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Developing Domestic Elderberry Production and Markets
61 Plays1 day ago
In the 90s, a small team of researchers from the University of Missouri tasted some elderberry wine and wondered why this ubiquitous native fruit wasn’t a part of local farming operations. Nearly three decades later, Missouri leads the country in elderberry production. Kate speaks with Patrick Byers and David Buehler, two people who helped build the domestic elderberry market, about the cross-sector collaborations that made it possible.
The Taproot Podcast is an initiative of the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program, a project funded by the USDA National Organic Program to support transitioning and organic producers with mentorship and technical assistance and to grow the greater organic community. Learn more at organictransition.org.
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Guest Bios
Patrick Byers, recently retired from the position of Horticulture Field Specialist with the Webster County office of University of Missouri Extension, was born in Nebraska and raised in the Midwest. His educational background includes horticulture degrees from the Universities of Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas. Patrick’s 33-year career touched all aspects of horticulture, and his most recent job focused on advisement to fruit and vegetable farmers with the goal of supporting sustainability and profitability. His passions include berries (especially elderberry), garlic, native fruits and nuts, hops and orchids. In retirement he is developing his own homestead on 24 rocky Ozark acres in south Missouri.
David Buehler, known to most simply as Farmer Dave, is the founder and driving force behind Buehler Farms, which he owns and operates alongside his wife and business partner, Ann Buehler. Their farm sits on land that has been in Dave’s family since 1899. Buehler Farms serves as the umbrella company for their broader elderberry ecosystem, including ElderFarms, which produces finished consumer elderberry wellness products, and Nobleberry, their emerging functional elderberry soda line.
Dave has spent years studying and refining elderberry production, from nursery propagation to large-scale orchard design. Buehler Farms supports growers across the region through custom American elderberry installations with a berry buyback program, raw bulk product supply, and practical, experience-based consulting. His approach centers on clear communication, proven methods, and helping growers create real opportunities to diversify and strengthen their operations.
Dave’s vision is simple: help build a strong regional elderberry network where the small, ordinary farmer can thrive.
Helpful Links
Credits
This work was funded and supported by the USDA National Organic Program, Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP)
Produced by Kate Cowie-Haskell
Podcast art by Geri Shonka
Thank you to Jackie Casteel and Will Chiles for the inspiration for this episode.
Music:
- Ghost Solos by Lucas Gonze, from the Free Music Archive
- Chasin It by Jason Shaw, from the Free Music Archive
Recommended
Transcript
Elderberry's Historical and Agricultural Emergence
00:00:00
Speaker
The elder tree has been used as food and medicine for thousands of years. And if you've never eaten the berries or the flowers from the elder tree, you've definitely driven by them.
00:00:13
Speaker
The tree thrives in ditches and disturbed areas, making it a frequent sight along highways. And it's native to much of North and South America and grows across most of the present-day United States.
00:00:27
Speaker
But despite this ubiquity, elderberries have not played a role in U.S. agriculture until very recently. In the nineteen ninety s researchers at the University of Missouri started experimenting with elderberry cultivars and working with farmers to establish an elderberry market in the U.S. Today, Missouri leads the country with over 400 acres in elderberry production.
00:00:51
Speaker
In this episode, I'm sharing conversations with two people who helped build the domestic elderberry market. My name is Kate Cowie Haskell. Welcome to the Taproot Project.
Pioneer Efforts in Elderberry Cultivation
00:01:17
Speaker
Hi, I'm Patrick Byers. I'm recently retired from University Missouri Extension and served Missouri farmers, commercial specialty crop farmers, for 18 plus years as a horticulture field specialist based in southwest Missouri.
00:01:33
Speaker
Patrick is part of the original team of researchers who advocated for elderberries in Missouri. We spoke about the origins of that project and the resulting collaborations with farmers.
00:01:44
Speaker
And we happen to be at a small fruit research meeting, berry research meeting in Wichita, Kansas. And just south of Wichita, there's a winery ah called Wildwood Cellars. And they hosted a ah very nice banquet in the evening for our our group.
