Tens of thousands of years ago hulking glaciers swallowed the terrain spanning northern Illinois, which contributed to the topographic, flat features of much of the state today, but in southern Illinois, the ice masses peeled away and uncovered a landscape of rolling hills and diverse plant species. These days, Libby and Derek Ervin pay homage to the fact that their community is where the glaciers ended all those years ago, with the name of their retail store in Marion, Glaciers End.

“Glaciers End is a farm-to-shelf specialty food store. We do small-batch artisanal foods, syrups, shrubs, pickles, hot sauces,” Libby stated.

“We grow a lot of what we make, so we’re always growing stuff at the farm, and we have a kitchen where we turn it into products,” added her husband.

Inside their quaint downtown storefront, shoppers will find wonderful and unique foods.

“Everything that we make is versatile,” explains Libby. “It can be used in multiple ways. Beverages. Cocktails. Mocktails. Cooking with it for flavoring.”

“I think the quality of our product is good, and I think people are interested in the fact that our produce is local. It’s a taste of southern Illinois,” says Derek.

“We use honeysuckle in pretty much every different type of thing we make other than hot sauce,” explained Derek. “We use it in the shrubs. We also make a honeysuckle jelly, a honeysuckle cordial and syrup. It plays well with other ingredients and we have an abundance of it on the farm.”

Libby and Derek have proven to be a dynamic team to create this out-of-the-box business that utilizes the freshness of nature that grows on their farm.

“He’s very much a mad scientist. He does a lot of research on podcasts and looking at other countries’ cookbooks and obscure things and kind of adapting from there,” says Libby. “ Derek is also our chef…. [He] does the majority of our planting. I’m harvesting most of the stuff. Then we preserve it and bring it to the shop.”

The journey to southern Illinois

Derek and Libby seem to fit perfectly into this beautiful portrait of retail success. But their journey took a few turns before they settled down in Marion.

“We met in 2014 in Chicago, got married in 2017,” Libby stated. “We were trying to figure out if we wanted to buy a house there. But every chance we got, it was ‘let’s get out of town, go hiking, fishing, camping and we had the opportunity to move down here and take over his grandfather’s farm and be close to family.”

Derek was also encouraged to take a leap of faith and start a business away from the big city.

“It’s funny, when I was in college, I used to take my grandmother’s pickles home and my buddy said ‘You need to go home, talk to your grandma figure out how to make these pickles and drop out of college,’” Derek explained. “So I laughed, but you know, 30 years later, I am making those pickles.”

Life at the farm

The Glaciers End magic starts on the Ervin’s farm roughly 15 minutes north of downtown Marion.

“You know you look around here you don’t see like a typical farm, but if you know what you’re looking for, there’s food everywhere,” Derek said as he walked the farm. “We started making things at our home, started looking for things that people don’t make–what could be interesting and could it be something different–and we’ve just kind of landed on some good stuff.
“We also just started looking around our farm at what we have growing naturally and started using that to make products,” adds Libby.

Sumac. Hickory. Honeysuckle. They all grow wildly and in abundance on the family farm and are all harvested by the Ervins and worked into featured products at their store.

“A lot of people try to fight it and try to grow things and they have to use bunch of fertilizer and stuff, but if you looked around there’s elderberry already growing here. Why wouldn’t we grow elderberry?” questioned Derek.

“My favorite thing we grow is the Elderberry. It has a lot of potential health benefits, and it’s something that brings back a lot of memories for people,” explained Libby. “My grandmother made elderberry wine or did elderberry jelly.”

“I think my favorite thing to harvest is the hickory bark. We get to kind of traipse through the woods, get our boots on and take a hike,” added Derek. “Harvesting hickory bark doesn’t feel like work, and it’s just nice to go into the woods and kind of walk around and snap bark off of trees and smell the roses.”

“I always say we accidentally started a food company,” exclaimed Derek with a laugh.

Advocating for business

The Ervins say agriculture plays a “huge part” in their professional identity and that advocating for small farms and clean food aligns with their life. Earlier this year, the couple traveled to Washington, D.C. with the Illinois Stewardship Alliance to speak up for small farms and small businesses. They say they also helped state legislators expand the Illinois Cottage Food Bill, so that home-based businesses are permitted to prepare and sell a wider abundance of foods that are grown or made in their home.

“It’s really given us a voice that I don’t know we would have had if we would have stayed in Chicago,” Libby stated. “I don’t think a lot of people get the opportunity to rewrite the rules of whatever it is that they’re doing. We were both a part of rewriting the Cottage Food Bill, while we were in the cottage food business. We were working with a lot of other people. We were able to change the law so that we could actually do more things and develop. I don’t think a lot of people that start businesses get a chance to do that.”

The Erivn’s passion for what they do is evident as they welcome customers — both frequent and new – in to Glaciers End.

“Being able to see someone try a sample of something we make and see their eyes light up is probably one of the most rewarding things that we do,” Derek shared. “I love the fact that we get to talk to people, explain where it came from and how we made it. Maybe I get to talk to them about the history of the recipe and that kind of thing. I think people really enjoy that.”

“I love retail because it gives us a place to have, like our home, and our shop is our home,” said Libby with a smile. “ We’re having people come to us and we’re having people seek us out. Our shop is becoming an economic tourism thing.”