Rice Lake Farms Inc., a family-owned growing operation based in Grant, Mich., is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
The farm, established by Bob Veurink, specializes in non-GMO root vegetables such as turnips, celery root, carrots and red beets and offers several squash varieties in the fall and winter. Parsnips are particularly appealing, says Rick Sible, who handles business development and food safety.
“They are very rich in appearance, color and uniformity as well as Brix content,” he says, adding that the region’s fertile muck and marl soil helps assure top-quality vegetables.
Rice Lake Farms also employs best agricultural practices such as rotating crops and using non-GMO seed sources, Sible says. Products are kosher certified.
At first, the company typically sent its harvested product to an outside facility for packing, but about 15 years ago, Veurink’s son, John, the current owner and operator, converted an old cold storage and carrot-packing facility into a packing operation called Rice Lake Farms Packing LLC, Sible says. That enabled packing to take place in-house.
The company also purchases, stores and packs product from growing areas in places like California, Arizona and Texas.
“When the farming operation is idled, packing is very busy,” Sible explains. “We have invested very heavily in an extensive cold storage system that was built in the last 10 years, so we can ship year-round.”
The company employs 40 to 60 people in the farming and packing operations and farms 500-plus acres.
“Maximizing yields is essential, but the most important product we have physically speaking is our land, and No. 2 is our people,” Sible says. “We try to take care of both and create an environment that is safe, clean and systemized.”
Rice Lake Farms Packing has an extensive service area, shipping to and from anywhere from Los Angeles to Boston, he says. But the firm’s major distribution areas are Philadelphia, New York and Boston — a region that has 30 million to 40 million people to feed, he says.
