Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Lawn Gone Food Farm posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Contact The Business
Send a message to Lawn Gone Food Farm:
Videos
Auntie Em! Auntie Em!
It's a good thing we got more bricks yesterday to batten down the row cover.
The goal of Lawn Gone Food Farm, through product (fruits and vegetables), process (small-scale, intensive, organic growing), people (farmers), and place (the farm), is to bring health and wholeness to people, the community and the Earth.
That’s a lofty goal for a little farm. Yet, we live in hope and work each day to make our dream and reality. As farmer/neighbor/citizen in East English Village and in Detroit - and on our shared planet Earth home - we seek to:
* Grow food that is local, healthy, high-quality, affordable, and culturally appropriate. This year we’ll grow 62 varieties of 31 different fruits and vegetables for our city, our neighbors and ourselves.
* Be a good neighbor by nurturing relationship of mutual trust and accountability, contributing to the good of the commons, keeping our dollars local, and working with fellow gardeners and farmers across the city (most who have been here far longer than us) for a food secure and food sovereign Detroit.
* Care for the Earth and her resources by stewarding the land and water entrusted to our care, using no toxic chemicals in our growing practices, living in simple and sustainable ways, and working toward a zero waste operation.
* Create beauty by designing an aesthetically pleasing space where people want to gather and be nurtured by their surroundings.
* Model intensive growing methods and serve as an educational resource to those who want to maximize production in small spaces/yards.
* Cultivate wellness and wholeness by nurturing ourselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For us that means time with family and friends, rest, play, reflection, sharing food and stories at table, and taking vacations where we climb mountains.
We will never make our dreams a reality without the help from our family, friends, and community. We are grateful for the gifts we have already received from:
Keep Growing Detroit. Thank you for all the resources you offer to us and growers in the city of Detroit through the Garden Resource Program (seeds, transplants, compost, tools, tilling, trellising, row cover, soil tests, classes, etc.); Urban Roots (community gardening training, networking, garden support); and Grown in Detroit (market infrastructure, supplies and staffing). Your help is making our farm possible!
MSU Organic Farmer Training Program. We are grateful for the 8-month OFTP experience - for the classroom instruction, the hands-on farming, the mentoring from experienced farmers, the process of writing a business plan, and the relationships with members of my 2017 cohort that helped Leah develop the skills and confidence to make this farming dream a reality.
Earthworks Urban Farm. What a gift to have the opportunity to learn from urban farmers, Patrick, Roxanne, and Tyler, and to be in community and learn about so much more than farming with and from Nefer Ra and the leaders and participants in the EAT (Earthworks Agricultural Training) program. Thank you all!
Farms/Farmers from whom I’ve learned. Susan Sides (Lord’s Acre, Asheville, NC), Meredith Leight (Granite Springs Farm, Pittsboro, NC), Sharon Bodenschatz (Bluestone Farm, Brewster, NY), Will Summers (Stony Point CC, NY). I am grateful to have experienced farming with each of you in so many different settings
Detroit growers. What can I say? Never been in a city with people quite like you. Thank you for welcoming us into the city. We are grateful to be in your company, hear your stories, see your growing spaces, and work alongside you for a food sovereign city. You make farming/gardening in this city a great joy. Thank you for who you are and all you do to care for your neighborhoods and communities.
For this land on which we grow we are grateful and we recognize the responsibility we have in being able to purchase and “own” a piece of land. We know this land is a gift of the Creator and we are to be stewards, tilling and keeping it as long as we reside on this Earth. We acknowledge our privilege (that which we did not earn but is given to us by virtue of our white skin) to move into a city, particularly Detroit, and purchase a home with a lot, even as so many native Detroiters are prohibited from doing so by systems of oppression. Additionally, we live in this place because our settler forbears forced First Nations people (Potawat0mi, Ottawa and Huron) from the land and, through treaties/laws, denied them opportunity to purchase and hold title to land. May we continue to humbly learn our history, listen to the stories of those who were and are here, and forever be transformed for the work of justice.
This work - this farming - this feeding people - this journey toward health and wholeness - is a call, a vocation. May we live into it humbly, faithfully and well.