00:02:01
Speaker
And we were served elderberry wine. And it was good. And Andy and I were or just kind of talking about elderberries and realized that we had both picked elderberries as children. Our mothers made elderberry jelly.
00:02:16
Speaker
And, you know, that was kind of cool, but we realized we really didn't know that much about elderberries and we hadn't heard of anyone really working with elderberries to turn it from a wild harvested crop into a profit center for farmers.
00:02:29
Speaker
And that is kind of the genesis of of our interest in elderberries. I was back in 1997 and the first thing we did as good researchers do is try to find out, you know, who's done the work before us so we don't have to repeat the work. And after a pretty extensive literature search, there just really weren't many papers out there on elderberry. You know, there was some some work developing improved elderberry cultivars that happened back in the the nineteen twenty s in New York, and then ah later on in the 1950s and 1960s in the yeah maritime provinces of Canada. But
00:03:06
Speaker
really very little work had been done on on the horticultural aspects of elderberry, how to grow the crop and how to grow it profitably, and also how to process the crop and you know make value-added products from the crop. And so we kind of started with the CleanSafe, which was very, very very exciting.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah. why Why do you think there wasn't more about elderberries done already? Well, you know, ah there was an elderberry industry based on wild harvested plants, and that seemed to be about as far as anything had gone.
00:03:39
Speaker
And a lot of elderberries were wild harvested, you know, tons and tons in the Midwest. And and they were used for products like jellies and and wine and and juices and that sort of thing. But there there there began an interest in elderberry as a health supplement, as as a a plant that has healthful qualities.
00:04:00
Speaker
And, you know, the the late 90s, there was a lot of interest in people taking charge of their health. And elderberry was receiving some buzz, if you want to call it that, because of the the the healthful aspects of the yeah the first the juice and then the flowers and and perhaps other parts of the plant as well. But we began to to see some interest in growing it as a cultivated plant.
00:04:24
Speaker
When you start to work with health supplements, you really need a clear idea of what is in the berries, the raw material that you're going to use to make the health supplement. And with wild harvested fruits, you really don't know.
00:04:37
Speaker
And so we realized this, you know the the early part of our work, as I mentioned, was to try to figure out who had done things before us. And we were interested in which ah improved elderberry cultivars were available because a cultivar is just that. It's it's a a plant that has known characteristics.
00:04:57
Speaker
And again, unlike a wild plant where you really don't know much about it other than you know what you can physically see with your eyes. But a cultivar has has known qualities. There were a few cultivars available, as I had mentioned.
00:05:08
Speaker
None of them really did that well in Missouri. And, you know, we found this interesting because elderberry is, and you know, it's a native North American plant. has a huge range from the Gulf Coast up into Canada, from the eastern seaboard to the Rocky Mountains originally, and perhaps even beyond that.
00:05:25
Speaker
But the ones, the cultivars that were available, back in the 80s and 90s, just weren't that well suited for the Midwest. And so we began to look at our native elderberry plants in the Midwest. and And the early work was basically trying to identify superior wild plants and bringing them into culture and growing them and and doing analytical work with the berries and with the flowers to understand you know what was in them.
00:05:50
Speaker
And out of that early work, a handful of improved cultivars were were developed and And those have been more or less the backbone of the Midwestern industry.
00:06:03
Speaker
i Fast forward to to four years ago, and you know and and we could talk more about other things. I'm sure we will. But I do want to highlight the fact that we now have organized elderberry breeding programs, at least two of them in the Midwest now. And the goal of these programs is to take those early cultivars and and make them even better through controlled breeding. And so that is an extremely exciting development.
00:06:26
Speaker
So how have farmers been involved in this process like since 1997?
Farmer Contributions to Elderberry Industry Growth
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, how ah how have you been and your team been working or with with farmers to try to develop elderberries that work here?
00:06:41
Speaker
We have just a core group of of very helpful farmers that have guided our projects, both extension and research from the beginning. And not only have they guided, they've also put forth the effort to write letters of support for grant proposals. In some cases, they have helped fund work through their efforts.
