Today I'm talking with Cindy and Mike at Rustic Roots.

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00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Cindy and someone else in the background. I don't know who it is yet. At Ruster Groots Farm. Good morning, Cindy. Good morning. It's my husband, Mike. Hi, Mike. Sorry, I didn't know you were going to be part of this. Awesome.

00:29 Fantastic. All right. So tell me about yourselves and Rustic Roots Farm. Rustic Roots, sorry. Rustic Roots Greenery. We started a small greenhouse a few years ago and now we've built up. We found a used one for sale and bought it and put it up. We sold a couple of our cows to help pay for it. I don't know. It's fantastic.

00:58 Go ahead. All right. Mm-hmm. So for years, she wanted a greenhouse. And for a long time, I did a lot of the plants. And one year, she just couldn't handle me getting rid of the little helpless seedlings that we were thinning out. So she decided to keep them and took over our entire living room. So 2020, with the COVID and the COVID-19 pandemic,

01:24 Um, the kids getting kicked out of school, um, finally, after about eight or nine years of, uh, begging, we decided to have a, uh, arts and crafts and science program. And we built a greenhouse. About a eight by 12 or eight by 14 on the pad in front of our house with the kids with, um, rough cut lumber and glass panes and just basically things that we had around. And then we.

01:51 rolled it around to the south side of our house. And that first year she filled it. So the second year we doubled the size of that greenhouse and Cindy took that as a challenge. So she filled it again. Um, then I had a friend sent me a link to some people selling a 30 by 70 greenhouse about three or four hours away. And I'd been looking into.

02:19 I'm building a different greenhouse for a while and I've really been, I was really getting into the geothermal and some of the different ways to make greenhouses cheaper to heat and operate. And so we went down and we bought this greenhouse from some people that do the same thing. They sell garden starts. And then September of 22, we started our...

02:46 construction of our brand new greenhouse or brand new to us. And we dug a 20 by 60 foot hole in our front yard and filled it with 2000 feet of perforated pipe. And we built a climate battery style geothermal and then we plunked a greenhouse on top of it. He says we, but really he built, I just helped a little. You guys sound a lot like me and my husband. Um, we, I applied for a grant to.

03:16 to fund a heated greenhouse last year. And we actually got the grant, which dumbfounded me because I didn't think we had a hope in hell of getting it. And I was like, so do you want to build a heated greenhouse, honey? And he was like, I do. We can't afford to. I said, we can now. And he said, did we get the grant? I said, we did. I said, it's got to be finished, complete, by May 31 of 2024.

03:45 Can you make that happen? Because we didn't get the money until November of 2023. And he said yes. Oh, wow. And I said, OK, you better pray for good weather in the spring, because otherwise this is not going to work. And it was finished, I think, the weekend before May 31. Oh, nice. So yeah, go ahead. We applied for a grant. But what we learned is the grant money is only for brand new greenhouses. You can't.

04:14 You can't utilize that money to buy a used greenhouse or anything like that. Yes. We had to buy all the, the, we had to buy all the supplies new or they had to be in really, really good condition. Yeah. Almost new. So yeah, there's definitely some parameters that you have to meet. Yeah. We had a, we had a drought, um, 2022 and we had a small cow herd that we were running.

04:44 And basically it was a decision of, do we want to buy hay and rent pasture? Or what do we do? And we ended up selling the majority of our cows and calves. And we took that money and that's basically how we funded our greenhouse. Yup. You gotta find a way one way or another, because if otherwise it just doesn't happen. And the other thing is, is that animals are expensive to feed. I mean, people who have dogs and cats.

05:13 As house pets, they know how much money they spend to feed their pets. And it is just exponentially more expensive, the bigger the animal gets. And the more it's livestock, not a pet. So it's hard. And I don't blame you. It's the weather has been insane the last couple of years. You're in Nebraska, right? Yep. We're in a, we're in the panhandle in Nebraska. We're.

05:38 We're actually closer to the capital of Wyoming and Colorado than we are the capital of Nebraska. So we're about three hours from Rapid City, three hours from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and about four hours from Denver, Colorado. Yeah. And we're in Minnesota. And you guys pretty much have had the same weather we've had as far as I know. The last two summers have been rainy in the spring and then not a drop of water to be found at the end of June, July.

06:08 Well, yeah, end of June, July, August, and end of September. Last summer, my husband watered every night for at least an hour and a half from the well. Yep. Well, we kind of had the opposite problem last year. Last year was actually an extremely wet year for us. Oh, okay. Um, typically we only average about 15 inches of rain a year. Um, last year we had between 30 and 40 inches. Um, but like, like I say, in 22, we had.

