Growing Farmers, Feeding Artists at Loma

By Madeleine Hill Vedel

Sun contributor

Spending a moment in the shade with Nic Theisen is a treat. It doesn’t take long into our interview before I start wishing I could be one of Loma Farm’s privileged 50 CSA shareholders, to be invited to private farm gatherings, receive personalized typeset pressed thank-you notes, and follow more closely the agricultural calendar as visually and deliciously evoked by his wit and craft.

I’d seen Nic’s thank-you notes, poetic & personalized, at The Cooks’ House in Traverse City, and I’d admired his black and white photo essay on the restaurant and crew at Alliance in a past edition of Edible Grande Traverse. Learning of his future plans for a crafts’ space and gallery at Loma Farm, adding another dimension to his and his partner Sara’s small-scale organic vegetable and flower farm in southern Leelanau County, eight miles outside of Traverse City, nudges the good feelings another step higher.

Photos by Madeleine Hill Vedel

Nic and Sara arrived in Leelanau County in 2011. They’d been based just outside of Fort Collins, Colorado (where they met during college), and where for six years Nic worked and lived on a small CSA and market farm. Sara ran a small cafe in town and worked alongside Nic at the farm. Nic has a degree in conservation biology; Sara’s is in education. Nic was initially thinking of a job in parks and protected area management, perhaps at the Department of Natural Resources, but an internship on an organic farm to complete his degree altered his trajectory. He’s been farming ever since. It was on that organic farm in northern Colorado that Nic grew from an intern to managing the CSA and market garden. The farm offered exposure and the chance to acquire a myriad of skills including working in the dairy herds, making yogurt and butter, baking pizzas in a wood fired oven, constructing solar powered yurts for interns, using the ‘passive’ geothermal heat from the pizza oven belly to heat the green house, and, with Sara, manifesting non-profit “farm-hands” education and kids’ camps.

So why Leelanau County? Why Michigan? In fact it was a difficult decision as they both dearly loved living in the West. After looking at farm possibilities in Minnesota, eastern Iowa and Wisconsin, it was Sara’s mom who suggested they look at Traverse City. As Nic shares: “We liked Traverse City for many reasons, the obvious ones. We knew we were changing our farm focus from markets to restaurants. We saw a murmuring here, interest in local, quality vegetables, restaurants like Stella’s and The Cooks House. The year we started our farm 7 Monks’ Taproom opened. It was our first account. Since then new restaurants have opened that share our values. The timing was so lucky.” Loma now has 30 restaurant accounts in the region.

Landing in the region was relatively smooth for Nic and Sara. Jan and Gerard Grabowski at Pleasanton Bakery hired them, delighted by Nic’s baking experience and Sara’s management gifts. There, not only were they paid good wages, but were also offered benefits. Nic worked as the early morning baker for three years, through the early start-up period of Loma farm, working fewer hours each year, till Loma brought in enough for him to forego the outside income.

Loma Farm is situated on the former Leelanau Cultured Veggies farm owned and run by Nancy and Pat Curley. Nic and Sara were introduced to the Curleys about a year after their arrival in Traverse City. They opted for a lease-to-buy option, locking in a purchase price with a five-year option to buy. After three years on site, they decided to purchase the 13 acre property and are now farming five of those acres: three with vegetables, small fruits, and herbs, and two in cover crops. “Our original goals were farm stewardship and soil building,” emphasizes Nic.

Key to the farm acquisition and evolution has been USDA-FSA loans, and mentorship: “The Traverse City USDA office has played an essential role in the creation of Loma. Our land, buildings, and large equipment have all been purchased with FSA loans. We have also been the recipients of a REAP solar grant and an NRCS hoop house grant, both also USDA programs. These programs have allowed us to pursue our passion. I think our local office is particularly helpful and interested in the success of local farms.”

Seven years into building their farm, Nic and Sara continue to evaluate where they are and how they can improve the farm, what they offer, and their work/life balance. “Last year we pulled back and upped our goals, planting more densely, filtered out crops that weren’t profitable, working on ‘leaning up’ our processes in general, eliminating waste,” explained Nic. Loma employs nine people—seven seasonally from April through November, and two part-time year-round—and it is one of their goals to offer good jobs with good pay and benefits.

“We’d like to increase our profit margin by decreasing expenses, not by increasing sales. And then we might consider expanding. I’d like to start grooming a manager to run the farm. I’d still over-see, but I’d like to have a day-to-day manager. Then we could move into doing more events on farm: like receiving the Zingerman’s farm tours, and dinners with our restaurant colleagues such as Alliance and The Cooks’ House.”

But Nic and Sara don’t want to stop there. They have infrastructure goals—they just went solar in September this year—and the desire to build a space for art, block printing, photography, and writing. “More for our sake than for profit’s sake. We want to keep food the focus. We want to dig a little bit deeper, honing the farm to be regenerative and not such a burden. We feel that happening this year, and using that extra time to be more open to the public, rendering the farm an inspiration for ideas to spread, hosting small movie screenings, dialogs, dining events to celebrate food and community.”

There is always more to do, more to improve, more to create. Nic and Sara are fans of the Lean Farming movement, which encourages careful observation of process and steps, and constant improvements. For example, counting your touches on a crop such as beets: how many times is a vegetable touched to get it from the field to its cleaned, ready for market bunch in the cooler? And, how can the number you arrive at be reduced? The goal is to render the tasks and time of each team member to be more efficient.

A farmer’s time is short, and so our interview comes to an end and I pack up my computer. It’s exciting to be with someone who is so clearly in a space of creation and nurturing of both his environment and his community. I feel just that much more grateful to live in a region that welcomes and supports such dedicated farmers. We benefit so greatly from the quality of produce they bring to market, from the nurturing of the land in their care, and from the richness they offer to our community.