Vegetables are a Serious Business at Birmingham Farm Stand

On any given Sunday, Katie Mullane-Bach, co-owner of Nature’s Pace Organics in Mayville, MI, rises before the sun. She drives 37 miles, across rivers, bridges and hills to the public parking lot off North Old Woodward Avenue in Birmingham.

That's where she and her husband, Jacob, set up shop for five hours every week at the Birmingham Farmers Market, one of 50 vendors at the seasonal event sponsored by the Principal Shopping District.

From under her canopy tent, Mullane-Bach sells 40 kinds of vegetables and herbs, ranging from tomatoes, eggplants and green beans to kale, Swiss chard and yellow carrots.

For Mullane-Bach, who is celebrating her third year at the Farmers Market and six years in farming, the practice of growing and selling organic vegetables is more than a job: It is her Zen.

The organics behind organic farming

Organic farming and producing organic produce is about more than just meeting standards for certification, Mullane-Bach said.

Organic production is defined as a production system that fosters cycling of resources, promotes ecological balance and conserves product biodiversity.

"For all practical purposes, organic is a label, like a brand name, in our culture," Mullane-Bach said. "A farm can be certified organic after three years of not using any agrichemicals. However, some of these chemicals remain in the soil a lifetime. But sure, any garden can be organic in a healthy sense. One must only feed the soil." 

Mullane-Bach majored in German at Western Michigan University, where she was an active member of the university's biodiesel cooperative. She minored in international business and environmental studies. Studying abroad in Germany opened her eyes to fresh food flavors and environmentally conscious cultural practices.

"I realized that localization and living within bioregions is really the path to maintaining a possibility for clean drinking water, nourishing food and experiential knowledge for children and ourselves," she said.

Although the goal is to sell vegetables, Mullane-Bach said organic gardening is about nourishing the soil the same way humans nourish their own bodies — and about understanding the pests instead of merely killing them with pesticides.

“Bugs don’t eat plants with perfect pH,” she said. “They always go for the weakest plants. The life of the soil and the farm is what makes great vegetables. (Organic farming) is about beneficial soil, fungus and insects. Without them, you have dead food. We embrace them. It’s part of life.”

Instead of simply spraying the plans, Nature’s Pace Organics comes up with creative forms of pest control. Mullane-Bach and her team of interns systematically identify whatever pest may be plaguing a certain crop and learn about its life cycle, its natural predators and its habitats.

Cabbage looper caterpillars were recently attacking the farm’s crop of cabbage plants, but Mullane-Bach said pesticides weren’t even top of mind when it came to attacking the problem.

“Cabbage loopers were eating our broccoli leaves, so we interplanted dill with the broccoli to attract predators to eat the pest,” she said. “Dill attracts braconid wasps, which eat cabbage loopers.”

From the farm to the Birmingham Farmers Market

Planting, harvesting and selling produce at the farmers market is a strategic endeavor all on its own.

Take the tomato: Field tomatoes are planted in mid-March. Organic produce must come from organic seeds, which are twice the price of regular seeds. The seed starts growing in its individual cell inside a plant flat. When the nights are freezing, another layer of plastic and supplemental heat is given until the plant is big enough to be planted in the ground, usually around Memorial Day. 

Once the tomato seeds are planted, it will be about another month before the tomatoes appear. When vegetables are ready to be brought to market, the farm staff stays up until 1 a.m., bunching radishes by porch light, and waking early to pick basil for ensured freshness.

At peak harvest time, Mullane-Bach wakes up at 3:30 a.m. to arrive in Birmingham by 7 a.m. in order to set up her canopy tent and display the vegetables by 9 a.m.

“The question is, ‘How are we going to get this extraordinary tomato to market?' ” Mullane-Bach said. “We put tomatoes on a bread tray in a single layer until it’s full. Then we fill another bread tray. We stack the trays on top of each other and load it in our station wagon. In peak harvest time, we use a van. It’s tight in the van, but it’s important to handle it properly.”

Mullane-Bach said the vegetables she sells are different from what people find in grocery stores.

“We harvest it by hand,” Mullane-Bach said. “Grocery stores picked it a week ago by a machine.

"We encourage people to give our green beans a try. They taste so different, there are so many different flavors that you can’t find at grocery stores. We like seeing people find new varieties and taste things and revel in our love labor. We’re not pigeonholed like grocery stores.”

Life at Nature’s Pace Organics can be difficult and tiring, Mullane-Bach said.

“We spend the whole week growing by hand,” Mullane-Bach said. “There are lots of repetitive tasks. It is five days of meditation. It is quicker not to talk. At the market, it is six hours of intense talking, followed by a whole week of not talking. We get a big rush of adrenaline for the market, and when we get in the car, we are supertired.”

Correction: Nature's Pace Organics is located in Mayville, MI, not Grand Blanc, as first reported in this story.