Roots Farm: Community Centered On-Farm Research

In this in-depth interview, Jen Clark of Roots Farm shares her journey from homesteading to running a regenerative, no-till farm in Washington. She describes her innovative research projects on dry farming, composting, and soil fertility, emphasizing sustainable practices and community engagement. 

Roots Farm is currently two acres producing diverse fruits and vegetables. They primarily market with a CSA and farmers markets.  As they transitioned from a homestead to a larger commercial farm, she and her farming partner remembered their original focus on getting food out to the community who needs it.  With a strong belief that everyone should have access to healthy food, Jen is currently attempting another transition to funding the farm through research grants in order to provide 100% of the produce grown to the community.  

Jen also describes how she got into on-farm research and what her different projects are discovering.

Photo provided by Roots Farm

____________

Thanks for listening to Fresh Growth! To learn more about Western SARE and sustainable agriculture, visit our website or find us:

 · Instagram

· Facebook

· Twitter

 · YouTube

 Contact us at wsare@montana.edu

Transcript

Steve (00:03.635)

Today's guest is Jennifer Clark of Roots Farm in Polesboro, Washington. Roots Farm is a regenerative, no-till operation with the mission of supporting underserved communities with a significant portion of the farm's produce being distributed through local hunger relief organizations. Jen, thanks for sitting down and joining us today.

Jen Clark (00:39.83)

Yeah, glad to be here.

Steve (00:42.035)

To start, can you tell us more about Roots Farm? Where you are, what's the climate, and how you got started?

Jen Clark (00:47.52)

Yeah. So Roots Farm is located in Palsbo, Washington on the Kitsap Peninsula. We're just a few miles from the bridge that will take you up to the most upper Northwest corner of the U S so pretty close to Canada. We live just across the street from a canal. it's we have a maritime climate. We are in zone nine A so it's generally pretty wet and a pretty temperate climate. Although over the last years we've gotten quite a bit drier. Yeah, so we farmed on a 10 acre homestead and quickly outgrew our operation and it took us about six years to find our property. We went from one acre to 10 acres. Originally we planned on homesteading and it kind of accidentally turned into a commercial farm, which I know sounds funny, but there's   a long story behind that.

Steve (02:11.442)

So how many, I mean, so you're on 10 acres now or more?

Jen Clark (02:14.664)

We're on 10 acres, yeah.

Steve (02:15.918)

Okay, all right. And what do you grow? What's your production?

Jen Clark (02:19.757)

So we're a diversified fruit and vegetable farm. We currently have about two acres of no-till crops. We have an orchard, we grow grapes, we grow blueberries, we grow strawberries. Our main market has been CSA and farmers markets over the years. And so we grow a little bit of everything, but we're... currently transitioning to a different business model. So that's going to look a little bit different over the coming years.

Steve (02:54.376)

What's the change?

Jen Clark (02:56.811)

So I've been farming with the same person for about 13 years. We met as homeschool moms. And as I said, it was supposed to be a homestead and morphed into a much larger operation. I think both my farm partner and I, our heart really wasn't in selling retail. And we wanted to get the food out into the community to people that needed it, we both felt like people should not have, everybody should have access to healthy food. so, and there's more to this story I know that we'll kind of talk about in a little bit, but a few years ago, I would say about four, between 75 to 90 % of our produce started going to food banks through the LFPA program, which is USDA funding that funds purchases from local farms to distribute to food banks. And so we did that and we started working with more community organizations. And I decided that I was going to attempt to fund my farm through research and education grants to be able to donate 100 % of our food and we are about 50 % of the way to that goal currently.  

Steve (04:32.136)

Alright. What kind of research do you do on the farm?

