Eat Local

Frawley’s Fine Herbary

When Donna Frawley displays her wares at the Midland Area Farmers Market on Saturdays, it isn’t with herbs that have been on a truck for five days. It’s herbs that were picked the night before.

“It’s the ultimate freshness,” she says. “You can see the face of the person who grows them. Ask questions on how to grow them.”

Frawley’s Fine Herbary is also the booth to get an education into the fine art of growing and using herbs, with one herb featured each week. Education is in her blood: Frawley was a home economics teacher before moving to Michigan.

When a neighbor moved to Switzerland and gave her custody of his seed box, and being the frugal person she is with an avid interest in food, she planted all 23 varieties.

“I didn’t know anything about these 23 varieties,” she says. “The more I read about them, the more I wanted to read. It stirred an interest that was lying dormant.”

Her love of herbs expanded from there, and she now grows 50 varieties. In addition to buying fresh single herbs, Frawley also stocks 58 of her own herbal mixes.

“I add one, two, maybe three ingredients to make a final product,” she says. “They (the herb mixes) are easy to use and flavorful.”

While Frawley says she doesn’t specifically grow organic, there are high points to using fresh herbs over dry.

“Fresh over dried is the flavor,” she says. “It just doesn’t compare to dry. And if you’re growing them, you can pick and choose if you have a particular interest. Garlic, chives, you can use them on everything.”

With 40 fruit trees on her large residential Midland lot, fresh-picked fruits pop up seasonally at the booth as well.
And, there are samples.

“My motto is, I built my business on the free sample,” she says. “If people taste and they like it, they’ll buy it and use it. Because we don’t have unlimited funds, and people don’t want to spend money on things if they don’t know how it’s going to taste.” 

Dawson Farm LLC

Laura Dawson has all her ducks in a row, as well as her chickens and geese.

Dawson says it’s high time people started taking a good look at what is being injected into the food they are eating—and start buying from locals who are doing their best to raise and grow organic foods.

“I’m on a mission to let people know to find someone locally to purchase food,” she says. “It might not be me, but find someone close to them because it’s time for all of us to eat local food.”

She not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. She and her husband, Tom, operate the 18 1/2-acre Dawson Farm in Midland, where they raise about 175 chickens, geese, and ducks for both eggs and meat to sell to local consumers.

Although Dawson says raising the birds is now her calling, it wasn’t always so.

“I wasn’t quite sure of doing it,” she says. “I was actually afraid of birds. You couldn’t even get a little parakeet on my shoulder or my head without me going into a major panic attack. I knew I could set my mind to do anything I wanted to do. Now I really love the chickens.”

In fact, Dawson has a few buddies among the flock, namely Little One, Freckles, Henrietta, and Isabelle.

Although the farm isn’t certified organic, that’s just the way the couple does things, starting with the feed, which is free of hormones and antibiotics. The birds are free range as well.

The Dawsons sell both chicken and duck eggs, along with birds for meat. Geese are only raised for the meat, and turkeys are available in the fall, by special order in the spring.

Meat and eggs can be purchased at the farm, while eggs are available at the Health Hut (212 E Main St, Midland).

The Dawsons also run a Community Supported Agriculture garden program, allowing people to buy a share that gives them fresh vegetables, eggs, and fruit each week.
 

“I can’t say enough about what we do,” she says.

Hingston’s Countryside

When May rolls around, Geri and Jim Hingston are busy harvesting asparagus the couple has grown on their

Merrill farm for the past 15 years. Once asparagus season is over, they are free to do as they please until the chestnuts start in the fall.

Not a bad life for a couple of retirees.

In fact, Geri says, in the fall her life reminds her a little of that famous Christmas song, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.

“I roast them just before Christmas,” she says. “We cut them up and put them in salads and vegetables, chop suey and stir fry.”

But getting to that cozy-around-the-hearth feeling isn’t as romantic as it sounds. Chestnuts must be harvested before the deer eat them.

“When they are ripe, they fall off onto the ground,” she says. “We have to go back and pick them up every day or the deer are into them. They manage to get them out of the burrs and eat them.”

However, humans don’t have it that easy. Jim uses leather gloves to remove the nut from the burr, a spiky covering over the chestnut.

While the chestnuts can be sold as is once the burrs are removed, the Hingstons also sell them with a crisscross made with a utility knife in the shell. Once the crisscross is made, the nut is put on a cookie sheet in the oven or on a paper plate in the microwave and heated. Heating makes the shells pop right off the nuts.

Care of the trees and asparagus begins in the fall, once the crops are harvested when Jim puts down fertilizer. In the spring, the asparagus has to be cut back so it doesn’t go to seed. Once it’s cut back, it starts growing again for sale in May.

The couple sells their chestnuts at the Midland Area Farmers Market and at their home. The asparagus can only be purchased at the farm.

Fancy Pants Farm

Tim and Nancy Kohler literally live off the land, growing, raising, and even knitting everything they need to survive.

And, it’s all done organically on their 200-year-old 20-acre Clare farm, Fancy Pants, named after their dog, a Blue Heeler (Australian cattle dog).

It all started 19 years ago when Nancy decided to raise goats for milk. It grew from there out of necessity. Suffering from Crohn’s disease, Nancy found she felt better when she didn’t eat foods with preservatives or chemicals.

The goats were joined by chickens and rabbits five years ago and then sheep. The stock is raised on the goat’s milk, as well as feed Tim grinds himself, and whey from the goat cheese. The animals are free to roam and graze on the land. The Kohlers say the goat’s milk makes the livestock very healthy and heavy.

