Growing La Casa Verde Farm with Noel Weeks

By F. Josephine Arrowood

Sun contributor

You may have seen Noel Weeks at farm markets in Leelanau or Traverse City in the past few years. Maybe you noticed Facebook posts of La Casa Verde, his organic farm business. Maybe you decided to join his CSA this spring, when the Coronavirus gave you a new appreciation for locally grown, nutritious food. The slender young man’s soft voice and easy demeanor belies a fierce work ethic and relentless determination to succeed.

La Casa Verde was planted on just two acres about seven years ago, at his parents’ home in Cedar. From those humble beginnings, with the support and help of Dave and Margaret Weeks, Noel has steadily grown his business. Just as farmers till cover crops to nourish the soil, the family have invested in the old-meets-new dream of growing good food in environmentally responsible, sustainable ways.

A tour of La Casa Verde, a 40-acre former cherry farm just north of Cedar, reveals the fruits (and vegetables!) of this young farmer’s vision and hard work. Bought two years ago, the homestead was a mess of cherry stumps, scrub pines, and tangles of wild grapes. Of 18 tillable acres, about four are planted in vegetables. Six acres of cover crops include oats, field peas, vetch, sunflower, and daikon radishes. Greens, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, melons, and more stretch away in tidy lines, while fencing combats the heavy browsing of abundant wildlife. Noel lost some early plantings to deer, and had to sleep for a time in a tent, with his dog and a shotgun to dissuade them, while erecting his fence.

The 31-year-old grew up far from the farming life. Born in Marquette, he moved at age five to Charlotte, North Carolina. After high school, the family moved to Cedar as his father pursued a nursing career at Munson. 

Noel attended Kenyon College in Ohio, but his first semesters were not happy ones. “I went to school to be an engineer; to study physics. In my second semester, I wasn’t too into the quantum physics, wasn’t doing well. So I switched the tune, switched to religious studies with a concentration in environmental studies.”       

The two areas of focus played surprisingly well together. “My environmental studies were more policy-based; that’s how I got exposed to agriculture. I did a sustainable agriculture class, and got to intern on some farms near Columbus.

“My [other] focus was religions of the Americas—Judaism, Christianity, and African religions—though I did study Eastern/Asian religions as well,” he says. “Studying the history of religions gave me a look into the different worldviews that were the building blocks of culture and society. Learning a lot of different worldviews and people’s ideas on and about God helped me gain perspective, and establish my own sense of identity in a tumultuous world.”

Noel sees a strong connection between human life and the natural world. “I’m out there in nature and have to work with nature, in order to grow vegetables and tend to the land properly. For me, it’s a good path to take.”

His family was initially dismayed by his decision to immerse in a back-to-the-land lifestyle. “My grandparents, great-grandparents were farmers, and my grandpa—his whole life was to get off the farm. Once World War Two hit, he went to war, got a job, and never went back. Their farm was in Ohio, and on my grandma’s side, they farmed in Bay City, Michigan.

“When I told my grandpa I was going to farm after college, he was not happy. He tried to talk me out of it. But he came up and visited here a few times before he passed, and it brought up a lot of memories for him. He told me some stories of his childhood farm. For equipment, they used to have cars with the top cut off and they’d pull implements through the fields with those. They had donkeys, and they grew tobacco for their cash crop.”

The tale is a familiar one for many whose parents or grandparents practiced subsistence agriculture. It was the era of the demise of the small family farm. “When his family got out, farming was getting into big equipment, big machinery, and chemicals, which is very debt-oriented.”

To those who would scoff at “lazy millennials,” Noel’s work rate and ethic may seem astonishing—yet this was a common pattern of life less than a century ago. As his grandpa predicted, Noel’s days at La Casa Verde are full of effort, with 40 varieties of vegetables, fruits, and cover crops to tend, each with their own growing schedules and requirements, along with raising a dozen pigs to certified organic standards.

“I get up around 4:30, feed the pigs, then change clothes before I can start on any vegetable work. Different boots, pants, shirt. Food safety and health is important always. 

“The first half of the season, it was all about planting, weeding, bed maintenance. By mid-July, it’s all about harvest, wash, pack, and go. We move through the day on heat sensitivity. So three days a week, we’re harvesting leafy greens starting around 6 a.m. Then we do kale, chard, radish; broccoli’s got to come out early while there’s still dew on it. There are crops where you have to wait until the dew’s gone: like peas, beans, squash, tomatoes. We do those every two days. There’s a pretty good rhythm to it. Then with the market days, it’s feed the pigs, change clothes, load up the market van, start up harvest, go from there.”

