From Their Farm to Our Kitchen: Nearly 190 Years of Adams Farm

Aug 19
4 min read

When we say local produce, we actually mean local.

Adams farm is located at

10701 Adams Road

Clarklake, MI 49234

(517) 529-9819

Just down the road from The Deck Down Under in Jerome, Michigan, sits a family farm with roots stretching back nearly 190 years.

Adams Farm has been in the Adams family since 1837.

To put that into perspective, Michigan had only become a state a few months earlier.

Today, nearly two centuries later, the farm remains in the family. Chuck and Karre Adams, along with their two children, continue a farming tradition that has now reached its seventh generation.

And that's exactly the kind of local story we love being connected to at The Deck Down Under.

It Started With Sweet Corn on the Porch

Although the Adams family had already been farming for generations, the farm market people know today has much humbler beginnings.

During the 1970s, Chuck's parents, Bill and Clara Adams, began selling sweet corn from their porch to make a little extra money.

People liked the corn.

Apparently, they liked it a lot. Soon customers wanted more. Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and other fresh produce joined the sweet corn.

Eventually, the porch officially lost the battle.

Around 1979-1980, the family built the original produce barn to handle the growing business. Clara also wanted to start a greenhouse, adding flowers and vegetable plants to what the family could offer its neighbors.

What began with some sweet corn sitting on a porch had grown into a true local farm market.

Seven Generations Later, They're Still Growing

Today, Adams Farm continues as a seasonal farm market and greenhouse, growing and selling the kind of produce that makes Michigan summers worth waiting for.

Sweet corn. Tomatoes. Peppers. Potatoes. Cucumbers. Squash. Pumpkins and other seasonal fruits and vegetables as the Michigan growing season changes.

Their sweet corn in particular has earned quite a local following over the years.

But what interests us most isn't simply that Adams Farm is close to our restaurant.

It's that they're growing food here.

Why Adams Farm Produce Ends Up at The Deck

Our chefs can't manufacture August.

There comes a point every summer when Michigan sweet corn gets sweeter, tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes and vegetables coming out of nearby fields simply don't need much help.

That's the food we want in our kitchen.

When beautiful local produce is available just down the road, it doesn't make much sense to us to start with something that has traveled halfway across the country.

There's also something different about cooking seasonally.

Instead of deciding what we want an ingredient to be, we can look at what's coming out of local fields right now and ask:

What can we make with this?

That's when cooking gets interesting.

A great chef can do a lot with technique, seasoning and creativity. But give that same chef an ingredient that was already great when it walked through the kitchen door and you've given them a serious head start.

"Locally Sourced" Should Mean Something

Farm-to-table and locally sourced have become popular restaurant phrases.

We think they should actually mean something.

For us, buying locally isn't about putting a trendy phrase on a menu. It's about relationships with actual farmers, growers, bakers and producers throughout our part of Michigan.

It's knowing where an ingredient came from.

It's being able to tell you about the family that grew it.

And sometimes it's realizing that the vegetables sitting in our kitchen came from a farm whose family has been working Michigan soil since 1837.

That's pretty hard to replace with a produce sticker on a cardboard box.

Local Food Is About More Than Miles

There's another reason these relationships matter to us.

We're a locally owned independent restaurant.

We understand what it means when someone chooses a local business.

So whenever it makes sense, we'd rather see our food dollars travel down a Michigan road than across the country.

That supports another local business. It supports local jobs. It keeps more money within our surrounding communities. And ultimately, it helps preserve farms and businesses that give this part of Michigan its character.

There's a nice simplicity to it.

Local farmers grow great ingredients. Our chefs cook them. Our guests eat them.

Everybody wins.

Nearly 190 Years Before It Reached Our Kitchen

The Adams family certainly wasn't thinking about The Deck Down Under when their family began farming in 1837.

Bill and Clara probably weren't either when they put sweet corn out for sale on their porch in the 1970s.

But that's one of our favorite things about local food.

Every ingredient has a story before it reaches our kitchen.

Sometimes that story started yesterday morning in a field.

Sometimes it started with a family selling sweet corn from their porch.

And every once in a while, it started nearly 190 years ago.

So when you see beautiful Michigan produce appearing in one of our late-summer dishes, remember there may be a whole lot more behind that tomato or ear of corn than you thought.