Make-and-Take Jewel Corn Craft

Stop by the Community Room, 11am-1pm, for a fun and festive event for you and the kids! Create and take home your very own jewel corn. It’s the perfect opportunity to enjoy the season’s bounty, share in the spirit of giving, and make something special together.

Wild Carrot Herbals – Skincare with a difference!

Kim McDermott, Wheatsfield Wellness Manager

Wild Carrot Herbals tops our list of favorite skincare companies in the co-op’s Wellness Department. Wild Carrot had its humble beginnings in Oregon in the 1990’s. Back then, founder Jody Berry was a young organic farmer at The Evergreen State College, growing and learning about plants by hand. What began with experimental handmade herbal products eventually grew into Wild Carrot Herbals. Fast forward to today, Jody is still with the company, making body care products the same way, using whole plant infusions, biodynamic farming practices, and handcrafted small batch production. The company buys direct from local growers and farmers in the Oregon area, uses mostly organic ingredients, and has a strong sustainability focus. Some key features of the company are very lightly scented products using only natural essential oils, cruelty free and no testing on animals, skincare recipes guided by the traditional use of plants and herbs, and sustainable packaging using glass jars and metal lids (no plastic here!).

Some of the co-op’s most popular Wild Carrot items include Blue Tansy Facial Moisturizer, Saffron Face Cream, and Vanilla Sweetgrass Face Cream (but oh, how to choose just a few…!). Blue Tansy moisturizer is a lightweight, easily absorbed facial moisturizer that’s non-sticky and ideal for daily use. Aloe and nourishing avocado oil give it a perfect balance of hydration that’s not overly heavy. The inclusion of blue tansy oil and blue yarrow oils confer anti-inflammatory and calming benefits to the skin, and is an excellent choice for combination skin. Saffron Face Cream is a wildly luscious face cream that is hydrating, regenerative, soothing, and anti-inflammatory. Made with shea and cocoa seed butters and sea buckthorn seed oil, this cream is super rich and concentrated. Sea buckthorn seed oil, with its concentration of omega fatty acids and antioxidants, is like a super food for your skin. Many reviewers comment how they love its subtle vetiver scent. Vanilla Sweetgrass Face Cream is Wild Carrot’s first and most beloved face cream. With a base of shea and cocoa seed butters, jojoba oil and sea buckthorn seed oil, vanilla face cream is rich enough to get our skin through the Iowa winters, providing a protective barrier that is deeply moisturizing, protective, and repairing. The sweetgrass and vanilla flower give it a lovely warm and grounding scent.

If you’ve been curious about Wild Carrot and haven’t yet treated yourself to Wild Carrot’s skincare, now is a perfect time to try it while it’s 25% off through November 3.

Endangered Eating

October 2026 Produce Parable

By Adam Calder, Wheatsfield Produce Manager

From the staple foods we eat daily, to the special occasion treats we fondly cherish, food carries significant cultural weight for most people. What might happen to us, to our culture, to our stories, when some of those foods disappear?

In her book Endangered Eating, culinary historian and journalist Sarah Lohman tackles that question. Guided by the Ark of Taste, a list created by Slow Food International, Lohman travels the United States from coast to coast, to taste for herself some of these culturally significant foods that are in danger of fading away.

Lohman visited Coachella Valley in California to taste unique American-variety dates most people in America have likely never heard of. The desert-valley climate in Coachella Valley is uniquely suited to grow excellent dates, so they have been farmed there for over 120 years. In that time, farmers have cultivated dates with names like Abada, Black Gold, Blonde Beauties, Empress, Honey McGill’s, and Tarbazal.

The Black Gold date comes from Sam Cobb Farms in Sky Valley, California. With a melty mouthfeel, and a taste of fruity, sweet caramel, these dates are a gem.  One day, Sam Cobb was driving and saw an attractive date palm tree growing on the side of the road. This palm tree likely grew from a pit someone had discarded out the window of a car years ago, so Cobb had no idea what the variety was. He liked its look and flavor so much that he declared it would be his “black gold” once he started selling it, and with that a new date variety was born.

Lohman journeyed to Walden, New York, to learn about the Newtown Pippin, a blushing, yellow-green colonial-era cider apple grown commercially to this day. Hard and starchy when picked in November, they must be stored until spring to let the starches convert to sugars.  This long cure time imbues an extraordinary, lingering taste in the apple juice.

The reason this apple is still grown, and hundreds of others drifted off into history, is that there is a consistent and large demand for the Newtown Pippin apple from the Martinelli’s apple juice company. They use the Newtown Pippin as the source for over half the juice used in their organic sparkling apple cider (which we sell at Wheatsfield!), and they pay farmers above market rate for those apples to ensure that steady supply. The Martinelli’s family has owned their company from its start in 1868, and understands the important heritage of the Newton Pippins they use.

In upper Michigan, Lohman was a guest of the Ojibwe Nation to learn how they traditionally harvest manoomin, or what is known as wild rice. In Ojibwe culture, manoomin means “the good fruit” or “spirit delicacy”. It is the first solid food of their babies, served at their funerals, and eaten every day in between. It is immensely important to their culture.

It is traditionally harvested from canoes, using two sticks. One gently bends the stalk over the canoe, the other lightly taps the ripe grains into the canoe. Once the canoe is full, the rice is taken ashore and dried in the sun, followed by a roasting in a cauldron over an open fire. This loosens the rice beards, so they come off easier when the grains are threshed by a “dancer” with protective knee-high deerskin moccasins (manoomin hulls are covered in sharp barbs). The threshed grains are then winnowed using a shallow birch-bark tray to toss the rice in the air, letting the chaff blow away.  None of this happens to farmed “wild rice” sold in most grocery stores, which isn’t truly wild at all.

