Norm’s Farms is the largest vertically integrated elderberry company in the U.S. Meaning, we’re working to consolidate multiple steps in the typical distribution process. Instead of operating solely as a farm, a manufacturer, or a consumer brand, we perform all of these tasks in-house. As our operations in each area continue to grow, so are we able to bring you more quality supplements.
We’re a U.S. based company growing as much elderberry as we can and making as many supplements as we can. Our mutually beneficial farmer partnerships and U.S. based manufacturing relationships allow for sustainable growth at Norm’s and for the larger local economy. Our goal in this is to create a system that’s economically viable, socially supportive, and ecologically sound.
Have you noticed that an 8oz bottle of either our Original Extract or Original Wellness Syrup has DOUBLE the number of servings the other guys’ 8oz bottles have? That’s because we work to ensure our products have the highest natural potency possible. For our extracts and syrups in particular, we use a gentle extraction process that helps preserve key antioxidants in the fruit, like polyphenols, anthocyanins, and Vitamin C.
You deserve to know exactly what goes into your dietary supplements. Creating a vertically-integrated, direct-relationship system at Norm’s (1) ensures we have complete transparency over our ingredients and (2) guarantees your family is receiving legitimate, quality elderberries every day.
At Norm’s, we harvest our own American elderberries, create well-loved recipes, and deliver immune-supporting products to families all over the U.S. From nature to nurture means we manage the whole supply chain, have direct relationships with farmer partners and companies that think and function just like we do, and make sure our elderberries are minimally processed.
]]>Sustainable agriculture focuses on producing long-term crops and livestock while having minimal effects on the environment. Farms (like Norm’s) that practice sustainable agriculture work to find a good balance between the need for food production and the need for environmental preservation.
Farmers practicing sustainable agriculture build and maintain healthy soils, create systems to conserve water, reduce or eliminate the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and help promote biodiversity. If you’re doing it right, the result of this work is economically viable, socially supportive, and ecologically sound.
We believe the future of industrial agriculture should be sustainable. Consumers and retailers concerned with sustainability should look for values-based foods and supplements that are grown using methods that promote farmworker wellbeing, that are environmentally friendly, or that strengthen the local or national economy.
We only get one Earth, and it’s our job to take care of it. Sustainable agricultural practices enhance the quality of life for farmers and their communities and provide families with products they can feel good about. Beyond that, sustainable agriculture provides many benefits:
For the Norm’s team, sustainable farming is part of our bigger Nature to Nurture movement. We focus on planting perennials (elderberries) that help strengthen the soil. Our farmers aren’t ripping and tearing our crops from the land every year. Elderberries are also great for erosion control and absorb a lot of carbon dioxide. We’ve helped take a wild plant and cultivated it into a crop that is good for our environment, our local economy, and for families across the nation. More than that, we pay our farmers a livable wage and work with our local extensions office to help put elderberry on the map as a specialty crop. We love this work and plan to set the bar higher with each passing year.
We believe every little effort counts. Intentionally celebrating Earth Day with recycling crafts or by planting flowers can be a fun way to try new things or teach kids about how to care for the Earth. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of ideas to help out the planet this year. (Better yet, implement these ideas all year round for a healthier globe.)
You can always take our glass and plastic bottles plus our shipping material to your local recycling center, but we thought it might be fun to include some DIY Earth Day recycling ideas to celebrate the holiday. Here we have six creative ways to repurpose our containers around your home:
First, soak your Norm’s Farms Liquid Supplement bottle in hot water to peel off the label. Once clean, our glass bottles can be reused as small flower vases around the house. A few fresh flowers can add a special feeling to your home, and our signature amber glass is on-trend. No one will ever know your vases were originally elderberry syrup bottles.
Our amber supplement bottles double as the perfect shelf decor. Try your hand at this DIY reed essential oil diffuser recipe for a quick, affordable project that also makes a great gift idea. Places like Walmart, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Amazon all carry the natural reeds you’ll need for this earth day recycling idea.
It’s as if our 8oz elderberry supplement bottle is meant for this essential oil body spray recipe. Best news is, all you need for this reuse idea is a recycled bottle, essential oils, witch hazel, and water.
Using our Organic Elderberry Gummies containers as bathroom storage is a great way to keep your drawers organized. They’re the perfect size for odd-and-end things, such as bobby pins, scrunchies, Q-tips, or cotton balls.
