Local First Friday: Leafyhead Lotions & Potions

Leafyhead Lotions & Potions (http://www.leafyhead.com/pages/Home.cfm), founded by Tricia McCauley in 2009, uses locally grown herbs and plants to create creams and lotions.

The ingredients for the products are home-grown by McCauley or sourced from two Oregon companies: Mountain Rose Herbs and Horizon Herbs, according to McCauley. She sells face and body creams, lip balms and body salves, beard oil for inflammation, insect repellant, and more online through Etsy or by email and at certain D.C. crafts markets that can be found on the Leafyhead website.

“I love connecting people and plants,” McCauley said. “So when I get to talk to someone and tell them about a plant they haven’t ever heard about before, that’s really exciting to me.”

McCauley, who holds a master’s degree in herbal medicine, created her first product after learning how to make lip balm at graduate school. Because she had a list of food sensitivities, she created cilantro lip balm using cilantro essential oil so she didn’t have to worry about ingredients in outside products, according to the website.

“I had all these crazy sensitivities … I couldn’t do soy, gluten, or oats at the times,” said McCauley. “When I learned that I could make [products] for myself, that’s what really inspire me to make them.”

From then, most of the products were created to meet specific needs of her friends (although she found many could be applied to other uses), including Boobie Balm for a friend who was breastfeeding and Peppermint Foot Cream for a friend who spent the work day on her feet, according to the website.

The products use a variety of oils and butters (including coconut and almond oil), essential oils, and herbs (including aloe vera, black walnut, chamomile, and plantain).

McCauley said she is not sure whether she will expand the company in the future but that using Etsy in the past year to year and a half to sell more of her products has already been a “huge expansion” for her.

“There are a lot of people that have been with me for many years, so they purchase from me every year,” said McCauley. “But I am getting more and more and more strangers from around the country purchasing from Etsy.”

About the Author 

Seema Vithlani is a junior multi-platform journalism major and French minor at the University of Maryland. This spring she is also an editorial intern for Washington Gardener Magazine.

"Local First Friday" is a weekly blog series profiling independent garden businesses in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic region. Washington Gardener Magazine believes strongly in supporting and sourcing from local businesses first!

Local First Friday: Eco Honeybees

Bees are essential to the food system. Aside from producing honey, they pollinate around one-third to two-thirds of important crops, according to various estimates, and the rapid decline of the bee population in recent years poses a serious threat to many berries, fruits, and vegetables. 

Nestled just outside DC in Falls Church, VA, Eco Honeybees serves homemakers and businesses interested in beekeeping in the metro area with hive installment and maintenance services.

The local business helps people who don’t necessarily know how to care for bees themselves, which takes time and has a steep learning curve.

“There’s a lot of people who want to do something about the bee crisis,” said Larry Marling, who co-founded Eco Honeybees (http://ecohoneybees.com/) with his wife, Karen, in 2011. “We essentially provide the expertise and the labor.”

The team plans how many hives they will sell each year in advance, assembling equipment and starting the hives over the winter (a delicate time for bees) to sell to customers in the spring and summer. 

Then, they install and inform their clients, the majority of whom are homeowners, according to Marling, about hive maintenance.

Customers can employ the business to inspect and monitor the hives, which Marling said is important to ensure the hives are adapting to their environments and to eliminate potential problems, including parasites and diseases, before they can become problems.

They would also receive advice and guidance to help their hives survive the next winter.

“We’re not dealing with beekeepers here,” said Marling about why his business strives to help and educate its customers. “I mean, a common question we get is ‘Why do bees create honey?’ They don’t understand that they create honey to survive in the winter.”

Generally, hives produce between 10 to 40 pounds of honey per year, according to the business’s website, but this changes based on the environment and other factors. 

Eco Honeybees uses its own breeding program to populate its hives, and it provides a choice between Langstroth hives, or more common, vertical hives, and Top Bar hives, which are horizontal and considered more organic because the bees fill them out with little guidance, according to Marling. 

For Langstroth hives, honey is taken using an extractor. Top Bar hives are more old-fashioned in that the liquid honey comes from crushed combs and is then strained.

“No hive is better than the other,” said Marling. “It’s just essentially, you know, ballroom dance versus tap – people have a preference.”

Marling said one challenging aspect of running Eco Honeybees is being ready to give customers immediate assistance and adapting care to various environments around the DC metro area.

“In this day and age when everybody is destroying the environment, we’re trying to improve it,” Marling said. “There is no handy manual of how to do things. There is nobody out there for advice. The mistakes we make are our own.”

Marling said the business is getting more commercial clients, including restaurants, schools, and country clubs, and it is constantly looking to expand.

About the Author 

Seema Vithlani is a junior multi-platform journalism major and French minor at the University of Maryland. This spring she is also an editorial intern for Washington Gardener Magazine.

"Local First Friday" is a weekly blog series profiling independent garden businesses in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic region. Washington Gardener Magazine believes strongly in supporting and sourcing from local businesses first!

Local First Friday: Three Part Harmony Farm

Three Part Harmony Farm sells fruits and vegetables to consumers in the DC-area. The farm grows produce on a two-acre parcel in Northeast Washington, DC, most of which is sold through a community-supported agricultural program, according to its website at http://threepartharmonyfarm.org/. 

It supplies to local stores and restaurants in DC, including Pansaari and Potter’s House, according to the website. They also sell seedlings to Annie’s Ace Hardware. 

