Grow it. Learn it.
A working teaching farm with open beds, shared tools, a laying flock, and hands-on classes. Anyone can plant, weed, water, or harvest. Beginners welcome. Show up dirty, leave fed.
Planned for the neighborhood
What's Growing
A working teaching farm and a rescue center. A place where showing up looks like dirt under your fingernails, food in someone's pantry, and a dog finding its way home.
A patch of ground. A whole lot of people.
We're planning a working farm in Tama County that teaches everything a working farm can do, open to kids, families, veterans, and anyone who wants to learn:
- Laying hens and livestock
- Vegetables and high tunnels
- An orchard and berries
- Soil and conservation
- Canning and food preservation
- Upland bird habitat
The harvest feeds the pantry first. On the same ground, a rescue center gives ReRooted a home base: intake, fostering, training, and a safe, no-questions way to surrender an animal.
No gatekeepers. No "qualifying." Whether you bring seeds, sweat, or just yourself, you belong here.
"Plant the row. Share the row. Keep showing up."
Three parts, one piece of ground
How it'll work.
Share the harvest.
Fresh food goes straight to the HeartRoots pantry, no questions asked. Later, a sliding-scale community market puts every dollar back into the farm and the programs it feeds.
Give ReRooted a home.
A licensed rescue center for ReRooted Rescue and ReRooted Bird Dogs: intake, isolation and kennel space, a training field, and a monitored, safe way to surrender an animal any time of day.
Not open yet. ReRooted Rescue can't take animals today and there is no drop-off location. Please don't leave an animal at any HeartRoots building. When intake opens, this page will explain exactly how it works, including hours and how many animals we can take. Meet ReRooted →
Patience, friend.
How we get there.
No made-up deadlines. Roots take time. Here's how we get from "idea" to "first harvest," one phase at a time.
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Already growing
Start where we stand.
Our flock of 28 hens is already laying for the pantry, and the HeartRoots community pantry opens in Traer in November. The farm starts before the farm does.
1
Phase 1
Find the ground.
Land in Tama County, conservation partners, and a capital campaign. Coffee, paperwork, conversations, and a lot of walking fields.
2
Phase 2
Break ground.
Beds built, soil tested, high tunnels up, orchard planted, a winter-proof coop. First volunteer days and first classes.
3
Phase 3
Open the doors.
The rescue center opens once it's licensed, the harvest flows to the pantry, and the community market follows. The seed becomes the system.
Want to help plant it?
This one's all hands.
Got land? Tools? Time? Seeds? A truck? Kennel know-how? A spreadsheet brain? A loud opinion about heirloom tomatoes? We need all of it. Pull up a row.
Faith-rooted. Open to every neighbor. Help is never conditioned on belief.
pull up a row —
Get on the crew.
Tell us what you've got. We'll reach out as each phase needs it. A real person reads every one.