We recently connected with Laura Tidrick and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Believe it or not, there was a time when owning a family farm was part of wishful thinking, and not necessarily something we thought we’d jump into fully.

So why did we start? The reasons are plentiful and our answers range from “fond memories made us do it!” to “something had to change so we didn’t feel awful anymore.”

If you’re wondering about the latter, we’re referring to the “F” word…. food allergies. Count us among the many who felt sick far too often from a combination of the foods we were consuming and the products we used on our bodies. Enough was enough, and we took matters into our own hands to become the primary source of our food and body care.

Obviously food allergies alone didn’t send us heading for the country to start a heritage hog operation. There has always been a deep love for farm life, with Laura having grown up on a farm; that was an experience we wanted for our family, too. We also consider ourselves foodies and having that connection to our food makes the experience of enjoying it much richer. We enjoy time spent in the kitchen cooking, canning, taste-testing, sharing a meal together, and creating the gluten and MSG-free seasoning blends you’ve come to enjoy; it fills our proverbial cup.

We had experience to give us confidence with our new adventure, with Jesse’s background in chemical engineering, we developed and tested our own line of gentle, effective soap products made with clean ingredients. Paired with Laura’s childhood and experience on her family farm including her grandmother’s recipes for soaps, we felt excited to start life on our farm.

Everything that led us here is what inspired our mission to create the highest quality food for our family, and also for our customers.

We hope our customers can tell the love and care we put into our products, all with the ultimate goal of helping you put healthy, local, and sustainable options on the table, and to nourish your body.

Using certified organic feed and pasture grazing, we raise heritage breed pork; free-range geese, ducks, quail and chickens for meat and eggs. We produce amazing, pure-white lard for cooking and handmade lard soaps.

Laura, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Mossycup Farms is a small 10 acre family farm, and that’s the way we like it. We believe in being connected to the foods we eat, and that’s why we’re proud to supply high quality pork, ducks, turkeys, chicken, eggs, and lard for our local community and beyond.

Our products are created with love and diligent care; the time we invest into raising and breeding our heritage pork pays off immensely in a way you can surely taste; our chickens roam freely on our property supplying us with eggs and, later on, tender meat, and our handmade soaps & seasoning blends are made in our on-site commercial kitchen using family recipes.

We started Mossycup Farms after a rough few years figuring out allergies and other health issues that we realized were significantly remedied when we cut out the middleman and raised and produced our own high quality, gluten-free, organic and ethical meat and body care items. Everything we create is rigorously tested (husband is a chemical engineer!) to ensure quality, safety, and effectiveness. If it doesn’t work for us, we won’t offer it for sale to you.

Everything we create is done with care, quality, and respect for our customers, our animals, and the Earth in mind.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I worked for a large company in Minneapolis for a number of years before moving to Iowa and buying the farm. Being polished, appearing to have everything under control and being knowledgable about all of the aspects of my job was important in that world. I was very concerned for the first few years of running our farm business about things being complete and “just so” before inviting customers to the farm or letting them try new products. I’ve learned that my customers don’t care that there’s paint chipping on one of the barns and the grass needs a mow. They enjoy following our journey and watching the farm grow and evolve. New products don’t have to be perfectly packaged and I can give them to our regulars to try out for us before we finalize things. Admitting our struggles is also part of the story and helps our customers understand when we shift gears and make changes.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I really think the biggest thing is that our family uses and eats everything we sell. Our customers know that we’ve dealt with food allergies and health issues and that I am PICKY about what our family eats and puts on their skin. When I am ready to offer a product for sale I have already researched and sourced ingredients that meet our standards, made many trial batches and have had our family use the products for weeks or months before rolling out a new product. They can come to our farm and see how the animals live or follow us on social media to see videos and pictures.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mossycupfarms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mossycupfarms/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mossycupfarms