The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • January through April 2022 • Page 58
The Community Farm of Ann Arbor A Look at the Past, the Present, and the Future
By Sandor Slomovits Photos by Mary Bortmas The Community Farm of Ann Arbor was founded in 1988. It was one of the first organic, and perhaps the only biodynamic, farm in Michigan, as well as one of the first CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). A few years after the Farm began, and up until three years ago, it was run by Annie Elder and Paul Bantle. After Annie and Paul moved to California in 2018, several other farmers ran things, and then this spring, Dan Gannon was hired to run the Farm. To learn about that transitional period, the current state, and the future of the Farm, I spoke with Karen Chalmer, one of its founding members and someone who, in the past 33 years, has devoted countless hours of work, in many different capacities, at the Farm. She jokingly says, “My official role now is as the farm grandmother.” She still leads a weekly weed and sing, which is exactly what it sounds like. I asked Karen for her farm memories from the past 33 years. Karen: In the fall of 1987, the Ann Arbor Public Library held a panel discussion with farmers about the plight of small farms in America. Dale Lesser, who’s one of our neighbors was speaking, so I decided to go and listen. There were four or five farmers, and they all told the same story—they just couldn’t compete with the big factory farms. In order to do what they loved, somebody had to work off the farm to support the farm. Then a man named Trauger Groh from the Temple-Wilton Community in New Hampshire (the first CSA in the US) said, ‘You know, there’s another way to do this, it’s called community supported agriculture.’ I’d never heard of that, but Cindy Olivas and Marcia Barton—Cindy worked at Wildfire Bakery and Marcia at the Ecology Center—had studied biodynamic farming and wanted to start a CSA in Ann Arbor. ‘Was anybody interested?’ About ten of us said, ‘Yeah.’ We met that weekend at the Steiner School and in 1988 we started on borrowed land. I think there were 150 members that first year and we all got such lovely produce that everybody wanted to keep playing. But the farmer we were renting from was so amazed at the life on his farm that he decided he wanted to farm again. So, we moved to Huron River Drive where we were for two or three years, and Marcia and Cindy were still farming.
We had to move a cow and a greenhouse. (Laughter) It was lots of fun. That was a big lesson, that the farm could survive and thrive. —Karen Chalmer Then Cindy left. She was sort of the Annie of that first part of the Farm, had that kind of heart. Marcia was kind of the Paul, and we thought the farm couldn’t possibly survive, but then Marcia found Annie and Paul, and they came on with Marcia. Then
we had to move the whole farm again and it was September and we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, how’s this going to work? We should be planting garlic for next year.’ And that week I got a call from Isabelle Yingling who said, ‘I’ve got this farm in Chelsea that my husband and I intended to farm, but we’ve had five kids and we’ve never farmed it. My husband’s gone now. Do you know anybody who’d like to farm it?” (Laughter) So, we moved, and Annie and Paul started farming. We had to move a cow and a greenhouse. (Laughter) It was lots of fun. That was a big lesson, that the farm could survive and thrive. Annie and Paul became the farm and did wonderful things. They, created the community and the love… So, when they said they were leaving, it was like, ‘Oh, I know the farm can survive because I’ve seen this happen before.’