Lohman also tastes heirloom sugar cane in Hawaii, Navajo-Churro sheep in New Mexico, Choctaw filé powder in Louisiana, and Carolina African Runner peanuts as she travels across the U.S.A., tracking down the foods that form the stories of who we were, and who we are, as a nation of diverse people and unique cultures that all meld together to form something truly American.

A Piece of Tradition, Made with Care

Melissa Lanphere, Wheatsfield Marketing Manager

This week the co-op started carrying breads baked locally by Piece and Freedom Bakery. We have a love for connecting our members and shoppers with the people behind the food they enjoy, so we asked them to share their stories, traditions, and care that is baked into every local loaf.

1. How did Piece & Freedom Bakery begin? What inspired you to start baking and eventually turn your passion into a business here in Ames?
   It began at the Ames farmers market in may of 2023. It is hard to believe that now we have a brick and mortar and a commercial kitchen all on Main Street. Our mission is to expand the palette of Iowa by showcasing flavors that are not common to Iowa and US. We love people venturing out and exploring things they might not have tried otherwise.

2. How did the partnership between your families come together? What does it look like to run a family-centered bakery, and what does each person bring to the business?

   Hanna moved from Washington, IA where she also participated in farmers markets. She moved to Ames because her partner is at ISU. After a couple of successful markets we understood we can work with each other and we made a big move to open 301 Main Ste 107. Hard to put in words, my mother is the head baker and the bread maker for the business, Hanna is customer service and sales and I make sure it all stays afloat.

3. Your name has such a meaningful story behind it! What inspired the name Piece & Freedom? What does it mean to you personally, and what do you hope customers take away from it?

   My friend who is now in Poland due to the war has come up with the name, she and I thought what do people need in this life, firstly freedom – freedom to choose who to love, what to do, where to work, freedom of word, financial freedom that is essential to us, but sometimes all we need is a piece of cake to get us through the day.

4. We’d love to hear about your logo and visual identity. What inspired the design, and what do its elements represent? We understand that the design incorporates elements like wheat, flowers, trees, and the sun. How do these symbols connect to your values or vision for the bakery?

   You are absolutely correct, again the design of the logo was my friend Anna Sedleruk who now lives in Poland, she and I sat down (virtually) and said we are Ukrainian and this logo will shout it in every element, the sun- is what we all need to live, the trees symbolize that we Ukrainians are rooted in our land and identity and the wheat is our homage to being the bread basket of Europe.

5. What ingredients do you prioritize when developing your recipes? Are there particular qualities you look for in your flour, butter, eggs, chocolate, nuts, fruit, or other ingredients? 

   Of course, chocolate is only 70 or 60 percent for all cakes and ganaches (we use mini chocolate chips for apple chocolate keks but it is the only exception), butter for our desserts is Wutrich (german), flour for our bread is King Arthur. We use the things we would use in our homes. If we cant read it we dont buy it.

6. How do you approach ingredient sourcing? Do you work with particular farms, mills, or suppliers? Are there ingredients you prioritize sourcing locally, organically, or from specific regions? We’d love to know what matters most to you when selecting ingredients.

   We do get our rye flour from Early Morning Harvest Mill, we get our dill from Pammel Grocery store. Hazelnuts we buy from a farm in North East USA. Eggs we buy through our food distributor.

7. Are there ingredients or additives you intentionally avoid? For example, do you have any preferences regarding artificial colors, preservatives, flavorings, or other additives? Are there any ingredient standards or practices you follow that shoppers might appreciate knowing about?

   We don’t do any colorings AT ALL, our spinach raspberry cake is green, everyone thinks we add someting – we don’t. It is the spinach (fresh) that makes it green, no powders nothing we cannot read.

8. How do you choose ingredients that deliver the flavor and quality you’re looking for? Are there particular ingredients where quality makes a noticeable difference in the finished product? We’d love an example of how a thoughtful ingredient choice affects the taste, texture, or overall experience.

   We are obsessed with ingredients that bring the star flavors to surface, if it is Kyiv Cake the first thing you will taste is the cashews and hazelnuts, because that is what makes the cake have a wow factor. Everyone always says our lemon baked goods are so good, well because we spend time zesting every lemon and juicing it always ourselves.

9. What has it meant to grow your business in Ames? You’ve grown from farmers market beginnings into a downtown bakery. What has surprised you most about the community’s response, and what have you learned along the way?

   My father said to not expect people to go to downtown and buy bread this is just not something that will happen. Well, we sell 200-300 loaves in a week. But also the people who come in and say I have not had this before and I would like to try are the ones that bring me joy. I also love that some couples went on a first date in our store, got engaged and got married and had their cake from our place for their wedding a full circle moment for us. We also had a neighbor at the farmers market Wendy who sold shirts, we got to be super friendly and her favorite cake was Kyiv cake, she always had a piece at the end of the day, when we opened our store she was there with her family we loved that! But moreover, a year after her son and daughter in law were our first big wedding order for 220 people!

10. Is there anything else you’d like Wheatsfield shoppers to know about you or your bakery? This could be a story, tradition, ingredient philosophy, personal inspiration, or something about your business that you wish more people knew.

    We are ukrainian women owned business, we care about everything all the time it is our biggest pride and stress, haha! We want the bread to look beautiful, to be tasty, we want you to come back. We want to meet your family we want to be a part of your circle. We care about your health and well being, we are upset when we dont see you for a long time and we are overjoyed when we hear that you have been travelling and thought of us as you were eating a new cake. We are a part of this community even though we are not from here and we are grateful for that.