The Families of Bailey's Local Foods
Bailey's Local Foods started as a daughter-father business with the daughter (Nina) organizing the business and the father (Wendell Bailey) acting as my right-hand man. I grew up farming with my dad. In high school, we'd do chores together most mornings before the sun rose. I have many overly romanticized memories of walking across the dark fields with my dad to the barns. The stars were a dome over us once my eyes adjusted and we could find our way across the fields and over the fences just by the feel of the land beneath our boots and the stars. Our farm was a factory-farm raising thousands and thousands of ducks. We also had a cow, a pig and a big canning garden for our family's eating.
[Wendell (Opa) and Nina picking saskatoon berries with the kids at a U-Pick farm near Simcoe]
In high school I realized that I wanted to farm so I apprenticed at an organic produce farm for 5 months and marketed the produce in Washington DC. I've also worked on a conventional produce farm and also milked cows on a dairy farm. My latest farming gig was when I lived on my parents' farm with my husband and baby and worked with my dad to change the farm from a factory-farm to a pasture-raised poultry farm. We raised healthy and happy meat birds on pasture in a moving skid house. We also raised hens who had access to rotating pasture and happily ate bugs and plants everyday. My farming experience and my farmer's heart influences how I do this business. I am now the kind of person/business I wish I could've sold chicken and produce to when I was a farmer.
My mom and dad moved to Waterloo a couple years ago and live in an addition on our house. We call our house Coop House for the old chicken coop in the backyard. The original owner loved his chickens so much he put stained glass windows in the chicken coop. We also like how Coop House looks like "Co-op House". We do a lot of co-operating between our households and nearby neighbours.
Matthew is my beloved life partner. He and I share everything from parenting and income-earning to washing dishes and eating big bowls of popcorn after the kids are in bed.
Wendell Bailey is married to Bonnie and retired from 23 years of teaching in a one-room Amish school and is now resting from too many years of farming to count. He grew up a farm boy in Indiana and then ventured out to join the civil rights movement and to teach English in Poland. At 29 years of age he settled down near his ancestral farmland and raised his family. He has three daughters.
Now Wendell has eight grandchildren. He is the world's best Opa. He is also the bread baking machine at the Coop House churning out five loaves at once. Wendell is also a weather junkie. If you are wondering what the forecast is, he usually knows.
Part of what my dad and I love about Bailey's Local Foods is the chance to get to know farmers and neighbours and bakers and cheese makers and other local food lovers. Everyone has an interesting story.
Now a new friend, Rachael Ward, has joined in this buying club project and she's going to lend her business organization expertise to help the buying club grow and run smoothly. Andrew Ward is the guru who designed the on-line ordering form. I wouldn't still be doing this if it wasn't for Rachael and Andrew. Being able to place on-line orders efficiently is what gives members the beauty of so much choice.
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