Our Story
A melding of ecology, botany, agriculture, community food systems, and cooking, Berries and Flour uses many uncommon plant crops in our products, some from local farms, some from fields, and some from our forests. Each of these Midwest plants has its own story to tell!
The Mission of Berries & Flour
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​​By teaching how to recognize, harvest, process, grow, and consume more traditional, regional foods, we encourage folks to eat closer to home. This practice is ever so important considering many of the economic, social, and environmental issues we face today.
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We readily collaborate with many individuals and organizations toward food accessibility and justice. We do cooking demos, give edible gardening lectures and foraging workshops. Our predominant “store front” is made up of local farmer's markets, and our products can be found in our farm store and in in regional stores.
Our commercial kitchen, inspected by IL Department of Public Health for wholesale, enables us to produce our own value-added products, but also allows Berries and Flour to operate as a small-scale fruit and vegetable processing facility, and kitchen rental for other micro food operations. These activities contribute much-needed components of a strong local food system in Central Illinois!
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Owner & Head Chef Heidi Leuszler
I grew up the daughter of parents with wanderlust who believed that culinary experiences were among the best ways to know a place. We harvested and foraged wherever we lived; mangos in Florida, morels and mustang grapes from the back acre in Missouri, wild strawberries and holly grapes in the Colorado mountains, and chokecherries in North Dakota. We traveled the world, dined in people’s homes and ate from hedgerows & tidepools & local markets. As we moved through a delicious world, my mother taught me to preserve seasonal bounty, and be adventurous with flavor pairings from the myriad of places I have lived and visited.
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My husband and I purchased a home on seven acres of rich Illinois loam soil, and we promptly planted native prairie and trees, wildflowers, a “Midwest Hedgerow,” an orchard, berries, and asparagus. The Midwest is a treasure trove of foodstuffs, both domesticated and wild, and I believe we should celebrate this by exploring with our palates and growing and eating what we can locally. I now prepare seasonal dishes based on what grows in the backyard and on local farms. As a professor of environmental science, ecology, and botany at Parkland College, and sometimes the University of Illinois, I have continued to learn more about native plants, ethnobotany and agriculture. All of these experiences have helped me to become an advocate of food security based on a local food supply.
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I decided to start Berries and Flour as the synergy of all of these passions for me: culinary skills, ecology of native landscapes, growing of plants, foraging for wild foods, and teaching people about the plentiful Midwest land. Starting this bakery ties these many skills together into a delicious box that others can easily share.