McLaughlin Grows Urban Farm at Trinity Health Muskegon

05/06/2025

Check it out! We'll be with our friends Aldea Coffee this Saturday as part of our annual seedling sale. 🌱 From 10am-2pm, all of our seedlings will be $2 each (cash only). We can't wait to see you and help get your summer garden started! ☕🪴

05/02/2025

Meet the Farm team! 🪻🐞 Farmers Savannah and Tim are going into their 4th season with McLaughlin Grows, and their first season as a part of Trinity Health. They’ve been involved in everything farm related since 2022 and are the determining factor on how the farm looks, what it produces, and how it produces it. Our team is incredibly grateful for the hard work, endless knowledge, and heart they put into their work each day!🌷You can catch them at the Muskegon Farmers Market the first Saturday of every month (see you tomorrow!), volunteer with them at the farm, or learn about some of the practices they use at our workshops! 👨🏻‍🌾👩🏻‍🌾

04/23/2025

Meet the Farm Team! 🌸🫛We'd like to highlight our newest member of the team, Sydney McCann. Sydney joined us in January as our Education Coordinator. It’s almost unbelievable that she’s only been with us 4 months - she has accomplished so much in that time! Sydney has designed free workshops to run every month through October, planned a day camp for children to come get their hands dirty and learn about the farm, and continued our tradition of hosting field trips throughout the year. That’s on top of designing 20 educational raised beds and coordinating all our volunteers! 🥕👩‍🏫

We’re so looking forward to a year of increased community engagement and opportunities thanks to Sydney's hard work. If you’re interested in any of her educational events or want to volunteer, shoot her an email: [email protected]

04/21/2025

We’re already on Week 3 of our 36-week Farm Share season! Here at McLaughlin Grows, our Farm Share boxes not only include produce grown on our farm, but produce and dry goods from other local farms in West Michigan! Our partner farms include Tortoise & Hare Farm, Shady Side Farm, Moore Garden and Farm, The Woven Trifecta, Kaleidoscope Farm , HW Farms , Eighth Day Farm, and Gazer Farm. We look forward to welcoming in more farms as the season continues. Partnering with other local farms creates a larger food selection for farm share members and helps support our local food system. We still have shares available for summer and fall! 📦🥕

04/18/2025

Did you know that in the US the average meal travels over 1,500 miles before it reaches your plate?! You can drastically reduce the “food miles” your food travels when you buy produce straight from your local farmers and farmers markets. 🥬🧄

We are so lucky to have an incredible farmers market here in Muskegon! You can catch us at Muskegon Farmers Market at Booth 73 the first Saturday of each month from May-October, beginning May 3!

04/17/2025

Continuing with our Earth Day spotlights, let's talk about native plants. There’s a lot of buzz 🐝 about native plants right now, and for good reason! Native plants are a critical food and habitat source for native insects, birds, and other wildlife. They are environmental powerhouses because they do not require pesticides or fertilizers, they use less water, and they help prevent erosion. We have a native plant garden here at McLaughlin Grows not only to help pollinators and increase biodiversity, but to help educate others about the importance of these species.

We recently had an awesome group of volunteers help us move our native plant garden to a new location on the farm. Volunteering is a great way to learn more about which plants are native to Michigan and how to best care for them. It’s also a great opportunity to spend time enjoying nature! We welcome volunteers of all backgrounds, interests, and abilities. Our next volunteer event with United Way of the Lakeshore is on Earth Day 🌎 April 22 from 1-4pm! Sign up here: https://ow.ly/B4oo50VtuqV

04/16/2025

We use the No-Till method here at McLaughlin Grows, which is a farming practice which improves soil health and increases soil biodiversity. This method helps us avoid using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which leads to healthier plants and produce! We are excited to share this knowledge through our free community workshops so others can adopt these sustainable practices too. Savannah recently led an informative workshop about how to use the No-Till method in backyard gardening. Our next farm workshop, Intro to Raised Bed Gardening, is next week Wednesday, April 23 at 6 pm.

04/15/2025

In honor of Earth Day coming up next week, we’d like to share some of the practices we use around the farm to help protect our beautiful planet. We’re very excited that all of the plants for our annual Seedling Sale will be sold in biodegradable pots instead of plastic this year! After the seedlings are planted out at home, these coconut coir pots can be composted in your backyard compost. We are always striving to reduce our plastic waste by reusing our seed starting trays and opting for biodegradable options when we can. 🌎♻

This year we have TWO Seedling Sale dates! Come see us at on Saturday, May 10 from 10am-2pm, or stop by our main farm site, 175 E Larch Ave, on Monday, May 12 from 12 pm-5pm. We’ll have different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, kale, flowers, herbs and more!

04/14/2025

We’re only one week away from Earth Day and our day of service with United Way of the Lakeshore! We hope you can join us on the farm on Tuesday, April 22! 🌎🌿

Roll up your sleeves and make a difference this Earth Day! 🌍 We're teaming up with McLaughlin Grows Urban Farm at Trinity Health Muskegon on Tuesday, April 22 for an afternoon of meaningful service—and we need your help! Bring your coworkers, family, or friends and dig into a project that gives back to both our community and our planet.

📅 April 22 | 🕐 1–4 PM | 📍 McLaughlin Grows Urban Farm
Registration is required—sign up here: https://ow.ly/B4oo50VtuqV

Let’s make every hour on Earth Day count.

04/08/2025

Meet the farm team! 🍅🌼
Kaitlin is our Manager of Farm Programs and has been with McLaughlin Grows since last October. When she first filled the role, she took on many of our farm teams' administrative tasks allowing them to focus on what they do best—farming. These days she still does all those tasks, but is also the person behind the screen for our FSA members, the one advocating to expand farm programming, and the person the rest of us turn to with all our questions. We are very grateful to have her!

04/03/2025

Did you know we have an Education Program at the farm? We love connecting kids and families with the great outdoors by offering field trips, summer camps, and free youth workshops! Our Farm Educator, Sydney, loves bringing the farm to school classrooms through hands-on activities and fresh produce tastings, and hosting class and group field trips at the farm. We are also excited for our free Kid’s Planting Party workshop coming up on May 17th, and our first session of Sprouts & Seedlings Mini Camp on June 9-11.

To book a field trip, sign up for camp, or to learn more, please email Sydney McCann at [email protected]. We can't wait to learn and grow this summer! 🌱

04/02/2025

🌱 Join our team! 🌱

If you're interested in spending a summer at the Farm, check out to link below to apply to our paid, 16-week Agriculture and Community Health Internship. You'll do everything from harvesting, to creating bouquets, to leading volunteers (and you'll get to work with some pretty awesome people, too). We hope to see you this summer! 🌼

https://trinityhealth.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Jobs/job/Mercy-Health-West-Michigan-Community-Health-Services---Muskegon-Mi/Agriculture-and-Community-Health-Internship_00579837-1