At any local farmer’s market or your favourite restaurant, chances are good that the people producing, cooking, or growing your food are also busy managing a home and family. A visit to Gibsons’ Coho Commissary gives us a glimpse into a few of these family businesses.
Taped to the wall inside the office is a child’s drawing of a rainbow radish – a gift from the eldest child of Jack Chen and Hilary Prince, Brassica’s head chefs and a husband-and-wife team. “To Daddy, from Ava,” it says. An endearing reminder of who and what this is all for.
Downstairs in the commissary kitchen, Michelle Musey, the woman behind the namesake MAMMA MUSEY’S PIEROGI, is at her station, listening to a podcast and cutting strips of bacon. In front of her is a whiteboard with English names of cooking utensils listed next to their Ukrainian equivalents. There is also a task list written out to help her new hires, recent Ukrainian arrivals, know what to do when Michelle leaves work to meet her kids: two six-year-old twins and a four-year-old.
This is her only hard rule: to be there to see the kids off to school in the morning, and to greet them when the bus drops them off in the afternoon.
One could safely assume the bacon is an ingredient for her pierogies or the takeout meals she recently started offering. “No,” she laughs, “these are for the lunch program at my twins’ school. I’ve been feeling a bit of FOMO [fear of missing out] not being present for class field trips and other events, so I thought I’d sign up to make food for their school’s lunch program.”
What’s one more task on her to-do list?
“The pierogi dough is vegan,” Michelle explains, as she cracks an egg, “but I use our duck eggs in our baking.” As she rattles off the names of her flock, her husband, Nolan Musey, rushes in, having just delivered a series of orders to local retailers. He waves hello, then swiftly washes up, throws on a hairnet, apron, and gloves, and gets to work. These two could be the very definition of a ‘dream team:’ a partnership with a shared vision.
Managing social media is a job on its own, but for Mamma Musey it’s an essential marketing tool to help build community, promote new products, solicit orders, and announce their presence at farmers’ markets, on and off-coast. Markets are their bread and butter, and Michelle and Nolan trade off weekends so one can stay home with the kids – time that would otherwise be spent together but a mutual sacrifice made for the sake of their family.
A similar story is shared by John Byrnes and Suzy Grant of THE FARM, a well-known family operation with humble beginnings. Today it is a full-fledged business that is steadily growing. Familiar faces on the farmers market circuit, John and Suzy also create clever content on social media and give back to their community. Oh, and they have a few animals at home, too.
Today their commissary station is quiet; John was there hours prior for a graveyard shift to fulfill pre-orders of their popular sourdough bread for the Roberts Creek Market, happening later in the day. Suzy or her mother Arlene would later take over packaging, labeling, and managing the booth.
Earlier in the week, a failed attempt to catch Suzy by phone was returned with a cheerful text, “Sorry! Tied up today – celebrating a special nine-year-old’s birthday!” Family first.
A connection finally took place a week later, and the discussion was largely about birthday celebrations and cakes – there have been a lot of them this month. When asked if she gets to see her husband, Suzy laughs at the absurd question, but pauses to think. “We’re sometimes ships passing in the night, but we try to get John home for dinner on Tuesdays so we can all be together.” As Michelle does for Nolan, Suzy is quick to credit her husband John for his tireless contributions.
In the Byrnes-Grant family, the kids play a role in The Farm’s success. Their eldest son at home creates labels and signage, while their next son helps with market sales. Their daughter, who has an eye for merchandising, helps with booth set-up and looks after the family’s pets, as well as their dog- and horse-boarding charges. Their youngest son has taken up the long-standing tradition of making lollipops.
Soon John and Suzy will need help to manage their large agricultural property for the growing season and will take in farmhands to help with work that would otherwise take up any free time the family had to be together. For now, Suzy is looking forward to a weekend away in the city with John and Bruce Cockburn.
“Running your own business makes for some long, long days, but we try to stay flexible to make things that are important a priority, like birthdays,” she laughs, then sighs. “We just cram it all in – and eat a lot of cake.”
