By Alena Mentink
Butchering our first duck came about in a rather unpleasant way. It started with a snapping turtle that the boys discovered on the sledding hill. The turtle looked harmless enough, but thankfully the boys knew better than to touch it. They thought it might be a painted turtle, like we have seen before, but since they were not at all sure, they left it alone. Continue reading “Enjoying the Weather”
Our family has been enjoying the beautiful spring weather and spending lots of time outside. Now that Dad has finished setting up the play set, the babies love to play there and also enjoy helping Mom in the garden. The boys have taken several fishing trips down to the dam. Continue reading “Work and Recreations on and off the Farm”
By Alena Mentink
The rain we received has been a huge blessing. The pastures and hay fields suddenly sprang to life and became a carpet of green. The lilac bushes leaped into bloom, although we think that a late frost killed a large portion of the flowers. The bees have become active and have been feasting on the many dandelions surrounding our property. Continue reading “The Blessings of Spring!”
By Alena Mentink
This week truly has felt as if spring has come. Part of the reason for this is due to the warm weather. Another reason is because we have been planting seeds. At the end of last week we repotted all the house plants that we ordered. Continue reading “Signs of Spring on the Mentink Family Farm”
Permaculture is working with nature instead of against it. It is also making thoughtful observations before putting useless labor into a project. Instead of thinking that things need to be done a certain way, permaculture is remaining open to new ideas. The term permaculture is made up of the words permanent, agriculture, and culture. This means that you are creating a permanent, self-sufficient food supply that will sustain a culture. Permaculture was first created for the use of food production. However, because permaculture is an idea that stimulates new thoughts, permaculture is continually growing and changing. Continue reading “What is Permaculture?”
By Alena Mentink
This winter has been very busy, fun, and full of new experiences. We have worked on school, made lots of plans, and enjoyed being outside. This fall, Dad and the boys went hunting. Continue reading “Our First Winter”
The last several months have felt like a whirlwind! We have prepared our old place to sell (pictured below), moved, established our camper outside of our new residence to temporarily live in, prepared our animals for winter, started cleaning up around our new place, made a lot of decisions, experienced a few unexpected hardships, prepared a wood chip garden, and started gutting our new, old house. We had A&A Roofing put a metal roof on our house. We hope to collect water for the gardens eventually. We also participated in our first holiday show and filled Christmas orders. We have met so many nice people through this transition!
Through all of this we continue to homeschool and encourage our kids in as many skills as we can. We also continue to grow/raise a lot of our food and make almost everything from scratch. We know the Lord has and is at work giving us extra energy and strength, wisdom, patience, and so much more! Our prayer is that we will be good stewards of what He has provided for us. We are so undeserving of His blessings! Continue reading “We Have Moved!”
Tomorrow will be our sixth week of the local farmer’s market. This is our first experience selling at a farmer’s market. Our family has had a lot of fun through this process. We have enjoyed visiting and educating our community about local, natural products and we are blessed to see our children grow as we attempt to instill an entrepreneurial spirit in them.
Our oldest Alena, 14, has been busy sewing aprons, weaving pot holders, and baking cinnamon rolls. Kailey, 11, has been baking bread each week. She recently purchased two nubian does. Caleb, 9, loves to build and has been making raised beds and recently started worm farming. Aiden, 6, will be raising 5 broilers this fall.
I hope to share some tips on selling at a farmer’s market after we have more experience.
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.
