The Farmer’s Hand Stocks Its Shelves With Real Food Made By Real People

he women of The Farmer's Hand have packed over 100 locally sourced foods and specialty products, a café and an immeasurable amount of charm into a narrow Corktown space.

Rohani Foulkes and Kiki Louya share backgrounds saturated in food. Foulkes grew up in Australia, raised by a part-indigenous, part-Malaysian mom whom with she spent weekends at farmer's markets and collecting seafood from the ocean's shore. Louya was raised here in Detroit by a Congolese father and a mother from the soul food South. Both went on to work as professional chefs before opening shop in September 2016.

"Locally sourced" is more than a buzzword here. From the spaghetti squash to the lamb sausage to the bloody mary mix, each item at this artisanal grocery store has been carefully selected from food growers and makers within a 40-mile radius.

Foulkes says, "You can walk into this store and you can ask us about any product on the shelf, and I can tell you where the farmer is, who he or she is, how old they are and what their soil looks like."

Like that soil, those relationships took time to cultivate – but these personal connections are what sets The Farmer's Hand apart.

"People are becoming a little bit more aware of what they're eating, where it comes from and who's growing it," Louya says. "I would like to put a face to it."