Lauri Kranz and Dean Kuipers’ LA HOMEFARM is the first brick-and-mortar store from Edible Gardens LA.
LA HOMEFARM is a neighborhood grocery and farm market, and your source for beautiful home and garden goods. We specialize in fresh, naturally grown produce from small, local farms (including our own) and the rare naturally grown flowers that you’ve come to expect from Edible Gardens LA. We’re stocked with both dairy and non-dairy milk, cheese and eggs; pantry basics including unique pastas, dried beans, rice, flour, sauces, oils, tortillas and breads; spices and herbal remedies; unique imported foods; and a wide variety of unexpected finds including a home-tested selection of gluten-free items.
Make the good life simple with our Grab & Go selection, including sandwiches, bake-at-home pasta dishes and pizzas, baked goods and frozen treats from the best makers in Southern California.
Because great meals involve artistry from the food to the plates, LA HOMEFARM also offers one-of-a-kind artisanal home and garden goods, including ceramics, dishware, linens, artwork, garden tools, aprons, cookbooks, poetry and more. We can’t put it all online: you have to come see.
Photo by Yoshihiro Makino
OUR STORY
LA HOMEFARM is truly a labor of love! In 2019, we started working a small urban farm space in Glassell Park, where we could grow for local chefs and experiment with new varieties. Lauri’s company Edible Gardens LA has designed and maintained organic edible gardens for hundreds of families, schools, and institutions since 2005. Dean is a journalist and has been writing on ecological issues, including farming, for decades.
When the pandemic emptied out grocery stores in March 2020, and farmers’ markets were closed, we began receiving calls from friends in the community asking if we could deliver produce. Restaurants were shuttered and farmers we love told us they were stuck with produce they couldn’t sell. In the space of 48 hours, we started putting together farm boxes to get that food to people. Within a few weeks we hired a van and a driver, then bought our own van, and it grew and grew.
We did everything together. Soon we were meeting farmers in the pre-dawn dark in parking lots in Hollywood, chucking boxes and crates of wet veggies from their overloaded trucks to our overloaded van, lots of times with the cops flashing their spotlights on us, and driving with the passenger seat stacked to the roof and the eggs in the driver’s lap. We are honored to work with great chefs and specialty producers including Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project tortillas and flour; Lupa Cotta pizza dough; Truffle Dealers Italian truffles, oil, parmesan, and pre-made lasagnas; spices and herbal remedies from Wild Terra; La Morra frozen pizzas; Bub & Grandma’s bread; jams from June Taylor; and a whole cast of other legends. Every week the offerings have grown. Plus we have continued to run our own farm. The days are long and the nights very short, but our hearts are full. What a privilege to feed people, and what a joy to do it together.
In the fall of 2021, after a year and a half of contact-free work, we decided to open a brick-and-mortar shop, where we could continue our delivery service and we could see your faces! We have focused on the farm while we built out the market and shop in Glassell Park. The process is long, and we could not have opened the doors without the support of you – our community. We’re excited to serve the neighborhood and the friends who’ve been with us all along.
Photo by Yoshihiro Makino
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to increase access to food grown locally, responsibly and deliciously. The long-term goal is to empower every community to produce its own healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate farm goods. That means we need to grow toward growing. We encourage the development of new local distribution networks and farms, which in Los Angeles often means urban and backyard farms, especially in neighborhoods that may be food deserts or have no farmers markets or regular source of high-quality produce. This is a matter of health, food equity, and food sovereignty. It also helps address the causes of climate change. The pandemic showed us all that eating local is a matter of food security for everyone.
Edible Gardens LA grew out of school garden programs and Lauri continues to teach, and our 2019 book, A Garden Can Be Anywhere: Creating Bountiful and Beautiful Edible Gardens (Abrams) is a how-to on growing your own food. Dean reported on the 2006 destruction of LA’s South Central Farm, one of the largest urban farms in the country, and has been committed to increasing local food production ever since. Healthy food is how we make more successful communities.
We have a long history of working school fundraisers, pop-ups and local markets like the Echo Park Craft Fair, and support of food activists including Project Angel Food. We look forward to opening the store to neighborhood events, product demonstrations, fundraisers, readings, art shows and more. We hope to meet you and that your story will become part of ours very soon.