2 minute read
Co-op Owner Spotlight
BY LAURA PETERSEN
Julie Carville remembers the first time she caught the scent of freshly ground whole grains.
She was living in Oakland and went with a friend to a small health food store. She recalls the sweet aroma of the grains when she opened the car door.
“I couldn’t believe it when I stepped onto the sidewalk. I thought, ‘I’m hooked on this,” said Julie.
Before that day, Julie had always thought of health food stores as something unappealing — a strange place with hundreds and hundreds of pill bottles. She discovered something quite the contrary when she found organic, whole foods. Little did she know, she was embarking on a life long path of healthy eating.
Julie and her partner Rondal are long-time BriarPatch Owners with a deep affinity for the cooperative model. While still living in Oakland, Julie belonged to a small cooperative of folks who purchased boxes of farm-fresh veggies delivered from the back of a pickup truck. Later when she moved to Tahoe, she couldn’t stand it that organic food was nowhere to be found in the grocery stores.
“We didn’t want to go all the way to Oakland to get our produce and organic grains,” said Julie, a dedicated home bread baker.
That’s when she discovered BriarPatch, a small cooperative market tucked away in a renovated home in the neighborhoods of Grass Valley where it was commonplace for local farmers to walk in with boxes of freshly harvested fruit and veggies.
“BriarPatch opened their cute little shop on Washington Street. We were thrilled. We could finally get organic produce. We really loved it. Everyone was so friendly and community-minded,” said Julie.
She enjoyed coming down the hill every couple of weeks to stock up, year-round. A lover of nature and celebrated local author of several books about wildflowers, it was an excuse for Julie to escape the snow and see the arrival of spring wildflowers in the foothills. Later, she would help support a small organic market opened by friends in Tahoe before moving to Nevada City full-time.
In the 1990s, she supplied BriarPatch with green beans from her own garden when the store was located on Joerschke Drive.
To this day, she and Rondal continue to do most of their shopping at BriarPatch. She marvels at the way the store has grown with over 200 employees and the organic bounty she finds in abundance on the shelves - a transformative journey that mimics her own humble wandering along the organic food path.
In the 1990s, Julie supplied BriarPatch with green beans from her own garden.
An early view of BriarPatch when the store was located on Washington Street in Grass Valley.
