Years ago, local family owned and operated business Golden Meadows Honey Farm owners, Lidia and Christian were bedazzled by the idea of a combined store that supplies the community with both honey & artisanal gifts as well as beekeeping supplies.

Christian’s ‘getter done’ attitude turned his interest in beekeeping into a complete bee operation, running the business’s mid-sized apiary focusing on pollination and speciality honey production.

Our storefront as well the opportunities to attend farmers markets allows Lidia to pursue her dreams of developing connections within the community to learn and to share our knowledge with others. Reflecting back, Lidia is awed by how much she has learned about bees’ significance to the environment, society and economy, and ways to learn from and support the bees. “I believe we have everything we need here within our community.”

The two combined their passions into a beautiful business!

 

What’Soup started when I was on my maternity leave and had the need to have nutritious and quick meals on hand. Being a chef, I started putting recipes together and thought that frozen “ready to eat” soups would make a great quick, easy and nourishing meals and that’s how the business was born.

 

Tomatoes! Our family doesn’t eat tomatoes out-of-season, so when these sweet beauties are around we really savour them. Greek salad, tomato sandwich lunches and just mowing down a couple yellow romas for a snack. A huge priority for us is the flavour of our vegetables, and we feel like we have the varieties of tomatoes that we grow pretty dialed-in, as we are in our 14th season of growing. I, Cara, first found out what a tomato could taste like when I was getting to know Andy (my husband). His Dad grew some tasty big beef tomatoes in his big backyard garden. Over the years we’ve paid close attention to which varieties not only grow well in our climate (soil-grown in our unheated greenhouse) but to those who have a depth of flavour.

 

Having sensitive skin, my daughter having eczema, and my mom having rosacea, I always had to read ingredients labels. Even when I read the labels and did not list anything I had a known allergy to, I would still react. When I did some research on cosmetic laws, I was appalled to learn that a company can say they are organic when only one ingredient is. The kicker for me was that if an ingredient was below a certain percent, it did not need to be listed. The term “greenwashing” was coined by so many companies claiming to be chemical-free when in fact, they were just not listing them.

Having the word perfume or fragrance can mean a blend of 300 chemicals. This did not sit well with me, and I wanted to come up with a brand that only used organic, vegan ingredients, was transparent (lists everything on the label), and did not use preservatives or any unnatural chemicals.

I went back to school to learn to formulate, aromatherapy and a naturopath program. For years before Faceplant was a business I was creating products for my loved ones. My partner told me my products changed his life as he thought he would struggle with dry skin and dandruff for the rest of his life. He believed so much in the products and me that he helped me create Faceplant Organic.

 

 

When my daughter was little she would refer to when I was formulating or making products as “potioning”. She also would proudly tell people she was Faceplants “hamster”. Misremembering that the term was being a Guinea Pig!

It was a case of good timing and great minds thinking alike! Anique and Federico moved back from Italy in 2013 after falling in love with craft beer over there. The craft beer scene had just started taking off in Vancouver after some regulation changes allowing for breweries to open lounges and [the other founders] Ryan and Eleanor were avid craft beer drinkers and home brewers. Both couples dreamed of opening a brewery and after many discussions over beers they decided to start working on a business plan. It took a few years, but we opened our doors in 2016!

 

 

I [Anique] love anything in from our Serie Selvatica (wild series) which uses seasonal local fruit. It’s a real labour of love processing hundreds of pounds of fresh fruit for these beers but it makes so much difference in the final product. It’s also amazing to be able to work with local farmers, some of whom we’ve met at farmers markets! Right now we have our Tart Wild Ale with Naramata Apricots and our Tart Wild Ale with Raspberries!