Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Wrenn.
Nick, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I like to say that I came into this world with my intense love for trees from my first breath. As a toddler when my parents had a difficult time getting me to fall asleep one trick, they found helpful was to take me outside and carry me around the yard. Our house in those days backed up to a woodlot and I think that I just wanted to be out under the trees to feel safe. It is hard to know exactly what a baby was thinking or feelings but regardless I definitely have had a deep connection to trees from my earliest memories. I always just felt drawn to and protected by trees. Something about being in their presence calms me. As I grew, we moved around a bit and I insisted that my parents seek out homes with woods nearby so I could always get away to the trees when I needed to. Luckily for me they met that need. I never questioned my love of trees but I also never really considered how to integrate that love into my career.
Like a lot of kids, I kind of just went down the path that was expected of me. I followed my parent’s footsteps and went to college. I studied Civil Engineering because I had an interest in construction and big equipment but mostly, I just wanted to work outside. A lot of construction jobs, even management roles, require outdoor activities. After graduating I worked on several highway and port projects. I filled various roles over this period of my life, sometimes making big management decisions, and other days simply being a body with a shovel. It was fun at first but quickly I came to realize that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in this field. It just was not a good fit. By the time I eventually quit my role in construction I was honestly pretty miserable and unsure of my path forward.
Construction had taught me that what I really wanted was to be working with plants outside, not just simply working outside. So, I turned to the trees of my childhood. I began spending long hours walking the woods I had walked as teenager. I talked to the trees and I played a lot of thought experiments as I tried to sort out what to do with my life. This was around the start of COVID. I wish COVID had not happened, I know a lot of people really suffered during this time, but I was privledged to gain a lot of down time due to the virus. That downtime really helped me form the courage and direction which I needed for the next chapter of my life.
Book by book, lecture by lecture I began to learn as much as I could about nursery work and farming and gardening. I quickly realized that I was fascinated by most aspects of farming. It was hard to focus one area at the beginning. Over several years I volunteered as often as I could at various farms. I attended agriculture conferences and workshops whenever I had the opportunity. While I was still living with my parents in PA, I did a lot of experiments in our garden and landscape beds. During this period, I also got very interested in foraging wild foods, specifically tree crops like black walnuts, paw paws, and persimmons. I was beginning to learn that trees really could provide for a lot of my needs beyond just emotional and spiritual realms. Trees could feed me and provide some of my income via crop sales and nursery work. Then in 2022 I had an opportunity to move to my grandparent’s farm in Cedar Grove NC so I packed up all my belongings and headed south.
I didn’t know anyone in NC at the time so it was a big leap of faith. But I knew by that point that I wanted to start a small farm of some sort and this was my best chance at getting access to land to pursue my dreams. I spent two years in Cedar Grove establishing my nursery and continuing to refine my skills/passions. Along the way I learned a lot about my own needs. For example, when I started, I thought that I might want to have a seed farm or a market garden. But I quickly learned that both of these operations would require more hours of work in the hot sun than my body was interested in supplying. On the other hand, the nursery work mostly required me to be busy in the shoulder seasons when the temperature is not as extreme. So again, I found balance by pursuing life with the trees.
I still garden and I save lots of seeds but I do these activities as a hobby and to grow food for my own kitchen. I can sustain that. The nursery work is now my full-time gig and the workflow it requires is well aligned with the needs and abilities of my body. Alongside the nursery work I also planted 100s of trees and shrubs at my grandparents’ farm. I call the area my food forest and I still visit there whenever I can. The process of getting those trees established was first of all fun but secondly provided vital experience when navigating customer questions in my role as a nursery person. In 2024 I wound up moving to Henry County VA to be closer to family and to get a bit higher in elevation. It turns out the NC climate is a little hot for me. I still maintain my food forest in Cedar Grove and I regularly collect seed and distribute plants in the Durham/Raileigh area. That part of the world will always hold a special place in my heart, it is where not only my business got its foothold but also where I feel I truly got to know myself in a deeper way.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I would say that my road has not been smooth but it did feel somehow guided throughout the whole process. There were always little synchronicities that made me feel I was doing what I was meant to be doing. One of the most challenging aspects for me has been stable housing and land autonomy. All along the way I took what housing options were available to me but none of them ever really felt good. At first, I was staying in an apartment 30 minutes away from the farm in Cedar Grove and that commute made it challenging to be on the farm as much as I wanted to be. Then I found a mobile home closer to the farm but it didn’t last long because the landlord decided to sell it shortly after I moved in. The way I see it, it could obviously be WAY worse, but as a farmer it’s pretty important to live on the land. There are so many important moments of observation that fall outside of typical business hours. So many times where 15 minutes of work at dusk or dawn or midnight could make a big difference towards some goal but if you’re not there at the right time you miss the opportunity.
