It’s a cool, rainy August day here on the farm. I have decided to take advantage of this and write our first blog post. The goal of this blog is to be transparent with everything we do, share useful information we have learned, and journal our progress. We hope this is a useful tool for current customers and people thinking about buying our products as well as those with a desire to learn new skills.

We have a lot of changes coming in the near future so I thought I would write about where we are right now. Some of this is a repeat from our About Us page, but I also realize that this will change over time.

We started making soap back in 2011 for our family. We loved the soap and started giving it as gifts and sharing it with anyone that wanted to try it. They loved the soap too and requested to buy it. We weren’t sure about having a business, but we appreciated hearing the stories of how it was helping people with cracked/bleeding hands, eczema, and dry skin, and they loved knowing what they were putting on their bodies. We started making additional skin care items for ourselves and found that people loved these too. Because of the encouragement of friends and family, and our desire to help people attain more natural products, our business, Mentink Family Farms, developed. Our primary purpose is to honor and glorify God in all we do and to be a blessing to others through our business.

We are blessed to be the fifth generation living on about 4 acres outside of Osceola NE. At the beginning of our marriage we both thought we would never farm! That same year, about 2002, we planted our first unsuccessful garden. We didn’t give up and each year it got better. We loved knowing what we were eating and especially the flavor of our own food. In a quest to add more clean food, we added chickens in about 2007. After this, God really changed our hearts about farming and put a love for it on our hearts. We started growing more food in our beyond organic garden and slowly adding more animals to raise for ourselves. We now have two family milk cows: Candice and May, 4 calves, a berkshire hog named Penelope, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and a horse (for fun). We are very excited about our recent purchase of registered Katahdin sheep. Lord willing, we plan to grow our small herd and sell breeding stock and meat in the near future.

Due to deceitful labeling laws we believe the only way to know what we are eating or putting on our skin is to do most of it ourselves and start buying locally. As people see how we are growing and raising our own food, we have had a lot of requests to sell these products too.  We have been praying about how we can bless others with these same products. Lord willing, we will be buying 20 acres from our parents, which would allow us to have extra to sell. Our goal is to raise more animals in a rotational pasture based system, including Berkshire pigs, grass-fed beef, and Katahdin sheep. We are hoping to have extra duck and chicken eggs available in the near future. We are working to grow our treatment free bee hives as well as integrating permaculture design into our gardens. We haven’t used any chemicals (not even on our yard) for the last 14 years. We will continue to strive to raise superior, beyond organic products, with less impact on the environment, at the best price we can without sacrificing quality. We are growing our business slowly with no debt in order to keep our prices down and to not be a slave to a debtor.