Former computer engineer Eric Kampe did the first planting for his company in 2012. The following year, he sold nine varieties of seeds. This year Kampe, thirty-five, is offering seed packets for forty-nine herbs, vegetables, and flowers.
The growing company has new mixes of lettuce and of baby greens, bok choy, and calendula. Also offered for the first time are the Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper–which Kampe says only gets better with roasting–and the hard-to-find heirloom Lucullus green Swiss chard.
“When you saute it, just put a touch of heat on it, and it just melts,” Kampe says of Lucullus. He obviously has a motive other than seed harvesting for growing vegetables.
“The point of this is good food,” he says with enthusiasm.
The U-M grad and his wife, Meredith Kahn, also thirty-five, run the business together.
“I’m the farmer,” explains Kampe. “She’s the administrator.” (Unlike Kampe, Kahn kept her day job, as a U-M librarian.)
They employ a part-time worker, Stacy Mates, also of Ann Arbor, to help with fieldwork and educational outreach. Mates staffed this year’s company kickoff event in March at Downtown Home & Garden when Kampe was booked elsewhere.
Kampe and Kahn sell seeds at the Farmers Market, along with starter plants grown in a hoop house in their backyard on Pomona Rd. The front yard is devoted to growing plants for seeds, as is a three-quarter-acre plot the couple rents on Tessmer Rd. near S. Wagner and Scio Church roads.
In addition to DH&G and other stores, Ann Arbor Seeds are available online at a2seeds.com and through Nature and Nurture, a local organic landscaping business.
Kampe estimates he sells “thousands but not tens of thousands” of $4 seed packets yearly–each with more than enough seeds for a home gardener’s typical season–from Detroit to Grand Rapids.
“We’re not trying to go too far, because I want to be a local, regional seed company,” he says.
Kristin Ness, seeds buyer for DH&G, says there are at least two good reasons to buy Kampe’s seeds.
“You just know they’ll do well in our climate,” she says. “And a lot of us want to support local.”
Also locally produced are Ann Arbor Seeds’ graphics; they’re by Andy Sell, who’s pursuing a master’s in landscape architecture at U-M.
Though Kampe adheres to organic growing practices, he hasn’t completed the necessary steps to be certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That may change this year, he says–in part because Ann Arbor Seed is starting to sell seeds in bulk to local organic farmers.
In the meantime, Kampe is focusing on filling orders for this year and growing crops for 2017’s seeds–making sure his soil is ready, sowing seeds, and contending with Michigan’s always-mercurial weather. He also teaches sporadic seed-saving classes, and does his best to promote them on the company’s Facebook page.
“It’s like being an artist,” says Kampe of his new life as a grower. “You’d be crazy to do it if you don’t love it.”