Jen Clark (04:36.502)

The short story of how we wound up research, I was the kid that always asked, I questioned everything. And so into adulthood and farming, was always, if there was a problem, I was always experimenting and coming up with different ways to do things. And so about three and a half years ago, I had the CEO of an organics food company come out to my firm and interview me. And after a few hours of conversation, he left that day offering to fund research. And I didn't really think he was serious. And he texted me a few weeks after that and asked me to write him a proposal. And so I wrote a research grant proposal on Bokashi composting, which is basically fermenting food waste. And so that started our, I guess, our journey into research. It's a, it's a fairly small project, but we took food waste from food banks and an organic food company, fermented it and took a field that was basically dirt and rocks, very acidic and grew beautiful crops, using the Kashi. And so, that went really well. And then I started meeting people  that worked for universities and in agriculture and was offered more opportunities. You know, here I'm a farmer, but I think what I, lot of my family are in research and I think that's how my brain is wired. So just getting out there in the ag community, I was given these opportunities and it was going so well that, um, I started, uh, applying for more grant funding on the farm. so going into 2026, we are currently doing four separate research projects, and we may be adding one to two more as we get notifications of grant proposals.

Steve (06:54.47)

What are the projects? I'm curious. mean, you've got...

Jen Clark (06:56.555)

The first project was, well, let me backtrack just a little bit. So our focus for our research projects is dry farming because of the drought we're having in the Western states. so essentially adaptation to drier conditions for farmers. And then the other area of focus is alternative composting methods, essentially teaching people to make their own compost with locally available feedstocks. And we've currently got about five or six experiments going. But the reason for that is between supply chain disruptions, inflation, we really want to teach farmers and home gardeners how to make their own fertility to grow their own food. And so one of the projects, so the first, we were awarded a Western SARE Grant this past year. And the title of that project is Pacific Northwest Dry Farmed Bush and Semi-Bush Squash Variety Trials. And we have roughly an eighth acre field that over the years has had probably six to eight feet of wood chips added. And the experiment, the two problems small farmers are facing are drier conditions and limited access to water, and then also land constraints. Land is extremely expensive. And so the trial is, we are trying out compact bush varieties in these conditions to see which ones are the most productive.  So how can a small farmer get a larger yield out of a smaller area? Within that study, we're also doing, I guess you call it a sub study, we're inoculating, we're doing kind of like mirror image rows and one is just dry farmed and the other one is we're inoculating with wine cap mushrooms to see if it increases the moisture content of the soil, if it increases production, and then doing a financial analysis at the end of the season to see if it's actually worth the cost. And so this will be our second year of that trial. And we'll be offering a few workshops through Washington State University to small farmers and ag professionals on this type of farming. We just found out we were awarded our second Western SARE Farmer Rancher Grant, which I'm very, very excited about. One of the, guess, I wouldn't call it composting, but fertility methods we've been trialing is biochar. The proposal title on that, it's called Biochar Enhanced Dry Farming for Potatoes and Peppers. So we're taking a field and we're tilling in 5% biochar to about the top six to eight inches of soil. And before we're tilling that in, we're also incorporating another composting experiment we have. We have local tribes that have massive amounts of fish waste. They will, so many fish every year get thrown away. And so we started making fish emulsion and fish hydrolysate, which are two slightly different methods. And so we are, when you take char, there's nothing in it and you have to pre-charge it or inoculate it with fertility before it's added to the soil so it doesn't suck up nutrients in the field. And so we will be charging the biochar with the fish waste. And so it's kind of twofold, is the biochar is made from on-farm or local wood waste. And then what it's charged with is also a waste product. And so we, in about two weeks, will be adding the biochar and tilling that in. That's going to be a two-year study. so half of the field is going to be, I guess, conventional dry farmed potatoes. And we'll mulch it with straw. And then the second part of the field will be the same exact. It'll be a mirror image, except it will have charged biochar. So we'll be tracking moisture retention, soil fertility, biological activity, pH, and just seeing the difference in growth. Does the biochar enhance moisture retention? Basically, we're studying, does it aid in dry farming methods. Is it another thing that farmers can use to help?

Steve (12:41.497)

Right, another tool to help dry farming succeed. Yeah.

Jen Clark (12:44.872)

Correct, yes.

Steve

Without the fish emulsion, how would Biochar normally be charged?

Jen Clark

There's many ways. So another way that we're charging biochar, if I talk about other projects, kind of intermixed, is that okay?

Steve (13:02.375)

Sure, absolutely, yeah.

