ROCK VALLEY’S RENAISSANCE WOMAN

By Bob Fitch

Lisa Groeneweg is the owner of Creamery Creek Consign & Design. Three years ago, she bought the shop and continued the existing business of selling furniture and some home décor items on consignment. She’s phased out of selling small home décor items because keeping track of the items in her books cost more than she was earning in commission. What’s stunning are the talents she’s cultivated in herself and put to work at her home and business. Lisa was born and bred in Rock

Valley as one of eight Van Otterloo children. She married a farmer and when they started a trucking company, she stayed home with their sons, Luke and Levi, and tended to their 400 cattle. She drove the tractor and even a semi when she needed to. Over the years, she developed a variety of skills. “When I was first married, we didn’t have money. If I wanted neat things, I had to learn how to make them myself.”

On a single day three years ago in January, Lisa got divorced, sold

Lisa did some of the home construction work herself, including building a stone fireplace. She learned stone masonry by watching YouTube videos and from her brother who works in construction. “He says I have a better eye than him, so now he has me do the stonework for most of his fireplaces.” Many of the materials used in her home have been purchased in out-of-the-ordinary places and online. The firebox is about a $5,000 unit purchased for $300 in Michigan. She’s working on her window trim now, much of which was purchased at the Habitat for Humanity outlet in Sioux Falls with online purchases filling in the gaps.

“I just like to find things really cheap and then make them into something cool.” She said her interest in building things goes back a long way. “When I was in kindergarten my favorite thing to do was go pound nails into wood. I was with all the boys instead of playing with the dolls.”

Lisa learned leatherwork to create incentive gifts for her nonprofit donors. She learned that through YouTube videos, too.

Besides her fireplace, another masterpiece is an amazing, one-of-kind TV/stereo home entertainment unit with a bar –all housed in an antique church pump organ. Lisa and her boyfriend, Terry Woodky, were inspired by similar pieces they’d seen people make with pianos. But old organs weigh a whole lot less than old pianos.

“The organ itself is a beautiful piece, a work of art. There’s so much craftsmanship in it. It’s all quarter sawn oak with intricate hand carving,” she said. It came out of an old settler’s cabin in the Riverfront area of Sioux City. It was a mess – with evidence that it was a home for mice (and it even had a complete rat skeleton in it).

This showpiece is on display in the store, but belongs to Terry. She does have three other old organs available for a customer who might want their own custom-made unit by Lisa and Terry; or an organ can be purchased for someone who wants to refurbish one on their own.

In addition her hands-on skills, Lisa also co-founded an international nonprofit organization called Chengeta Wildlife. In late 2013 while browsing a social media platform, she came across the story of Rory Young, a Zambian-born Irish wildlife conservationist and anti-poaching strategist. He was working to protect elephants in the Sahara Desert from being poached for their ivory tusks. The poachers sell the ivory to fund terrorism. The organization’s efforts focus on protecting wildlife through locally-led and lasting anti-poaching solutions.

Lisa was moved by Young’s story of how human greed was decimating the wildlife in his homeland. During her time on the board, Lisa helped raise about a half million dollars for Chengeta Wildlife. Her efforts were featured in a front page story in the Sunday Des Moines Register in 2017. The organization’s work continues even though Rory Young was killed by jihadists in Burkina Faso, West Africa, in 2021. (To learn about the organization, see www.chengetawildlife.org ).

Her hands-on creations, her business, her house and her wildlife conservation efforts have all been tackled while living with leukemia for the past 17 years. “I take daily chemo meds to keep it in check. In the last month, actually, it came back a little bit for the first time ever. So we'll be doing more testing next month again,” she said. “I actually have a couple of blood disorders. The Leukemia makes me pump out too many white blood cells. Then I also have essential thrombocythemia which makes me pump out too many platelets, so I have a danger of blood clots as well.”

Lisa made this innovative tic-tac-toe board which doubles as home décor. There’s a checkerboard on the flip side.

“For years, I was sleeping about 20 hours a day. I had so much fatigue I could barely function. It would take me a day to recover after going to the grocery store. Then I met a doctor from Sioux Falls and she helped me start a ketogenic diet that got me back on a path to good health. I could function again.”

With more energy in recent years, she has spent time on the road with Terry, who is retired. They met on Match.com almost two years ago. He’s a resident of Marinette, Wisconsin, but spends about a month-and-ahalf at a time in Rock Valley before returning to Marinette for a few weeks. Lisa said, “I had a little 6x10 trailer that I used to haul furniture around. This past summer, we re-did it into a little camper – we call it the ‘cramper.’ It’s got water and electricity. It’s got a little booth in there where you can sit or it folds down into a bed. So we spent part of our summer doing that last year.”

Obviously Lisa loves wildlife, so enjoys seeing the bears who wander into Terry’s backyard in

Marinette. But she’s not ready to give up on Rock Valley. She values time with her family, most of whom all live locally, including both sons. Luke, 26, lives on an acreage and works for C & J Construction. Levi, 20, works at Kooima Company and lives with his mom.

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East Valley Farms is a family farm that has been raising swine in northwest Iowa for over 50 years.