Name: Karen Knierim
Wildrose Farm Organics
www.wildrosefarm.com
Neighborhood you live in: Breezy Point
Tell us the background on Wild Rose.
Wildrose Farm has been in business for 31 years, using organic cotton for the past 12 years. Most of the knits come from a family farm in Texas, our wovens come from a mill in North Carolina. We make rugs from all the small scrap pieces of cotton, with the real tiny pieces we’ve had some paper made and had some countertops pressed for us, we donated the fabric scraps to the U of MN, the countertops were pressed at Shetka.
How do you commute?
We’re rural, right now we have a regular pickup truck, we do own an electric car, it was a prototype made by a Wisconsin battery company in the late 70s--it’s called an Endura, and it’s possibly the only one. It takes 20 big marine batteries; it’s supposed to go 150 miles between charging. We got it for a song and are spending a bit getting it running.
Who inspired your view of environmentalism?
Chuck and I have been married since 1972, and we subscribed to Organic Gardening magazine before we bought the farm in 1974. We’ve subscribed to Organic Gardening since then too. We didn’t know anyone farming when we started, so we checked out all the library books we could find. We’re on Nickel Road, and the Nickel family that built the homestead still had several homes on the road at the time--the sons were in their 70s—so we were able to pick their brains.
What’s one positive thing that encouraged your environmentalism early on?
Our view on health and natural living was really strong right from the beginning. We raised three daughters and fed them mostly from our garden and with the milk from our goats, we lived off the land and only bought things like bananas and oranges and things you couldn’t grow here. Since then our daughters have become young women and done their own research and they’ve individually come up and thanked us for raising them organic. The kids really appreciate now what we did, even though we lived off the farm. Kids who grew up in the country had to learn to make their own fun.
What inspires you to keep going?
We realized that all three of our girls could be in college at the same time, so we started the business and the first three years we only did wholesale. We had about 10 employees and our daughters were also able to work for us, and were able to put themselves through college that way. We’re probably driven by wanting to provide for the family and the employees. We’ve been really independent, and when you go into business for yourself you can do things the way you see things need to be done. It’s so much better to be able to say, “this is a smart plan”.
Right now I have a couple of part-time people, we’re at the lowest in employees that we’ve been in a long time. When I hire employees the job application is to come and make themselves a shirt. In that couple of hours they try out all the machines, and I know them quite well by the time they take their shirt home. We’ve had make your own clothes days so that everyone, no matter what their circumstance, can have organically grown cotton in their wardrobe. I give them the fabric and they just put in their time.
What have you witnessed changing about the sustainable community in the last 5 years?
It’s become very popular to be sustainable and local, they’re very prestigious words right now.
What have you noticed change from conventional to organic materials? How have your methods changed?
12 years ago no one knew what organic cotton was, now people are saying, “oh great, organic!” We fired the sales reps that said, “make it cheaper, customers don’t care about organic.” Really the organic clothing is not a lot more expensive, but our labor costs are a lot higher. We’ve pretty much found our niche, we’re considered low price compared to a lot of department store prices. We’re mostly doing retail right now and I really like that because I see what people are buying and what it looks like on them, and it changes what I’m doing. If the shoulder line isn’t right I change it, if people like pockets I put in pockets. Some people come out to farm but we do a lot of art fairs and organic fairs, so we’re on the road most of the time. We’re on the Greenroutes.
What do you envision things will be like in 5 years? In 10?
We’re doing some new things, we’re expanding to make a big green house and we’re going to expand to carry environmentally sound cleaning products and organic feed. We’re looking at an expansion to carry a wider variety of things and grow year round for things like salad greens and herbs. We plan an expansion of our clothing sales with a Gypsy wagon that will travel to more Renaissance festivals in other states.
We’re going to have a biomass heater and solar for the greenhouse. Right now the house and studio are heated with a wood burning fire. The greenhouse will be thermal glass, we’re working with Habitat for Humanity and recycling thermal pane sliding glass doors that are taken out of lake homes. When somebody wants to put up a million dollar house they tear down several lake cabins, so Habit for Humanity is recycling them.
Where do you get your information on the environment?
We’ve been doing organic conferences on the last six or seven years and there’s a lot of good classes and good speakers, so we’ve talked to a lot of people and listened to seminars and picked up a lot of literature, and we use the internet a lot.
How do you, in your own circles of family and friends, impart your sustainable practices?
I think that we’ve had a good influence on the people around us, we’ve converted a lot of people’s thinking to buy organic food and things, we definitely see a lot of people that we know going to organic clothing and food. We’ve been preaching for a long time. We had a retail store for three years that we closed in 2000, we decided we didn’t want to do the 9-5 thing, that we’d go on the road instead. When we had the retail store we had a general store that carried organic cleaning and personal products, and we were doing a lot of preaching about how it was better to spend $8 on organic shampoo than $1.50 on something with all those chemicals. My husband equated it to seeing your friend standing in the middle of the road and the semi is barreling down on them and you’re crying, “get out of the way!”, and the person is saying, “why, I’ve always been here.” The people we’ve been talking to for years have had a bout of cancer or health problem and now they’re saying, hmm maybe we should eat organic. A lot of people have to really be hit upside the head with it before they understand, but it’s gotten a lot more popular too to be environmental and organic. Now we talk to people and they say yeah yeah! we want to know more. The time has really come.
What are three things you do to be green?
The first one would be organic clothing. 3% of clothing now is made in the United States, the rest is imported, and so producing clothing that is local and organic is our #1.
Food is the second. We avoid any processed foods at all--if it’s a plant, a tree, or an animal it’s food, if comes out of a box, a can, or a plastic bag it’s not.
Third is healthcare products, I don’t think people realize how much toxic material they put in their household environment and on their skin. I think that’s far behind when everyone is thinking about turning off lights and putting in sustainable light bulbs. I consider that a minor part when you consider every toothpaste and body lotion you buy is so full of toxins.
What do you think is the #1 thing people can do to be green?
I’d say the top thing is food. People really need to get local and organic foods, just in those things we would support a sustainable environment instead of the petroleum that brings tomatoes from Chile and strawberries from Guatemala. We feel that once people are eating a good diet, and they’re feeling good, and their minds are clear, that the other things fall into place naturally.
Images from top to bottom: Pecan Herringbone Rug, Blazer Jacket, Vintage Cape with Collar, Birch Grove Rug. All available at www.wildrosefarm.com.