Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

If you don’t find the answer you were looking for, feel free to reach out to us via our contact form.

General Questions

We love volunteers! Right now, our volunteer opportunities are quite limited because of COVID-19. But in the future we will welcome your help—from processing garlic to monitoring wildlife on the farm, to stuffing envelopes for mailings and more. Check back for future opportunities.

Sharing Our Roots has a diversified stream of funding sources. Individuals donate their hard-earned dollars. Family and private foundations provide us with grants. We have support from county, state and federal governments as well. We offer services, such as poultry trainings, for a fee. Our farm produces products like garlic and elderflower that provide farm income. We also have patient financing from firms eager to see perennial agriculture models succeed.

Questions About the Farm

We have a regularly scheduled farm tour once a month on the weekend. We also host events focused on a variety of topics, from coppicing elderberries to growing perennials to sequestering carbon on-farm. If you’d like to schedule a private tour, please email: info@sharing-our-roots.org.

Sharing Our Roots, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and Sharing Our Roots Farm, an LLC, support each other through a variety of programs and funding sources. The nonprofit provides education and outreach, food security programming and much more to local and regional farmers and community members. Sharing Our Roots Farm is demonstrating innovative models needed to provide income and ecological services using a perennial agriculture system.

In 2016, Sharing Our Roots acquired 100 acres of degraded corn-on-corn farmland and is working to restore it to health by keeping the soil covered, planting perennials, cleaning up waterways, and adding wetlands. We also are working to improve production and developing markets for elderflower, asparagus, garlic and more. In addition, we are conducting on-farm research to improve the profitability of poultry on the farm.

Our farm is a public-facing farm; we exist to share with others. We share the land, the machinery, produce and rootstock, technical expertise and more. We also exist to demonstrate innovation on the land. We are showing how a perennial farm can be profitable and help increase markets for alternative crops. We are researching farm-level ways to dry elderflower along with alternatives to feed chickens with less soy. In partnership with Dakota County, our farm is demonstrating an innovative conservation-ag easement and restoring ecosystem services. Learn more about our 100 acres of innovation here.