Thinking of growing and drying your own herbs this year? Use our recyclable plastic gummy containers to keep your DIY dried herbs fresh and organized in your kitchen cabinet. Bonus tip: place several bottles on a lazy susan for easy access.
We’re using our clean gummies bottle one more time to organize the nuts, bolts, batteries, and other small tool items normally found in your junk drawer or lost in the garage somewhere. This project, along with a simple text label maker could make your type-A dreams come true.
Did you know? All our shipping material is recyclable and compostable! That’s right, we don’t use styrofoam, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, or other types of single-use plastic when shipping products directly to your door. We use either a new or used cardboard box, cardboard honeycomb inserts, and paper. That means it all can be recycled or composted when it arrives on your doorstep.
When composting, you want equal green and brown matter. Green matter can be your fruit and veggie table scraps, and brown matter can be things like mulch or cardboard. Shredding our cardboard boxes and packing paper makes for a great addition to your compost if that’s your style.
Elderberries are great for erosion control, provide a habitat for birds and pollinators, and absorb a ton of carbon dioxide. We sell native American elderberry cuttings and plants once a year for those ready to start their elderberry journey. Our plants even come in compostable containers that can go straight into the ground with your plant!
Pre-orders are typically open in October-December for cuttings and January-March for plants. Make sure you sign up for our newsletter so you can be notified when these products are available again. FYI, our plants ship in April, and could become a great Earth Day tradition to start with the fam.
If you already have elderberry plants, you can take cuttings off of them, root them, and make more plants. Check out our Farm Life Blogs to learn all about growing Elderberry.
Thanks for joining us on our journey to care for the planet. Happy Earth Day from all of us on the farm. 🌎🌷🌸🌈🌿🌏
]]>Make this craft extra fun by letting the kids pick out foods to try, and have everyone guess what color the egg will turn out after dyeing. Spoiler alert: when you use red cabbage scraps on a white egg, it turns out blue! Guessing beforehand is sure to create laughs and fun for the whole family.
Keep in mind, the effect of natural dyes vary depending on how concentrated your dye is, what color egg you use, and how long and how many times the eggs are immersed in the dye. Ready to get started? Here’s what you need to dye your own Easter eggs this year:
We rummaged through our fridge this week and found red cabbage, coffee, green tea, turmeric, and of course our Elderberry Extract, our Elderberry Blueberry Children’s Formula, and our ElderCran Extract. We soaked the eggs and left them in their solutions overnight, but you can also pull the eggs out at various times to get an array of color vibrancy. Pro tip: err on the side of more material rather than less when creating your dye for more vibrant colors.
Happy Easter from all of us at the farm! We hope your family has a fun-filled spring.
]]>This fall, we added 17 acres to our farm. That's an additional 15,000 elderberry plants in the ground, with more planned for the spring. Our farm growth is exciting because (1) it's where our roots are and (2) because it means we get to continue providing high-quality, potent elderberry supplements for you and your family long term.
If you didn't know, elderberry is an investment plant. It takes 5 years for young plants to fully mature, and we won't harvest much from them until year 3. That means the elderberry farmer needs patience, grit, and foresight. And for the team at Norm's, there's no other business we'd rather be in.
Norm’s believes strongly in our farm to table method of supply and production. We grow our own elderberries, and we have direct relationships with our elderberry farmer-partners. We make our own supplements, and we build long-lasting partnerships with companies that think and operate in the same way.
It’s a business model we’re proud of. We know our products intimately—from nature to nurture. And as an added measure, we conduct third party testing on all our products to ensure you’re receiving legitimate, high-potency elderberry every time you take a spoonful.
Our elderberry extract is one of our most popular products. It's made with our farm-fresh elderberries, water, and a small amount of natural preservative. That’s it. Now that harvest and planting is over this year, production is full steam ahead. Stay tuned as we continue to bring you even more surprises in 2021.
We started our business when the jobs we had held for decades were crumbling beneath our feet and despite trying for well over a year, couldn’t find another similar job in the middle of the last Great Recession. They say that to form a successful business you can’t have a "plan b", and we didn’t. It was Norm’s Farms (we called it Elderberry Life back then) or bust. The day we started the business we could never have anticipated finding our current partners and retirement was the last thing on our minds.
What do I remember of those early years? Working all day, every day and having a great time for the most part. When fears of failure would creep in, I discovered that hard work was the best antidote to that fear. I found myself repeating my friend George Marshall’s favorite saying about what it takes to start and run your own business: “Hard work, perseverance, dedication and self-sacrifice”. That saying became my mantra and I used it to push my way through the exhaustion and occasional hard times and fear that comes with them. We put our heads down and worked like the dickens to pull together Norm’s Farms because we had no plan b and because failure wasn’t an option.