The goat’s milk is sold for pet consumption only, but the couple does sell soap made from the milk.

Then there is the produce. The Kohlers sell beets, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, eggplant, sweet corn, winter squash and parsnips, dry beans, shell beans, and green, purple, and yellow beans. Last year they test marketed the vegetables to the public with much success.

“We always had a garden, but we kept making it bigger and bigger, so we didn’t have to buy any food,” says Nancy. “Everything we eat we grow here.”

Fertilizer for the two and a half acres of crops comes from the goats, sheep, rabbits, and chickens.

“I believe organic vegetables and such things are good things,” says Tim, a third-generation farmer. “I don’t believe in putting chemicals in my mouth.”

A former milking parlor on the farm became the couple’s storefront, where customers can find seasonal produce, along with the soap, jams, jellies, fresh-ground horseradish, and goat, rabbit, and chicken meat.

Customers can also find a few items of clothing.

Spinning wool from her angora rabbits and sheep, Nancy knits the wool into socks, hats, mittens, and sweaters. She also sells handspun yarn that is chemical free.

In addition to their storefront, the couple sells their wares at the Midland Area Farmers Market.

BayBees & Arndt Miss Bee Haven

The Arndt family is on a mission to find every bee a good home, a home where it can roam free and produce honey and honeycombs for the family’s new businesses.

As swarmbusters, the family will come out and remove swarms of bees from wherever they aren’t wanted.  

As BayBees and Arndt Miss Bee Haven, the family markets raw honey and chemical-free beeswax products to the public.

“They (the bees) are put in good homes,” says Vern Arndt. “They are given the best opportunity to survive away from pesticides.”

“It’s the right thing to do for the bee population,” adds family member Roxi Davidek. “Every swarm we catch is one less group that is killed.”

Arndt was the instigator of the bee business.

When his father, Dennis F. Arndt, was diagnosed with cancer four years ago, Arndt got plans for a Langstroth bee hive, bees that are traditionally used for beekeeping, off the Internet. He thought that a new hobby might just keep his dad occupied. With this, the family was off and running in the beekeeping business.

Sister and brother-in-law, Roxi and Steve Davidek, and Arndt’s brother, Dennis R. Arndt, joined in two years ago. Now the family has more than 50 hives scattered around the area in Bay City, Prescott, Frankenmuth, and Flushing, where the bees roam free, usually staying within a one-mile radius of the hive.

While the family has been keeping the harvest for themselves, this year they began selling their raw honey and chemical-free beeswax products from their homes to the public.

“For us, as a family, it’s wonderful working together,” says Roxi. 

The family extracts the honey and honeycombs from the hives themselves.

Average harvest from a hive is 60 to 90 pounds of honey, and that’s after leaving between 80 to 100 pounds in the hive for winter feeding for the bees.

Honey is bottled raw, which has a milder taste than processed honey.

The beeswax products, which come from the honeycomb, have only organic essential oils added for fragrance.

The combs, full of honey, are also sold for eating.

“You can chew the wax; it’s not harmful,” says Arndt. “It’s supposedly good for the teeth and gums.”

Fat Gander Bakery

It was pressure from her family that pushed Denise Ciaravino to market her baked goods at the Midland Area Farmers Market.

“My girls and my husband thought my baked goods were good enough that I should sell them,” she says. “I didn’t think it would fly. But it started up and people kept buying our products, so I guess they were right and I was wrong.”

Selling under the name Fat Gander Bakery, named after a favorite farm critter, a gander who loves to eat, Denise and Richard Ciaravino sell all sorts of luscious goodies at the Midland and Hemlock farmers markets. Although Denise does special orders for people, the markets are the couple’s storefront.

Ciaravino says the secret to those fabulous baked goods is the fact everything is fresh. Nothing is ever frozen.

“Most of the stuff (ingredients) we get locally,” she says. “We go to Sam’s, Gordon’s, buy from the farmers down at the market as things become seasonal. We try to keep the money local to keep our economy going here, support everybody.”

Fresh is only half the story. Ciaravino, as a woman who has been collecting and enjoying recipes all her life, puts a lot of love into those baked goods.

“I can remember one of my first recipes I got was from a neighbor,” she says. “I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. I loved her coffee cake. I got her recipe, and I still make it today.”

Joining the coffee cake at the market is a fabulous carrot cake, 10 varieties of cookies, breads, and something customers call pies. While it may look like a pie, Ciaravino says it’s much better.

As much as the Ciaravinos enjoy baking, there is another reason the couple pop up at the farm markets: They just love rubbing elbows with those who stop by their booth.

“We just have a wonderful time meeting all the people down there,” she says. We laugh so hard, our bellies are a little sore and our faces are sore from laughing.” 

Resources:
Arndt Miss Bee Haven, 4455 Maple Rd, Frankenmuth, 989-652-3843, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
BayBees, 3060 Coventry Dr, Bay City, 989-684-0555
Dawson Farm LLC, 2125 W Gordonville Rd, Midland, 989-837-3250
Fancy Pants Farm, 10777 E Washington Rd, Clare, 989-339-1780, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Fat Gander Bakery, 2126 E Gordonville Rd, Midland, 989-859-3175, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Frawley’s Fine Herbary, 4613 Lund, Midland, 989-631-3136, www.frawleysfineherbary.com
Hingston’s Countryside, 18670 Dice Rd, Merrill, 989-642-5672