Take a look behind the scenes at Whole Foods Market’s Gluten Free Bakehouse.  In 1996, Lee Tobin was diagnosed with celiac disease, and, as a baker in our Chapel Hill, North Carolina, store, this presented a real challenge.  But Lee took it on! He began experimenting with gluten free baking on his own time, developing recipes that rivaled conventional goods in flavor and texture.  Over the years, Lee’s gluten free breads and baked goods flew off the shelves faster and faster.  By October 2004, he was proud to fire up the gluten free ovens in the new, completely separate, dedicated facility: the Whole Foods Market Gluten Free Bakehouse.

Eagle Creek Growers – Mantua, Ohio
Under a 3½ acre greenhouse, the Bonner family at Eagle Creek grows a wide variety of potted plants and hanging baskets almost completely off-the-grid. They heat their entire greenhouse system using energy created from an on-site boiler system utilizing environmentally friendly products such as wood waste, saw dust, and dried manure from local horse farms.

Savannah Bee Company – Ted Dennard
Savannah, Georgia
As Ted Dennard tells the story, he got started in the beekeeping business when “an old, battered pickup truck swarming with bees rattled into my life.” He learned the craft of beekeeping from the driver, Old Ray, and has kept bees in his backyard ever since. Today Savannah Bee Company’s award-winning artisan honeys are carefully harvested by the finest beekeepers in the southeast and delivered to Whole Foods Market in the purest form possible.

Capriole Farmstead Goat Cheese
Greenville, Indiana
In 1976, Judy Schad and her family fled the suburbs for a small farm in the hills of southern Indiana, in search of a more sustainable lifestyle. More than 30 years later, Judy has built a goat cheese farm on the 80 acres surrounding her home where some 500 goats roam the pastures and woods, while Judy and her crew use their goat milk to make fresh, ripened, and aged chevres by hand.

The Thompson family has been farming in southern Brooks County, Georgia, since the early 1930s. Today, Raymond and his son Andrew own and operate Thompson Farm Smokehouse, where they continue the tradition of providing excellent quality food grown on a small family farm. The Thompsons raise pastured pork and employ old-fashioned salt curing methods to ensure superior flavor in Thompson Farm meat.

Note: Our Farm to Market slide shows currently feature farmers and producers from our South and MidAtlantic Regions. We hope to expand to others in the future.

Mercier Orchards – Blue Ridge, Georgia

Tim Mercier has been picking apples since he was seven years old on the North Georgia orchard where he was raised and now lives with his children and grandchildren. Tim and his crew hand-pick dozens of varieties of apples over 200 acres that will ship out to Whole Foods Market the very next day, making them the freshest bushels of apples available straight from the tree to the market.

The Choptank Oyster Company is a thriving oyster hatchery and farm that produces high quality oysters, while also helping to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Traditionally, millions of bushels of oysters have been harvested annually from the waters surrounding Dorchester County, Maryland, up until the 1970’s when harvest numbers began to drop off substantially as a result of over harvesting. However, The Choptank Oyster Company is helping to turn this situation around by culturing and spawning millions of native oysters in the bay at any one time.

On Monday in Atlanta, Georgia, several hundred people gathered in Piedmont Park with Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, to celebrate their Time for Lunch campaign. It was National Day of Action and this Eat-In (part potluck, part Sit-In) was just one of more than 300 across the country as tens of thousands of people came together on Labor Day to tell Congress that it’s time to get real food into schools. Preliminary results from the field showed that turnout was greater than expected, which demonstrates that people are concerned about our children’s health. Slow Food wants to send a clear message to Congress that the time to update the Child Nutrition Act is now. We have a chance to invest in our children’s health, protect them from food that puts them at risk and teach healthy habits that will last through life. If you haven’t done so yet, you can sign the petition at www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.

Shawn Thackeray – Thackeray Farms – Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina

Shawn Thackeray began farming this 200 acres of land located a mere mile from the Atlantic Ocean many years ago with his father-in-law when it was all planted in tomatoes. Today Shawn owns this land, where he dedicates 20 acres to grow heirloom tomatoes and has expanded the rest to grow a diverse roster of specialty vegetables and several varieties of wildflowers. Thackeray Farms is currently transitioning their sustainable farming practices to organic in order to improve the condition of the soil and the surrounding water and to provide the healthiest working environment for his employees.

MEADOW RUN FARM – Lititz, PA

Dee Horst-Landis and her husband Philip are turning her family’s scenic land in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, into a sustainable farming oasis. With pastured chicken and turkey, grass-fed beef and lamb, and pastured pork from heritage breed pigs, this young couple is intent on building fields of healthy soil and grass from which to feed their livestock a grass-based diet.