Jen Clark (13:19.624)

 All right. To give context to the biochar, because there's a lot of, overlapping of projects. So the beginning of 20, yeah, 2025, we were awarded a two-year contract with the Washington State Department of Ecology. Their main focus is superfund site cleanup, and then also they're focusing on the Washington State solid waste plan, which is trying to divert waste products from landfills. And I saw the grant proposal and in another life, I would have studied worms and entomology.

Steve (13:49.447)

Nematodes, nematodes, there you go.

So, right, right! And so I wrote the grant manager and I said, do you think you guys would consider a grant proposal of food waste diversion with worms? And she kind of went, write a proposal. We'll see. We've never had anyone propose something like that. So I spent the next three, four months writing a pretty comprehensive proposal and we got the award. So it is a pretty significant two year, I guess it's called, it's public education. So you're educating the public, but what it's funding is we're putting in a large vermicomposting operation into shipping containers and we're putting a classroom between them. And every week we pick up paper products and food waste products from food banks and process them and we are going to be, I'm going to say we probably have 20 different worm bins outside, inside different types. And we're feeding the worms, the waste, you know, tracking the waste and tracking how many worm castings are coming out. And then we're teaching free vermicomposting classes to the public. But anyways, circling back to Biochar, because that was an offshoot from Biochar.

So the beautiful thing about a lot of these different composting methods is they complement each other. And so as we feed the worms on a weekly basis, we're also adding biochar to the bins. So by having the biochar added to the bins, it sucks up the nutrients that are in the vermicompost. So that is essentially charging it, adding to the dynamics of the finished worm compost. You know, and a lot of people, they'll add it to their compost pile. They, you can add any type of liquid fertilizer. There's a lot of different ways it could be utilized. Some people spread it in their chicken coops to help with odor. And then when they harvest the chicken manure and compost it, that biochar is there. There's quite a few different ways. Another offshoot, but it's still biochar, is we just partnered with our local conservation district to do biochar education. And so we have a ring of fire, which is a flame cap biochar kiln. And we're currently having discussions with other municipal organizations that are looking to take noxious weed waste and burn it. And we may actually take that noxious weed waste and also incorporate that into our vermicompost. So we're taking all these waste products and turning them into fertility for the farm for, can't say free because it takes some work, but very affordable, very high quality fertility products.

Steve (17:03.343)

Right, right, that aren't petroleum based and on a ship somewhere that's not moving.

Jen Clark (17:16.582)

Correct, correct. Our big focus is, I would say, strengthening local food infrastructure by teaching people to save seeds, grow their own food, make their own compost, just keeping it as local and circular as possible.

Steve (17:35.878)

Back to the biochar and the fish, because that's two things. How do you know which one worked? If it does work? I mean there's two new inputs in that field. You've got your control on the potatoes and then you've got the other half with two things that have been changed.

Jen Clark (18:02.373)

Correct. So how do I know which?

Steve (18:05.807)

Well, if for some reason that half didn't produce well, know, was it the fish emulsion that caused the issue? Or if it produced very well, was it just the biochar? Was it both?

Jen Clark (18:21.957)

That's kind of a hard question to answer because biochar, if we just added raw biochar to the field, we would likely have a crop failure or very unhealthy crops because that uncharged biochar is going, once tilled into the field, it's going to absorb any available nutrition. So when we do plant the potatoes, they're gonna have nothing to feed off of in the soil. And so, you have to charge it with something. You know, if, yeah, that's a hard question to answer. So you really have to charge biochar with something. And so if it's a failure, I mean, we could analyze that a little bit with soil testing, you know, was it lacking in fertility? Gosh, I don't really know how to answer that.

Steve (19:15.588)

Yeah, no, was just curious. But yeah, I think you did answer it. I mean, it has to be charged. It does not work unless it's charged. Yeah, all right. You sound like an ag university researcher's dream, by the way. I mean, because you want to do the research on your farm. And they're always looking for partners to do good research or propose research that's needed. You know, follow up and then do the education afterwards.

Jen Clark (19:25.252)

Correct, correct, yeah. I do have a very curious mind. I like to do experiments. And then on the flip side of that, I also have a motivation to work with my community. And so it's a beautiful thing. I had people say that it wasn't possible to fund my farm with research grants. The universe is telling me otherwise, and the universities are telling me otherwise, because currently we're getting about 90 % of the projects that we apply for. So we could be adding one or two more studies in this year. getting paid, I mean, we're growing vegetables anyways, so just to add in there, getting paid to collect data.

