This past Sunday morning, amidst the dust and echoes of renovation, with one kid at a friend’s house and the other working, my wife and I escaped to Heeman’s for a little impromptu date. It felt like a small rebellion against the mess at home, a conscious choice to press pause on the chaos and breathe in the sweetness of a new season.
As soon as we turned onto Nissouri Road and saw the flourishing greenhouses and berry fields stretching out before us, something in both of us relaxed. Heeman’s isn’t just a berry farm. It’s a beloved, three-generation, family-run greenhouse, cidery, and grocery hub on the edge of London, Ontario, offering strawberries from June through October and a cozy “Berry Beanery” café tucked among flowering plants in the sprawling garden centre.
When we arrived, we parked the car, grabbed some boxes, and wandered through the cheerful crowd. The greenhouse hummed with warmth, rows of bedding plants and perennials beckoning like old friends. We picked up some plants for our garden, and made plans for where we will put other plants once the renovation is done and the house is painted. The berry fields called to us, and after purchasing our plants, we took advantage of the drive thru, picking up a flat of delicious, freshly picked strawberries to enjoy (both on the drive home and in our kitchen).
There is something sacred in that simple act of selecting fruit that hasn’t crossed thousands of miles or passed through cold storage, food grown with love and passion by people we know, people who have run this thriving business with integrity and heart. It was our first lesson of the day: the shopping matters. For our renovation-weary hearts, knowing where the food came from, and the people who grew it, was nourishment in itself.
Supporting Local Grows Its Own Kind of Goodness
At Heeman’s, you don’t just buy berries. You meet the people who grow the food and tend to the plants. You can chat with a “Daymaker,” their orange shirts bright against the green of the leaves, who will give tips on caring for potted plants in your new garden, or the best type of plant for your space, depending on the size and the sun exposure. You can ask about how best to enjoy your strawberries or asparagus and you can know that the answers you will get come from a person who cares, not simply someone trying to make a sale.
Watching the exchanges between shoppers and staff reminded me that supporting local is about relationship-building. It’s about seeing the faces behind each box and basket, feeling grounded in a community that thrives on connection, not convenience. That experience is a far cry from choosing something off a shelf at Walmart or Costco (though, don’t get me wrong…I also enjoy a good trip to Costco). At the farm, each choice carries a memory and a story, a link in the chain that binds us to the land and to each other.
Heeman’s has created more than just a business. They’ve crafted a place that invites lingering. The café smells of berries, espresso, and fresh-baked treats. Couples sip strawberry shakes under trees. Children and dogs run on the grass. Gardeners wander slowly. You can almost track the seasons by the soil under your sneakers and the blooms around you .
Small Moments That Mean Everything
Our chaos at home is loud. We have empty rooms…like really empty, with no walls or floors or ceilings, no lights or switches, and contractors and tradespeople coming in and out every day. We live much of our lives in our garage lounge or the back yard (which has been amazing). I drop our dogs at daycare each day on my way to work, to keep them from being underfoot and to give them a break from the chaos. But at Heeman’s, time slowed. We didn’t check our phones. We didn’t talk about what’s still undone. We simply wandered, talking about the colors, the plants, whether a lilac or a Japanese maple would be better in the new front garden.
We don’t often do that anymore, in the rush of renovations and daily obligations, with parenting and work challenges and the million immediate decisions that need to be made. Yet there we were, side by side, choosing plants and ordering berries, remembering how to take our time.
We bought a flat of strawberries, some zucchini plants to replace the ones that were not doing well in our garden, a white pumpkin to grow alongside the orange ones, some cantaloupe plants simply because I have never grown them before. We took our time, drove home slowly, watching the late morning light filter through the trees and reflecting on everything left to do at home, and everything we still have to do together.
This market visit wasn’t just food, though those berries are delicious and will be made into compote or jam or strawberry shortcake. It was a ritual, a ceremony of togetherness, one long overdue. We leaned into the beauty of simplicity, even while everything else around us feels broken and in flux. It was the perfect kind of date.
A Metaphor for Living
As we drove home, flat of berries in Nancee’s lap, I kept thinking: this is exactly how we are trying to live and what we want to share. The table isn’t a piece of furniture. It’s an invitation. A choice. It’s the rhythm of our lives, rooted in intention, not in perfection.
We don’t need a finished kitchen or a perfect table to invite someone in. Though, we are really looking forward to having those. We just need to plan, to gather, to carry our berries or our joy or our grief or our stories, and to show up. Our renovation will eventually yield new counters, cabinets, floors. But right now, the counters we have are work benches. The chairs are going to go back to the deck. The walls are bare and the floor is concrete. And that’s okay.
Because hospitality is about making space for connection. It’s about setting aside the expectation that everything must be beautiful in order to belong. The market reminded us of that today. The berries reminded us of that today. The sweetness of the berries, the passing smiles of strawberry-buying neighbors. All of it was sacred.
What We’re Planting Even Now
Our home might be mid-apocalypse of dust and construction, but there is life here too. We’re preparing to plant a new front garden once the new windows are in and the house is painted. We’re keeping track of what grows well in the greenhouse so we’ll know what to plant later. Our back garden is thriving and will yield nourishing food to feed our bodies and our souls.
More than that, though, we’re cultivating a mindset. One that holds space for imperfection, that chooses simplicity over status, that draws connection from conversation over a quart of strawberries just as easily as from a meal shared.
And so at the end of the day, as evening fell, we enjoyed our berries sliced over some chocolate cake. We will make jam and compote. We will enjoy them with ice cream. We’ll sit at our patio furniture with plates and laughter and gratitude.
We will remind ourselves that our world doesn’t need finished spaces or flawless meals. It needs us showing up. Eating messy waffles. Drinking coffee at sunrise. Spreading jam over silence shared. Creating belonging out of whatever space we have.
And at the heart of it all?
My arm around my wife’s shoulder, the two of us working together to get through this renovation journey and the journey of raising teenagers into adulthood, and together we’ll remember:
This is home.
This is life.
This is enough.
Christine Sharpe: Writer, Speaker, Leader . 
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