Margaret McLeod Leef, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Chef Iocovozzi Brings A Taste Of The Philippines To Asheville

Asheville, North Carolina has an eclectic dining scene and one of its “hidden” gems is Neng Jr.’s. It serves elevated Filipino cuisine in a little restaurant that’s tucked away in an alley on Asheville’s artsy West Side. Folkways Reporter Margaret McLeod Leef visited and brings us this story.

This story originally aired in the May 5, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

The first thing I notice about Neng Jr.’s is its lively decor. There’s a green-tiled open kitchen, fire engine red countertops, and turquoise walls. Adorning the space are items from Chef and owner Silver Iocovozzi’s personal life — stuffed animals and well-worn books, trinkets from Iocovozzi’s mom for good luck, a quirky telephone in the shape of a red high heel and a vibrant painting of Iocovozzi’s husband, Cherry.

But, what I’m here for is Iocovozzi’s popular Filipino creation — the adobo.

“To me, it is like a quintessential Filipino dish, and it evokes all those flavors,” Iocovozzi says. “I think a lot of people get their minds blown by it, and I love that.”

Inside the kitchen, Iocovozzi cooks in a high-powered wok over an open flame. The adobo is served with duck on the menu. But today, Iocovozzi makes the adobo with pork cheeks that he has on hand. The adobo sauce simmers while he prepares a bitter melon relish to set off the adobo. The dish has a uniquely Filipino flavor profile.

“I would say it’s really a kind of a tangy cuisine, lots of vinegar and lots of sour,” Iocovozzi says. “There’s a lot of tart aspects to it.”

Silver Iocovozzi, chef and owner of Neng Jr.’s.

*Photo Credit: Will Crooks/Courtesy*

The bitter melon, a spiky cucumber-looking gourd, is almost too tangy on its own. But paired with the rich and silky adobo, my mouth waters for more. The dish is an example of the taste and technical skill Iocovozzi is known for.

Neng Jr.’s was recently nominated for a James Beard award, and Iocovozzi was named one of Time Magazine’s Next 100 People to Watch. He traces the start of his cooking journey back to his mother. He has fond childhood memories of her cooking.

“She would sit down on the ground with this really heavy cutting board and tenderize meat and marinate it, and it was a really simple marinade. It was just soy and oil and garlic and onion and black pepper. But it tasted so good to me,” Iocovozzi says.

Iocovozzi and his mom loved the soy, garlic and onion flavors. His mom is Filipino, and his dad was from North Carolina.

“They met in Japan. My dad was stationed there; he was a Marine. My mom, a Filipino woman, was working in Japan at a karaoke bar. She was an entertainer,” Iocovozzi says.

Iocovozzi’s parents met and married, and his mom immigrated to the United States. His mom was the only person of color in her new family. Staying connected to her Filipino heritage was difficult.

“My mom was really seeking some comfort of home and realizing she couldn’t find that representation of Filipino food or cooking, or even that warmth of culture that Filipinos bring,” Iocovozzi says.

But she found a way to share her culture with Iocovozzi.

“I would go with her to the Asian market and get all these ingredients that she could tell me about and get excited about. Because I think that was like the little amount of representation that she could share with me,” Iocovozzi says.

It wasn’t until visiting Manila and Batangas in the Philippines that Iocovozzi fully understood his mom’s culture and the link between food and celebration. “I grew up between Manila and eastern North Carolina, where my grandparents lived. And [I] really had a lot of experience in Batangas. Batangas is coastal in the Philippines where we would go visit. And because we were in town, they would just bring a reason to have a fiesta and a big celebration around food,” Iocovozzi says.

Those fiestas often centered on butchering and cooking a whole hog. “This was the first time I’d seen a pig be sacrificed. A lot of the cookery in Batangas is no electricity, no gas, just fire. And to see the way … these people that are living in these provinces cook with fire and break down pig and really know how to kill a pig with their hands — it’s an experience I’ll never forget. And also understanding how much I can appreciate food and where it comes from,” Iocovozzi says.

Understanding where food comes from — and how to prepare it — was a quest that took Iocovozzi from the Philippines to the American South and around the world in the restaurant business.