Steve (20:17.293)

Yeah.

Jen Clark (20:42.116)

Doing what we're already doing is pretty amazing. I love teaching and so that's a huge component of it. So here in the next 18 months, we are probably going to be offering a total of, I'm going to say close to 75 free community classes. So a lot of those, we're partnering with local organizations. Some of them will be doing farm walks and classes. We do a lot of work with Washington State University and also, gosh, I lost my train of thought, and some on-farm educational classes. We also do two internship programs. We do a WSU internship program and we also do, it's called Vet erans Conservation Corps and we host veteran interns. And so we offer classes for those programs also.

Steve (21:39.127) 

Are most of these on the farm or are you going into communities?

Jen Clark (21:46.276)

So most of the classes we are going to be traveling, a big portion of them are the vermicomposting classes through the Department of Ecology. And so those ones, I would say 98 % of those are off-farm. So we're working with food banks and local community organizations and conservation districts. yeah, so we're taking one Friday a month where we'll teach four to five classes on a Friday.

Steve (22:26.489)

I gotcha, alright. On your farm, and as a researcher on your farm, what challenges have you faced?

Jen Clark (23:36.194) 

The biggest challenge, actually the biggest challenge we faced was last spring. We were pretty much 100% grant funded and we had gotten contracts with local organizations including food banks to purchase our produce as well as several research grants and that included Western SARE and all of the funding was put on hold because of political issues and we lost, I'm going to say 95 % of our operating budget. And some of the funding came through, I would say about 25 to 30 % of the funding we received later in the season. But that was a really challenging year because we were just transitioning to nonprofit activities, grant funding. And to have that happen, we got, we didn't even have money to pay labor. It was, it was a pretty rough year. And so, I was doing a lot of solo work. My employee started a couple of months late. But we recovered. We, we kind of, kind of pivoted and, and did a farm share. And so I would say that that has been the most challenging year, in general. One person told me once that farming is like gambling. If you're a farmer, you're a gambler because there are so many different factors that change on a yearly basis. And so you can think that you know what you're doing, mother nature tells you otherwise.

Steve (25:22.137)

Yeah, yeah. And it's funny as you were talking about all the loss of that funding through the political cycle. It's the same reason that farmers diversify what they grow. So you've just got some different markets. And then as you've gotten more grants, some local, some state, some federal now, you've got a more diversified research base that will hopefully avoid that problem in the future.

Jen Clark (25:56.519)

Exactly, and we learned a really hard, or I learned a really hard lesson, is yes, to keep things diversified. So long-term, we do state grants, federal grants, we're working with private corporations, so there's private funding. We just, this year, which hasn't been announced yet, we have a corporate sponsor, which is a national company. And we're also keeping a small farm share, so selling weekly vegetable shares to community members. So we're trying to stay as diversified as possible. The way I see things going is we may change, so currently I'm not a non-profit, I'm an LLC, but we do have a fiscal sponsor. And some people know what a fiscal sponsor is, but it's a nonprofit that is an umbrella organization for a for-profit business to apply for grant funding. And so we work with an organization called KCAA or Kitsap Community Agriculture Alliance. And so we've been working with them for community outreach projects. And I may eventually transition to be a nonprofit, but we're just, yeah, we're kind of sorting out what things look like for us, but I see, you know, we're going into, we're gonna be offering therapeutic services on our farm. We just built a facility this past year. so, yes, diversification is definitely happening on the farm and yeah.

Steve (27:42.596)

All right. So what advice would you give young growers or any growers? You're doing a very unique way of farming, but what advice would you give other farmers about how to be successful and sustainable?

Jen Clark (28:02.666)

Success is subjective, I suppose. And so I don't have, I don't look at my failures as failures. I look at them as learning experiences. And so I think just keep going. You're gonna fall down and you're gonna fail. And just look at what you learned from that and what you need to do differently the next time you do it. And... Yeah, would say, yeah, just keep going.

Steve (28:34.329)

Yeah. There you go.