06:37 well below normal, probably more like 12 inches of rain. Yeah, so my original statement stands, the weather has been absolutely bonkers. Yup. Yes. I don't know if you guys know what's going on in Minnesota right now, but we have major damaging flooding going on in the lower half of the state right now. Yeah, you got a dam that's no longer a dam, too. Yeah, I'm about half an hour from there. Oh, wow. Yup. Yeah, that was...

07:06 Not great. And my husband actually works in the city where that is going on. So the detours that he's had to find to get from Lusor, which is where we live, to Mankato and back has been crazy. And our road out front of our home is basically a two lane county road and it is one of the detours. So

07:31 Usually, you know, a couple cars go by, it can be another 20 minutes, a couple cars go by. If it's harvest season, lots of tractors and semis full of corn going by. For the last two days until this morning, it has just been car after car after car and people honking their horns and screeching their brakes. I'm like, we did not move back to the city. I know we didn't. That's right.

07:58 So it's eased up this morning because the major highway nearby is back open again, which is a blessing because I really did not miss the sound of the cars. Yeah, I didn't miss the sound of cars all the time at all when we moved here because we used to live in town and it was constant noise. And boy, I got reminded why we moved. Yeah. So anyway, all that having been said.

08:27 awesome thing about the big greenhouse. And I think it's funny that Mike tells stories just like my husband tells stories. That's awesome. He's like, yeah, she wanted, and I begrudgingly said sure, blah, blah, blah. But underneath- Well, I know they say to, you know, you need to thin the seedlings and pick the best ones and everything, but I'm like, they're all growing perfectly fine. You don't need to thin them out and throw them away. You just put them in dirt and there they go. Yeah.

08:54 But underneath the husband's stories is that I love her, I want her to be happy. How can I make her happy? So it just makes me giggle when I hear other people's husbands tell stories about them because it's the same tone of voice every time. Well, I felt so bad for him because the second year we had the little greenhouse and I had so many in the living room and I kind of took over part of our computer room with plant

09:24 We were just outgrowing things and he went outside in March and it was snowing, kind of sleeting outside and he was putting together the other greenhouse, just like kind of tacking it on the end of the other one, just so we'd have room for all of them. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm right there with you, Cindy, because we used to, now we have the greenhouse, we don't have to anymore. Yay. But every year for the last 20 something years.

09:54 we have started our seedlings in the house on the kitchen table. And the kitchen table was actually a living room table in the old house, we didn't have any room for a kitchen table anywhere. And so my living room table would be covered with seedling trays and seedlings growing like crazy. And then when we moved here, we have an eat-in kitchen. So where the kitchen table sits, we actually added another folding table behind the kitchen table.

10:22 And that was completely covered with seedlings. And it didn't bother my husband, but I love to cook. And part of the reason I was so thrilled about this place when we bought it in 2020 is because it had a place to actually sit in the kitchen at a kitchen table and have coffee or lunch or dinner. And every spring, there's no place to do that because the table is covered. So...

10:48 This spring, I was like, this is the last spring my kitchen table is going to have to be covered in baby plants. Yay! You'll get your house back. My husband looked at me, he said, you're going to miss them. He said, you're going to be begging me to bring in basil babies just so you can watch them grow. I was like, all right, yeah, maybe. But at least it'll only be a couple, not two tables worth of seedlings anymore. But anyway, all that.

11:17 being said, because this is very much a giggle fest, but I'd really like to know what you guys are doing with all these plants. Are you selling them as bedding plants? Are you selling them from your property? Do you wholesale? How are you moving them? I started my first year, it was kind of an accident. Like Mike said, I just took all the thinned seedlings and planted them. I ended up with 350 tomato plants.

11:42 Yep. And normally we only used about 40 to 50 in our garden. So I'm like, what do I do with all of the rest of them? I didn't think that far ahead, but you know, it was amazing. They grew, they stayed alive. So I just kind of put an ad on Facebook and sold them for a couple bucks piece in town and just to whoever in the area. And they went in like 24 hours.

12:11 So that was eye-opening. For us, I garden, I can everything. Tomatoes were really a staple in our garden. So I make sauces and can the tomatoes just plain and whatever. So going to places around here, it was extremely expensive to buy the amount of plants we needed. And

12:39 The cheapest place to get them at the time was like Menards. You can get a little four pack of tomato seedlings, but you know, they were four inch tall plants. And between the hail and a shorter growing season up here, there was no way to make it work. So that's kind of why we started doing the seedlings to begin with. But in the...

