Nic Theisen, Loma keep farming, even in winter

By Ross Boissoneau

Sun contributor

“Growing food in summer and fall is easy,” says Loma Farm owner Nic Theisen. “Growing during winter is a more interesting story.”

Spoiler alert: he’s right. Winter is cold and snowy. There’s significantly less light. It costs lots of money to provide electricity if you want heat spaces to promote growing. It’s a huge challenge to try to grow under those conditions. Why even bother?

There are a few reasons. One is because Theisen wants to promote better, longer-lasting use of the land. Another is to keep his workers employed year-round. And there are those that depend on the products from the farm, especially Farm Club, the nearby restaurant that Theisen and his wife Sara own along with Gary and Allison Jonas.

While it’s a challenge, it is doable. It involves planting much of the year and harvesting all year long, even digging in the snow for root vegetables. As one crop gets ready for harvest, another is underway, growing in uninsulated hoop houses, as crops (and the moveable hoop houses) are regularly rotated.

Hardier crops can remain on the vine (Brussels sprouts) or underground (potatoes and carrots) until they’re needed. Hardy greens such as kale and collard greens will survive in the hoop houses, though their growth is curtailed as the mercury drops.

Theisen says Loma Farm uses organic practices but does not go through the costly certification process. And the farm still sells to other restaurants, saying those restaurants trust Loma’s production practices and feels it unnecessary to push the farm to certification. The restaurant utilizes products from other regional operations for those items Loma doesn’t produce, such as meat and grains. They only reach beyond the area for ingredients that simply cannot be grown here, like citrus fruits, and for those, they only utilize certified organic producers.

As the commercials say: but wait, there’s more. Not only do they grow and harvest a host of vegetables throughout the year, they process them on-site as well, from drying and fermenting to milling. The operation includes a mill to produce its own flour and cornmeal from grains grown on the farm. There’s a wet stone mill to make masa.

Supplying Farm Club and its other clients means not only growing throughout the year, but storing the bounty from the fields. Theisen says this year they ran out of room in the coolers, so they turned back the clock and turned to a neighbor who had an empty unheated barn. By storing the bins of potatoes, cabbages and other products in bales of straw, they’re able to keep some 25,000 pounds of produce cool without freezing while not using electricity.

That is not the only way the farm keeps its products available for use throughout the year. Peppers and heirloom beans are dried for future use. Sauerkraut, hot sauces and kimchi are fermented.

If it sounds like a 21^st century endeavor turned on its head, it is. Many of the practices date back centuries, but in service of a decidedly modern restaurant.

The principals’ backgrounds dovetailed nicely into Loma Farm and Farm Club. Nic grew up next to the family dairy farm in Wisconsin. He and Sara, a Michigan native, had been attracted to the wide-open spaces and clean air out west, where they started a CSA market farm. Eventually they missed their Midwestern roots, and that, combined with the increasing cost of land and the changing environment, prompted them to move closer to home.

“The climate crisis was obvious,” Nic says, pointing to an increasing lack of water and the declining air quality from the increasing number of forest fires.

They embarked on a three-week tour of the region, from Wisconsin to Iowa to Minnesota before eventually settling on this area, helped by a friendly push. “Sara’s mom threw Traverse City into the fishbowl. It was not on our radar,” Nic says. When they checked out the area, they found the same sense of open space, big land and adventurous spirit they’d embraced out west. They moved here in 2010 and started Loma Farm the next year.

They began supplying restaurants with their fresh foods and opened their own farm market. The idea of a farm restaurant had always been in the back of their mind when Gary and Allison Jonas stopped in. “Gary and Allison brought a crew (to the farm). I think that’s when the whole idea was born. We talked about it over the years,” Theisen says.

The Jonases had operated a restaurant and a bar in New York City before moving to northern Michigan. Tired of the all-consuming work of running a restaurant, hey eschewed the food side of hospitality by opening the Little Fleet, a bar with a host of on-site food trucks.

Despite vowing never to operate a restaurant again, their friendship with the Theisens led to those discussions and eventually to the creation of Farm Club. “In 2018 we started designing. We opened in July 2020 – in the middle of the pandemic,” says Theisen.

Which actually wasn’t a bad idea. As essential businesses, the farm and its attendant market were immune to the closure from the pandemic. The work was outdoors, and so too was the dining. “There was no indoor dining that next winter (20-21). People even ate outside in the winter.”

The combined operations have been so successful it has outgrown its current footprint. There’s a need for more space for the market, as well as for cooking, baking and storage. Theisen says they intend to break ground this spring for a new facility next door to the restaurant. It will combine another kitchen, primarily for baking, with an expanded market area, including a tortilleria. Loma Farm and Farm Club continue to thrive and grow—even in the winter.