00:07:01
Speaker
They provided research sites for us to plant plants and and, you know, do our projects. And again, very, very helpful. This has has been a fruitful, a very fruitful no pun intended collaboration from, no pun intended, i remember early workshops back in the late ninety s and early two thousand s where you know, it was through the efforts of farmers saying to their colleagues, you need to be here. You know, the the researchers are coming down to talk about elderberries and, you know, there might be a handful in in a given year. And then the next year and we would be building on those numbers. And now our our annual elderberry meeting it attracts, you know, and in excess of of two thousand to 300 people from across the country and even internationally. So it's it's very exciting to see what, you know, that the efforts of farmers
00:07:50
Speaker
you know, hand in hand with researchers and extension workers have accomplished with elderberry. David Buehler is one of the farmers who invested in elderberries early on, and he's been an advocate for the crop ever since. He runs Elder Farm, a certified organic farm focused on elderberry production, located in Mount Vernon, Missouri.
00:08:11
Speaker
I spoke with David about why he made the switch to elderberries and how the crop continues to change his life and his community. Dave, I'm wondering maybe if we could just start by talking about your farm. um I know that it's been in your family for generations, and um I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit of a walkthrough of ah how how the farm has changed over the decades that it's been in your family.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, so my great-grandparents, immigrated here from Switzerland. And they settled in this little valley in Missouri in 1899.
00:08:52
Speaker
Started just basically a small little farm dairy operation. There was about 100 acres to begin with. Did some different crops.
00:09:04
Speaker
It kind of grew some through the years. We're some over 300 acres now. Still relatively small farm.
00:09:15
Speaker
Generations of kind of doing the same traditional type farming. And back, I would say back in 2012, I had been going to the University of Missouri Research Farm, and they always have a field day once a year.
00:09:34
Speaker
And they kept talking about this elderberry. And it kind of had piqued my interest a little bit. So they, about 25 years ago, started just gathering cuttings from the wild from other people and doing some research on how to grow it and what it needs to flourish and push production. What are some of the issues with insects and disease?
00:10:02
Speaker
And so they laid just an amazing foundation for farmers for us to kind of take and run with. um I had a distant cousin. He planted ah a few acres. And for the first year, I kind of watched him and I thought, hmm, I think I'm going to try this. So we planted 10 acres in 2012. It was a big, massive planting at the time. Most of what had been planted was like quarter or half acre. Maybe an acre was a big spot.
00:10:35
Speaker
But we really kind of wanted to dive into this and see if we could do this on a farm scale. And i can definitely tell you, I've had plenty of failures. a lot of it from the very beginning, there was no equipment really for the de-stemming. There was no harvest equipment.
00:10:57
Speaker
So every step of the way, we've kind of all had to pioneer how we're growing this, how we're pushing production. We build de-stemming machines now to help take the berries off the stem.
00:11:12
Speaker
So it it's kind of been a journey, and i should say not only for us, but other small farmers that had started looking at this and as an option too.
00:11:24
Speaker
So 2012, you planted your elderberries, 20 acres. That's a pretty amazing investment. Your website talks about like eco-friendly being a big part of your farming philosophy. um Why did it feel like elderberries fit into that? i think it was i think it was kind of looking at profitability per acre.
00:11:45
Speaker
ah We had some soybean ground that I knew that profitability, i was just making maybe at the best a few hundred acres, a few hundred dollars per acre each year.
00:11:57
Speaker
And looking at production, capabilities for elderberries and looking at, oh, I can make several thousand dollars per acre with these. So it's like I only have so many acres, so each acre has to be as profitable as it possibly could be.
00:12:16
Speaker
And what we did, we had some soybean ground that it was kind of erodible, especially when we had floods. So taking it out of tillage and putting it into some kind of perennial, along with grass and some clovers and and other different plants, we could hold the soil.
00:12:38
Speaker
ah we can build the soil back up. um So yeah, They're kind of in an area that every once in while they'll get some floods, but usually the water drains off of them pretty quickly. And, you know, we have zero soil loss in those areas.
00:12:55
Speaker
so And looking at a lot of fields that maybe they're small, irregular shaped, maybe they're hard to get equipment in. Kind of looking at that also, my dad was an old traditional farmer and he he thought it was just crazy. You know, he he definitely had some he definitely had some choice words for me about it. But...
