We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Annie and Dennis Holtz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Annie and Dennis thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

In 2018 we started our micro farm and blacksmithing adventure by moving from the city to a 1.5 acre residential property in a small town. We turned our garage into a blacksmith studio and planted tons of flowers, fruits, and vegetables. The next year we started selling at a farmers market at a tiny scale. We just kept expanding the gardens over the next 3 years. During this time we built up clientele and started working with a local restaurant. All the while we were looking at larger acreage across several states to scale up. We made offers on a few and finally decided on the one we purchased in 2021, which ended up being 20 minutes from our house. Though we don’t live there yet and have to commute to farm it, we have been able to keep the current client base and expand significantly. We want to scale up even further by building a pole barn on the farm where we can teach others about regenerative agriculture, permaculture, blacksmithing, flower arranging, glass blowing. If you would like to see this happen, please check out our GoFundMe link on our website.

Annie and Dennis , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are a chemical-free farm in a sea of conventional farms. Our main products are flowers, garlic, CBD hemp, and forged items. We are in the process of creating a permaculture paradise where people can not only buy food and flowers, but come to learn about agriculture and the old crafts. Everything we do is at the service of building health: the health of the soil and our foods, the health of the community and rural economies. We work hard to regenerate and restore the soil. We work hard to create functional art that is not going to get sent to a landfill and can become proud heirloom items. When possible we visit scrap yards and repurpose steel and copper. We feel we are different because we are creating quality products that are not disposable. People are trying to get back to nature and get back to creating with their hands. We offer the opportunity to experience all of this in one place.

We do what we do because we are artists in our soul. We do what we do because the world is drowning in single-use items. We love to create heirloom products that won’t end up in a landfill, and people are proud to own.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Consistently showing up at the farmers market and getting to know our customers. Once we got to know our customers, they would recommend their friends and family because they were so happy with the quality of our work, our customer service, and our willingness to take on custom orders. Now we attend other art markets and have some brand recognition. It also helps being one of the only blacksmiths in the area.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Our expansion was to a property that has no electric, no water, and no buildings. We use 275-gallon water totes and run our irrigation off of a solar generator. On top of this, we commute to the farm almost every day to work. Annie still holds a full time job in addition to farming, and the days are long. If this does not illustrate resilience I don’t know what does! But it’s all in service of the goal to build the infrastructure there over the next couple of years.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wroughtironfarm.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wroughtironfarm/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/wroughtironfarm
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@wroughtironfarm1809
• Other: If you are able to help us build up the farm, we would greatly appreciate your help. No amount is too small! Our GoFundMe is located here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/build-wrought-iron-farm-with-us

Image Credits
Dennis and Annie Holtz