We were lucky to catch up with Brittney Rooney recently and have shared our conversation below.
Brittney, thank you so much for making time for us today. We’re excited to discuss a handful of topics with you, but perhaps the most important one is around decision making. The ability to make decisions is a key requirement for anyone who wants to make a difference and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your decision-making skills.
Holistic Management uses a decision-making process to help ensure that the actions taken to restore land and livelihoods are ecologically, socially and economically sound based on the context described by the people involved. It was important for our farm to start here because on a small space, we ultimately have to constantly make decisions to both maximize production (ultimately an extractive process) but also build up the ecosystem. Having a holistic management plan, we have a foundation that we can always come back to when we’re making decisions.
The 6 main principals that are at the core of our holistic management plan are:
REGENERATIVE ENTERPRISES – “sustainability” means that our farm enterprise works to sustain itself and the local resource base. This means we design systems that evolve and improve capacity over time.
ECOSYSTEM MIMICRY- We want the farm and its enterprises to mimic the complexity and resiliency of a natural ecosystem. We plan for multi-species/crop interactions, and emergent properties that arise out of these connections.
FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE – We are developing the farm to generate sufficient income to allow us to increase our current production and allow for a high quality of life. We also want to expand our enterprises and bring on future partners and managers who can make an ample salary from their work here.
COMMUNITY NETWORKS – We try to ensure that our customers, stakeholders, and friends feel a part of a broader positive movement, that of redefining agriculture on the large scale, and use of vacant land through urban agriculture in Detroit. Our farm works with other growers in the region and we look to offer on-site educational experiences as well as the chance to develop independent enterprises that leverage our existing infrastructure.
PROFESSIONAL TRANSPARENCY – We demonstrate ethical and sustainable profit with an open farm policy. Progress, successes, and failures are documented then openly and honestly share these with visitors, customers, public & wider networks (locally & digitally). We are available and willing to help and host guests.
QUALITY DRIVEN – By innovating in farming and marketing practices, we provide products and services which are diverse and high quality. We only eat nutrient-dense, whole, healthy foods on the farm and promise to deliver the same to our customers. We pride ourselves on our excellent direct customer relationships & services as we always deliver as much as or more than is expected or required. We don’t want “organic” “naturally grown” to be synonymous with small, holey, or dirty produce.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Beaverland Farms is a Detroit urban farm that grows nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables and cut-flowers in natural systems that value biological mechanisms and life processes over the use of chemical inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. I manage the farm, as well as work there full time. We seek to regenerate the landscape in Brightmoor, Detroit by emulating ecosystem functions with symbiotic farm enterprises which are economically and environmentally resilient, and which add stability and security to our neighborhood and larger metropolitan community.
We hope that our mission makes clear that we are opposed to the use of pesticides, herbicides, and other synthetic compounds in biological systems. We are part of an agricultural system based on processes and cycles rather than inputs. But we prefer to define our system by what we do do rather than what we don’t. Our practices are intended to mimic the complexity and resiliency of a natural ecosystem while yielding the highest-quality edible products. We have developed these practices through research, trial-and-error, and a philosophy of continual improvement.
You can purchase our farm products from our farm stand, located at the farm! Check our website or social media for updated seasonal hours.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Diversity. Just as a person is a much greater whole than the sum of their individual interests, their voice, their face, or their laugh, the beauty of an ecosystem comes when the properties and processes within it are the result of wonderful and complex interactions between many different organisms. And just as a resilient business is one which has many revenue streams, the resilient farm has many crop species whose functions are duplicated and reinforced by the other species.
2. Doing something I loved. To this day, while the work is hard, it feels worth doing every single day. Cheesy… but true!
3. Finally, having a well-developed and conservative financial and business plan really helped grow the farm to the point where it is today. My advice: pay yourself from day one! Do not develop a business that can exist with free labor, only a business that can exist when everyone is paid fairly for their labor.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Absolutely! A ecosystem like a farm has so much potential – more potential than just a few farmers have time for. Initially, we were an annual and perennial vegetable system exclusively. But when one of our employees wanted to open up into the cut flower market, we were all for it. Now, she manages that operation and it is as important to our farm as our vegetable production is.
Mushrooms, orchard crops, bees, medicinal and culinary herbs… all of these are enterprises that could be developed alongside our current production by leveraging our existing infrastructure.. A visit to the farm is the best way to see what we are about and begin the conversation about joining our team.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.beaverlandfarms.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beaverlandfarms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beaverlandfarmsdetroit
Image Credits
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