00:13:22
Speaker
i I just had this feeling like I feel like this is going to be something someday. And we just kept plugging along with it. And especially it seems like in the last since COVID, gosh, it's just exploded.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. That's pretty interesting. um Is that just because you think there's been like more talk about like natural remedies and and health? Is that where most of the interest is coming from?
Health Benefits and Market Potential of Elderberries
00:13:51
Speaker
I feel like we're in a health and wellness revolution. People are looking at everything they're consuming, whether it's food, whether it's pharmaceuticals, whatever it might be. I think people are becoming so much more aware of ingredients.
00:14:08
Speaker
um Used to, I think we all felt like, you know, we we could eat anything and we could trust whatever was in our foods or or medicines was good for us. and um I think through the years, people were just, they want to know more. And this, this is a plant that's been used for thousands of years.
00:14:30
Speaker
You know, Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, this was his medicine cabinet. He turned to elderberries for so many different things in the human health.
00:14:41
Speaker
And we see it all the time. People, they use these products. Um, We use all natural ingredients and you and they really get a response. You know, the human body is an amazing healing machine if we give it the right nutrition to do that.
00:15:01
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. I'm curious. So you were talking ah about this a little bit. um But so in the last like 20 or 30 years, the elderberry industry, the domestic elderberry industry has really been created and is in the still in the process of being created. um And farmers and researchers have been working together to develop cultivars from native elder trees. And, you know, there's so many pieces that go into that, like educating the public about what an elderberry is and what the benefits are, figuring out which value added products are going to be marketable. um
00:15:41
Speaker
Like you said, developing the machinery to actually process the elderberries. Can you say more about how you and maybe other elderberry farmers have been a part of the collaboration in building the elderberry industry?
00:15:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's really been a, it's been a great community of people that, very sharing. We've had a lot of little elderberry conferences. We have one big one in Columbia every year, and then we have smaller regional ones.
00:16:12
Speaker
And then farmers and speakers coming together sharing what they have learned. Maybe they somebody tries something and it works. Maybe somebody tried something and it doesn't work. and just that openness and sharing, because we will all want to build this into an industry.
00:16:31
Speaker
the The demand is huge. ah You know, I was talking about the European supply chain and and how we import as far as the united states 95 of all of our elderberries from europe and If we look at food sustainability, food security, we want to definitely grow the majority of that here in the United States.
00:17:01
Speaker
So that's what we've really been pushing for since the very beginning. You know, we have have a little more antioxidant rich elderberry here in the United States with these American varieties. um We've, have some with European varieties have some cyanide issues where we don't have that with these American elderberries. So the universities have Their first grant, I think they got like $5 million. dollars
00:17:32
Speaker
So they divvied that up. lot went into health research, variety development, mechanical harvesting, processing. And now they're working on another $8 million dollars grant. And I definitely hope hope they get that.
00:17:49
Speaker
Right now, they're looking at Alzheimer's dementia research with the brain health. looking at all types of antiviral aspects with the elderberry, looking at weight loss and how the gut biome can be healed with the elderberry. So all of these amazing things, you can see the excitement in these professors' faces that they're just, they're onto something good and they want to continue to keep pushing this forward.
00:18:21
Speaker
And I think what i think that The American public is a lot more educated on elderberry. When we first began, you know, majority people, and it was in our diet with our grandparents, our great grandparents, and you'd see it a lot in jellies and wines.
00:18:36
Speaker
Now you're seeing it in all kinds of different food products as an ingredient. Yeah. is Is this, is like health and alternative health and wellness something that you were interested in before elderberry, or has it kind of come since you've started growing it?
00:18:53
Speaker
You know, it it was, I was just a farmer looking at profitability per acre, and looking what I could grow on my property that would give me the most profit.
00:19:10
Speaker
It was not something that I ever thought or dreamed about that I'd be going down this road where we're manufacturing products, we're helping other farmers get started. Gosh, we travel all over.