In addition to growing vegetables for CSA shareholders and farm markets, he has also raised pigs for several years. He used to pasture them at his parents’ and land leased from others. With the purchase of this farmstead, he can consolidate his efforts, and free up some time to attend to his many other chores.

The pigs are a relatively new breed called Idaho Pasture Pig (IPPs), a cross of Old Berkshire, Duroc, and Kune Kune. Their short snouts are suited for grazing rather than uprooting, their temperament is friendly, and their cold hardiness works well in northern Michigan’s long, snowy winters—all factors that mesh with small farm operations.

We visit a field with fencing that he can move every couple of months or so. Several black and white pigs are resting under trees, grazing, or vocalizing loudly.

“They’re talkative,” he laughs. “And see how they’re hairy? They do really well in cold, but this heat has been a little tough on them. In September, I’ll move them to another cover crop area to live. Everywhere we’ve had animals, we have vegetables. The long-term vision is a three- to five-year rotation of pigs, cover crops, grazing food for the pigs, then vegetables. With biodynamic farming, instead of bringing in [commercial] sources of nitrogen, we’re creating nitrogen.”

After years of work, La Casa Verde received its organic certification just last year. Expanding his herd through breeding is one requirement of the rigorous process, which is very important to Noel for both economic and philosophical reasons. As with other aspects of organic farming, the labor intensity and extra measures can make the products somewhat more expensive—but the results are well worth it.

“I feel really good about raising them. I want to eat meat, but your standard [commercially raised] pig can’t even move 360 degrees in their pen their whole life. This is a completely different product—in terms of taste, way more nutrition, and humane animal husbandry—by an exponential amount. I’m working on building my herd. I have three herds going now. Before, I would just buy feeders, graze them, and sell them. Now I’ve got one sow I’ve had for two years, three gilts (that will be sows once they’ve had a litter), and a boar.” 

Was it daunting for a city boy to contemplate raising large animals? “My first college internship was on a farm with 200 acres of animal pasture, with boars, cows, and chickens for meat and eggs. I definitely put in my time learning it. I also WWOOFed  [World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farming] at an animal ranch in Tucson that raised pigs and goats.” 

When the time comes for harvesting his pigs, the options are limited. “I have to go down to Coopersville for that. They have to be slaughtered in a certified organic facility and processed by one as well. Before they go into the slaughterhouse, it has to be completely cleaned, and the animals have no contact with any conventional animals; they go in on a separate day and separate place. Then they get sent to a certified organic processor.”

As with all farming, finding workers remains a perennial challenge. “We need help for four months of the year, and of that, about a month and a half where we really, really need it. We go through Michigan Works, and we use migrant workers who are willing to come for a few weeks at a time.” 

One full-time worker arrived in April, went through a two-week quarantine, and has proved valuable with his years of experience working crops on big vegetable farms. “He knows how to trellis tomatoes, how to pick squash; he’s been doing it his whole life. We need people like him, who have experience, who can work ten to twelve hours a day outside in all kinds of weather.”

He continues, “I’d like to get some interns again, but it’s hard: they want a competitive hourly wage, but where I come from, internships are unpaid because you’re learning. If I have to supervise, teach someone how to do things, it takes away from my time. I have a lot of work I have to do, on the tractor, planting seed, paperwork.”

He also hired a full-time produce washer, a young woman who lives across the road. “You’ve got to have someone who does just that; someone who’s efficient at it. It’s a different skill than field work.”

As with family farms of a bygone era, members of the Weeks family contribute essential hours to keep the business flowing. “My dad is my business partner, with an MBA, so he does our accounting, a lot of record keeping from my field notes. My mom grows flowers, picks and arranges them; she helps at the markets as well.” She’s also an artist who paints and sells beautiful flower vignettes. 

“We go to six markets, five days a week. That’s our business model—fresh, direct-to-consumer sales—which has been very valuable, this year in particular. Restaurant sales are down, grocery stores not ordering as much. Farm markets are a building game, because you’re developing relationships. We try to produce a quality product, be consistent, have variety.” 

With COVID-19, those local, well-established relationships have been a boon. “There were definitely big unknowns. But we planned production as normal, because everything we’re selling now, we started working on it in late February, early March. This year was full of extra unknowns, but we bolstered our CSA membership (summer and fall shares), got a good response to that. The farm markets’ openings were delayed, but they did an online market initially, so that was helpful. We sell at my parents’ a couple days a week as well.” 

He adds, “Any farm is gambling. Any time, any year, you plant seed and you hope it’s going to grow. Then you’re hoping to be able to sell it.” For La Casa Verde, the gamble—bolstered by hard work and ethical vision—is paying off, for Noel and people who love to eat good food.

Find more information on La Casa Verde at their Facebook page.