Community gardening isn't just a summer hobby in Wastenaw County thanks to some large, plastic-covered hoop houses that are starting to pop up in the Ann Arbor area.
Excerpt:
Shannon Brines stooped down, pulled a young carrot out of the ground and gently brushed the soil off its roots.
"My customers love to get these," he said, checking his crops one cold, rainy morning last month.
While most Michigan gardeners still haven't bought their vegetable seeds, Brines spent his winter harvesting handfuls of baby carrots and hundreds of pounds of fresh baby lettuce, arugula, spinach, chard, kale and exotic gourmet greens from three unheated hoophouses near Dexter.
Growing produce year-around in Michigan may sound like a global-warming daydream. But entrepreneurs like Brines prove it can be done -- profitably -- in the low-tech, plastic-covered sheds.
"It could be a living, depending on your definition," says Brines, 34, a University of Michigan data analyst who lives in Ann Arbor. If he focused only on growing, he figures he could make about $40,000 a year.
Read the rest of the story here.
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.