Green Wagon Farm
Ada, MI
Green Wagon Farm is a certified organic, family-owned vegetable farm in Ada, Michigan, run by Chad and Heather Anderson. Both grew up in West Michigan. Chad found his calling for growing food while serving with the Peace Corps in Uganda in 2009, and he started the farm in the spring of 2010, working the fields in the mornings, taking factory shifts and selling from a roadside stand on borrowed land. A first employee and a small CSA followed in year two. Heather, a nurse who later earned a culinary arts degree from the Secchia Institute, met Chad during the farm's third season and now co-manages the farm and its market.
The farm has held organic certification through OnMark since 2016. The team relies on crop rotation, row covers and cover crops, tests its soil twice a year and uses OMRI-listed sprays only when needed. A half-acre greenhouse, five hoophouses, caterpillar tunnels and low tunnels extend the season, and fall crops are stored in insulated coolers through winter, which lets the farm operate year round.
A crew of roughly ten to twenty people supplies CSA members, a year-round farm store on Quiggle Avenue, the Fulton Street Farmers Market in Grand Rapids and restaurant partners around the Grand Rapids area.