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Ratzow tends to seedlings in the greenhouse her husband constructed.

continued from page 12

mind when paying more for organ-
ic produce. “Spending that extra
money is supporting local food
growers and the Earth’s health.
And when you understand the
true labor that goes into growing
food … well, you can spend that
money on organic asparagus or at
Starbucks.”
Organic farming helps the envi-
ronment, she said. “Without soil
health, you have no plant health
and without plant health there is
no human health,”
Ratzow said.
“From World
War II, chemical
fertilizers started
being applied to
our food at an
exponential rate.”
Lisa Fein of West
Lisa Fein
Bloomfield likes
buying from Root
Revival’s Saturday market. “We go
almost weekly. It is so nice to sup-
port someone local and to know

she is not using pesticides,” Fein
said. “And you can’t compare it to
what you buy in the store; the taste
is so amazing. Last summer, I had
something new I never had before,
ground cherries. I was eating them
by the handful like candy.”
They taste, Ratzow said, like “a
cross between blue cheese and
pineapple upside-down cake.”
Ratzow grew up attending Adat
Shalom Synagogue in Farmington
Hills and now goes to Temple Shir
Shalom. Her Jewish upbringing,
she said, gave her a “moral com-
pass.”
“In my life, Judaism serves
more of a traditional family role,”
she said. “Nature is my spiritual
course.” •

Root Revival Acres’ farm stand is open
each Saturday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at 7601
Honeysuckle Road in West Bloomfield. Call
(248) 752-6618 or visit it on Facebook.

Jessica Ratzow maintains a working organic farm in her West Bloomfield backyard.

14

July 20 • 2017

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