A 5-gallon bucket of carrots, “unwashed and dirty,” and three ice cream pails of chokecherries.
“That’s how my business got started,” says Diane Schmidt, recalling her first sales attempt at the Mandan Farmers Market nearly 40 years ago.
Schmidt was a single mom at the time. She’d haul kids and carrots to the farmers market on Saturday mornings. She can still picture her young boys, in 1986, sitting on the curb while Mom made sales.
Today, “the Juneberry Queen” is hauling a lot more to market. She offers a plethora of garden produce (cleaned and washed, which she is a stickler about today), a variety of canned goods and even fresh-baked juneberry pies. She estimates selling over 700 pounds of juneberries and 400 juneberry pies during a farmers market season, and she cans at least 2,000 jars a year!
“I just wore my stove out and had to get a new one,” Schmidt says, pointing at her new model. “I made 32,000 jars on that stove.”
Her best sellers, she says, are the juneberry pies and chokecherry jelly. She’s famous, however, for her “Slippery Hots.” It’s her specialty pickle, made using the “big ugly yellow cucumbers that everybody would throw away.”
Schmidt and a friend worked for two years to perfect the Slippery Hots recipe.
“It took two years to make it so it wasn’t too salty, or too sweet, or too vinegary, or too watered down or they got soft, or whatever. It was fun, but it was a lot of work,” she says.
She makes 400 jars of Slippery Hots a season, and they immediately sell out. It’s the only recipe she’s not ready to share.
“When I’m done gardening, everybody can have it!” she says. “But every other recipe I’ll give out. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Garlic is another fast seller, which has been offered since the Juneberry Queen joined forces with “the Garlic King” – her husband of 25 years, Marc.
“He loves his garlic,” she says.
The couple used to plant about 1,800 garlic bulbs, but have tapered back to 800. They plant the garlic in the fall before the ground freezes, then dig it up in July, before it goes through a series of drying steps, including on a drying rack Marc fabricated himself.
Their garden reign has been a partnership in every way. Marc will prepare the gardens – three of them – in the spring. They’ll plant, weed, tend, pick and harvest together during the growing season.
“If I’m doing it, he’s going to do it,” she says.
And while Diane does the bulk of the canning and baking, Marc rises early to bake the pies on market days and lid the jars. He is a steady helping hand behind the scenes and Diane is the bright face of the business.
“I have over 140 standing customers each year,” she says. “I have a list, a book with names and orders. And I’ll see them in church, ‘Don’t forget me on your list!’ they’ll say.”
Not only are the Schmidts hauling more to market, but they’re selling more often, too. In addition to sales out of their home, the Schmidts sell on Thursdays and Sundays at the Bismarck Farmers Market in the north Kirkwood ACE Hardware parking lot and on Saturdays at the Mandan Farmers Market in Heritage Park.
Diane is the longest-selling vendor at the Mandan Farmers Market.
“The thing I get out of it is the satisfaction of doing it all, how happy it makes my customers,” Diane says. “I don’t even care if I give it away. I do a lot of benefits and give a lot of my stuff away. In my heart, that’s just so awesome.”
Though Diane has retired from the medical field, her hands have a lot more work to do.
“These are working hands,” she says. “I would always tell my grandma, ‘My hands are never going to look like that, Grandma.’”
Diane comes from a long line of passionate women gardeners. Her mother and grandmother taught her how to garden, and the chokecherry jelly recipe Diane shares is from her grandma. Elda Charvat, Diane’s mom, died in 2022 at the age of 97. She helped Diane in the kitchen until age 95.
Diane also cares for geraniums that have been in her family for five generations, passed down from her great-great-grandmother.
With Diane’s infectious energy, it’s safe to assume the Juneberry Queen will keep the Garlic King busy in the garden for years to come. And if her mom’s life is any indication, Diane might just wear out another stove or two.
“It’s a lot of hard, hard work, but you got to love it, like any sport or any activity,” Diane says. “I love to garden. It’s in my heart. Because when I’m out there, I think of my mom and my grandmother, who I gardened with every summer. Always.”
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Cally Peterson is editor of North Dakota Living. She can be reached at cpeterson@ndarec.com.
DIANE’S HOME CREATIONS
Diane and Marc Schmidt, Mor-Gran-Sou Electric Cooperative members who live north of Mandan, operate Diane’s Home Creations. They sell a variety of homegrown produce, frozen juneberries, homemade juneberry pies, chokecherry syrup, assorted jellies, salsa and pickled vegetables, including Diane’s famous “Slippery Hots” pickles, out of their home and at local farmers markets. Find the Schmidts during the growing season:
• Saturdays, 9 a.m to noon, Mandan Farmers Market, Heritage Park in Mandan.
• Thursdays, 8 a.m. to sellout (about 5 p.m.), and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Bismarck Farmers Market, north Kirkwood Ace Hardware parking lot in Bismarck.
To place orders or for pick-up, contact the Schmidts directly at 701-663-8622 (home) or 701-391-0506 (cell) or email marcwdiane@yahoo.com.
