OurBrownCounty 17May-June | Page 24

~ story and photo by Bob Gustin

Salem’ s Good Nature Farm

Some couples have a special song, a favorite movie, or a poem which reminds them of
gave it to her. They were married a few months later, on November 27,
1981.
their love for each other. Mike and
Mike is a native of central
Mitzie Salem have a vegetable.
Massachusetts, but Mitzie is a
It’ s appropriate that the owners
Hoosier, born in Columbus and
of Good Nature Farm in southern
educated in dance at Indiana
Brown County see broccoli as a
University. Mitzie always wanted
symbol of their lives together.
to be a dance teacher, and she left
After high school, Mike did
home to attend The School of The
summer work at Woods Hole
Hartford Ballet, in Connecticut,
Oceanographic Institute, took a year
which had a two-year teacher
off to be a ski bum at Sugar Loaf
training program. After graduation,
Mountain Resort in Maine, and got a
she stayed at the school to teach
job at a flower shop and greenhouse
for about two years, then joined
in West Brookfield, Massachusetts.
the Betty Gunderson Studio of
He studied at the Stockbridge
Dance in Massachusetts and helped
School of Agriculture and eventually
expand that business from about 75
bought the greenhouse where he
students to 250.
was working.
Through most of the 1980s
He was tending the store when
and’ 90s, the couple followed their
a ballet teacher named Mitzie came
dance and greenhouse careers in
in to order flowers for her mother’ s
New England.
retirement. It was love at first sight.
In 1999, the Salems uprooted
After taking care of the flower order,
and moved to Brown County. Mitzie
Mike lifted the top of a cold frame,
was an only child, and she knew
snapped off a broccoli stalk and
her family would one day need her
24 Our Brown County May / June 2017
close. So the Salems moved to an 1865 farmhouse with 140 acres just northeast of the intersection of Indiana 135 and Bob Allen Road. Mitzie’ s parents, who lived nearby, had owned the land, raised cattle there and rented out the farmhouse.
With help from neighbors and friends, they remodeled the house, built greenhouses, and began raising vegetables and flowers and cultivating community. The Salems also became a regular part of the farmer’ s market in Bloomington.
The shift from ballet teacher to“ greenhouse goddess” was a gradual one for Mitzie, as she taught ballet for a few years at Dancers Studio in Columbus while Mike did soil analysis.
“ I traded in my tutu for a trowel,” Mitzie says.
For a while, Mike also worked with Al Donaldson, doing soil analysis work. When Donaldson