Help Rachel & Family After Being Victims of Theft

Rachel Lachance is the sole owner and maker of her family run business, Black River Foraging Co. Her unique products are all natural and made using high quality ingredients most of which take an entire season to produce as she makes and grows and almost everything that goes into these lotions, salves and oils on her property. 

Rachel and her daughter attended an in person market in Timmins shortly before Christmas. For local makers and small business owners, the holiday season is the biggest selling month of the entire year. It is also the time where makers stock up their displays so that they don’t run out of product! 

With a ton of product and a gorgeous display set up, Rachel was ready to pack up for the day once the market was over. She was told by one of the market hosts to “feel free to leave your display and pick up tomorrow”. With a family at home and a bit of a drive ahead, she decided to do just that- leave her display set up for the night (she even restocked it prior to leaving). Rachel took a photo of her display for marketing purposes and waited in the car for a few minutes before leaving, not having an ounce of fear that her product would be tampered with. 

The next morning the unthinkable happened. Rachel went back to the market thenext day and to her disbelief, EVERYTHING was gone. Her entire display, every last product, all of it, gone. She figured her display must have been moved because,no other vendor had anything touched on their display- but when she asked the market director where it had been moved to she was told “it wasn’t moved anywhere, this is how you left it”. In complete disbelief Rachel realized that she had been the victim of a major theft. To top it all off, she was then banned from all other markets in fear of her talking to the other vendors about what had happened. As you can imagine, all of this was unthinkable and completely disheartening. 

I could go on with more detail- but in light of not wanting to point fingers and cause an issue for the market host, I’m going to leave it at that- the most important thing is that this family was robbed of everything they had worked for and produced. 

Approximately $3600 of product was stolen causing Rachel and her family to close Black River Foraging Co indefinitely at this time.

As a community and as a fellow maker myself, I’ve seen the tremendous support that this town has to offer when it comes to small businesses. So while you may not be able to support Rachel by purchasing an item, you can support her today by donating to this fundraiser. Whatever you can put towards this beautiful family business to help them recoup from such a financial loss at such a critical time is greatly appreciated. No amount is too small. 

I’ve set the goal at $5000 because not only do I hope that we as a community can cover the retail cost of the goods that were stolen but also some extra to make up for the years worth of work that went into so many of these items. 

If you are not financially able to donate, please simply share this post.

Thank you for taking the time to read this!