Peck Produce is growing a lot of vegetables this year. So much that the urban farm expects to sell 20,000 pounds of produce after everything is harvested this growing season.
"We're trying to do as much as we can with what we have right now," says Noah Link, co-owner of Peck Produce.
Link and Alex Bryan launched the urban farm in 2011 after purchasing a four-acre lot from the Michigan Land Bank. The one square block sits on the 1600 block of Lawrence Street. It previously served as the home Peck Elementary School before it was torn down.
Today Peck Produce, also known as
Food Field, grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables on the site, including leafy greens, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, ginger, artichokes, and parsnips. Last year the urban farm sold 16,000 pounds of produce.
Peck Produce also has chickens it uses to produce fresh eggs and turkeys for butchering later this year. It also has an
aquaponics operation that is growing all sorts of native fish.
"We have 400-500 catfish and blue gill growing in the fish pond," Link says.
Peck Produce has a staff of four people, including two new team members it has brought on over the last year. Link and his team are starting to host community dinners this summer with food grown on the farm to help bring more people into urban agriculture as either practitioners or patrons.
Source: Noah Link, co-owner of Peck Produce
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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