I also remember having to develop comfort around uncertainty and probability. Would we be able to sell that first 7 pallet order of products made with the elderberry we grew? Probably. But what if we couldn’t? What if our labeling was all wrong? Did we miss any regulatory requirements that would prove fatal to our little business? The answers to all those questions was “probably not” but there was no crystal ball that could deliver the certainty I craved. Over time, I learned to trust in our ability to overcome the obstacles and problems that arose and to be comfortable with not being able to see exactly where we were headed. We also learned that failures, like our “ready to drink” products that were launched under the name “Elderberry Life”, are just as valuable as successes and, maybe more so, because to make a failure valuable, you have to learn from it.
By the time our future partners, Brittany and Devon, first introduced themselves to us, we had survived a re-branding to our current name, Norm’s Farms, we had let go of the ready to drink products because we had no chance of succeeding in that market, and had overcome numerous crop failures too. Despite those failures and others, our business was still growing by as much as 60% each year. In short, we had become so comfortable with making mistakes and suffering failures that I was writing blog posts about failures, like this one about all of our labeling and naming mistakes, or this one about crop failure, a totaled van, the loss of our two labs, and more. It would take a couple more years before Brittany and Devon joined us as investors and partners in Norm's Farms and, once we got the deal done, we have never looked back. We knew that our little business needed a younger generation to carry it into the future and that is exactly what Brittany and Devon, and the many people that now work for Norm’s Farms are doing. To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. It is time to let the “young’uns” as we affectionately refer to them, carry on without us.
We’ve found new passions to lose ourselves in these days and having something to turns towards as I leave Norm’s Farms behind is a blessing. Rodger and I and our adult kids have been building a camp for our extended family and friends on Lake James. Rodger is rebuilding a boat, and I continue to explore painting and other forms of creativity. The Covid-19 crisis was not the environment we planned on retiring into, but we’ll make the best of it, as so many people are these days. We can’t open up our camp until the crisis is over, but we can still retreat to our lovely patch of woods by the lake, listen to the leaves rustle in the wind and the cries of Bald Eagles, Osprey and Red Shouldered Hawks. We can still receive our daily visits from the Pileated Woodpecker and Whippoorwill that also call our little cove home. Thanks for a lovely ride, for following us over these many years, and for supporting small business! We wish everyone of you the best, this year and for years to come. Go Norm's Farms!
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Feeding America is our country’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization. With more than 40 years’ experience, Feeding America has created a network of over 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries throughout the United States. Because of the pandemic caused unemployment, Feeding America estimates that an additional 17 million people will need their services in addition to all those they already serve. Feeding America also thinks it will need an additional 1.4 billion in resources over the next 6 months to provide enough food for everyone facing hunger. The situation has become even more dire as food donations to Feeding America network are in decline due to supply chain challenges and decreased food donations from manufacturers and grocery retailers. The volunteer work force upon which Feeding America depends has decreased by as much as 60% as people stay at home to shelter in place. According to Heather Schlesinger of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, “We are distributing an additional 250,000 pounds of food per week to support five local urban and suburban school districts that are closed. We have stopped using volunteers inside our building – we typically use close to 600 per week. We have spent more than $500,000 in the last seven days on food purchasing vs. a typical week of less than $50,000.”
Many of us want to know what we can to help. According to the Wall Street Journal and Feeding America, too, the best way to help food banks at this time is to donate money they can use to buy food to distribute. To help address this crisis, Norm’s Farms has donated money directly to Food Banks in Durham, North Carolina and in Springfield, Missouri. Bart Brown, the CEO of Ozark Food Harvest said “We’re so grateful for how the community is stepping up to help neighbors in need during this unpredictable time. More people than ever are seeking food assistance, and we’re meeting the increased demand by purchasing more food for our Mobile Food Pantry distributions and hunger-relief partners. Every dollar donated to our COVID-19 Hope Fund helps provide $10 worth of groceries to people who need help right now.”
We’ve also set up a way for you to make a donation of 1.00, 5.00 or 10.00 dollars to Feeding America whenever you place an order on our website. To donate select the amount you want to give when you choose the product(s) you wish to order from us. Just look for the small box that says “Support Feeding America in this time of critical need. Add a donation to your order” located on each product page. Thanks so much for pitching in during our national crisis! When we all pitch in, we shall overcome!
