Well, I got the word that I was accepted into the Orono Farmers Market this past weekend!  Very exciting for me, as it's the first market I've ever attended as a vendor.  I've been to my share as a customer and always loved the atmosphere of meeting the makers of the food I was going to eat, talking with them about recipes for the season, and just enjoying the air around me.  Now, I get to offer my biscuits to folks' dogs at the market!  I'm definitely looking forward to the friendships that will come along with being a part of a crew like the one that makes up the Orono Farmers Market.

Next...I'm waiting to hear on the Belfast Farmers Market and the Common Ground Country Fair put on by MOFGA to see if I was accepted into there. 

And I'm almost finished designing our new website, and that's super exciting, too.  Final proofs of our boxes, new websites, new markets....lots of great stuff on the horizon. 

www.barkwheats.com

Now that our business is growing, we are creating a new website to match our "brand" and we are moving away from selling our products through our website.  We are still a part of the hand-made online community at Etsy.com, but we are taking down our Shopify-based site.  We decided to migrate our blog into the Gaia Community since we love this site and we think our sustainable business practices fit perfectly within the Gaia mission.  We are not here to advertise our business, but rather just find a nice parking place for our blog on a social networking website that matches our own personal and business values.  We hope to find lots of friends here!  Thank you for stopping by!

www.barkwheats.com

Just wanted to post up a little taste of our up and coming artwork. It’s not finished just yet, but this is the basic look of it...  Our new boxes are 100% recycled, printed with water-based inks... we should have them in 2 weeks!

www.barkwheats.com

We were going to wait a little while before moving to boxes for our product, but we feel the time has come to do so now. We came to realize that the cellophane bag that we are using can get a little “tired” looking on the shelf so we’re wanting to showcase our wholesome dog biscuits in a fabulous 100% recycled box! The bag inside will be the same cello bag, and everything will still be compostable.

As for the design of the actual packaging…we’re just finishing that up and I’ll be sure to post up some pictures as it goes out to press.

Thanks to all who have been purchasing our treats at the retail outfits! We truly appreciate it!

www.barkwheats.com

Last week was a pretty big week for us. We dropped off our treats at 4 other locations in addition to the Belfast Co-op. It’s really exciting to have a great group of natural food stores and co-ops on our side to offer our treats to consumers in the state.

While our packaging is awesome, we’re currently working on something better. It will still be compostable and fabulous to the environment, and I think it will offer an even better “shelf look” for the consumer. Be on the lookout in the coming weeks.

www.barkwheats.com

I made my way out to Gardiners Honey in Swanville the other day to pick up a pail of honey. There’s nothing like the taste of raw honey. The shelf brand stuff that’s cooked up so it won’t crystallize just has no flavor like the raw honey. Mmmmmmm….

Finally put my new baking space to work this week, too. Made many many many biscuits, mostly the sea veg ones. I had a great discussion with a gal who is selling my treats, too, about the iodine content in the sea veg biscuits. As many will know, there is a good amount of iodine in sea vegetables (more in kelp and other green veggies than dulce and other red veggies). I went to work on finding out what I could about all of that regarding the content in my biscuits. Glad to say my biscuits are a great supplement for iodine deficient dogs, and a fine biscuit for those who aren’t, too. There’s not enough iodine in them to give any concern about over-ingesting…unless your dog (and wallet) were able to sustain more than a bag a day over the course of many many months. As always, it’s a good idea to monitor your dog’s intake of minerals and other food stuffs, and if you find your dog is a bit iodine deficient, then absolutely feed your little one some more Barkwheats Sea Veg and Chamomile!

Our new labels are at the printers getting printed with soy ink on chlorine free cardstock and getting ready to hit the shelves of the Belfast Coop next week. After that we’ll hopefully be in some shops in Bangor, Blue Hill, Augusta and Portland. I’ve got my sites aimed and we’ll be gettin’ there. In the meantime, if there’s a shop you want to see carry Barkwheats, ask them to contact me!

www.barkwheats.com

Well, I’ve been grappling with this question for a couple ingredients of ours (eggs and honey) since we started baking Barkwheats and I’ve just about come to a decision.

