Those seeking local produce in Michigan will find the farmers market worthwhile to visit. Among the state’s many vibrant markets, the 52-year-old Meridian Township Farmers Market in Okemos stands out as a year-round hub.
“I think the market serves a number of different purposes,” said Tom Cary, the farmers market manager of the Meridian Township Farmers Market. “The main one that most people recognize is providing access to local farm goods and other products from local small businesses…the other role it has is as a community gathering place.”
In addition to the fresh produce and food, the Meridian Township Farmers Market also offers a variety of homemade body care products.
Udderly Magic
Udderly Magic, a homemade body care product brand offered at the market, features products made in Charlotte, Mich. Founded by Kim Birsen, Udderly Magic has been making goat milk soaps for 26 years.
“We were raising goats, and I went to a goat seminar, and somebody there was making goat milk soap, and I thought, well, that’s something I can do, so I started out slow and then it just kept expanding and expanding,” Birsen said. “And I also had an interest in natural healing, so the oils, the essential oils that I was using for the soap kind of lends itself to exploring those other areas, and I went into more back and body care as well as the soap.”
Brisen’s journey into soap making began with her interest in natural remedies and her willingness to pursue knowledge.
“I’ve always been interested in herbology and natural healing, but I never took any classes with others physically for that,” Birsen said. “Originally it did more like reading.”
Birsen’s commitment to quality extends to the selection of raw materials and the craftsmanship of her products.
“I use a lot of good quality oils,” Birsen said. “We use a lot of oil in making soap. And I use virgin cold pressed olive oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, coconut oil, and a little bit of castor oil to help it slide on your skin, and just really good quality ingredients go into it. It’s produced in my home and I use a cold process, which makes a really hard, long-lasting bar, very economical for the price. That takes six weeks to cure, you have to let it set for six weeks before you can put it on the market.”
While Birsen raises goats primarily for the milk used in her soap, she sources the necessary oils from elsewhere, as her farm does not produce oil.
“So the essential oils that I use, I used to get Majestic Mountain Sage, which is out west, but they’re closing, and now I get a lot of it from Wholesale Supplies, which is out of Ohio,” Birsen said. “A lot of it is locally sourced as far as the United States. Some of that has to come from overseas and you know obviously we don’t have, we don’t grow coconut here and we don’t grow cocoa seeds, so that stuff comes from overseas into the facilities that I buy from.”
Birsen also prioritizes building trust with her customers through open communication and clear labeling.
“I just always make sure I’ve got a good quality product going out,” Birsen said. “I’ve never had any complaints about the quality of it. I always label it with everything that’s in it. It’s got coconut oil in it and if you’re allergic to it and it is on the label, but it does have coconut oil in it and I’m always honest upfront with the customer. [The benefit of selling products in the farmers market is] being able to talk to the customer if they’ve got questions — exposure is a good form of advertising. I’m also online, so getting the product out there in front of the customer is a good thing.”
Sapo de Solis
Sapo de Solis, an 8-year-old homemade body care product brand offered at the market, features products made in Lansing. Founded by Chuck Johnson, Sapo de Solis brings a unique perspective to soap making by drawing upon Johnson’s experience managing restaurants, catering services and managing inventories.
“It’s kind of the same kind of thing, except instead of food, it’s soaps,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s journey into soap making began with his experience of seeking alternatives for laundry detergent.
“I was tired of finding the big bottles of mostly water and chemicals to use to clean with, so I started researching online and found a product to make, and so that’s kind of how I started,” Johnson said. “We started with the laundry detergent. We made a few items that we gave to family and friends for the holidays. And they all said, you know, why don’t you guys sell this stuff? It’s really good.”
Unlike Udderly Magic, which utilizes milk from personally owned goats in soap making, Johnson focuses primarily on the crafting process using sourced ingredients which he finds readily available and inexpensive. For Johnson, the terms ‘homemade’ or ‘handcrafted’ mean the precise combination of raw materials according to his recipes.
Johnson utilizes raw materials from a variety of sources.
“If I can find it locally, I prefer that, especially beeswax,” said Johnson. “We use beeswax a lot in our lotion recipes and our lip balms and that kind of stuff. herbs and different additives that we add to the products. If I can find them at the market here, I’ll source them that way. But most of the time it’s online, either Amazon or we have a couple of other soap vendors that we buy from online you know that ship the others to us. In order to be able to provide a consistent product, I have to be able to source the ingredients year-round.”
Johnson’s experience with managing inventories in the food industry has likely informed his decision to produce Sapo de Solis items in small batches, a practice he believes is a key advantage of his brand, to ensure both freshness and the ability to use gentler preservatives.
“We make everything in small batches, so it’s super fresh,” Johnson said. “And because of that too, I don’t have to use a heavy preservative, like formaldehyde or some of the other more chemically based preservatives. It’s an enzyme base, which they say there’s a six-month shelf life when you use those preservatives. We make it in small batches so it’s constantly fresh, it’s made fresh, and doesn’t sit around on the shelf for a long time.”
To further define what fresh means for his products, especially the soaps, Johnson explains that ‘fresh’ has a specific time frame due to the essential curing process.
“So fresh would be outside of that cure time,” Johnson said. “I make soap almost every single day. We have a variety that we offer. But usually by the time you get it, it’s probably a couple of weeks old just because we have to go through that you know the curing process with soap especially.”
“Now some of the other stuff, I can make it, and it can be immediately available. So I would say within, for us, fresh would be within a month, four weeks,” Johnson said.
Johnson prioritizes building trust with his customers through community engagement in product testing.
“When we introduce a new product, we’ve done this a couple of times, we’ll reach out to our customer base and see if anybody’s interested in helping us decide if we want to have this product or not,” Johnson said. “So, we will do like a sample group, control group, or a focus group. And they’ll try the product and then they’ll have a little survey that they’ll fill out and get back to us of what they like, what they disliked.”
Johnson says that the experience of interacting with customers in the farmers market is important to build community and trust.
“We value the interaction that we have with our customers, especially starting at the market,” Johnson said. “We’re seeing these faces all the time. They know me, they know that I make this stuff. They know if they ever have a question, all they have to do is reach out.”.
Market Management
To ensure the quality of products sold in the market, the Meridian Township Farmers Market has established guidelines for vendors, requiring vendors to provide licensing, product labeling with descriptions and recipes.
“We do state some things like products should be fresh, they should be good, especially if it is vegetables or fruit with regards to prepared food or any other kinds of items that require licensing,” Cary said. “We need people to have been inspected and have licenses and labels of what their products are so that we know what’s in them. If you’re a craft vendor, you have to provide receipts of your products.”
However, standardized inspections for homemade soaps and body care are difficult, even though Cary actively engages with the vendors’ offerings to gain firsthand insight into their product quality.
“I usually buy most of the products that are in the market to just try them and see what they’re like,” Cary said. “I will have some idea, but I don’t sample everything and test it. It’s impossible to inspect everybody and even determine what a standard would be like for soaps or body care items.”
The vendors in the market community play a significant role in upholding the market’s reputation.
“One of the things that does happen is that vendors tend to protect the market and the image of the market,” Cary said “If there’s a vendor that’s doing things that are not of high quality or that are questionable, then I tend to hear about it, because those vendors don’t want their products to be confused with these other person’s products and their reputation get damaged because somebody else is doing a bad thing.”