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The last time the world experienced a pandemic like this was just over a century ago when the Spanish Flu raged around the globe in 1918, 1919 and 1920. The Spanish Flu killed up to 100 million people- about 5% of the world’s population. Because of the significant advances in science and medicine, no one expects Covid-19 to be that deadly, not even close! History Unplugged has produced a very informative podcast entitled Covid-19 is Nothing Compared to the 1918 Spanish Flu and as the podcast suggests, we should be very grateful that we are not facing what our grandparents and great-grand parents faced 100 years ago. Medicine has come a long way since bloodletting was the recommended treatment for the flu!
Most states have issued some sort of “Shelter in Place” order. Wondering what exactly that means and how states are enforcing their orders? CNET has aggregated all the differing state orders in one place along with very helpful information about worldwide travel restrictions, which businesses can stay open, which businesses must close, etc... While it is important to keep up with the news, so you stay informed, most psychologists are advising us to limit our news and social media consumption to a few minutes a day in order to protect our emotional and psychological health. The website Worldometers provides a quick snapshot of confirmed Covid-19 cases in each country, and also by each state in the US. For more information about what is happening in your state, visit your state’s Department of Health and Human Services website. There you will find case counts by county, specific instructions from your state, and resources for individuals and families, health care workers, and more.
Another website that provides information concerning the projected peak of viral infection per state, and when we might see social distancing and shelter in place orders lifted, is Covid-19 put together by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. Because none of us has immunity to Covid-19, the disease is spreading rapidly across the US. In order to control the spread of the virus states have ordered many businesses to shut down resulting in mass layoffs. The US Congress has passed the largest rescue package in our country’s history as a result. If you are one of those folks that find your small business closed or an employee or contractor that finds themselves furloughed or laid off, there may be help for you within the rescue package. Here’s a link to a stimulus package questions and answers article. Many states and other organizations are holding on-line town halls to help citizens navigate the application process.
And for those of you with kids at home, every kid LOVES to play in the dirt! The University of Idaho’s Teton County, Idaho extension is offering free victory garden courses on-line and seeds can be ordered on line as well. Wondering what to grow in your garden? The Sustainable Food Trade Association published a fantastic guide entitled 100 Organic Plants You Can Grow And Eat. I love the health information, vitamin and mineral content, and disease prevention information they give for each plant in addition to the growing and insect control tips. The guide even includes recipes!
Staying home with your “shelter in place” partners 24-7 can certainly challenge your relationships. Let’s face it, many of us are not used to spending so much time with the same people day in and day out, and conflicts are expected. Learning to deal with stress, exhaustion and conflict in a positive, love affirming way is the trick to thriving in our new reality. I highly recommend Brene Brown’s new podcast entitled Unlocking Us, and invite you to take a listen to her episode entitled Comparative Suffering, the 50/50 myth and Settling the Ball, where she talks about strategies for falling apart, staying connected and kind, and giving ourselves permission to feel hard things during these extraordinary times. The Atlantic published a great piece entitled How Not To Tank Your Relationship in Quarantine a few days ago that advises all of us to intentionally look for the upsides of our relationships- and even the upsides of being stuck at home- and it’s totally worth a read!
If you and your shelter in place partners find yourselves getting bored and restless, the City of Los Altos California put together a wonderful resource of fun activities to do while you are home together. These activities include everything from “biodiversity bingo” for the kids that can be played in the yard, links to free on-line learning resources, links to live video feeds of animals at the San Diego Zoo and Monterey Bay Aquarium, a virtual tour of the Louvre museum, Yosemite, and much more. You’ll also find links to free on-line fitness classes. The site even has links to famous actors reading children’s books!
Much evidence indicates that the worst of this should be behind us by June or so. While we don’t know if the virus will make a comeback in the fall or not, we should have the summer to reconnect in person with all those we love and miss so much. We predict that the summer of 2020 will go down in the history books as the “summer of hugs”! Until then, stay home, stay safe, stay healthy, and when you must go out, be sure to thank all the front-line grocery, gas station, pharmacy and health workers you meet. They are our heroes!
]]>Siler City is a small North Carolina town experiencing a renaissance fueled by the arts community and the local “Farm to Fork” movement. We chose Siler City to host our Elderberry Festival so we can support the community’s efforts to revitalize their downtown and to bring attention to the Oasis Café, a purveyor of great local food and our Norm’s Farms products.