13:07 After the first year we sold and they went so quickly, the second year was a little more on purpose. I started a few other things and... I sold them at the co-op that year. Okay. Yep, yep. There's a farmers co-op in town. They let me set up some tables and bring in some plants and they just sold for a percentage and that went really well.

13:37 The next year we partnered up with Valor General Store in Hemingford and was able to sell it at both stores there.

13:51 So, and then this last year was just at Valor, but Valor and Facebook. We sell some at the house, but we sell a lot of them in town. It's, we're, we're seven miles out of Hammingford, but we're, we're two miles off the highway on a pretty terrible dirt slash mud road. So, um, it's hard to get people to come out to the greenhouse and buy, but, uh, we got a pretty good relationship with the folks that run the hardware store. So we sell in there. And then.

14:21 It's a ton of work because they're closed Sunday and Monday. So every, every Saturday evening we go up with a pickup and stock trailer and bring an entire trailer load of plants home, put them back in the greenhouse and kind of nurse them back to health from being inside and then turn around on Tuesday morning and haul it all back. Yeah. Oh, that's, that's gotta be just kind of a bummer to have to do that.

14:50 Well, and it's funny up here, you know, I have people starting in April. Well, when are you bringing your plants in? I'm like, you know, we can't plant till like June 1st, right? Our frost dates the 25th of May, you know, which really turns into the first week of June. So. Yeah, but people don't, people don't know. I mean, my husband, the first spring we were here in the new house, planted seeds in February. And I said, what, I said, what are you doing?

15:20 Yeah. I said, they're going to die before you can get them out. They're going to be so leggy and root bound and we don't have room to repot them and keep them in the house. There's no place to put the bigger pots. He was like, I'm just dying to get started. He said, I'm so sick of not having anything green. Well, hey, it sounds like the man needs to get into flowers. They take forever. Oh yeah. We are growing. Cindy started.

15:48 What was your seed in the ground issue about? January 17th. Yeah, no. And I think I need to start a little earlier because my flowers didn't bloom on time. Oh, and you were doing this in the greenhouse? Well, no. No, in the house? It was in the house, but I had so many going that I ended up taking over part of his woodshed. He's got a little room off the side of his garage that is sort of insulated.

16:17 And it was easier to heat. So yeah, I took over a little more of his life. We built vertical originally when we were doing it in the house, we built vertical racks and we're using basically 10 by 20 trays and there's five, I think five shelves, um, and then there's three sets of lights per shelf. And then there's two of those racks. Well, we just moved those to the wood shop and she's got a table out there. And.

16:46 soil and then she can plant everything and then what we were doing is she would transplant and then as the season progressed we would then move it to the greenhouse in like four-inch cups. Yeah, yep. When you're growing from seed it is a never-ending battle of transplanting them from the little tiny cells to the next size up.

17:14 until you can get them outside in the ground if that's what you're doing, because that's what we do. If you're just putting them in pots to sell them, then you gotta keep doing the thing with transplanting because they keep getting bigger. So yeah, it's a constant, constant, never-ending job. So my question is, I don't wanna ask a rude question, but are you...

17:41 Are you seeing success with this? Are you, is it worth it to you? Are you making a profit on this? Well, this year we had trouble the last couple of years with soil. We would end up with a volunteer tomato plants coming out of soil. Yeah. Or too many bugs coming out of some really name brand soils. I don't want to knock anybody, but it was frustrating. So we had to find some special soil.

18:11 and ended up being Iowa or sorry, Ohio. My bad. He dealt with it. I didn't. So see how that works. But to get it here, we couldn't find any truckers coming west with an empty load. So the soil ended up being the same price as the shipping. And I just, it's frustrating

18:41 preferred to keep using the soil I was using. It was a little more affordable. Anyway, we had to raise prices for that. It just seems like everything was more expensive this year in general. And the store, you know, they were fine with it and people still supported us really well. I was very grateful. So by Memorial Day...

19:11 weekend, we had finally broke even on soil and seed costs. Good. So, so, so is there any room to be ahead of the game on this this year? Is that where it sits? So basically, in my opinion, we've for the three years we've done this, we broke even, you know, even with some investments and things like that, which is fine for me, in my opinion, to get a business going. You know, if you can.

19:41 breakeven and cover your costs and continue to expand a little bit. Um, one of our most successful things is that we partnered with, um, the recycling center in a town about 30 miles away. And so all of our cups and flats and all those things are all recycled. We don't have to buy any of that. Which really helps the price. Yes. And keeps it out of the landfill. Yeah.

