might be headed.
Garden
Sarah doubled the garden capacity from 2021, helped by our mom and dad, Margaret and Steve, our cousin Jack and our pal Kim. Sarah's green life savvy and Dan's terra preta soil mix was a winning combination. Our abundance of nutrient dense chard, tomatoes, kale, eggplant, carrots and herbs generated a modest trade with the Highland Drive and Crystal Drive neighborhoods. Lots of folks shopped right out of the garden.
We also had plenty of eggplant, celeriac and a wide variety of potatoes. Our trial plantings of black beans and millet were successful.
Sarah experimented with building layered garden beds, inter-planting, and making predator habitat in the garden.
Farm Store
The Love Farm Store has been upgraded with a resin floor, fridges, freezers and steel shelves. There's still plenty to do yet - we want to move in the propane blower, insulate the walls, and redeploy our gray water evaporator.
This winter, the Truck Garden buying club continues to rent the Farm Store for logistics. Before the Farm Store was available, Truck Garden members would have to pick-up their orders soon after the trucks delivered, which was a hassle. Members now have way more flexibility, even when ordering fridge and freezer items.
The inventory of Love Farm Cooperative products is growing, but there's not enough yet to justify keeping the farm store heated all winter. Collaborating with Truck Garden is an optimization of the space, and with prices rising and shortages forecast, helping Truck Garden to maintain a direct connection to the supply chain feels empowering.
Regenerative Revenue
Premise
Acquisition of the East Farm or Saving Texas from a Scenic Highway was completed in early 2022. Our plan for the 200 acres is robust wilds resonance. That means getting in sync with the intelligence of the forest and fostering a gentle human presence. Some of the parcels' boundaries already have residential impact, but we will not subdivide and develop the interior, we are not interested in commercial timber harvest, we don't use herbicide poisons to control "invasives" and we don't allow hunting with firearms and lead ammunition.
Taxes on Texas
With these conventional revenue options off the table, can "Texas" contribute to legacy economic prosperity? Simply stated, how are we going to pay the taxes?
We stretched our financial resources and captured Texas not to contribute to the impoverished culture of consumption, but to learn from the land and thrive. We knew that if we'd just listen, the land would tell us what it wanted. The message so far is... regenerate.
Income that doesn't tinker with the vitality or synergy of the wilds - flora, fauna, waters, soil, etc. is regenerative revenue. What can the forest provide that doesn't require it's degradation or destruction?
Regenerative revenue is definitely not wilds management or wilds improvement, those concepts are oxymoronic, unless the improvement we seek is within ourselves.
Just listen
An open hearted person who walks in the wilds can learn to intuit the inherent value. Creative people can discover that health and vitality are available in abundance. Mindful foraging yields food and medicines, lead free hunting provides meat, skins for clothing and sinew for tools. The springs and streams provide energizing water free of endocrine disrupting contamination. Just walking the forest wakes up the senses and encourages well being, the inspiration for regenerative revenue.
Research
Love Farm, Laughing Linden Farm, Green Tara Farm and other wilds resonant farms in the Shire are identifying and creating regenerative revenue streams, rediscovering the culture of wild land and water. We can choose to thrive even as the concept of consumption implodes. The global life support system invites our alignment.
Examples (so far)
Maple sap harvest
Last spring Love Farm launched our maple syrup operation, which we plan on expanding in 2023. We keep the mineral rich sugar sand in the syrup, which other producers filter out. Our intuition is that these minerals are bioavailable and health enhancing... anyway, they are for sure delicious!
Trails
We might create a trail system on the entire east farm that could be licensed to foragers, birders and neighbors. Specific trails could be designated for hikers, human powered bikes and even horses. Cooper Road cuts right through the East Farm and there's a web of legacy logging roads that could be mapped.
The Crystal Highland Owners Association signed a trail license in November for the East farm's western most parcel. Wilds resonant trail curation is an auspicious next step for forest regeneration.
Bow hunting
From October 2022 to January 2023 the East Farm parcels have been leased for bow hunting only. Access (tracking) is available to our lessee over all the parcels, including areas bordering residential development, while arrow and bolt releases are restricted to the interior.
The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy's Embayment Lakes Nature Preserve property is adjacent to two East Farm parcels, and hunting with firearms is permitted there. Our parcels' boundaries are posted with "no hunting or trespassing" signage and we've deployed trail cams to be sure that's respected.
We're also offering weekly bow hunting leases for the north and south edges of the West Farm, in collaboration with Gauthiers Archery of Traverse City. The lease properties are low lands, and between them is the high land, with Love Farm's 40 acre wild meadow and smattering of farm buildings. The high land will be access only, (no hunting) to provide a refuge for the deer herd. After deer have been taken from the low land leases, a gradual re-population from the high lands should occur. We'll stagger the lease weeks to facilitate this natural process. The antique apple orchard is full of deer and turkey!
Curiosity Fair
Inspired by John Taylor Gatto's experience in mainstream schooling, Love Farm is exploring how to provide self education resources for all ages, and especially for kids. This summer we hosted 3 Curiosity Fairs, in which kids and adults played on the farm and shared skills like foraging, music and martial arts. Sarah's working on her summary of the Fair experience.
The word school seems a complete anathema to the concept of education. We don't want our kids to be like a school of fish, seeking safety in an anonymous crowd while predators circle for the kill. When Sarah and Dan think about kids, we imagine them as autonomous, open minded and competent world builders. That's the dream Love Farm's resources are being configured to facilitate.
History
From the early 1990s until 2015, White O Morn Farms hosted a small herd of Belted Galloway cows. My father, Jim Kelly dreamed of being a farmer and for decades he and his advisor Al Cline lived that dream. My name is Dan Kelly, Jim and Eileen's son. I started managing the operation in 2015 when my father was diagnosed with Parkinsons. In 2019 we reorganized as Love Farm. Sarah Alexander brought her plant super powers in September of 2021.