Siler City traces its roots all the way back to 1750. The town was officially incorporated as Siler City in the late 1800s and by the 1940’s, Siler City was a thriving little town of about 5000, best known for its textile mills, furniture mills and meat and poultry processing plants. Like so many towns, the closure of the mills devastated the local economy. Siler City’s once vibrant downtown became a series of boarded up buildings and residents fled looking for employment elsewhere.
By Ann Lenhardt, Co-Founder
I met Alvaro Matta just a few weeks ago at the urging of Rodger, my husband. Alvaro, owner of Reedy Creek Naturals, a brokerage and consulting firm located in Charlotte, NC, a place that Alvaro has called home for years. Reedy Creek Naturals represents farmers and manufacturers of quality, science-driven dietary supplements, herbs, and super foods, reached out to Rodger because he is a big fan of elderberry. I was surprised when Rodger told me that the reason he wanted me to meet Alvaro was not because of his interest in elderberry, but because of what he was doing for wounded veterans. I arranged to meet Alvaro at a local restaurant the following week. The first thing I noticed about Alvaro was his beautiful smile and warm and welcoming brown eyes. Slim and fit, with a few tattoos that give away his history with the Marines, Alvaro exudes a joyful peace and calm. While my father served in both World War II and the Korean war, Dad spoke very little of it and, aside from my dad, I have known only a handful of veterans in my life. I learned that only .4% of Americans serve in the military, so I guess I’m in good company when I confess my ignorance about military life and the challenges that veterans face. I knew that somehow elderberry and the military were connected in Alvaro’s life and asked Alvaro to explain. I was blown away by what I learned.
Alvaro’s own experience with the military began when he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and went to Parris Island, SC for boot-camp in the summer of 1990, right after high school graduation. Alvaro served with Charlie Company 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit as an Infantryman Rifleman, Machine Gunner & Radio Operator and deployed to the Persian Gulf War and Somalia. He left the Marines when he fell in love because it was impossible to maintain the mental discipline necessary for a warrior on a mission when his heart was pulling him back home. For the next 10 years Alvaro made a living in both the music and food industries. He spent quite a bit of time working for FoodState, where he learned about the importance of eating whole, nutritious fruits and vegetables and studied under some of my own personal heroes, like Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Tieraona Low Dog. Alvaro used the information he learned to overcome lingering health problems sustained during his military service.
In 2009 Alvaro reconnected with Elijah Sacra, a fellow Marine with whom Alvaro had served and who had also worked very hard to overcome health problems sustained during military service. The two of them founded Semper Fidelis Health and Wellness on November 10, 2009 to bring their knowledge and experience directly to Marines suffering with chronic health issues. While attending the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, Elijah met Clarissa Kussin, a holistic healer, personal chef and integrative nutrition health counselor and when Clarissa agreed to join Alvaro and Elijah, Warrior Wellness Solutions was born.
and recreational therapy equipment. Through one on one coaching with the Marine and his or her family, Warrior Wellness Solutions teaches the Marine about holistic nutrition and detoxification protocols designed to support healing and reduce inflammation and body fat. Each Marine is given an adaptive functional movement exercise program to improve strength, balance and flexibility. Mindfulness based yoga and meditation are taught to reduce the effects of post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury along with life coaching to improve emotional wellness. To address nutritional depletion, each Marine learns how to incorporate whole, nutritionally dense and immune system boosting foods into their diet. “We don’t tell the Marines what not to eat”, Alvaro said, “instead we teach them how to add healthy foods, because you can’t outrun a bad diet!” One of the easiest ways to get started is to learn how to make smoothies or juices from fresh leafy greens, whole fruit and veggies. Elderberry is one of the foods that Marines are encouraged to incorporate in their diet because of its high level of antioxidants and immune system boosting properties. The Integrative Nutrition Health Coaches provide the Marine with supportive mentorship to help them feel their best through food and lifestyle changes.
The Warrior Wellness Solutions rehabilitative program typically lasts from 6 weeks to 6 months, depending upon the individual needs of the Marine. Following the intensive initial rehabilitation period, though, Marines receive perpetual support. And all of it is free. Since their founding Warrior Wellness Services has brought their rehabilitative services to thousands of Marines and, because of their remarkable success, Warrior Wellness Solutions has become an integral part of the Wounded Marine Battalion program at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Warrior Wellness Solutions is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization sustained through donations and has earned GuideStar Platinum status. They have also achieved recognition as an America’s Warrior Partnership Four Star Alliance Program of Excellence and as a Great Nonprofit’s “Top-Rated Nonprofit”. Donations to Warrior Wellness Solutions can be made here and this summary of the great work Warrior Wellness Solutions does is perfect for sharing with everyone you know!
