The Beginning
Jenna Weiler
I started caring about food about 7 years ago. That's me, Jenna, in the middle there. I read Michael Pollan, and Mark Bittman and was inspired to change my eating habits. I figured the best next step for me was to join a CSA. That one little decision, leading me to one spectacular farm, changed my life. I dove head first into the good food movement, never looking back.
The first year I joined Groundswell Farm as a CSA member I was overloaded with food I didn't know how to cook, but loved the challenge of going through a whole shares worth of veggies each week. My interest in health, cooking and farming grew, and I joined Groundswell as a farm-worker part time. I've been with them ever since.
The idea for Tater tats was born in those fields, while picking beans, us farmworkers joked that we should tattoo beans onto our arms, in order to make sure we were harvesting the correct size. After just a few minutes of veggie tattoo talk, the idea of Tater Tats was born.
Over the winter I decided to give this crazy idea a shot, I asked my friend Zoe to illustrate some veggies, and launched a kickstarter. Our goal was to raise $2000 to create a line of tattoos that would get people excited about healthy eating, vegetables and sustainable farming.
With a little boost from an NPR's the salt article, the kickstarter was funded and I was suddenly running a temporary tattoo company. What? I sell Tattoos now?
My desire is for this little company to be about more than just tattoos. Small farms and healthy eating campaigns have so much stacked against them (subsidies, lobbyists, etc) I hope to help offset that imbalance just a little bit by helping our friends plant fruit orchards, build hoop houses, and install fences.
Tater Tats is an experiment in helping fund small farms, a way to inspire folks to eat healthy, and ideally one small step towards changing the food system for the better. So follow along, I asked some farm friends to join me and we'll be writing about things that inspire us, creative food and farming ideas, and things that we think need to change.