Farms for Folks: Increasing healthy food access while building vitality in U.P. Farms

ALEX PALZEWICZ, UP Local Food Coordinator & Online Sales Lead

“When COVID hit, we wanted, like so many other people, to figure out how to help the community,”

says Joe Newman, co-owner of Mighty Soil Farm in Chatham. To build local food security in Alger County, several farms, including Mighty Soil, collaborated to form Farms for Folks (FFF), a food access motivated CSA program. Area individuals and businesses donated to the FFF fund to provide fair prices to farmers and pay for food to give to those in need.

This program was made possible through community funding and by working with Alger County Communities That Care(AC3) to act as a fiduciary. Local volunteers helped with aggregation of produce and delivery for those who lacked transportation. Seasonal items from area farms, like greens, potatoes, squash, and more, were packed and distributed to about 10 Alger-area families, with plans for 20 this year. These boxes also offered additional items like eggs, proteins, and bread. Participants were thrilled and, “farmers all felt great about their food going to folks who really, really needed it,” Newman says.

In the early stages of this program, Newman pitched this collaborative CSA idea to the Upper Peninsula Food Exchange team, which inspired a similar project in the Western Upper Peninsula with the Portage Health Foundation (PHF). The foundation partnered with non-profit social service and health agencies, including U.P. Kids, Keweenaw Family Resource Center, BHK-L’Anse and the

Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Health Center, to identify area families to invite to the program. In the Keweenaw region, the PHF-managed program included culturally appropriate local items, like manoomin (wild rice) and maple syrup from Dynamite Hills Fam in Baraga County.

“Helping the people (in our community) is really neat,'' Gina Kerr, owner of Whispering Wild Market Farm in Toivola, says. Her farm provided apples, corn, potatoes, collard greens, onions, and raspberries to the PHF program. “I love how things are budding off of this program.”

Both programs offered educational resources to empower participants to store, prepare, and cook the ingredients. Seasonal recipes from MSU extension were shared with FFF participants. In Copper Country, the Portage Lake District Library, which was one of the distribution sites, even created their own educational cooking web series, Biblio Bistro, to complement this program.

Collective CSA models like these strengthen the ties within the community, from the farmers to the eaters. After the successes of these programs in 2020, both are continuing through the 2021 growing season. These examples showcase how rural communities can have a voice in creating impactful programming that shapes their own food system.

“Supporting local food efforts is a win-win for the community through increasing access to nutritious, locally grown food [while] supporting the local economy” says Dr. Michelle Seguin of the Portage Health Foundation.

See the collective CSA 2020 Outcome Report from PHF at localdifference.org/phfcsa2020

Find PHF Recipe Cards AT phfgive.org/food