00:19:25
Speaker
i go we go to all these other states and we help farmers get started. We'll maybe do custom planting. We, Missouri certified nursery. So all the new varieties that are coming out, we grow.
00:19:41
Speaker
So transplanting these plants on farms, sitting up their irrigation. a lot of times we do a turnkey orchard where we'll come in, um Look at your soil, amend it, do the planting, mulching, irrigation. And sometimes people want to do it themselves and we just sell them the plants. But then also setting contracts up or setting up a market for those farmers when they do get started growing.
00:20:08
Speaker
They know that they've got a market to sell their berries. And I think that's been a big thing with agroforestry. In all different aspects, I don't care whether it's chestnuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, whatever, whatever these farmers are wanting to grow. One of the biggest things that I see kind of missing in that chain is making sure that they have markets set up.
00:20:36
Speaker
to sell their raw materials and and that's something we've really started addressing these universities with you know we we're very appreciative for all the research and all the all the work they've done but one of the missing pieces we want them to concentrate more on is helping us as farmers so we're going to grow these different things making sure that we have markets set up to buy these. you can You can have these farmers grow all these amazing agroforestry products, but if they don't have a place to sell them, it's not going to work. Yeah. so that's How have you figured out which which products
Processing and Farming Techniques for Elderberries
00:21:14
Speaker
to turn? Because elderberries typically, like you're not selling raw berries, or are you? So,
00:21:20
Speaker
We do a lot of initial processing, so maybe berries come in oh we'll put them in freezers, we have underground storage in caves. Maybe they go back out as raw berries or we do pressing here, so a lot of it goes out as raw juice.
00:21:39
Speaker
And so a company will buy that broad juice. They'll add it to whatever product they're making. Right now we're doing some freeze drying. We have a huge freeze drying facility that's just started here in our community.
00:21:52
Speaker
So we can freeze dry berries. We can freeze dry pulp. We can freeze dry that and grind it down into a powder. Now we have something that's easily shippable, easily workable. It's more of a stable ingredient. You know, anytime we ship frozen juice or berries, you know, it's ah it's more expensive.
00:22:14
Speaker
So if we can freeze dry it, pull all the moisture out of it, much lighter a ship, my shelf stable. So that's really been a big key that has just started here in the last month or two.
00:22:27
Speaker
so Wow, that's really recent. Yeah. were you And you say in your community, it a community resource? is the freeze drying facility something you've started? ah they They came to us first. They wanted to make sure that if they were going to build this facility that we could at least send them enough volume that it would to make it worthwhile. So it was kind of some friends of ours that they were looking at. Gosh, they freeze dry mushrooms now, elderberry, all kinds of pet treats. meat, aloe vera. I mean, they just freeze dry all kinds of different products. And it's really interesting. And they have two of the largest freeze dryers, I think, going the United States now. And gosh, you can stack about 2,000 pounds of raw material in each freeze dryer. And within a day or so, you know, it's it's down to the proper moisture. So that's been a really piece of the puzzle that's helped us because,
00:23:30
Speaker
Most of the people were just freeze drying on these small little home units and you just can't do the volume um to make it worthwhile. I mean, you can on a very small scale, but when you're talking thousands and thousands of pounds of berries, you know, you need, you need to do efficiency.
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. What are some of the characteristics of elderberries as a crop? Like I'm kind of looking to get a sense of like, what does your farm look like? What does it mean to have elderberry, like acres and acres of elderberries? Yeah. Characteristics as a crop.
00:24:06
Speaker
It looks, it looks like any, it looks kind of like a orchard or vineyard. um Most time our rows are anywhere from 14 20 foot apart.
00:24:19
Speaker
and We plant the plants usually about three to four feet ah spacing. So you've got wide alleys and that we keep mowed. We do a lot of different companion plants, a lot of clovers, a lot of different other grasses.
00:24:37
Speaker
And those alleys kind of help you go through and do harvesting or whatever work you need to do. Elderberries are, once you get them established, they're they're pretty self-sufficient. You know, other than mowing, some drip irrigation, and some kind of fertilization, once you get them up and going, they just...