The farm grows food for the region, including greens and roots in the spring and fall, and tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, and more for the summer.

The farm’s goal is to provide food for the area and combat food insecurity and lack of food variety.

About the Author 

Seema Vithlani is a junior multi-platform journalism major and French minor at the University of Maryland. This spring she is also an editorial intern for Washington Gardener Magazine.

"Local First Friday" is a weekly blog series profiling independent garden businesses in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic region. Washington Gardener Magazine believes strongly in supporting and sourcing from local businesses first!

Local First Friday: Good Sense Farm

Good Sense Farm (goodsensefarm.com) was founded in 2013 by Zachary J. Curtis after he spent five years working in agriculture, according to the business’s website. The farm grows mushrooms and cultivates bee colonies to make honey and hive products for the DC-area.

“We believe there is a need for more specialized food production like apiculture and mycoculture in this city,” it says on the website.

The farm sells its products to local community supported farms and other businesses, including Honeycomb Grocer at Union Market and The Spice Suite in Takoma. 

“We build and operate custom urban growing sites, then package and market our DC Grown goods to help CSAs retain customers, restaurants meet their local sourcing goals and small grocers answer the call for year-round, local food,” Curtis wrote on the website.

Good Sense Farm also offers MycoGarden installations (to facilitate growth of edible mushrooms), holds workshops to educate about food systems, and provides consulting and site planning services for agricultural operations, according to its website. 

About the Author 

Seema Vithlani is a junior multi-platform journalism major and French minor at the University of Maryland. This spring she is also an editorial intern for Washington Gardener Magazine.

"Local First Friday" is a weekly blog series profiling independent garden businesses in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic region. Washington Gardener Magazine believes strongly in supporting and sourcing from local businesses first!

Local First Friday: Relay Foods

Relay Foods provides groceries, beer and wine, and other home products to people in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area, saving them a shopping trip. The service offers the option of pick-up or delivery (in most local areas), and enables customers to build meal plans to choose their groceries.

The company was founded in 2009 by Zach Buckner, an engineer who was frustrated with the frequent grocery trips he had to make.

“[Buckner] founded Relay Foods with the hope of creating a simpler way to provide healthy meals for his family without sacrificing quality time at home,” wrote Cheryssa Jensen, the company’s press coordinator, in an email.

Customers can order groceries through the Relay Foods website based on their schedules; there is no fixed, required meal plan. Those who choose to have their food delivered pay an unlimited monthly delivery fee of $19.

The service offers a wide selection of items from various meats and produce to baked goods, canned items, sauces and condiments, and more. 

The website (https://www.relayfoods.com) also offers a Meal Planning feature in which patrons can browse or search through the recipe catalogue, import recipes from online using a URL, or type in recipes manually. Meals can be adjusted based on dietary preferences and serving size. Customers can use this tool to plan and select groceries. 

Relay Foods sources its food from around 190 local producers and takes commission from sales.

“With so many other food delivery companies out there, we often get pegged as something else: subscription-based, a CSA, or sourcing products from other grocery stores,” wrote Jensen. “We are always finding new and creative ways to reach our customer base and keep them informed about who we are [and] why we are different.”

In the future, Relay Foods will continue to expand its product selection, particularly its organic and local products, according to Jensen.

About the Author 

Seema Vithlani is a junior multi-platform journalism major and French minor at the University of Maryland. This spring she is also an editorial intern for Washington Gardener Magazine.

"Local First Friday" is a weekly blog series profiling independent garden businesses in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic region. Washington Gardener Magazine believes strongly in supporting and sourcing from local businesses first!

Local First Friday: Veteran Compost

Veteran Compost (http://www.veterancompost.com/) turns food scraps into organic compost in the Washington, DC metro area. 

A veteran-owned business, it employs other veterans and their family members. The team collects trash and food scraps from bins in both residential and commercial areas. They also work special events, composting materials for anything from small weddings to large festivals.

Veteran Farms has a 30-acre farm in Aberdeen, MD, with a farmhouse dating from the 1870s. The team uses wind power there to compost materials, and they have a large-scale vermicomposting operation in their barn, collecting castings from more than a million worms, according to their website

The business was started by Justen Garrity nearly six years ago. Garrity, who grew up in Howard County, MD, was in the Army for around 10 years. Upon returning, he noticed a demand for organic materials for soil improvement. He created Veteran Compost to meet this need and help with the landfill problem.

“We get to work with so many great people in our business,” said Garrity. “It’s a cool way to help people be more environmentally sustainable.”

Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans have a higher-than-average rate of unemployment. Also, two-thirds of the material that we throw away each year is compostable. Veteran Compost seeks to solve both of these issues. 

The business sells organic compost blends, gardening and potting mixes, seed starting mix, worm castings, and tea and coffee bags.

While it started very small, the business has been expanding largely since its inception.

“We’re always growing,” said Garrity. “We’ve been steadily hiring more employees, requiring more equipment, opening more facilities.”

About the Author 

Seema Vithlani is a junior multi-platform journalism major and French minor at the University of Maryland. This spring she is also an editorial intern for Washington Gardener Magazine.

"Local First Friday" is a weekly blog series profiling independent garden businesses in the greater Washington, DC, and Mid-Atlantic region. Washington Gardener Magazine believes strongly in supporting and sourcing from local businesses first!