Maia Donahue, Maddy Futter & Maya Piper
Update
H.H. Dow HS
1st Place
Division 2, News Writing
Human Interest Feature
Kristina Knopic wants to change the way people see food. In order to do this, she’s poured her heart and soul into Earth Foods, the company she founded after becoming very ill while away at college. After visiting doctors at the University of Michigan and at hospitals nearby but not improving, she saw an alternative practitioner who diagnosed her with soy, dairy, corn, and gluten intolerance. Knopic moved back to Midland with her family to heal through eating an organic diet. It was during this time that she noticed that the community was lacking an organic market.
“I felt like the universe was saying, ‘you need to do this for the community’,” Knopic said. “You need to help other people go through what [you] have gone through.”
In the summer of 2012, Knopic founded Earth Foods and began selling her organic treats at the Farmer’s Market in downtown Midland. Her business has been growing steadily ever since, which can partly be attributed to the fact that patrons of the Farmer’s Market like to hear personal stories when they go to buy their produce or homemade goods.
“We do see that people who have a unique story tend to be more successful than others,” Market Master Lindsay Rotarius said.
To one such couple with an interesting background, Christie and Aaron Cromar, every cup of coffee tells a story. From where the beans are grown to the natural flavor notes of the bean, the young couple treats their coffee with tender love and care. Narrativality is their artisan coffee roaster business which began in March of 2014. Their business revolves around creating unique, high-quality coffee through “ethically sourcing, artfully roasting, and meticulously crafting.” Unlike larger commercial companies, Aaron and Christie know where their beans come from, how they are picked, by whom they are picked, and whether or not this process has been done in a correct manner.
“To get a good cup of coffee, there really is a lot involved in the process,” Christie said. “We are trying to reclaim that in an ethical way by sourcing it ethically and then really taking care of it in the process.”
The Cromars sought to perfect not only their research, but also their coffee brewing process. When concocting their purely organic coffee, they make sure the amount of coffee beans, temperature of water, and timing of brew is exact. The process involves pouring water in small circular motions over the coffee grinds to make the coffee “bloom”, where the grinds seem to grow and expand. Each artisan roast, taking up to three and a half minutes to roast, will create a tastier coffee.
“Commodity grade coffee like Folgers and Maxwell House have poor quality coffee,” Christie said. “They just take machines, go through the fields and pull the whole bush. Sometimes that coffee will sit for a year before they do anything with it, and then they overroast it so you can’t taste that it’s poor quality, but then it tastes bitter.”
The Cromars are not the only vendors who take such care with their product. Rotarius recognizes that what makes the market special is its dedication to a variety of organic, local produce. Regulations at the Farmer’s Market say that everything sold must be edible, whether it be a bar of soap or dog treats.
Dave Pety, a phonebook writer in Mount Pleasant turned soap maker and owner of Love That Soap, creates silky smooth bars from organic materials. Since his start in June 2011, he has seen and heard that it is important to customers at the Farmer’s Market for soaps to be good for the body. Every ingredient is geared towards the maintenance of healthy skin.
“Every bar here is made with the same recipe,” Pety said. “They are all the same bar of soap except for the fragrance and the coloring. More olive oil than anything else, next comes palm, then coconut oil and then soy and then sunflower oil.”
Similarly to how Pety is geared toward nourishing the body with his soaps, Knopic’s personal philosophy about food sticks to the principle that organic is best when feeding the body. She’s most in her element in her home kitchen as she chops apples and blends almond flour with honey to create her bestselling, gluten-free muffins. Knopic talks passionately about how the food that people put in their bodies will ultimately end up fueling their cells.
“Food really is medicinal in a lot of ways and has a tremendous amount of healing benefits,” Knopic said.
Her ultimate goal is to share this kind of knowledge with the people that come to her stall at the market seeking help with gluten free diets. Her focus isn’t primarily on the money. More attention goes towards educating the community using her baked goods as a means of expression.
“My recipes have been a lot of trial and error,” Knopic said. “Some of the recipes are recipes that I just grew up loving, and I started experimenting with the different nut and seed flowers.”
For some people, coming to Knopic’s stall is a very emotional experience. She’s credited by many community members as drastically improving their lives by having helped them get on a gluten free diet.
“[I love] just getting to watch the kids grow up and the families get healthier,” Knopic said. “People lose the weight they need to, they bring their blood pressure down to normal, their diabetes is under control. All of these things are so huge for your life.”
In order to be able to sell at the Farmer’s Market, 50 percent of what vendors sell must be home grown and organic. For community members and farmers alike, this is perhaps the greatest attraction to the market. Farmer Isaac Martin agrees with this.
“I don’t like depending on other people,” Martin said. “I don’t like depending on Meijer or Walmart or any other grocery store. I really don’t have to go to the grocery store anymore; I can feed my family and try to make a little bit of money doing it. So I think the health benefits, for me, growing organically is what really makes me enjoy what I am doing.”
The management behind the scenes at the market is dedicated to creating an enjoyable environment for Farmer’s Market patrons, which is why this year they have added approximately 15 new vendors to prevent the market from becoming stagnant.
Newer businesses use the Farmer’s Market as an opportunity to test out the successes of new products before expanding. Patrick Barco, co-owner of Caina Tea, is a new vendor at the Farmer’s Market this year. Though he just started his business, he has already had a lot of success with his organic tea. Over the winter season the business is moving to Florida and hopes to get the same response from consumers that are new to authentic Chinese tea.
Barco and his wife blend and package tea directly imported to Midland from small, ecologically-friendly farms in China. Barco grew up in Clare, Mich. and attended Central Michigan University as a journalism major. Shortly after searching the job opportunities for journalists in Michigan, Florida, and Ireland, Barco decided to teach English instead.
He moved to China and taught in English schools in a small town where his wife, Xianna Cai-Barco, was learning to speak English. Cai-Barco, co-owner of Caina Tea, traditionally served tea by using the Chinese Tea Ceremony. While growing up, her culture placed a lot of importance on tea traditions. Cai-Barco wanted to move to America, and after marrying Barco, travelled to China to develop relationships with the best tea growers. With their knowledge and connections, the couple moved to America and started Caina Tea.
“You can’t get pure Chinese teas in America,” Barco said. “Even if you go to a Chinese tea shop, and we’ve done it in San Francisco and Seattle, where you think they would be direct from China, one quick flight, it’s still not. It’s blended, cheap stuff [like] berries and flowers, trying to give it some kind of flavor.”
Barco’s favorite part of being at the Farmer’s Market is hearing all kinds of stories from customers.
“We have met a lot of people [because of] the chit-chatting,” Barco said. “People like to go to farmer’s markets a lot for social reasons, so it’s been fun talking with different people and learning about their lives and things like that.”
Beyond its quality and taste, Barco highly values the health benefits his teas can provide.
“[Green tea] runs the full spectrum it seems, everything from thinning the blood, dilating the blood vessels,” Barco said. “Most of it is preventative, but there’s different research they’ve done on tea at different times. It’s pretty much all kinds of things.”
The Farmer’s Market experience differs distinctly from a commercial supermarket. Smiles are traded casually and vendors welcome conversation and questions. The ability to see where the food is being sold, where it is coming from, or who’s preparing it is a unique opportunity that members of the community value deeply. Vendors such as Knopic, Barco, and the Cromars are readily available to answer questions.
“It’s great for farmers to directly interact with the consumers,” Rotarius said. “The consumers are there, they can ask those questions. [It allows] the person to interact with the farmer and know that the person you’re speaking to is the only person who’s touched that tomato that you’re going to enjoy.”