Location
Unionville, Michigan
The Bell Family Farm Estate is an 80-acre centennial farm founded by Leonard and Sarah Luceila (Briggs) Bell in 1919, featuring a circa 1880s farmhouse. As the 4th-generation steward of our 4-acre homestead, I am dedicated to a deep connection to nature, thriving ecosystems, biodiversity, farm transparency, and cultivating synthetic-free nutrient-rich food on the farm for humans and animals alike. We are a farm where the animals are our best friends, living in harmony with nature and wildlife. By sharing our experiences, we aim to drive change, build trust, and foster collaborative relationships to heal the land, the food, the animals, and ourselves. We are a Level 1 ArbNet Arboretum, NABA Butterfly Garden, Monarch Waystation, NWF Wildlife Habitat, Pollinator Partnership Bee Friendly Garden, a member of the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary Network, and on the Kiss the Ground farmer map.
We offer a peaceful rural day setting that serves as an immersive farm experience, emphasizing open, unstructured connection with nature. Visitors interact with our heritage livestock and explore our pollinator gardens, providing a quiet retreat that reduces stress and fosters well-being through direct agricultural and animal engagement.
We operate a 4-acre active homestead on an 80-acre historical estate. A primary goal for our future is to evolve our farm experience into a fully realized educational learning farm. Currently, our goals also include expanding our farm harvest direct-to-consumer sales to offer non-GMO seeds, plants, trees, fresh produce, flowers, and a growing line of farm apothecary products. We are also focused on anchoring the upcoming Thumb Farm Heritage Trail.
We recently established the Bell Family Memorial Scholarship for Farm Girls (“Farm Girls For A Better Tomorrow”) in loving memory of my sister Shelly (Bell) Schnettler to support local agricultural youth, our property is currently pending nomination for the National Register of Historic Places, and we were recognized as 2024 Michigan Centennial Farm of the Year. We are currently seeking a sponsor to fund the purchase of February 7th (Shelly’s birthday) as National Farm Girl Day. We’ve been featured on Michigan Public Radio and in the Pollinator Partnership Bee Friendly Garden newsletter and have features coming up in The Natural Farmer and Backyard Poultry magazine. I’m actively participating in the Farm Foundation Farm Path and Next Acre cohorts, the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), a course with Holistic Management International, and I’ve just been accepted into the Agroforestry Accelerator program where I hope to pitch a Farm Girl Food Forest in every zip code. I am also the Region 9 Representative for MiFarmLink and serve on the advisory board for the Michigan Centennial Farm Association.
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