For Kelly Migler, assistant dean for undergraduate nursing and teaching at Valparaiso University, Friday’s FarmHop tour by the Northwest Indiana Food Council was a way to network.
With the tour’s theme “Local Food is Medicine,” Migler saw the value in connecting students with local farmers, including Al and Hakenah Hulitt, who own Hulitt Homestead on five acres in Portage.
“This touches on so many of the natural determinants of health,” Migler said, including access to healthy food, wellness and prevention, as well as teaching nursing students that “healthcare isn’t just in the hospital when you’re sick.”
About 25 people joined the FarmHop tour, which also included a stop at Hickory Hills Flower Farm south of Valparaiso.
Tour participants also learned about the Produce for Better Health program, a collaborative initiative of CoAction with the Food Bank of NWI, Meals on Wheels, and Region Roots Local Food Hub, according to a release, and met with representatives from the Nurse-Family Partnership, who talked about how the food council’s FarmHer to Mama program is integrated into work with expectant and first-time mothers.
“Because we provide food through the food council, it’s an opportunity for the recipients to get to meet the farmers,” and learn where their food comes from, Hakenah Hulitt said. Likewise, the tour offers the Hulitts the chance to meet the people who receive their products.
The Hulitts started their farm four years ago and joined the food council last year. They both still work full-time; Al Hulitt, who’s from Hammond, is a detective on the police force there, and Hakenah is a chemist for an environmental hazardous waste company. Their two sons, Christian, 11, and Daniel, 15, also pitch in.
In addition to produce, a small orchard and herbs for tea, the Hulitts also keep chickens for their eggs and have roosters as well. Development is rapidly encroaching on their homestead. Target and BJ’s Warehouse will be going up soon and subdivisions are rapidly taking root nearby.
Crowing roosters and builders hammering away as they framed a new home just south of the property seemed to compete for airtime throughout the tour.
The Hulitts are focused on reclaiming their acreage from the corn and soybeans that once grew there. The soil, Hakena Hulitt said, was hard, dry and cracked from being farmed with heavy machinery, and has been rejuvenated with compost, tilling and learning how to keep weeds at bay without pesticides.
“Each year, we’ve been reclaiming part of the land,” she said.
Selling produce, Al Hulitt said, evolved.
“It started as something small, putting free food on the curb, and people started knocking on the door saying they’d pay for it,” he said.
On Saturday mornings, when their kids were free, they set up a tent and a table and sold produce, “and that was their allowance,” Al Hulitt said.
The tour, said Anne Massie, co-executive director of the food council, which also took place with assistance from the food bank and the Indiana Department of Health, was geared toward “people who just really like and appreciate local food.”
Hulitt Homestead provides vegetable boxes for new moms through the FarmHer to Mama program, Massie said, adding the tour is meant to showcase the diversity of farms in the region. A similar tour, “Farm to School in Action,” is scheduled for Sept. 25, with a focus on collaboration between farms and schools for locally grown foods and scratch-made meals, according to a release.
FarmHop tours started in 2017 and then paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, Massie said. The tours were previously held three times a year, with three or four farms featured on each tour. The tours now are “a little more focused to tell that story,” she said.
The Hulitts, said Hakenah, found the food council invaluable as they met other farmers in the area.
More Top Picks Best Charcuterie Boards For Entertaining
“There was just an opportunity to learn from experienced farmers to help us learn on our journey,” she said.
The couple has a passion for healthful eating and taking care of the environment, providing for the land that provides for them, as Hakenah Hulitt put it. They also sell their goods at the farmers market in Gary’s Miller neighborhood.
During the tour, Hakenah Hulitt proudly showed off the first portion of land, now robust with growing produce, where the farmstead started.
“We had such great success with our small family farm, we gave the food away,” she said. “We were received with so much positivity, it just gave us the drive to want to do more.”
Since then, the farm has continued to expand. One of the Hulitts’ sons has three raised beds for turnip greens. The family started a small orchard and now has a high tunnel to extend the growing season, though the wire-framed structure covered with canvas has twice suffered damage from storms.
They hope to set up a farmstand one day, too, something more permanent than the tent and table where their sons used to sell produce.
Rachel Easley grew up in LaPorte County and moved away after college. Now that she and her family are back, she said, she wants to learn about farming, so she signed up for the FarmHop tour.
“We moved back last fall with the idea that we would be farmers on the local farm scene,” she said.