About
It all started when…
Our farm story
Rustic Roots Farm began when my husband and I moved back to our countryside “roots”. We bought the farm in 2010 and began to live closer to the land. We started an organic vegetable garden, fields of herbs, bees, goats, fruit orchard, and chickens. We teamed up with my in laws to combine another bee yard and sheep. We also salvage wood and turn what would have become firewood into lovely wood products. Rustic Roots Farm is dedicated to being a small farm and remaining a small farm. I hope to sustainably use our 10 acres to become prosperous but not at the risk of ruining our natural ecology. In this regard, we are working on removing invasive species, improving pollinator habitat, and maintaining soil quality through cover cropping.
Rustic Roots Farm is verified through the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP). We are verified in Farmstead System, Livestock System, and Forests, Wetlands, and Habitat System. https://www.washtenawcd.org/maeap.html The verification shows effective land stewardship practices that comply with state and federal regulations and show producers how to identify and prevent agricultural pollution risks on their farms.
What we do…
Mission..
bees
We started out with some bees when my father-in-law saw the lack of bees on his farm. He begin researching beekeeping and started a few hives on his farm. The next year, the bees migrated over to our farm as well. Together we have roughly 50 hives in any given year. We have three bee yards and work hard to insure good genetics for future bee generations.
baas
Jan and John have the sheep farm. They have a flock of 20 Shetland sheep and shear each year to produce yarn, roving, wool batting for comforters, and raw fleeces. They have raised sheep, horses, chickens, and now bees for over 50 years. Their interests remain in farming now that they are both retired, Jan has authored many farm books (found in the Shop section!) and John does beekeeping and farm projects.
buds
Plants and wood! We started growing food for our family on the farm. We have a diverse fruit orchard and are be able to offer neighbors fruits and vegetables from our farm shack. The other “bud” part is woodworking. When we moved to the farm we discovered we inherited hundreds of dead or downed Ash trees due to the Emerald Ash Borer. Now Ash wood is a great hardwood so we thought lets make some useful stuff with it! Then so began, the furniture business. We started out of our garage. Then we grew out of it and the all the dust! Next we bought a saw mill. Then we needed more wood storage, then onto the massive barn building. Followed by a kiln. Jeff creates custom furniture pieces that are created here on the farm. They are milled, kiln-dried, planed, and cut into the perfect custom furniture piece.
bawwks!
Our pasture raised chickens live most of their lives outdoors and perch at night in our spacious old barn. They eat bugs, ticks, grass, and anything else they can forage. They are fed kitchen food scraps and supplemented with Dexter Mill non GMO chicken feed. They roam around our fruit orchard, front yard visiting guests, and among the forest understory. We have a wide variety of breeds including Brahmas, Australorps, Americaunas, Rhode Island Reds, Marans, Lakenvelder, Dominique, Sussex, Orpingtons, and Wyandottes. We typically have 1-2 roosters to offer hawk protection for the gals.