00:25:01
Speaker
They just produce year after year. And and what I like about elderberries, you know, grapes, you have to do a bunch of trellising. You have to do a lot of spraying.
00:25:11
Speaker
Elderberries are just the opposite. You don't have to do any trellising. You don't have to do any spraying. They will pretty much, you know, we're taking just native varieties, basically planting these varieties all the way from Florida, all the way up into Canada, So they're very weather tolerant.
00:25:31
Speaker
um We're, weed and grass control seems to be, i think, one of the biggest things we've always kind of worked with and just using different types of mulches around the root zone.
00:25:46
Speaker
A lot of people use tree chips. You can use old hay and Some people use the black kind of fabric for weed control. I like to try and do more of a natural mulch.
00:25:59
Speaker
We do sometimes, we do compost, kind of do layers of different things and you're keeping that weed and grass kind of out of them, but you're also kind of shading that root, of the area where the roots are and and keeping that moisture in there at the same time.
00:26:17
Speaker
so we What we're trying to do is just mimic nature as much as we can. you know, most of the time when you see elderberries, you're going to see them in the ditches or or next to kind of streams. It's not like they like to be sitting in water, but they definitely like to have kind of a damp soil. So almost 99% the farms we put in will install some kind of drip irrigation just to kind of keep that soil and it's just kind of moist. That's really what they like. And you know, mostly, at most of that is, you know, your July and August time frame and that's usually when they're bearing fruit. Most time in June here in Missouri, they're going to be all flowered out. So you're going to see these huge white flowers
00:27:07
Speaker
And when you go in these fields, it smells just like acres of vanilla cake. Oh, gosh. Just an amazing aroma. And ah one of the things we've been doing with the flowers is making skin
Sustainability and Resilience of Elderberry Crops
00:27:21
Speaker
care. And skin care right now makes about 60% of our product sales. Wow. So it has really taken off. ah the University of Missouri has started to do some basic science with the elderflower, and they're very excited. And that, you know, we're always looking at different things that we can create or sell from this from this plant. And we use the leaf in a lot of different salves. So it's very much like the comfrey leaf where it's just very healing.
00:27:58
Speaker
We had a burn patient, that one of my workers kind of made a salve out of the elderly. And he texts back, he said, Oh my God, he said, that this is better than anything in their hospital they're giving me for both, you know, healing and pain. So it makes you feel really good that, you know, you're creating these things and people are really seeing some kind of response from them.
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Are you, so, so many of your products have ah like healing and wellness, bent to them. um for For example, like for your skincare products, are you specifically trying to hire or work with people who like have herbalist trading? like Where's the expertise coming from that actually informs those products?
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's it's kind of been an evolution. um a lot of times we'll look at, okay, let's just say, how do you make a natural lotion?
00:28:57
Speaker
You know, we kind of want maybe this kind of a base in it. So we kind of kind of just do studying, like how to make that, and then we tweak it. So it's like, okay, instead of this, we're going to add elderflower. Instead of this, we're going to add that. And through farmer's markets through the years, we've you watch people, they'll maybe try a lotion or maybe they'll try a product. And how do you like it?
00:29:22
Speaker
You know, is it too greasy? Is it too oily? a fragrance too strong? And then just continue to tweak it until we get something that we really, really like. But skincare is, I'm really excited with skincare. It's, ah if if you look at the label anytime on back of,
00:29:41
Speaker
Say you go someplace and you buy a product. And if you look at the label at a lot of what's in these ingredients, all those ingredients within 26 seconds, you put it on the skin, it's going to be in your bloodstream.
00:29:54
Speaker
So I think that's something we really need to be more aware of. And I know this is probably getting more into the product side than the farming side, but.
00:30:05
Speaker
Well, it's all, yeah. Farming is also, you know, finding a market for it too. So it's all connected. Yeah. um yeah I think this, the elderberry fits the regenerative, sustainable,
00:30:20
Speaker
um it checks all these check marks. And We have both organic fields and we have non-organic fields. And same as our farmers, we have organic farmers. And there's markets for both of it. Organic definitely brings, it'll bring another dollar per pound. So, I mean, it's definitely worth transitioning to organic on elderberry, especially because of the, we'll let's see some insects. We'll see Japanese beetle.
