Tilian Farm Development Center doubles acreage & farmer headcount

Aspiring farmers all too typically locked out out of the profession by high land costs are gaining ground via the Tilian Farm Development Center, one of the country's scant few farm incubator programs.

The center, located at 4400 Pontiac Trail in Ann Arbor Township, was launched in September of 2010 with a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Conservation Innovation grant. The first three tenants – Seeley Farm, Green Things Farm, and Bending Sickle Community Farm – started in the spring of 2011. Two more – Meristem and Honest Eats Farms – are new this spring. All are vegetable farms, except for Bending Sickle, which is a livestock operation.

"They're all folks with farm experience who had a hurdle to starting their own farm, which was securing land and having resources," says Andrea Ridgard, Tilian's farm incubator program manager. "What the incubator does is provide them with [rent-free] land for two years and a group of mentors and opportunities to connect with the community and set up their accounts and all of that in this community so when they do move onto their own land, they're already established in this area."

The center leases land from the township at the rate of $1 per year; its acreage more than doubled, from 16 acres last year to 44 currently, Ridgard says.

Also new this year is a farmer residency program, which rotates farmers through two-year stays on the land. The program is supported by the Tilian Residency CSA, Tilian's community-supported agriculture program.

Ridgard says, "The farmers will change and the incubator farms will change, but the land will be there and hopefully until we're no longer needed, until there's enough farms here to feed our community, we'll be doing this."

A volunteer hoop house building event for the public will be held at the center from 8-6 p.m. on April 14. Food grown there will serve incubator farms on the property. More information is available here.

Source: Andrea Ridgard, farm incubator program manager, Tilian Farm Development Center
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar