Today we’d like to introduce you to Jena & Ryan Grosschmidt.
Hi Jena & Ryan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
We met out of college, working in the claims department for Nationwide Insurance, and were married soon after. A decade later we had both worked our way into management positions and found a passion for knowing where our food comes from. Soon after the birth of our daughter, Jena needed a major spine surgery that refocused our priorities to our health, family, and benefiting our local food system. In 2016, Know Your Roots LLC was born. We started off renting greenhouse space from Anthony Petitti’s Garden Center to expand and grow our selection of naturally grown, heirloom/non-GMO fruit, vegetable & herb starter plants. Believing in the importance of knowing how our food is grown, we were excited to share our products with the community and did so via order forms and Plant Sales at our home. Conversations with a customer about a local need for a market that highlights small businesses led to the birth of the Plain Township Farmers’ Market at Veterans Park. In 4 years, the market went from being open only in the spring and with 10 vendors, to May – September, featuring 30+ weekly vendors and up to 60 at our monthly special events. We enjoyed our time at the park, teaching our community how to grow their own food and supporting the farmers, makers, and bakers that supplemented our grocery & gift shopping needs. During this time, Ryan built a hobby greenhouse off the garage of our home in North Canton. Moving our growing operation to our backyard and expanding our personal gardens and orchard, we were able to fine-tune our heirloom plant varieties, finding the ones that grew best in Ohio’s climate and utilizing all-natural ways to mitigate pests and disease, while promoting healthy growth. As the market and our plant sales grew, we created a website, so that customers could pre-order their ideal gardens for porch or market pick-up on their dates of choice. We also started looking into opportunities to make shopping local, a year-round habit, by speaking with Mayor Wilder of North Canton to host a Winter/Indoor Market, when the Plain Township Summer/Outdoor Season ended.
As we were gearing up for year five, the state shut down for COVID-19 and Plain Township made the difficult decision to end the market, due to the amount of traffic it brought to the park. Believing that our community needed access to fresh, nutritious food more than ever, we were pleased the Governor declared farmers’ markets to be essential. Knowing that local farmers and small businesses would not survive without a safe way to connect with their customers, during these trying times we approached the Director of Administration for the City of North Canton, Patrick DeOrio, and Mayor Wilder about North Canton becoming the home of Stark County’s only year-round farmers’ market. Thankfully, they believed in the essential benefits of providing their residents with a market and offered to host the community at the spacious former Kmart property on North Main St. Opening in June of 2020, while the majority of the state was still shut down, we were blown away by the community’s support of small businesses and desire for fresh produce & baked goods. As the Wednesday traffic at the North Canton market was starting to grow, the Canton Farmers Market cancelled their 2020 season. With the Canton farmers fearful they would not survive the pandemic, we felt inspired to support them and their customers by expanding the North Canton Farmers Market to be open on Saturdays as well, to help accommodate the extreme traffic of the time.
After a successful summer of 2020, the market began it’s first-ever Winter/Indoor Season, around the same time that we purchased Ryan’s grandparents’ 4+ acre hobby farm in Lake Township. With plans to grow a food forest and continue to extend our selection of heirloom plants, we expanded our operation and built 1,200 sq feet heated greenhouse and hoop house on the farm. We continue to grow by the day, planting orchard trees and berry bushes, raising chickens, planting a pasture of wildflowers, and hosting 5 beehives. Every day is an adventure, and we look forward to creating a sustainable homestead that supports our family’s future and offers unique produce & plants to our community.
In the beginning of 2021, we were contacted by Patrick Wyatt from the Downtown Canton Special Improvement District, about bringing a farmers’ market back to Canton. After meeting with Donn Angus from the City of Canton, we got to work creating a new market for the City of Canton at Centennial Plaza on Saturdays from 10 am-1 pm. The market experienced a successful first summer season and is in the process of wrapping up year two, with plans for upgrades and special events in 2023. Stay tuned for more details: www.cantonfarmersmarket.com
The North Canton Farmers Market has moved to the North Canton Civic Center at 845 W. Maple St. in North Canton, operating year-round on Wednesdays, from 3 pm-6 pm, offering live music, wine tastings, 30+ weekly vendors, food trucks, cooking demos, make & takes and so much more! Learn more at www.ncantonfarmersmarket.com or visit our Facebook page.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been a non-stop roller coaster since we decided to become small businesses owners. There were definitely a couple times that extreme discouragement set in and we had to push through. The first being the year we rented greenhouse space. In April, with all plants started and transplanted into their sale pots, a storm came through that pulled the plastic off the greenhouse, destroying 80% of our inventory. It was devastating to feel so defeated before our first official sale season began, but we pushed forward with the help of our friends and managed to fill our pre-orders for the season.
The 2nd big struggle was when Covid struck. We were notified at the end of March that the Plain Township Market was cancelled, with just 5 weeks until opening day. Already discouraged because life was changing daily with new restrictions being put in place, it could have been easy to give up on our goal of creating a vibrant food system for our community to count on. But it wasn’t easy… in fact, giving up didn’t feel right at all. We found ourselves more dedicated than ever to finding a way to bring the essential service of a farmers’ market to our community. We will forever be grateful to the City of North Canton for believing in us and ensuring the residents of North Canton and beyond have access to fresh, nutritious food, specialty products, and hand-crafted goods.
We’ve been impressed with Know Your Roots, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are a team of Farmers’ Market Managers & Heirloom Growers that provide our community with the opportunity to grow together and build a local & healthy food system. We do so by offering an extensive selection of heirloom and naturally grown starter plants for your garden and by managing the two largest farmers’ markets in Stark County, Ohio.
We started Know Your Roots, in honor of our decision to spread our own roots by building our farm and growing our family in northeast Ohio. The name is intended to remind and educate on the importance of relationships, a strong local economy, and knowing where our food comes from. The seeds we grow in the garden and throughout our community have been in existence for centuries. If we can learn from such, we can work together to ensure they will be available for the generations of tomorrow.
We believe that everyone deserves to have access to clean, local produce. To support this belief, in 2022, we signed a deal with the USDA to become an authorized facilitator of nutrition access programs. In doing so, shoppers at both markets can use their SNAP/EBT card and WIC & Senior Nutrition vouchers, directly with their vendors of choice, to shop groceries.
Our plants can be purchased year-round at the markets and via pre-order on our website at www.knowyourrootsohio.com. Save on your 2023 spring & summer plants by ordering in January, as part of our unique Plant CSA. More details on our website.
We’d love to hear about what you think about risk-taking.
We take risks all the time operating the markets and growing non-genetically modified crops in Ohio’s climate. From severe pop-up weather during market hours to a spring drought when we just planted 30 fruit trees, risk is an unavoidable side to business. For instance, when we made the decision to open the North Canton market 3 months into the pandemic, markets around the state were either closing or coming up with extreme ways to ensure social distancing. As a result, we considered having a drive-thru farmers market that wrapped around the Kmart building. Ultimately, we decided that model wasn’t the one that we wanted to support and made the choice to open as one of the first walkable farmers’ markets in Northeast Ohio, with an extra hour of open time for seniors and immune-compromised, and extra space to accommodate distancing. This was a huge risk at the time, and we are grateful that we took the path we did and were able to keep our community and vendors safe while operating by the required guidelines of the state.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.KnowYourRootsOhio.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/knowyourroots_ohio
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/KnowYourRootsOhio
Image Credits
Jena Grosschmidt
Joe Albert
