We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rich Westerberg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rich below.
Rich, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Our “business” evolved from a personal choice to find a small farm where we could grow better food for ourselves.
We were living in the city and wanted to move into the country to have fewer neighbors and more fresh air. I have always been a gardener and wanted to see if I could raise a lot of the food we would eat. We planned on a large garden and to raise chickens for eggs.
Once we found our farm, and began to raise veggies and chickens, word got out and others told us they were looking for fresh food too. Our business was born!
It has been a long term commitment, and a LOT of work, but our gardens have expanded, as have the number of different vegetables we grow, and we’ve added to our flock of chickens. We supply eggs to 20+ families each week and also have four families who receive all their veggies from us each week!
It’s really satisfying to be able to eat fresh vegetables and eggs, and to share the produce with so many around our community.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
In the past, I’ve owned a couple businesses and I’ve helped other people start up their new businesses. I’m an entrepreneur at heart. Starting up the farm was no different than any other business other than I needed a few different tools and a lot of seeds. I had a lot of gardening experience, so that helped!
One of the things we’re very proud of is that we’re 100% chemical free. No fertilizers, weed killers or other chemicals are used. Our chickens provide a LOT of manure and we compost that for later use in the garden. Extra garden produce goes to the chickens for extra food and everything maintains itself.
We’ve been working to maximize our harvest totals. Our garden is only .29 acres right now but we were able to harvest almost 3,000 pounds of produce last season!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Running a farm requires constant work and resilience. Being in Minnesota, our growing season is really only four months (Jun 1 – Sept 30). Frost is always trying to kill our plants and the heat of summer tries for the same.
During the growing season, the garden is a fulltime job with planting, tending, watering, weeding and harvesting taking a lot of time! Add in the chickens and we’ve got a LOT to do, seven days a week.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Since we had never owned or operated a farm before, we felt we had a great story for social media. We started our YouTube channel the first spring after buying the farm. We wanted to tell our story and show all the steps we’ve taken and all the setbacks. We were hoping to share our successes and also help others not make the same mistakes!
The Old Swede’s Farm YouTube channel now has over 4,000 followers from around the globe. We’ve also got a great audience on Instagram and Facebook. I think our chickens are the real stars of the channel but the garden shows off well during the growing season!
If you’re thinking of hosting a social media channel, think through your “story” and what you want to tell. It’s not all rosy and don’t be afraid to show the bad along with the good. Tell your story, and people will come!
Contact Info:
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theoldswedesfarm
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oldswedesfarm/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083348348691
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/OldSwedesFarm
Image Credits
Rich Westerberg