20:09 The part I hate is seeing a bunch of these corporations, you know, Walmart, the farm store and then the next town over, they just, they throw all the plastics in the dumpster. Or you know, they can't reuse them. It's just frustrating. I'd rather reuse something and it not be so pretty than to think of it, you know, not quite riding away the way it should in a landfill.

20:38 Well, the other thing Cindy always said when we started this is gardening shouldn't be expensive. Right. It shouldn't be expensive to raise a garden for your family. So, you know, yeah, we could charge more and we could do this. But at the end of the day, we also want it to be affordable for people. And that's why, you know, we've had offers in the past from some of the hardware stores to buy out our inventory, you know, but they're just going to take it to town and mark it up.

21:06 we would rather sell it ourselves instead of sell on wholesale. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah, it's not all about making money. In fact, I work at a feedlot a few miles west of our place and I've been there about nine years and my boss, he'd just shake his head at me every time I'd start telling my stories about the greenhouse endeavors and he goes, well, does that pay for your time? And I'm like, no.

21:33 And he's like, you're just crazy. You're crazy. The guy's all kind of got a kick out of it. Every time we'd start talking about, oh, I got, you know, 250, you know, plants transplanted this week and, and they're like, man, well, how many more you got to go? And I swore about 3,500 more. Yeah. But you love it. So you are, you are getting a return on it because you feel good when you do it.

22:02 Yes. And that's why I asked because I wanted to know if it was about money or if it was about the fact that you love it because if it's just about money, at some point you will be like, I'm not doing this anymore. Exactly. Exactly. Because it's not, it's... The other thing is too, the way that we have built this is everything's paid for, right? So there's no stress about paying the bills or paying the payment.

22:31 you know, and at any time, you know, Cindy kind of stressed about the greenhouse. And I said, if nothing else, we can completely stop the plants and just garden inside of it, you know, it's, it's paid for it's not a big deal. I just stressed because I even told our tax lady that we, we sold the beef cows we had, which wasn't many, but we sold the, the pears we had to invest into this greenhouse and I'm like,

22:58 I feel like I'm going crazy because at the time the prices for cattle were high and I just think you can at least make a good chunk off of a cow every year, but can I come near that with plants? I guess you can, but there's a lot of expense in it too. So yeah, kind of a toss up. Yeah. But

23:26 There's an old saying about if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life and work is a very different definition in that phrasing. And you love the work. So if you love the work and you're breaking even, then you're probably doing a great thing. My husband gardens because he loves to garden. Like it's an avid passion for him. It's how he de-stresses from his job.

23:53 And he loves his job. He just got a new job last year. Loves it. But it has stresses too. Every corporate job has stresses. So every spring, well, actually every January, he starts talking about planning the next year's garden because that's how he calms down. Yes. So, I don't know. I think everybody needs a thing that they do that brings them joy.

24:22 brings them peace and hopefully helps other people too. That's what I think. Yeah. I like it. I start itching around Christmas time. I'm like, we need plants. We need green. We need something. So January 17th, I finally got my first tray of seedlings started. I feel content.

24:51 when I start doing that finally. This time of year she's ready to be done. Yep and that's where Mike kind of steps up then because I'm like okay I'm good, I'm planted out let's and he loves the gardening part so I go out and help where I can but this is really his time of year. He loves getting out there and just his quiet time in the garden.

25:18 Yeah. It's his happy place. I think that's the reason why Kyle really likes to garden too, because I just leave him to it. I can't even make a suggestion these days without getting the look, you know. And I'm like, do you want me to shut up? I don't need to make any suggestions. I can just be quiet. He's like, what's the suggestion? It might be important. I'm like this. And sometimes it is sometimes like I hadn't thought of that. Thank you. And other times he's like, I got it. I'm like, okay, no problem.

25:48 So I am very happy to cook whatever comes out of the garden if it needs cooking with dinner. I am very happy to help with canning. I am very happy to eat fresh radishes and cucumbers and tomatoes when they're coming in. I don't want to be in the garden with him. That is his baby and he can go take care of that baby. I'm good with that.

26:13 There you go. So do you guys do other things besides this greenhouse nursery thing? Yeah. Go ahead. What kind of things are we talking? Well you build things, so are you a carpenter? No, I'm actually a welder for BNSF Railway. Okay. I work at a big locomotive diesel shop.

26:41 head of the welding department there. That's, that's my full-time job. That's your jobby job. Yes. Okay. Yup. On top of that, we do, I don't know, we got too much broke stuff around here that I fix. I fixed broke things for other people. We were crazy enough to have milk cows. So we milk and make cheese and do all kinds of things like that. We'd, uh, apparently we don't sit still very well.

