Lance Gray got interested in plants from his girlfriend Myrah who worked in the greenhouse when they met.
Lance Gray harvesting. (Submitted by Lance Gray)
“She loves being outside and learning about local plants wherever she is,” says Gray. “It was kind of a good combo, where she liked learning about the plants around and I like being outside.”
Gray makes a bunch of different things such as fireweed tea, a syrup from the fireweed flowers, labrador tea, and he harvests a lot of berries, including rose hips.
“We call them itchy bums up here because the seeds and the stuff inside of the berries has a bunch of tiny furs, as you can imagine going through your body coming out the other end. So it’s kind of funny when I thought about us utilizing them to make a jam. But that kind of comes down to the way that we prepare it. We strain it and we don’t get that side effect.”
Gray is a Local Food Cohort Entrepreneur with EntrepreNorth, a program designed to help entrepreneurs grow their business.
“A lot of this, almost all of it is really thanks to EntrepreNorth for getting me all this knowledge about how to get a business up and running. I just want to say a big thank you to them…as well as my partner Myrah, she’s been so supportive and motivating.”
Fireweed syrup. (Submitted by Lance Gray)
Gray felt intimidated when he first applied, but now that he’s in the program, he recommends the program for others to apply to.
“I’m so glad that I did it. Because once you get past that anxiety, there’s things that you’ve never seen or done before. And that’s been just amazing.”
Gray hopes to have an online store running next year. In the meantime, his Instagram is the main source for finding out what Gray’s Harvest is doing.
“Getting outside just makes us so happy and harvesting and sharing these things, finding what makes me happy has been one of the best experiences of this.”