He got his start in Asheville as a dishwasher in 2011 after a friend suggested he’d like the city. Soon, he attended culinary school in the area and worked as a chef at Buxton Hall BBQ — an Asheville institution — before eventually cooking at award-winning restaurants in Tokyo, New York and Grand Cayman Island.

In 2020, he returned to Asheville to build his own community around food. Within two months, he secured a building with a takeout window for what would later become Neng Jr.’s. When designing Neng Jr.’s, Iocovozzi was as intentional about the space itself as the menu.

“I just want to create a space that shows some representation for those that have been seeking it and know that it can exist,” Iocovozzi says.

At Neng Jr.’s, Iocovozzi created a space that welcomes people of all ethnicities, genders, and orientations — just like Iocovozzi’s mom made room for her culture when she moved to the States. “I’m putting myself out there and my heart,” Iocovozzi says, “It’s really a passion project.”

The exterior of Neng Jr.’s, located in a narrow alley in Asheville, has a brightly painted mural.

*Photo Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef /West Virginia Public Broadcastin*g

And it was also a way to honor his mom, whose Filipino nickname was Naneng.

“It’s an affectionate name for a young girl. And I don’t, you know, identify as that, but … Neng Jr.’s is an iteration of that nickname stemming from my mom’s nickname. Because I’m her mini-me,” Iocovozzi says.

Iocovozzi shares his story through Neng Jr.’s, embodying the flavors, warmth and joyfulness of home. “I don’t think of myself as just like a restaurant in Asheville. I think of Neng’s as a restaurant in the world,” Iocovozzi says. “It’s so important to be a Filipino restaurant in Asheville because the people need to know what this food tastes like. And also understand this level of hospitality that comes from a Filipino.”

The Filipino traditions in Chef Iocovozzi’s family history continue to shape the restaurant. Iocovozzi is in the process of building a stage modeled after the original karaoke bars in Japan, like the one where his parents met.

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Asheville Luthier Honors Family Trade With Environmental Focus

Elizabeth ‘Jayne’ Henderson is a notable luthier who is following in the footsteps of her father, famed guitar builder and musician, Wayne Henderson. Jayne is maintaining the family tradition, but doing it her way.

This story originally aired in the Jan. 28, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

On a recent afternoon in Rugby, Virginia, Wayne Henderson is in his workshop alongside his daughter, Jayne Henderson. Wayne checks out a guitar Jayne recently built.

“Let me look at it and play on it a little,” Wayne tells Jayne. He plays a few cords. “Very nice sound and tone.”

Wayne Henderson tests a guitar his daughter, Jayne Henderson, recently built in his workshop in Rugby, Virginia. *Credit: Margaret Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Coming from Wayne, this is high praise. Wayne has made guitars for everyone from Vince Gill to Eric Clapton. He charges about $5,000 for a new handmade guitar, but they can fetch much more on eBay and other secondary markets.

He taught his daughter, Jayne, to build guitars, though it was not something she learned growing up. Jayne said back then, she was not interested in hanging around her dad’s shop. There were too many other people vying for his attention. It wasn’t uncommon for fans to hang around.

“I wanted to be special. I wanted to feel like he was my dad and not Wayne Henderson, this is the guy that everybody just reveres and thinks is just the coolest,” Jayne said. “I was like, I don’t want anything to do with this because I don’t want to have to stand in line for my dad’s attention.”

So Jayne followed her own path. She attended college and earned a master’s degree in environmental law and policy. However, she soon realized her nonprofit salary was insufficient to pay off her student loans. So she asked her dad for help.

“She said she had this loan, student loan going on, I guess like all kids that go to school do,” Wayne said. “And she said, ‘I’d love to pay this loan.’ And said, ‘I see what your guitars bring. Would you make me one that I could sell on eBay?’”

But Wayne had another idea.

“I told her, ‘What you need to do is make it yourself.’ I told her, ‘I’ll help you. I’ll give you my best wood. It’ll be one of my guitars, which means it’s got to be done exactly right. And I’ll probably make you do stuff over,’” Wayne said.

Jayne was reluctant at first.

“When I started that first guitar, I thought it’d be terrible. I’m like, ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ Because, you know, they sell for a lot of money on eBay, and I gotta pay back these law school loans,” Jayne said. “And what happened was I just, I loved it so much, and I got to stand next to him instead of in line to be the next groupie or whatever. I got to stand there with him, and he showed me how to do things.”

