{"id":870,"date":"2025-04-14T06:59:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T06:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/14\/aadls-gardening-farm-fest-highlights-local-farming-and-sustainability\/"},"modified":"2025-04-14T06:59:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T06:59:39","slug":"aadls-gardening-farm-fest-highlights-local-farming-and-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/14\/aadls-gardening-farm-fest-highlights-local-farming-and-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"AADL\u2019s Gardening &#038; Farm Fest highlights local farming and sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Hundreds of Ann Arbor community members gathered at the<a href=\"https:\/\/aadl.org\/\"> Ann Arbor District Library<\/a> downtown branch Sunday afternoon for the annual<a href=\"https:\/\/aadl.org\/farmfest\"> Gardening &amp; Farm Fest<\/a>. More than 60 vendors took part in the festival, including<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theherbalbasket.com\/\"> The Herbal Basket<\/a>, selling plant-based self-care products;<a href=\"https:\/\/jacobsfreshfarm.com\/\"> Jacob\u2019s Fresh Farm<\/a>, selling a variety of flowers and herbs; and<a href=\"https:\/\/beepresenthoney.com\/\"> Bee Present Honey<\/a>, selling tote bags and beeswax beauty products.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Attendees also had an opportunity to participate in a<a href=\"https:\/\/seedsavers.org\/how-to-organize-a-seed-swap\/\"> seed swap<\/a>, make<a href=\"https:\/\/fastframe.com\/blog\/how-shadow-boxes-work-what-they-are-why-theyre-used\/\"> shadow boxes<\/a> and attend<a href=\"https:\/\/aadl.org\/node\/638696\"> three<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/aadl.org\/node\/638855\"> different<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/aadl.org\/node\/638856\"> presentations<\/a>. The first presentation focused on strategies for growing flowering houseplants and the second on discovering and growing underutilized native and unique culinary plants. The last presentation was from Hillary Coleman, owner of<a href=\"https:\/\/www.etsy.com\/shop\/1991greenery\/?etsrc=sdt&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYhcoRc4HaPo0rbPoy2HrTeFRO0l9nPgJj9IanSPznnYPVC7nua0-vKtms_aem_mYuSRs9iuD25ZyfVcbXXUQ\"> 1991greenery Homestead<\/a>, on how she uses herbs in natural body products.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Erin Helmrich, librarian and festival organizer, talked about the<a href=\"https:\/\/aadl.org\/node\/318348\"> history<\/a> of the festival and how it has always centered around gardening.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis festival has been in a different form for almost 10 years now,\u201d Helmrich said. \u201cWe started it in 2015 and it was called \u2018It\u2019s Easy Being Green: A Sustainability Expo,\u2019 and it was in September. We wanted to do something to support the avid gardening scene. And so we\u2019ve fixed it and moved it a lot of times. We realized pretty quickly that it would be better in the spring for people to be planting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Hannah Northey, Ann Arbor resident and environment reporter for<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/staff\/hannah-northey\"> Politico<\/a>, told The Daily about the importance of this festival as grocery store prices for some food items <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/04\/09\/business\/grocery-prices-tariffs\/index.html\">continue<\/a> to rise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe price of groceries have been a bit high,\u201d Northey said. \u201cIt\u2019s really nice for us to find ways to grow our own food and then control our own ways of making food. This is a nice way for us to help the community out, and then to also make our kids part of things. It\u2019s just a really great way to be part of the community and help people grow their own food.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/projects.sare.org\/people\/green3forager\/\">Darla Kroft,<\/a> owner of Green Garden Foraging, said during her presentation that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wildabundance.net\/blog\/the-glories-of-chickweed\/\">chickweed<\/a> is treated differently in her family: while her father uses Roundup to prevent it from growing, she prefers to cultivate it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo my dad\u2019s a farmer,\u201d Kroft said. \u201cWay back in Thanksgiving, we were just talking about what I was growing, and what was happening in the garden, and what else just stopped. And he looked at me, and he\u2019s like, \u2018are you growing that intentionally? Like, of course, it\u2019s trending right now. It\u2019s a salad green. I had spent my entire farming career trying to get rid of it, and you\u2019re trying to grow it intentionally.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Tiffany Park attended the event and said she was surprised to learn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/stories\/2016\/01\/why-do-we-consume-only-a-tiny-fraction-of-the-world-s-edible-plants\/#:~:text=Homo%20sapiens%2C%20the%20most%20cosmopolitan,that%20we%20derive%20from%20plants.\">how many<\/a> types of edible plants humans don\u2019t eat.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI was really shocked to hear that there\u2019s 300,000 types of plants that we can eat,\u201d Park said. \u201cBut we only eat 1% of it. I think I\u2019m inspired to go out and see what else I can try and try to learn more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>LSA sophomore Nicholas Lusardi said while it can be difficult for students to shop locally, it also can be beneficial.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think for college students, the time and also the distance can be hard,\u201d Lusardi said. \u201cI know a lot of people, like myself, don\u2019t have cars to get around and go to these kinds of places that can be challenging, which is why I\u2019ve said that it could be harder, but also, maybe that gets you outside \u2014 riding a bike to a local produce store or something like that, instead of taking a bus or on a car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lusardi said he enjoyed the local shopping aspect of the festival and how underappreciated it is compared to shopping at a corporation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think this is beautiful because it helps you appreciate the alternative to the biggest grocery store in town, like the Walgreens down the street that you always go to get stuff,\u201d Lusardi said. \u201cSometimes it requires a little bit more effort to support local businesses, but it\u2019s always worth it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Kayla Lugo can be reached at klugo@umich.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of Ann Arbor community members gathered at the Ann Arbor District Library downtown branch Sunday afternoon for the annual Gardening &amp; Farm Fest. More than 60 vendors took part in the festival, including The Herbal Basket, selling plant-based self-care products; Jacob\u2019s Fresh Farm, selling a variety of flowers and herbs; and Bee Present Honey, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[945,947,950,948,946,949,506,951],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aadls","tag-farm","tag-farming","tag-fest","tag-gardening","tag-highlights","tag-local","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}