Our Practices
Growing Community
Plainsong Farm is a name for a place on earth that was here before any of us were alive. We anticipate it will outlast us all. As a living laboratory, we keep learning how to grow relationships with this place, its inhabitants of many species, and all who care for it. Plainsong Farm is meant to be common ground. Here, people of every faith and none find a home. We are here to tend God’s Creation. Everyone belongs.
As we grow connections, we seek the wisdom of the people and communities that have loved this place before us, including the Great Lakes Anishinabek who ceded this land in the 1836 Treaty of Washington, D.C.
Read our justice, equity, diversity and inclusion policy and practices.
Growing & Giving Food
At Plainsong Farm we use regenerative farming practices to grow seasonal, nutrient-dense food that enriches and enlivens the soil. We aim for a no-till, no-spray approach on the farm, preventing harm to earthworms and pollinators.
As of 2019, the Farm is MAEAP (Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program) verified and compliant with the FDA’s FSMA produce safety rules. We support the Michigan Good Food Charter.
To cultivate a more resilient and equitable food system, our produce is given to local organizations and grown with input from their communities.
In 2022 our produce is given to the Grand Rapids Community College Student Resource Center’s pantry, the Pantry at North Kent Connect, and the Grand Rapids Community Food Club.
Growing Faith
Experiencing God in Creation and through growing and sharing food provides new perspectives on faith practice. This work integrates discipleship, justice, ecology, and health for all. We look to science to teach facts and to religion to provide wisdom. We acknowledge and lament that European Christians practicing white supremacy and settler colonialism sowed legacy issues in our lives and food systems.
We seek a way to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, liberator from all evil. We go forward only one step at a time. Sometimes we accidentally go backwards. It’s God’s world. We’re only human. Daily we begin again.
