Mini City Homestead brings small-scale focus to local produce scene
Janice Bisson may not have the space for a full-scale homestead, but for her business, the point is to focus on the small scale.
Farmers growing soybeans, Ohio’s most profitable crop last year, may wait four months between planting and harvesting their fields. For corn, the state’s second most profitable crop, the turnaround from planting to harvesting can take two to three months.
And for Janice Bisson, owner of Mini City Homestead in Oxford, the turnaround between planting and harvest is as little as seven days.
For the past year, Bisson has been growing and selling microgreens — early shoots of herbs and vegetables harvested before they have a chance to mature. She densely plants the seeds, often broccoli and radish, in trays that she then covers with no light exposure for three days, weighing down the trays to trick the seeds into thinking they’re beneath soil. Then, she removes the cover and lets the greens grow under lights for another few days before harvest.
“Microgreens have a higher nutrient density than their full-grown counterparts,” Bisson said. “They’re kind of like a nutritious powerhouse … and I think a lot of the world doesn’t get that anymore.”
The homesteading movement has exploded in the past decade. Bisson lives within the Mile Square in Oxford and doesn’t have room for a full-blown farm, but part of her inspiration for Mini City Homestead was to see what she and her family could squeeze into their third of an acre.
Beyond the microgreens, Bisson raises chickens and uses their eggs for her homemade bread. She mills her own flour for the bread, too, and makes her own herbal tea blends. All of her goods are available at MOON Co-op and Harvest Moon Homestead.
Like any type of farming, growing microgreens comes with challenges. Covering the seeds restricts airflow, which can lead to a full tray molding if Bisson isn’t careful about the temperature and humidity. It’s been a learning curve for her over the past year to find what works.
Oxford has a strong community of local growers, though, and Bisson says she’s been able to rely on support from people like Mary Sutton with Harvest Moon Homestead. The stand Bisson uses for her grow lights and microgreens came from another local farmer. She hasn’t been able to use the bottom shelves yet thanks to her young kids who might dig into the plants, but they’ve been helpful in other ways, especially with the chickens.
“[My kids] collect the eggs; they herd them,” Bisson said. “Sometimes we let them out to free range, supervised, and they love to shoo them around and tell them where to go. It’s a lot of fun watching them.”
Bisson has been baking bread for decades, but she only started selling it this February. She uses an electric grain mill to mill her own flour, which she says adds nutritional value. A lot of store-bought flour, particularly bleached flour, relies on chemical processes to stay shelf stable, which Bisson said reduces some nutrients.
“Nutrition is at the heart of what we do, nutrition and wellness,” Bisson said. “That’s our main driver.”
Mini City Homestead was built with a focus on the small-scale, but Bisson said she would love to expand someday. She envisions growing the herbs for her teas herself in the future and selling bigger vegetables from her garden, and this summer she’ll be going to the Seven Mile farmers market once a month. For now, though, she’s happy to stay micro.
