Big Haps for Farmers and Foodies

by Lynda Twardowski Wheatley

Small-time farmers, growers and food producers – get off the porch and get ready to run with the big dogs. Plans are in the works to set up three “incubator” kitchens in Building 58 at the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, as well as a mobile slaughterhouse.

Part of the The Grand Vision's Northwest Michigan Food and Farming Network's ambitious effort to double the value of the region’s food and agriculture system by 2019, the kitchens and slaughterhouse are intended to enable small-scale entrepreneurs to easily and safely process their food into a saleable product, says Don Coe, owner of Black Star Farms Winery in Leelanau, and chairman of one of the many working groups that are part of the Food and Farming Network.

“We’ve got 1,400 farms in our five-county region,” he says. “More would raise a few animals for sale if they had an easy, affordable way to get it harvested. This way, they’ll be able to harvest the animal, and the animal carcass will move to the incubator kitchens, where it can be further broken down into saleable products.”

As envisioned, each incubator kitchen would be designed for a specific purpose. One would be dedicated to meat, fish and poultry; another to baking and dairy products; and the third to preserves and sauces.

Building 58 proves a perfect fit, says Jim Sluyter, coordinator of the Michigan Land Use Institute’s “Get Farming!” program and convener of the Food and Farming Network.

“It’s right in the city, it’s properly zoned, it’s got utilities, the buildings are historically interesting, and it’s strong enough to withstand massive refurbishing,” he says.

In fact, in the days when the Village was still a working asylum, Building 58 was the food storage and processing site for all the food grown on the hospital’s grounds – which fed 5,000 patients and staff each day. It boasts giant coolers and warehouse space, both essential for another necessity in food production: inventory storage.

Sluyter says the kitchens and mobile slaughterhouse could be a reality in the next two years, and he’s got good reason to be optimistic. Just this week Rotary Charities gifted a $5,000 planning grant to the TC Chamber’s Economic Development Corporation so fact-finding and feasibility studies can get underway for a proposed urban market at the Commons, of which the kitchens and slaughterhouse would be a part.

For now, he says, a check-in is due with the dozen-plus projects on the Network’s wish list. And that’ll be happening tomorrow, when more than 125 folks – farmers, foodies, buyers, distributors, elected officials and economic development principals convene for the Network’s 3rd Annual Farm Route to Prosperity Summit at Northwestern Michigan College’s Oleson Center.

Stay tuned to The Ticker for the scoop on what the Food and Farming Network is cooking up next.