Farm Field Trips

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Touring Wild Type Nursery, which specializes in wild harvested native plants for prairie restoration and pollinator support.

 

Expect field trips to 20+ farms in Detroit, Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti, Lansing, Grand Rapids and Flint and a weekend trip to urban farms in Chicago. OFTP participants often list these field trips as a highlight of the program, giving them insights into many different approaches to infrastructure, growing methods and other farm techniques. Each year, we visit different farms, but below is a list of typical farms.

 

Detroit

In addition to the field trip below, both OFTP groups have two days at Detroit Partnership for Food Learning and Innovation and a full day each at a full day at Keep Growing Detroit and Oakland Avenue Farm. The Detroit OFTP group has 7 additional days at Keep Growing Detroit. 

On our field trips in Detroit, we often go to: 

  • Fisheye Farms – No-till vegetables
  • Drew Farm – Detroit Public Schools farm
  • D-Town Farm & Detroit Black Food Security Network - National leaders in addressing racism in the food and farming system
  • Beaverland Farms – Permaculture-style alley cropping of vegetables and flowers between rows of fruit trees and beneath tall shade trees
  • Detroit People's Food Co-op - for lunch! 
About 15 people in a hoophouse looking at tomatoes with red plastic mulch and trellised up vertical strings.
Visiting Drew Farms at a Detroit Public School to see their hoophouse tomatoes and learn about selling produce for school lunches

Ann Arbor & Ypsilanti

  • Green Things Farm Collective - 5 Farm Owners collaborate to grow 3.5 acres of no-till vegetables & seed crops, beef on pasture
  • Growing Hope – Ypsilanti hub for urban gardeners with a farmers’ market incubator kitchen and model urban farm + they make us pizza in their on-farm pizza ovens 
  • Nature & Nurture - Seeds!
  • Tantre Farm - 35 acres of vegetables and a mushroom forest
20 peole standing for a photo at We the People Opportunity Farm in Ypsilanti.
OFTP participants learned so much from Melvin Parsons and the people returning from incarceration at We the People Opportunity Farm... it is such a welcoming and healing space.

Lansing

  • Magnolia Farms - Urban farm, vegetables, medicinal herbs
  • Allen Neighborhood Center & Hunter Park GardenHouse – Farm, edible park, multifarm CSA, workshops, incubator kitchen, farmers’ market, food cooperative and more….
  • 4H Children's Garden - 1st children's garden in the US
  • Wildtype - Native plants & ecological restoration
  • Two Sparrows - Herdshare dairy, beef, hay
About 10 people and 5 cows standing in a field.
Learning about rotational grazing for cattle at Two Sparrows Farm and making friends with the cows.

Grand Rapids

  • Green Wagon Farm - Vegetables, lean farming techniques
  • New City Farm - Vegetables, youth education, on-farm café and a new 5-acre urban farm; they make us a delicious lunch of soup, salad & bread 
  • Hope Gardens – Schoolyard gardens, community gardens and sharing seeds and transplants
  • Idlewild Farm/Dreamgoats - A cut flower farm that hosts a goat dairy that welcomes the public for "Goat Walks" 
People looking at a field of flowers
Flower fields at Idlewild Farm near Grand Rapids.

Flint

  • Edible Flint – hub for gardeners in Flint
  • The Local Grocer for lunch!
  • Clarkston Farm - a vegetable farm that used Jadam principles to brew their own fertilizer and invigorate soil life
  • Twig End Farm – 1.5 vacant lots of cut flowers in Flint
A woman leading a tour of her Flint flower farm with her home in the background
OFTP learns from Janie of Twig End Farm about growing a successful flower farm on just one vacant lot and her yard!

 

Chicago – New site for 2024! We hope to visit 6 or more farms like:

  • Mitchell's Patch of Blue - 5th generation farmer Kyle Mitchell grows SO MANY blueberries in SW Michigan 
  • Swimming & a picnic at Lake Michigan 
  • Garfield Park Conservatory - botanical gardens and greenhouses with plants from around the world! 
  • Chicago Lights – Youth internships, produce, community garden plots, classes committed to serving their Cabrini Green neighborhood 
  • Gary Comer Youth Center & Comer Crops - youth-led gardens and outdoor pizza ovens with crops, bees and an orchard on just 1.5 acres
  • Windy City Harvest – Job training for 80-90 youth per year, apprenticeships, business planning classes, gardens and aquaponics 
  • Gardeneers – managing 19 schoolyard gardens in south and west Chicago
  • Growing Home - job training and intensive veggie production
  • The Urban Canopy – 2-acre raised bed garden, Compost Club
A man looking at a whiteboard with a weekly plan for managing the plants and fish for aquaponics
Shane Bernardo of Detroit reads the plan for managing fish and plants in the aquaponics greenhouse at Windy City Harvest.

 

Student Organic Farm

Farm and Farmer Development

Food Systems: Planning and Policy

Land and Credit Access