By Contributing Member Dazmonique Carr
Many people are excited for September and October. Not only it is Libra season but these are the months where we can reap the harvest of the seeds sown farmer’s like myself. My name is Dazmonique Carr and I own a company called Deeply Rooted Produce. We distribute locally grown fruits and vegetables to Metro Detroit with a goal to decrease produce waste at the source of its growth by creating multiple streams of distribution and of income for urban farms in the city of Detroit. We service community members with produce boxes and strive to roll out a zero waste mobile grocery store in the near future.
Currently our farm is growing: a few different varieties of tomatoes, peppers (bell, Anaheim & cayenne), eggplants (black beauty & Japanese long), collards, Dino Kale, Salad Mix, Snap Peas, Strawberries, Fruit trees, and more.
Any of this produce that isn’t sold in produce boxes is then sold at farmer’s markets if we choose to attend. Otherwise the produce is used in our Sunday Dinner that we host, every single Sunday.
Furthermore due to the abundance of the growth of the farm, we will be rolling out a $20 box available. We only have 100 boxes available for the duration of the sale so you must act fast!! And make sure you wait for the sale because boxes are currently regularly priced. We source from our own farm at 2560 Chalmers, Occupy Yourselves Urban Agricultural Center, C.R.I.T.E.R.I.O.N Urban Farm, Rivendell Gardens, Rescue MI Nature Now, WJP Urban Farm and more. We source food mostly from East side farmers that have grown thousands of pounds of produce this year alone. We’ll have more data specifics closer to the season’s end.
● Deeply Rooted Garden: 2560 Chalmers
● Occupy Yourselves Urban Agricultural Center: Mayfield & Peoria (Off of Gratiot)
● C.R.I.T.E.R.I.O.N Urban Farm: 2911 Monterey
● Rivendell Gardens: 14545 Wilshire Drive
● Rescue MI Nature Now: Derby 19984 Derby Street
● WJP Urban Farm: Warren and Van Dyke at Parker Street
There are many actions you can take to support the farms listed above. If food sustainability and food waste is a significant issue that you would like to help us solve, consider attending our Data Workshop, where we will be presenting food mapping data from Deeply Rooted Produce operations alone. In this workshop we would seek to receive feedback on how we can improve and will be displaying our cyclical operations. Maybe reach out to us and discuss what data points you are specifically interested in. The workshop will be hosted on the week of October 18th and will not interfere with the Detroit Food Conference. We are interested in data that results in more community members (specifically those in low income neighborhoods) eating produce grown in Detroit city limits.
Action Items:
- Attend Sunday Dinner: 10/10/21 You can also donate to our organization on our website, which will be matched on our ioby campaign until the end of the season.
- Purchase a produce box on deeplyrootedproduce.com so that we are sourcing more produce from these lovely farmers and so that they can afford to spend less time at farmer’s market
- Volunteer: every Tuesday we have volunteer hours at our Chalmers Farm from about 10:30AM to about 3:30pm or so. Check out our instagram and facebook for updates.
- We are hiring! Apply to work with us, accepting applications for delivery drivers, farm harvesters and weeders. Fill out the form here.
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