Saturday Farmers’ Market Vendor Feature: Craftwilder

This week we are featuring Craftwilder! Craftwilder has created a premium, no sugar added kombucha made with only the best, ripest locally sourced ingredients. We recently had the pleasure of chatting with owner, Ian Hayzleden, to find out more.

How long has Craftwilder been around? How did you get started?

I started CraftWilder May 5 2017, while working in restaurants. I`ve always enjoyed nourishing and healing people as food is our medicine, but the restaurant industry has changed over the years and shifted in intention. I worked very long hours and physically demanding hours in very high-stress environments with fake lighting and many disgruntled individuals. I started this company with a paycheque, a big heart, and an abnormally high level of motivation & passion. I had been making it at home for a long time and studied wine + fermentation during my post-secondary. It was an easy way for me to spend more time in nature where I belong but allows me to meet beautiful people with similar goals and continue to help others.

What are the three most important things you think people should know about Craftwilder?

• CraftWilder was created with the intention to educate & help heal or maintain one’s health and share the story of our land and environment through the wild foods we harvest.
• We feel we promote individualism & mindfulness through our nontraditional take on Kombucha, Non-carbonated, wildcrafted, and unique flavours.
• We want to be an example for people to express their creativity and to be more involved in self-education. Learning is fun and easy!

You mention practicing regenerative harvesting techniques how do you do this?

Firstly, we harvest our ingredients with the intention to maintain and grow their numbers. Many shamans and healers around the world cultivate plants in the forest and care for them to gift to their children to benefit from. Over the years I have spent a great deal of time learning hundreds of plants and mushrooms to understand how they grow and their growth cycles throughout seasons and ecosystems. Leaving sensitive plants to seed first before harvesting is a way to regenerate their numbers. I have many locations of plants that are uncommon and have spent years spreading seeds from them and successfully increased the patch sizes for example wild Canadian ginger. We do this with other at-risk species such as devils club by cutting small sections of the stalk and burying them in moist soils and yellow cedars another’s I have cloned in the past and plant outdoors (approx. 100 seedlings and hope do more of this as time goes on)

What makes your kombucha/ SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) unique?

The only difference in our SCOBY is that ours also contains wild yeast subsequent of the wild ingredients we use. It’s more than likely as SCOBY`s have been used in China for around 2000 years that it was discovered in the wild first anyways. What makes our Kombucha different from everyone else is that we use only wild-harvested foods and have a nontraditional style that’s noncarbonated.

Beside being delicious, what are some of the benefits of kombucha?

There are many health claims around Kombucha, some truth and others needing more scientific research to sustain them. The human microbiome is delicate and our bodies only function the way that they do because of the bacteria and micro-organisms that exist in us naturally. All of our health steams from our digestive system including the foods we eat and with the right diet and probiotics we can greatly reduce the risk of disease or other ailments. Kombucha can improve cognitive focus because of the gut-brain axis which also increases ones energy levels throughout the day. Kombucha can be used topically in skincare products to maintain epidermal / skin health.

Why did you choose to come to the UBC Saturday Market specifically?

It was calling to me! Just such a beautiful and peaceful environment and have had gone in the past as a market go`er.

If you could only have one of your kombuchas for the rest of your life which one would it be?

I can feel my body and mind turning inside of me with having to pick a favourite. It changes frequently depending on what my body feels. Over the past year for me personally its was Devils club & apple, then Yellow Cedar which I still LOVE both but right now it’s our newest flavour my girlfriend blended which is our Sage, hawthorn, and chokecherry flavour. It’s incredibly refreshing with pleasant citrus and fruit notes with a light herbaceous taste. Better than a summer citrus beer and non-alcoholic!

Where else can customers find you? And is there anything else you want them to know?

We are going to be participating at the UBC farmers market this year but focusing heavily on online sales ( we delivery to all of the lower mainland) as well as retail location (Greens Organic on west Broadway, Pomme in Coquitlam, Polly fox Abbotsford) We are also busy reaching out to other retailers our supporters have recommended and hope to expand more through this option and get back to more markets next year.

We have started a UBREW/ brew your own Kombucha subscription on our online store. You can sign up for 1 of 3 different subscription levels and have access to all the wild ingredients we harvest. We work with you for balance your flavours in our style. You can pick up to any 3 ingredients you want that we have harvested and we do all of the brewing, cleaning, and delivery your creation to your doorsteps.

We hope to see a shift in how industry works and want to encourage people to reach out to us and be as involved as they can be in what we are working towards. Thank you so much for your time, energy, and valuable questions and we wish humanity good health, happiness, peace & love

Market Dates| Instagram | Website | Facebook page