Love Farm

From Crystal Highlands legacy

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Current Editor

In 1988, Dan Kelly (63), an artist and filmmaker, began spending time at his family’s property on Crystal Lake and the farm at Crystal Highlands. He has lived in Benzie County full time since 2010.

Then, in 2020, he took over the family farm, and in 2022, he bought an additional 200 acres from his oldest brother, James “Jim” Patrick Kelly (73).

This means that, of the original 400 acres that the Frenches and the Kellys had purchased, Dan Kelly now owns pretty much everything that is not part of the Crystal Highlands Owners Association (CHOA).

And he has renamed his property Love Farm.

“The idea of Love Farm is that it is ‘wilds resonant,’ which means that it is informed by the inherient intelligence of nature and the wilds,” Kelly says. “Some people might call it regenerative agriculture or permaculture, but essentially we are doing what the land tells us to do.”

Right now, there are basically three people working on the farm: Dan Kelly, his cousin Jack Ducote, and Sarah Alexander (34), who runs the “chaos garden,” which was feeding them as early as May this year.

“We made all of soil for the garden from our own version of terra preta—a technology of the indigenous people of the Amazon—and it’s extremely fertile,” Kelly says. “That is thanks to Paul May, of The May Farm in Frankfort, who turned me onto biochar, and I started researching from there.”

Love Farm also produces maple syrup.

“The things we want to do are super synergistic with nature, so we’re spending more time thinking about maple trees and how to take care of them,” Kelly says. “For instance, we don’t use a network of tubes for maple syrup like a lot of people do. It’s just one tap and bucket per tree. And we’re able to use the fire from the process to make biochar, so along with the maple syrup, we’re able to make two products at the same time, from the same amount of energy.”

He adds:

“Dark Energy Maple Syrup is the most expensive maple syrup in Benzie County, and we’re proud of that. It’s currently available at Murphy’s Markette in Beulah.”

Love Farm also has an event space in the top floor of the old barn; the space is called The Cathedral.

The kick-off event in 2024 was a retrospective of the paintings of the farm’s matriarch, Eileen Kelly, to celebrate her 95th birthday.

Other events that Love Farm has hosted include Dede Alder’s ecstatic dance; an art show titled, “Secret Beach,” featuring the works of Dan Kelly, Diva Gurang, Jill Johnson, Tyler Kieras, and Melanie Steffes; and annual volunteer tree-planting to build up the conifer forest on the property.

Learn more at Love.Farm online.

Featured Photo Caption: A barn and open field overlook Lake Michigan in the background. These are the last vestiges of rural farm life in the Crystal Highlands development, now occupied by Love Farm. Photo by Susan Koenig.