Meet the Modern Farmer Who Founded Detroit’s First Cider Mill
Leandra King believes Detroit Farm and Cider will be a vehicle for positive change.
As a child growing up in a turbulent home with a mother who abused drugs, Leandra King constantly faced a paralyzing anxiety that would completely consume her.
To calm down, she would find a quiet place outdoors and pile mud and dirt on her body. At the time, King didn’t really know why she did it or understand why it helped. The outdoors was simply a positive space where she could go to escape that anxiety. But the Detroit resident later learned that immersion in nature can have a restorative effect for those dealing with mental health problems. King recently opened Detroit’s first cider mill, a venture she hopes will share that same kind of positive space with her community.
“Whatever you’re experiencing in your life, being connected with the Earth will help [you] heal and there’s a lot of healing that’s needed in our city,” she says.
About 18 months ago, King bought a four-acre plot of land that was an abandoned school in the Dexter-Linwood neighborhood. There, she opened Detroit Farm and Cider: what she says is the first Black-owned cider mill in the country.
On what she describes as a slice of rural paradise in the midst of the city, King has an orchard consisting of 139 different fruit trees ranging from apple, peach, cherry and pear. She has goats and chickens for a petting zoo, horses, hayrides, zip lining for kids, live music, as well as 10 garden plots and three greenhouses where she grows everything from squash and brassicas to strawberries and pawpaw patches. “People get to come and experience a farm-like environment. It’s something that’s not typical of Detroit,” King says.
Of course, King has cider too, but she didn’t produce the apples for what she is currently selling. She ran into an unexpected spring frost that delayed her own cider production until next year. To ensure she still has a supply, she sources cider and donuts from another cider mill in Northville, Michigan.
Admission to the space is free, and her farm’s produce is sold at an affordable price. King also accepts food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. She says it’s important to her to have a space that is accessible to everyone, and that she’s especially focused on bringing the Black community together.
“There’s a spiritual and an emotional disconnect when it comes to unity within the community and family…. For some reason, we’re not able to live together in harmony,” she says. “The cider mill, it’s here because we didn’t have one, but it will be an outlet or platform to address some more deeper issues.”
Eventually, she says she’d like to provide space for a handful of Black vendors and more farmers to sell their products on the property and she’d also like to provide housing for them. King hopes she’ll eventually be able to offer programs on the farm to help young people struggling with mental health issues. For the time being, she’s focused on ensuring she’ll be able to offer Detroit-made cider by next fall. She says watching her visitors enjoy the natural surroundings of her cider mill has kept her motivated.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Meet the Modern Farmer Who Founded Detroit’s First Cider Mill
by Lindsay Campbell, Modern Farmer
November 29, 2020
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
This is so wonderful and desperately needed in our city. Detroit has so many cultural creatives doing brilliant work and so few of them get the recognition and support they need. The issues surrounding land use as it regards climate–and culture–change are immense and everyone can be involved. Learning the skills of sustainable and regenerative agriculture on a mass scale requires everyone to learn and implement the knowledge and skills at the micro level–in our own yards, gardens and communities. As a writer, this is my primary area of interest currently and I’m hoping I’ll be able to interview Ms.… Read more »
Leandra, that is awesome. Bringing the growing of food back to urban areas is so important. Thank you for all you do.
GOD-MORNING MY SISTER!!!
GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE!!! I am so happy for you. I instantly followed you on Instagram my name is Cornelius Simmons aka: CROPPER CORN. Please let me know what other platforms you are on so I can follow you. I pray one day we get a chance to meet and do business. I pray that God grants you wisdom and continual growth for generations to come.
Have a GOD-DAY!!!
BROTHERLY YOURS,
CROPPER CORN
Bravo on this wonderful project of love.
Leandra I so applaud you🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿 For being the visionary to bring a Black Cider Mill to Detroit!! Can’t wait to taste that nectar next year 😋