Supporting your local food economy should be simple: buy from local Michigan farmers, and enjoy fresh, nutritious, delicious produce. However, with rising grocery costs, price differences between a farm stop and a grocery store can be a serious hurdle for many folks wanting to shop local. Why is it that local food can end up more expensive than food in traditional grocery stores, and how do we ensure local Michigan farmers are paid a fair income while keeping their food accessible to our community? 

To answer this question, I spoke with Alex Blume, Argus Farm Stop’s Marketing Manager, about how pricing works at Argus Farm Stop, and how we work with local farmers and organizations to create access to the best, locally grown produce. 

While our customers often pause to admire the vibrant produce, freshly baked bread, and cafe offerings available at Argus Farm Stop, we also offer a wide variety of meat products, another key contributor to our local food economy. Local Michigan farmers who sell through Argus Farm Stop work hard to ensure their animals are raised humanely, providing them with rich, full lives, often implementing sustainable farming practices before the animals are processed to sell in store. 

To make shopping humanely raised, local meat easier, we started our Local Cuts Club: a monthly subscription service that provides our customers with high quality meat raised locally and ethically. Alex Blume and I spoke with Argus Farm Stop’s very own Rosie Estes, who, among many other responsibilities, runs our Local Cuts Club subscription.

Now that it’s finally starting to warm up in Michigan, it’s time to start thinking about planting fruits and vegetables for the late summer or fall harvests. Argus Farm Stop offers an abundance of plant starts during this time of year, as well as a huge variety of organic seeds from Nature & Nurture Seeds to purchase for your garden. Nature & Nurture breeds open pollinated and heirloom seed varieties and sells some of their beautiful heirloom tomatoes in late summer. The farm also offers educational resources for new gardeners seeking advice on what to plant and how to optimize growth in their gardens. Alex Blume and I spoke with Erica Kempter and Mike Levine, founders of Nature & Nurture Seeds, about how they breed new seeds for Ann Arbor and its surrounding communities to enjoy.   

Erica and Mike founded Nature & Nurture in 2001 as a garden consulting business. They installed gardens and offered new gardeners advice on how to successfully grow and maintain organic, native fruits and vegetables in Southeast Michigan. In 2004, Erica began breeding her own organic plant seeds. They also started a backyard nursery for mushrooms, mainly shiitake, which they sold to local Ann Arbor restaurants. They acquired their farm in 2013, and by 2014, Nature & Nurture was established as primarily a seed company serving the west side of Ann Arbor. 

At Argus Farm Stop, our primary goal is to foster a thriving local food economy by supporting small, local Michigan farmers and increasing food access for our community. One key element in achieving this goal is collaboration with local organizations that prioritize food access and sustainability. A great example of such an organization is A2Zero, a program through the City of Ann Arbor focused on creating a climate action plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. The plan includes a variety of sustainable solutions, one of which is rethinking how our communities approach food waste and consumption.

This February, Argus Farm Stop hosted the third annual Farm Stop Conference, bringing together farmers, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and pillars of local food systems across the country. The conference exists to encourage people nationwide to start their own farm stop, providing them with resources and connections as they navigate their journey toward strengthening local food systems. Since the conference started in 2024, attendance has nearly tripled. I spoke with Casey Miller of Argus Farm Stop about what it takes each year for her and Argus Farm Stop’s team to organize this major event.

We may feel inclined to believe that for local farmers, winter signifies a period of quiet, rest, and preparation for spring’s growing season. This is often far from true. Storage crops make up a significant part of a farmer’s fields and keep a paycheck coming back to them through the frost-ridden months. Storage crops, which are crops that can be cured and stored long-term, are widespread in our diet and have kept people fed for generations because of their ability to keep through winter. Farm stops also play a significant role in keeping us fed through these cold months, allowing local farmers to sell these crops year-round, and amplifying local produce when many have forgotten about it.

For farmers like Norm Holtz, winter is their busiest selling season. Holtz Farms, located in Ida, Michigan, relies heavily on sales of storage crops while Norm’s fields lie dormant under feet of snow. Potatoes, onions, leeks, and squash take center stage at Argus Farm Stop during the winter months, thanks to the investment Norm and other local farmers make in their crops long before they make it to our market.

Norm Holtz took over his family’s centennial farm in 1980. His family was growing grain crops at the time, but Holtz gradually transitioned into growing fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Holtz discovered these to be more practical choices in terms of the farm’s success, as they could better serve local farmers markets year-round. “In Spring there are tulips and daffodils. Summer brings green beans, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes.” Holtz shared that while he grows vegetables and flowers because of their practicality, they are also what he most enjoys growing.

Pączki Day is a tradition with a history almost as rich as the treat itself. Pączki are dense, cake-like donuts that are fried, filled with jam or custard, and covered in powdered sugar. It is a centuries-old Polish Catholic tradition still celebrated today in both Poland and the United States. This will be the eleventh year that Argus Farm Stop participates in the tradition. Employees of the farm stop spend the morning of Pączki Day covering themselves in powdered sugar as they package over three thousand pączki for Ann Arbor residents to enjoy. The pączki are baked and delivered to us by Crust Bakery, located in Fenton, Michigan. The bakery bakes at least eight thousand pączki each year, and have maintained their own Pączki Day tradition since 2014.