27:10 Oh, okay. Well, you do need to take a break now and then I hope you actually do get sleep. Occasionally. Until he stresses about the garden, you know, or the greenhouse freezing. He gets himself up a few times a night through the winter and it's like, stop, just stop it. So what's interesting is since we built it, so we built it, we started September of 22. We got it basically going by March.

27:40 23. So from the time we got it going until now, it's only froze twice inside of it. So we had two nights of, it was 27 and 25 below. And I don't have a propane heater yet. I just got some diesel shop heaters for backup. But

28:02 I got up and it was 25 below outside and it was 18 above in my greenhouse, which is depressing because it froze. But it's a little impressive because with no other heat other than the geothermal, it was 18 above in there. That is impressive. Yeah. And it's just a plastic hoop house, you know? Yeah, we run two layers of air inflated plastic. That's all we're running. Wow. That's amazing.

28:33 Well, it's a thousand dollars to put plastic on it. And at the time we were building it, I figured it'd be 15 or 20,000 to get, uh, twin wall panels to put on it. So it was just a, it was a cost thing. You know, we had X number of dollars after, you know, we sold cows and we had some money saved. So we had a budget and that's what we went with. And I've been, I've been pretty happy with it so far. Um, that air inflation helps too. We.

28:59 we live in a very windy environment so it keeps the plastic from whipping quite as much but I've been really impressed with that geothermal. Yeah we we thought about it for the one that we just put up but it would have been expensive to dig for it you know we would have had we would have had to rent somebody's machinery and time to do that so ours is actually a hard-sided

29:30 wood and the polycarbonate panels and the tin roof and back on it. And we haven't, we haven't actually done anything else. It's built, it is a greenhouse at this point. Um, my husband is going to be putting in installation this winter. It has electricity to it. And I think the plan is, is that we're going to get this thing. I don't know the name of it. It's like a battery.

29:59 but it's like a generator too. So you can actually plug things into it. Your cell phone chargers, electric things that need to be plugged in, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to get solar panels so that we can use solar for that battery. And then we'll have some kind of heat source that that battery powers to blow warm air around the greenhouse. And we have no idea if any of this is going to work. Not a clue.

30:29 And I said to my husband, what if it doesn't work? And he said, well, he said, we will have a greenhouse. We just won't have a heated greenhouse. I was like, okay, that's fine. But we're really hoping that it works because I really, really want tomatoes in January that we grew. That's my one tiny little hope that we might be able to have homegrown tomatoes in January because I was telling someone else, there is a company that grows

30:59 Better Boy Tomatoes in Minnesota in hot houses. And they are the closest thing to the tomatoes that we take out of our garden in August that I can get in January in our area. Oh neat. So, I really would love to have tomatoes. I really would love to have cucumbers because I will eat a cucumber a day when they're coming in. I love them. And he said, I don't know about the cucumbers. I said, okay, well, we can try. And we want them.

31:28 When our greenhouse frosted, we had, uh, they were 12 or 14 foot, uh, tomatoes in there. They were calling them ceiling fans were clipping them off. Oh, and they died. They were, they were loaded. I was getting ready to can waiting for them all to set on and. We had a sun gold cherry tomatoes out there. And then I had a bunch of, uh, Rutgers for, uh, slicing tomatoes out there. And then we had. Uh.

31:57 We were eating fresh green beans out of there. I had whole beans in there. Um, we had zucchini out there. Um, we, we still have strawberries out there. They survived the frost. So I couldn't believe that. Well, they're right by the outlet for the geothermal. Did, did either one of you just cry when you realized everything grows? Yeah. Yes. I was a little upset. Yeah. I would be sobbing. That would, that would be so.

32:26 sad and not, not, not. Yeah. Oh, the worst part is I lost a whole bunch of houseplants out there. Yeah. Well, it was getting a little crowded in the house with all of his houseplant babies. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, we have like 10 things of each in here. Why don't we excavate eight of each out to the greenhouse and they can grow happy out there. And he had a rubber tree. Rubber plant. A rubber plant. Uh huh.

32:56 It kept getting like, I was afraid it was going to get knocked over. Everybody kept brushing up against it when they walked by and it was right in the way. There's no really good place to put it. So I took it out to the greenhouse and I felt so bad because it died really quick. I thought I had to hunt for another one for him.

33:20 Oh, it's so sad. I mean, I cry when animals die, but man, if I had a greenhouse full like that and everything froze, I would sob for that too. Yeah, I did. It's frustrating. All right, guys. Well, we're at over half an hour and I try to keep these at half an hour. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And when I stop recording, don't leave because I need your file to upload from your site, okay? Okay. All right. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

33:50 Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Bye.