Good farmers make good neighbors. And coming in May, the public will have new ways to interact with them at the
Washtenaw Food Hub, a distribution and gathering facility for community farmers housed on a 16-acre plot on Whitmore Lake Road in Ann Arbor.
The food hub is renovating a former feed store into a space for community-supported agriculture (CSA) distribution from multiple farmers. The new space should be ready by mid-to-late May.
"We're making it a place where people can come and network and share the food distribution there from the CSAs and share some food recipes," says Richard Andres, co-founder and co-owner of Washtenaw Food Hub. He and his partner, Deb Lentz, also own
Tantré Farm, an organic farm with its own CSA. Andres calls it an "enhanced distribution site for community farm shares". There will be a meat freezer, along with eggs and vegetables. Gardening supplies, including organic minerals and fertilizers, will also be for sale.
Starting in early May, customers will be able to order from
Lunasa, an online farmers market, and make pickups twice a week, Andres says.
Three employees are working on the installation of a half-acre vegetable garden, an herb garden, and a quarter-acre blackberry patch. And the chickens aren't far behind.
On April 24 from 4-6 p.m. the food hub will be hosting a
dinner with Joel Salatin, who was featured in
The Omnivore's Dilemma. An author of eight books, Salatin has been called the most influential farmer in America. He'll be speaking at the Michigan Theatre afterwards at 7 p.m. Other potluck dinners will be held throughout the season as well.
The food hub, Andres says, is "trying to put things in more of a human and communal scale rather than the large industrial scale that things are on at that site right now."
Source: Richard Andres, co-founder and co-owner of Washtenaw Food Hub
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
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