00:30:53
Speaker
and maybe an elderberry beetle every once in a while But no more than what they do. They they have like a maybe a couple week life cycle and then they're gone.
00:31:04
Speaker
We monitor those areas if we have an insect, but most the time we just kind of, and there's organic things we can treat with that, but most the time we just kind of let it run its course. And by the time the insect is gone, the plant is already shooting out new leaves if they ate any leaves. So that's that's what I really like about it is this plan has survived thousands and thousands of years and it's, it's fought off all these different things and it's, it's tough as a boot.
00:31:35
Speaker
So. Yeah.
Revitalization and Legacy in Elderberry Farming
00:31:38
Speaker
How has your livelihood changed since you started introducing elderberries?
00:31:46
Speaker
We're,
00:31:50
Speaker
it's been a journey, you know, uh, I love what what I'm doing now. I love what we're growing. um We've reinvested you know everything we've ever made here in the last 10, 12 years back into this. you know We've taken old dairy barns and old barns here on the farm. We've remodeled them. We've updated them. We've bought new equipment. We've added personnel.
00:32:18
Speaker
So every time we make a little bit, we've just kind of put right back into it. um I feel like we've finally kind of really gaining some traction. um And it's fun. it's It's fun to see the excitement in all of these farmers' faces. I think agriculture is really at a crossroads right now.
00:32:41
Speaker
You know, ah these crop farmers are struggling. They've not made much money in the last four years. ah The beef farmers are definitely, they're making some money now, but, you know, for decades they haven't.
00:32:54
Speaker
And so this is definitely an enterprise that, you know, we're looking a lot at silvopasture now where maybe we're running livestock and elderberries at certain times of the year. So we're not basically losing any acreage.
00:33:09
Speaker
We're just kind of um being more creative with the acreage we do have. Yeah. And so your farm is called Elder Farm. I don't know. I wonder if that is both like a nod to the elderflowers, but also to like the generations that the farm has been in your family. Is it a double meaning?
00:33:28
Speaker
it It definitely was. um It was not planned like that. i just one of my hippies that works for me came up with it. And ah we kind of at the time was like, oh, that's catchy. But as the years went by, you know, it definitely has had that meaning to me is like, you know,
00:33:49
Speaker
All of our elders ahead of us um worked hard for all of us and and kind of paved the way. and um Yeah. Do you ever feel like an elder yourself?
00:34:02
Speaker
A berry? ah yeah ah i am i feel very blessed.
00:34:15
Speaker
I think the fun in farming for me was I had lost it. I had lost, I felt like year after year I'd put in corn or beans or cattle and it was just turning money, really wasn't making anything. i And once I kind of got into this and then we have such a great crew here, we probably have, most time we have about eight to 10 people working for us full time and Watching the excitement, and a lot of them are are in their 20s and 30s, and they will probably never be able to get into agriculture any other way, but getting them ah into parts of this. Some of them do production on the products. Some of them do the nursery. Some of them do the farm work. Some of them do the office work. and Finding that great team of people that...
00:35:08
Speaker
it takes a team of people. There's a lot of things i am not worth a darn, but thankfully they are, you know, and, and once you create or find group of people, man, it, it just makes things so much easier.
00:35:24
Speaker
I think that's such a magical time now in ag. I think that, like said, I feel like we're at the crossroads. We need to look at the corn and the beans and the, And the other traditional things. and And there's definitely need for that. And that's definitely important. But maybe looking at some of these other sustainable regenerative type plants and agroforestry systems that we can do that only helps benefit, you know, the environment and humans at the same time.
00:36:06
Speaker
Thank you to David and Patrick for their time. Thank you also to Jackie Castile and Will Chiles for inspiring this episode. The Taproot Project is produced by me, Kate Kawihaskel.
00:36:19
Speaker
The Taproot Project is an initiative of the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program. a project funded by the USDA National Organic Program to support transitioning in organic producers with mentorship and technical assistance and to grow the greater organic community.
00:36:35
Speaker
You can learn more at organictransition.org.