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We somehow managed to run the farm and the business in 2014 without Norm or our farm manager, although it about killed us! We hired another farm manager in 2015 and unfortunately, we lost that farm manager and our entire crop that year. We met Devon and Brittany at Natural Products Expo East that same year, and just in time too, as we needed another source of American elderberries in order to keep up with Norm’s Farms’ growth. We began buying berries from Devon and Brittany in 2016. And then, wonderfully, we joined forces with Devon and Brittany in 2017 to become the first vertically integrated, three family owned business in the US dedicated to the American elderberry. Devon and Brittany came on board at Norm’s Farms just in time too. Sales at Norm’s Farms grew by more than 200% in 2018 and we are posting an impressive growth rate for 2019, too. Our partnership has brought Norm’s Farms the resources we needed to hire people to help us and to manage the growth in a smart way. We now have three people dedicated to sales, a whole team dedicated to farming, another team dedicated to production, and another team, including Rodger and me, dedicated to marketing. Rodger and I have been enjoying the pleasure of being able to focus on just one thing in the company instead of having to manage everything as we did for so long. The best part of our partnership with Devon and Brittany is knowing that these young, smart entrepreneurs will take our baby, Norm’s Farms, well into the future beyond our ability to manage and care for it.
Norm’s legacy of agriculture and land preservation is carried on by his son Rodger Lenhardt, along with his wife Ann and their daughter Erin. Over the years, they have kept the vision of sustainable farming alive through elderberries. After becoming the experts in elderberry cultivation and learning as much as they could about product manufacturing under a different business name, the family founded the Norm’s Farms product business in 2013. The line of pure and simple elderberry extracts, syrups and preserves are sold in independent health food stores, co-ops, Whole Foods, Ingles, Lowes Foods, Kroger and other specialty grocery stores across America. With clean ingredients, immune boosting power and numerous wellness benefits, the popularity of Norm’s Farms products continue to grow.
In 2017, Norm’s Farms took the next step to grow their business by joining with two other families to become the first vertically integrated company focusing on elderberry products in the United States. Today, the Norm’s Farms family is made of up of the Lenhardt, the Bennett, and the Mareth families—all committed to products that offer “Health on Your Terms”. Sustainability and quality have always been a part of the Norm’s Farms story. Today, we are proud to be the go-to purveyors of pure North American elderberry, farmed and cultivated with care to deliver a full range of wellness benefits and immune support.
Watch Our Story Video
Taste the Norm’s Farms difference. Find our products at a LOCATION near you.
Intrigued and want to know more about elderberry? Check out one of these articles:
Read about Our Farms and the Elderberry Plant
Read about Norm’s Farms Products
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Elderberry and the fun that can be had in a family business.
Innovative Natural Solutions, or INS for short, has been a very dependable source for high quality berries for Norm’s Farms. Even better, we really hit it off with Devon, Brittany, and Ed, finding that we had much in common regarding family, business and our sense of humor. You’ve got to have a big sense of humor when you start your own business or you’ll never survive all the emotional roller coasters that come with being an entrepreneur! About a year ago we began exploring the possibility of creating a partnership between the two companies. INS and Norm’s Farms have mutual interests and mutual hurdles: We are both passionate about the value of elderberry as an emerging commodity crop in the US and we are both passionate about the opportunity inherent with Norm’s Farms as a flag-ship brand that brings the American elderberry to the market in a big way. Coincidentally, we are also both in the same stage of business development; we both have a proven concept and the market seems both ready and anxious for us to grow…if only we could find the help and supplies we need to succeed!
Over the year that INS and Norm’s Farms have been courting each other we’ve realized that we are both the help the other needs. Together, we have a tremendous opportunity to create a vertically integrated business that can aggregate the elderberries grown by the small family farms throughout the US and deliver them to you and your family in the form of the high-quality products you love and want. Devon, Brittany, Ed, and their team members, Ryan and Lewis flew out to meet with us last week and we made our partnership official! We took time to celebrate with our other critical partners like GW Stanley, Randy Maness and Tony Haywood with Got To Be NC and Ron Taylor of D'Vine Foods (we are pictured above at Ron's Lu-Mil Vineyard) and then got down to work. Our little one family team of three has become a two family team of eight and Norm’s Farms is well on its way.
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