At the busy Bello Vino food market in the Plymouth Road Mall, customers are used to getting fresh, locally grown produce much of the year. They just may not know how local.
About 4.5 miles from the store, Bello Vino owner Louis Ferris has turned 85 acres of his 107-acre estate in Superior Township into a farming operation that includes a 1-acre-plus vegetable garden, an orchard with peach, pear, apple, cherry and plum trees, 750 blueberry bushes, raspberry bushes, strawberries, a 2,100-square-foot greenhouse, eight bee hives and a flock of 128 breeding ewes to produce lambs.
All of that food is used to supply Bello Vino with up to 30 percent of its produce over the course of the year.
"We really try to do the specialty stuff that you don't find anywhere else." said Ted Thiry, a former tropical landscaper who now manages the three-year-old farm for Ferris, who is CEO of Federated Financial Corp. of America and owner of the Great Lakes Central Railroad.
For instance, the 300 tomato plants going from the greenhouse to the ground this spring are heavy on the "heirloom" varieties, such as Alberta peach and Armana orange. There are eight types of winter squash, eight types of peppers and 12 kinds of garlic.
Ferris, whose Great Lakes Central Railroad is expected to become a commuter line between Howell and Ann Arbor, said he bought Bello Vino in 2003 when he learned that Whole Foods, which occupied the building, was going to leave. Before Whole Foods, the store had been occupied by Merchant of Vino.
"It was such a well-known spot on the northeast side of Ann Arbor that I hated to see it close up," Ferris said.
The store reopened as Bello Vino in 2004.
The idea of supplying the store in part from his property - which he bought from Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan in 1991 - evolved as the vegetable garden which Ferris was developing produced far more than he or his workers could eat, Ferris said.
"We started giving it to the store, and they started selling it," he said. The next spring, the farm began selling it to the store.
What the store can't get from the farm it strives to buy as locally as possible, relying heavily on the Amish community around the town of Homer, said Jennifer Ferris, daughter of Louis Ferris and vice president of the store. In all, about 80 percent of the store's produce over the course of the year comes from what can fairly be called local sources, she said.
Bello Vino customer Judy Dyer said knowing much of the food she buys there is locally produced is important to her for reasons of ecology, even though she wasn't aware what farm may be producing it.
"I know that they sell local products, and I buy that," Dyer said.
The farm's sheep herd, initially purchased as a way to take advantage of all the grass growing on his land, now includes the breeds Coopworth white, Dorper, Middle Eastern fat-tailed and Dorset, selected for the quality of the meat they produce, Thiry said. The ewes started lambing in the second week of February and will continue until the Fourth of July, he said. The goal, still about two years away, is to be able to process four lambs for the market each week, Thiry said.
The sheep are fed no grain, so they have far less fat than sheep fed on grain, Ferris said. "As a result we're starting to develop a great name in our lamb.
The farm pays for itself if you don't amortize the fairly substantial investment in equipment and buildings, he said.
Prices at the store are comparable to similar markets, he said. His main goal at Bello Vino is to sell high quality products at reasonable prices.
"I'm a for-profit guy but I never really wanted to create a store like that for profit. I wanted to try something different," Ferris said.
John Mulcahy can be reached at 734-994-6858 or jmulcahy@annarbornews.com.
Source: http://www.mlive.com/business/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/business-5/1180536076219490.xml&coll=2