20 Questions with the owner of Greens, Eggs & Ham, Mary Ellen Grueneberg
1. Why – We do all of the above. Greens is for our heritage greens and vegetables, Eggs for the duck eggs and ham for our fowl products – we also have a turkey breast ham and a duck breast ham.?
2. What did you want to be when you grew up? Anything in the medical field
3. What is your biggest pet peeve? Currently, the lack of knowledge producers have on cost of production. Also, the number of producer and government meetings recently NOT serving local food. What and oversight!
4. What are some of your favourite things in life? Pets, Books
5. What has been one of your finest moments in this business? Whenever a new customer or chef calls us to do business saying they heard good things about us and our products.
6. Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits or other defining characteristics? I am never short of words!
7. What is the most craziest or most adventurous thing you’ve ever experienced? Starting and continuing with this business, our previous careers were so much easier – and less hours. We used to have vacations, free time and friends.
8. Do you have a family, and are they involved in your business? Yes to both questions. Andreas (husband), Ariana (Ariana’s Farm Fresh Fowl), Megan our organizer.
9. How largely are your products local/organic/fair trade? Local, Natural, conscientiously raised in a stress free environment. Particularly stress free before processing to keep meat tender. Many producers carry fowl upside down between fingers as they can hold more to get them to travel containers, we do not. Turkeys are walked by Ariana to truck and lifted. Other fowl is carried with wings back under our arms.
10. What made you choose to open a business independently instead of as part of a chain/corporation? Big business has cost us a lot of money starting when we began farming with contract finishing pigs, and feed problems with a large manufacturer when we tried fertilized duck eggs. Also, we do everything differently as we knew being small we could not compete on price with larger producers etc.
11. Where does your business’s name come from? We do Greens, Eggs and Ham, actually the name was to be Greens, Eggs No Ham as we were thankful to be out of pigs, but we thought it limited us to veggies and eggs and we did not know where we would go at the time.
12. Have you ever lived in another country? If so, where/why? I have not, Andreas lived in Germany for 1 year after university and before starting working. He nearly married into a winery, where the country would have schooled him for free!
13. What do you do in your free time? Who has free time? We usually relax around 8pm for a couple hours and spend time with our pets, particularly our parrots who need the attention. We also have a very interesting breakfast with all 8 parrots out and wanting to eat with us.
14. What do you think you’ll be doing five years from now? Hopefully having more help to ease the load on us all. Labor is a big problem as we cannot afford top wages to attract them.
15. When do you feel your best? In the morning, afternoon, evening? Morning
16. What are some jobs you did before you opened this business? Diagnostic X-ray, Ultrasound, Mammography and Director of Imaging at clinics and hospitals
17. Out of those jobs, what was the absolute worst one? Ultrasound was definitely my passion and niche. However, I really never had a worst job. However, worst thing that happened to me was when I suffered a permanent repetitive strain injury in my right dominant arm. This ended my previous career.
18. What do you have in your pockets? A quarter and loonie (for shopping carts), A permanent marker, for writing restaurant and customer names on product bags.
19. What makes you laugh? Our pets and daughters.
Yes, I have no troubles talking in public.
