Food - A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard - NYTimes.com

Field Report: A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard

David La Spina for The New York Times

Alexandra Reau, of Petersburg, Mich., tended to her rainbow chard. More Photos »

By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

Published: July 12, 2010

Lawn mowing and baby-sitting are standard summer jobs for the enterprising teenager. Alexandra Reau, who is 14, combines a little bit of each: last year, she asked her dad to dig up a half acre of their lawn in rural Petersburg, Mich., so she could farm. Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs. While her peers are hanging out at Molly’s Mystic Freeze and working out the moves to that Miley Cyrus video, she’s flicking potato-beetle larvae off of leaves in her V-neck T-shirt and denim capris, a barrette keeping her hair out of her demurely made-up eyes. Who says the face of American farming is a 57-year-old man with a John Deere cap?

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Summer Growmance

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Tony Cenicola/The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maria Washburn.

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“Let’s see,” says Reau, a quiet honor student who’s a little taken aback to find a New Yorker in giant sunglasses asking her questions in the plot next to her tidy white-brick ranch house on a June afternoon. “Those are carrots, spinach, beets, kale, watermelon, squash, zucchini, peppers, lots of tomatoes . . . um . . . corn, radishes, lettuce, beans, onions, garlic.” The weeds that sprung up during her recent class trip to Washington, D.C., are taunting her as we talk. When I tell her that people pay $4 a bunch for the purslane that’s growing into the burlap coffee sacks she has laid down along the rows for quick weeding — she flips them over to uproot any invaders, kind of like waxing your garden — you can see her 4-H wheels turning. (She’s been a member for half her life.)

Reau lives in an agricultural area — on the last day of school, seniors are allowed to ride their four-wheelers or tractors — but her great-grandparents were the last generation to farm this land. Her parents breed Suffolk sheep on the side: her father, Mark, is a carpenter, and her mother, Brenda, is the director of Michigan State University’s extension in Monroe County. Alexandra became interested in gardening after participating in the Monroe County Youth Farm Stand Project, which Brenda started two years ago to help disadvantaged youth learn about nutrition.

Food - A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard - NYTimes.com