Our Story

When Adam and I first said "I do" and moved to Ann Arbor in 2007, we heard about a local community garden project with plots for rent and signed up. That first year the weeds grew higher than the plants, but-- to my total amazement-- delicious vegetables hid in that jungle and made their way onto our plates.

That winter I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and was taken with the idea of growing our family's food and eating locally. I poured over seed catalogs and fell in love with the names of beans grown by Seed Savers Exchange. Armed with one trusty garden reference book, I seeded a flat of tomatoes in the windowsill and faithfully woke up 15 minutes early to water them with a baster every morning before work. I planted out our second season plot that spring and made friends with mulch. Everything grew! Tomatoes took over our kitchen in August.

Over the next decade I grew food as a gardener and worked professionally as a registered nurse at both St. Joe's Hospital and Michigan Medicine, but I became discouraged seeing the same folks repeatedly admitted to our unit with preventable diseases brought on by poor nutrition, stress, and lack of education about or time for exercise and wellness.

When the daffodils bloomed in 2012, our daughter was born. Our lives changed in ways large and small. Her birth brought me home to our community, to building deeper relationships and spending time outdoors. Her delight in the worms, weeds, and wind brought great joy and wonder for me, and made me look for new opportunities to share gardening with children and adults. 

I dreamed about creating a farm where we could connect children and young people-- those just starting out in life-- with really nutritious food and the joy and peacefulness that comes with working outdoors side-by-side with others. When our youngest (at the time) child started school in 2017, I began the adventure toward doing this earth work, committing to building a sustainable farming business that serves our community.

It’s 2025 and we are now eight years into working as land stewards. I've learned that small business owners wear many hats and develop diverse skillsets. I love the problem solving. I love connecting with the beautiful humans who are drawn to farms, community, music, beauty, nature. I love the creative opportunities. Most of all I love that I am doing work that I strongly believe in together with people I love.

Our First Land Stewardship

In 2018 we became long-term stewards of one small corner of land stewarded by many before us— the Meskwahki asa hina, Peoria, Anishinabewaki, Potawatami peoples and then a series of immigrant families who homesteaded beginning in 1832. This land has seen many families struggle, work together, build up, tear down, gather, and fade away.

We want to be the gentlest caretakers we can be; we know our stewardship is only temporary.

We seek to sustain habitat for an abundance of biodiversity-- bees, monarchs, snakes, birds, toads, turtles, and earthworms. As we are able during these parenting years, we offer hospitality to our community and do the important work of educating the next generation about sustainable agriculture and community building.

It is important to us to grow in the cleanest way possible because we know that our agricultural practices impact the soil we eat from, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. We decided to show a public commitment to sustainable practices by applying for organic certification as soon as we began farming in 2018. Accountability is important. By the power invested in Oregon Tilth, we were officially certified organic later that year.

When our family first explored this place in the spring of 2018, we discovered lilac bushes, mature mulberry and hickory nut trees, wild raspberries, a lone asparagus, peonies, and spaces rich with old livestock manure.

In our first five summer seasons, we offered a very special community supported agriculture program where folks of all sorts came to our farm each week and harvested their own share of vegetables and flowers. A series of wonderful volunteers, family, and friends helped us tremendously as we began, and later as the farm developed into a more serious business, we hired our first employees.

Our farm model has always run on deep curiosity, a tolerance for failure and trying again, and the belief that we can probably learn to grow anything or build anything or repair anything if we ask the right folks near or far. One of the greatest joys in Michigan farming is blank canvas we face each winter and the canvas we get to repaint again each summer.

Over the years we hosted thousands of friends and visitors, offered classes or workshops in everything from dahlia dividing to children’s music, and trialed or seriously grew over 100 different crops. Biodiversity and inclusivity have been our superpowers.

The Farm Expands for the Long Haul

In 2024, due to the great work of the Greenbelt Program of the City of Ann Arbor, we purchased a “forever farm” about a mile away from our original leased farmland. This coincided with Adam’s exit from his engineering career and a bit of risk taking on our part as we decided to try raising our family of five through farming full-time.

The historic dairy land and hay field we grow on now is equal parts tillable acreage and sugar maple forest. In 2025 we moved our growing operation to this new land with loamy soil and grew the best crops our farm ever produced.

We also made the business decision to focus fully on cut flower production rather than food, and to discontinue certification with what I now consider to be a problematic USDA National Organic Program. We now prefer to buy food from local farmers we trust, rather than rely on the certification label.

Beginning in 2025 we became year-round producers with the addition of four heated high tunnels. We are very grateful to be harvesting blooms 52 weeks of the year, which allows us to be more economically sustainable as a business and a better employer to the folks who have joined our Raindance team.

We continue to experiment with new crops, build infrastructure, raise our kids, and hold on tight for this wild ride of life. Thank you for following our story.