Trying to decide whether a local product that may be non-organic versus a product from afar that is organic was very difficult. I thought about our mission as a company to support our local community and to offer the best dog treats that one could ask for. I thought about the carbon emissions required to get organic honey and eggs to my bakers table versus the emissions that come from my Scion xA driving 45 minutes each way to pick up a pail of raw honey (42 mpg with summer tires on, 35 mpg with winter tires on). I thought again about the economical impact I could have on small honey producers and egg farmers here, and then thought about the lack of impact I would have on larger Canadian organic honey producers and large scale egg farmers. Where do I want to put my money? Do I want the profits from my business that YOU, the customer, are supporting to go outside of Maine? Do YOU want your money to go outside of Maine? Why do people purchase local goods? Is it because it’s quaint and cute, or is because they really understand that by supporting a local business they are affecting someone’s livelihood?

When all those questions were asked of myself, I undeniably wanted to support my local agriculture businesses whether their goods were certified organic or not.

Now, in the case of honey…that’s a very difficult product to certify as organic. Bees travel over 2 miles from the hive to get pollen and one would have to certify all of that land (not to mention owning all of that land) and wouldn’t be able to have any secondary source of income like renting their bees out to blueberry fields to help pollinate our states famous blueberry crops. I will purchase unfiltered raw honey from Maine, and when possible during the late summer I’ll purchase raw organic honey from a fellow in Rockland. Eggs will be certified organic for most of the year from farmers in Winterport and around Mid-Coast Maine. So rest assured that for a good portion of the year I’ll be using certified organic ingredients from Maine. When that’s not available, I’ll use non certified ingredients from Maine. The most important thing to me is that it be from Maine.

To read more about the Eat Local Food Challenge in Maine, visit Food For Maine’s Future and The Maine Foods Network and for a more national view of it all, check out this blog: Eat Local Challenge and the Locavores which is a fun site.

www.barkwheats.com

I just finished up my first large batch of our new bladderwrack biscuits, and boy did they come out awesome! A fabulous mix of ocean and earth (from the chamomile) that is sure to make the pups go crazy.

Of course, the health of the dogs are always in mind when making these biscuits, so the bladderwrack is for scavenging heavy metals from the blood and improving circulatory functions, and also acts with the chamomile in providing some relief from arthritic conditions. They look just like our original parsley and ginger biscuits, but have a much different flavor.

We’ll be updating the site shortly when our packaging is set for this new product.

www.barkwheats.com

I had been approached by a few retail shops who are interested in selling Barkwheats biscuits lately, and I must say it’s awesome! I hadn’t contacted any of them by myself, and one place has shelf space waiting for me as soon as I get my ingredients in from my suppliers. The winter season has given me many orders so far and things have taken off to a point that I wasn’t expecting. Needless to say, it’s a very exciting time for this small micro-business.

We’ve got our contingency plans in place for when we get orders that are larger than what we’re used to, and our organizational tactics are really far beyond anything that I could hope for. That’s mainly because of my partner, Renée. She handles a lot of the logistical stuff while I bake and talk with wholesale and retail clients.

I also just got a nice shipment of FRESH buckwheat flour. When I say fresh, I mean this stuff was milled 2 days before I got it. Amazing!!! I had one shipment of flour come in that wasn’t so fresh and I had to send it back. That took a little time to get sorted out, but I can’t deal with old ingredients…not for your dogs!

I figured I might keep this blog semi-active with some business happenings as we venture into this arena and look to take our local market by storm. It’s really fun, really exciting, and I’m super glad to have you all reading along, enjoying each step with us.

Till next time…

www.barkwheats.com

Another 5 inches of snow on top of the nearly 2 feet that are out in my backyard makes for a field day for my dogs. They love the fresh powder to run and trample upon. Meanwhile, I’m cozy inside researching more about how to make our treats the best they can be for your dogs.

I ordered a bunch of bladderwrack powder as well as chamomile for a new recipe. The benefits of these 2 ingredients are satisfying to my mission with Barkwheats in giving some amazing health benefits to your dogs as well as having an insanely tasty treat for them.

The bladderwrack scavenges heavy metals from the blood which is a great thing mixed with the buckwheat flour as that improves circulatory functions. All to improve the health! Chamomile takes care of pretty much anything that ails ya’ from sleeping problems to arthritis, to digestive issues to allergy relief. The amounts of each that would be in 1 treat are very minimal by human intake standards, but should have an impact on the health and well being of our furkids.

www.barkwheats.com