If it’s your first time hearing about the Magnolia Avenue Farm Collective, welcome! We are an urban farm growing on 17 city lots in the Urbandale neighborhood on the Eastside of Lansing, MI. Our core values include community, sustainability, ethical stewardship, collaboration, communication, and liberation.

If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that we’ve been moving through a time of transition the past couple of years. The two founders of Magnolia Ave Farm have created an abundant farm business that has grown a lot of food and engaged many neighbors in the work of growing, processing, sharing the harvest with those who need it the most, and celebrating the creativity of our community. However, the farm has never been financially viable enough to pay the owners or laborers a living wage, which is a common situation for small-scale urban farmers. Last year, the Farm Stewardship Council was formed to try new ways of sharing the work of the farm with more people and experimenting with a cooperative model of farm management. Along with this exciting new chapter, the business was able to purchase most of the lots that had been stewarded by the project for 8 years.

We need your help to cover a few key expenses for the 2025 season:

Taxes on the land that was purchased last year ($2500)

Replacing stolen and broken tools and equipment ($2500)

Facility rental costs and supplies for processing food and medicine collectively ($1000)

Materials for hosting events ($800)

Chest freezer for produce storage ($200)

Fundraiser goal: $7000

If you would like to get involved in supporting the farm in other ways, direct message our Instagram page @magnolia_ave_farm.

What we stand for:

Cooperative Work: We care for the land together, as humans have done for eons. We are working towards a future where the land we farm is held in common by the cooperative rather than privately owned by any one person. Rather than dividing people into some who give orders and some who obey, we work to build leadership structures that are free from hierarchy. We believe that people should have control over their own life and work and an equal say in group decisions.

Care for land: We work to help heal land with a history of exploitation, we are working to cultivate a thriving soil food web, so we prioritize the addition of compost, organic matter and cover crops each season. We value reciprocity. We feed the soil because the soil feeds us.

Community: We reach outside of our organization to actively seek out collaboration. We work cooperatively with neighboring farms and gardens to support our collective well being wherever the opportunity arises. We welcome our wider community by inviting them to gather in rituals of planting, tending, and harvest. We build ongoing connections through regular opportunities to work together and celebrate together.

Intentionality: We move slowly and with intention. It takes an earthworm 20 years to turn over the 6 inches of topsoil. We ground ourselves in our present work while also keeping our eyes on the big picture. We recognize that our actions have consequences, sometimes unintended. We strive to think through fully the impacts of our actions, intended and unintended, so that we can be a part of healing rather than harming the community we live and farm in.

Food For All: We believe that access to fresh, health giving food is the universal right of all people. We believe that all people deserve to have their basic needs met. We understand that our food system was built on a foundation of oppression and exploitation and that it provides for some while harming or abandoning others. We believe that financial resources, including income, are not and should not be the only determining factor in whether or not someone can access goods/services/care/etc. We believe in prioritizing people over profit. We believe in providing goods to everyone according to their need. We sell all of our goods on a sliding scale, a tool that allows a product to be priced at multiple points depending on the circumstances of the purchaser. We accept EBT and other forms of food assistance. We participate in mutual aid projects as they arise and donate surplus produce.

Solidarity: We recognize that our farm does not exist in isolation. We are one tiny part of a much larger whole. We understand that the work of providing healthful food to a community is tied up with many other struggles. The fight for affordable housing, the struggle for a living wage, movements against racism, classism, colonization and other forms of oppression all connect and intersect with the fight for food and environmental justice. We work in solidarity with other movements. An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us. Our liberation is bound together.

Sincerity: We strive to be honest and sincere in our actions and efforts. We value integrity and work to match our actions to our values. We embrace feedback. We are always a work in progress, learning and growing.