I will admit it has also been hard to be a farmer who does not have full autonomy on the land. I have always operated on someone else’s farm, either my grandparents or the place I currently rent in VA. It’s a strange situation where I am super grateful to even have the opportunity to do what I do. Most folks don’t even have access to a rental situation like this. But that said it is challenging to do work that revolves around trees when you don’t control what happens on the farm. Sometimes projects I want to do conflict with how the owning parties want to operate. I long to add tree crops into the work of my nursery but to do that I need to stay somewhere long enough to see trees that I have planted come into bearing. This takes years living in the same place. I have been hopping around a lot since 2020 and that makes it difficult to collect all the fruits of my labor.
The food forest I established in NC is a good example of this. I chose to leave NC for a lot of reasons but ultimately, I am not that far away. Cedar Grove is only an hour and a half drive. I could go there practically whenever I want but in reality, what happens is my schedule only allows brief windows to go check on things. As a result, I often miss the ripe window to pick fruits and nuts from my trees. I think its all part of the process and I am my way to eventually putting down roots in one location where I have more autonomy over farm management decisions. In the meantime, I am happy and grateful with how things have gone.
I think you have to expect some hardship and road bumps in life generally but especially in anything related to farming. I haven’t even mentioned the litany of things that have gone wrong specifically in the nursery along the way. Times when squirrels steal all your walnut seeds, or when plants don’t get watered enough during a drought causing them to die, or when a rabbit finds a away to get past the fence and eats half the garden. You can always prepare for these types of things but something unexpected will always go wrong. This is how you gain experience. I am better prepared now than I was 5 years ago and it shows but I am also not immune. I don’t think anyone in the farming world really is. You have to just roll with the punches. Expect some level of disappointment and cherish the moments when it doesn’t go that way!
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Living Soil Tree Farm ?
I grow many species of plants in my nursery but my focus is on the intersection of native plants and food producing plants. While I grow woody species and herbaceous species, I am much more focused on trees and shrubs. I also sell a small number of seed and cuttings. I operate on a very small scale, most days it is just me working in the nursery. My sales are a mix of local folks in VA and NC and folks who find me online from all over the country. I ship plants all over the place, mostly during the dormant season. In most cases I grow my plants from seed and I work to collect much of that seed myself. One of the things I am most proud of in my nursery is the fact that I grow all my plants without any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. That is pretty rare in this industry although I don’t think it should be that way.
I would say my specially is in producing bare root trees that come from relatively rare genetic sources. A lot of the seeds I gather and purchase for nursery production come from trees with above average qualities, usually in terms of the food they produce. This is a stark contrast to much of the nursery industry where the focus is on grafted trees or sometimes on low-quality seed. Only growing grafted plants puts us as a culture in a vulnerable position when pests and erratic climate conditions come knocking. Growing seed that is not well suited to your region or seed that comes from trees that produce poor quality food sets us up for failure down the line. I am very interested in genetic diversity of our agricultural plants. That is why I grow from seed and why I put a lot of thought into where my seeds come from. I want my customers to know the full story of not only how my trees are grown but also where their genetics come from.
Although I sell plants and seed year-round, I generally have the most inventory of bare root plants in the fall. I have potted plants available locally throughout the growing season and I generally offer delivery to Durham once a month or as my schedule allows.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that I am an avid gamer. I have really enjoyed video games from a young age. Its funny to me because I have also always been an outdoorsy person. I love being outside, I find that if my work doesn’t allow me to spend a lot of time outside, I get upset. So, it’s an interesting contrast that I get so much enjoyment behind a screen playing video games. I think what I enjoy about it is being able to let the imagination run wild and go places you can’t go in physical reality. I also get a lot of meaning from the social aspect of gaming. Getting on my PC at night is the main way I stay connected with my friends from back home. We are all spread around the world now (some of us even overseas) but we can all get together virtually and hang out while we play games together.
Pricing:
- My price per tree typically ranges $10-$20 per tree depending on species and quantity
Contact Info:
- Website: https://livingsoiltreefarm.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livingsoiltreefarm/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089645737329
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@livingsoiltreefarm
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@birdmanwrenn