Working side-by-side with her dad, Jayne began to develop a common interest with Wayne. “It was the relationship that I got that I never really got to have growing up,” she said.

Turns out, Jayne had a knack for building guitars. That first guitar sold for $25,000, putting a hefty dent in the loans. It wasn’t long before Jayne was hooked. Within about six months, she quit her environmental nonprofit job to build instruments full-time. But Jayne didn’t leave her environmental convictions far behind.

Typically, guitars are made from imported woods like Brazilian rosewood and mahogany. They’re not always environmentally sustainable. But Jayne makes hers from locally sourced and reclaimed wood. She also makes ukuleles from smaller scraps of wood that might otherwise be discarded.

“My passion lies more in preserving the natural world. I want to do that. I get to use this platform to push the things that I like,” Jayne said.

Jayne gets wood from a few different sources. One is just around the corner from her home studio in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s called Scrounger’s Paradise, a 50,000-square-foot wholesale wood shop filled with stacks of flooring, decking, tile and furniture.

Jayne Henderson inside Scrounger’s Paradise in Asheville, North Carolina, with owner Mark Olivari. Mark keeps tabs on the wood Jayne might like and shows her when she visits.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

On a recent visit to Scrounger’s Paradise, Jayne greets owner Mark Olivari as she walks inside, past the stacks of cut and planed wood that come from all over the world. Mark keeps tabs on wood that he thinks Jayne might want. He directs Jayne to a stack of wood in the back corner of the warehouse.

“Is that beautiful or what? That’s original chestnut before the blight came into North Carolina,” Mark said.

Jayne likes the wood. She said it reminds her of white oak. Jayne taps the wood to see if it has a good tonal quality.

“It doesn’t ring quite like Brazilian rosewood, but the density is really similar,” Jayne said. “This stuff has more of a bell-like [sound].”

Choosing the right wood is just one part of Jayne’s process. After visiting Scrounger’s Paradise, Jayne returns to her home workshop, where she uses a jeweler’s saw to carve an abalone shell to make a pearly decorative inlay on a guitar neck. Jayne is known for her custom inlay. It is one part of how she meticulously designs each instrument for the individual who will play it.

An abalone shell sits on Jayne’s work bench with a photo book of her work. Jayne often reaches for her pink polka-dotted pocket knife when carving wood for a guitar.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

“I like getting to know people. I like to hear their stories — where they’ve walked, what they’ve done. I love that. So I really try and focus on the person, the human that is asking you for something,” Jayne said.

Each guitar takes a little over a month to build. Jayne said making guitars has become more than her livelihood.

“I don’t do this because I want to make a guitar. I do this because I can’t not do it. And because it brings me so much joy to use my hands, and this is the way with which I can do it. But I love that I get to do something that makes somebody really happy,” Jayne said.

It has been fourteen years since Jayne built the first guitar with her dad. She no longer needs Wayne to oversee her work, but she often does her finishing work in his workshop in Rugby, Virginia, where she spent weekends growing up.

Jayne Henderson begins work on a guitar neck.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

“My stamp in my guitars has ‘EJ Henderson,’ where my Dad’s says ‘WC Henderson.’ They both say ‘Rugby, Virginia’ on them, and I never changed that,” Jayne said. “No matter where I move, it’ll always say that because my heart’s here, and my dad’s here.”

Wayne is proud of Jayne’s work and appreciates it all the more as a luthier.

“I’ve just always had that interest, you know, in guitar making. And you can imagine your youngin doing it, too. There can’t be nothing much more exciting or better than that,” Wayne said.

Sometimes, when Jayne visits, Wayne coaxes her to play music together. Though, Jayne said she’s not the musician, her dad is.

Back in Wayne’s studio in Rugby, the father-daughter duo tune their instruments and play “Freight Train,” a song written by North Carolina musician, Elizabeth Cotton. Wayne plays a guitar Jayne made for the songwriter and guitarist Doc Watson, another North Carolina musician who was also a close family friend of the Hendersons. Doc died a week before the guitar was finished.

“This is a guitar she made for Doc. It’s made out of white oak,” Wayne said. The white oak is the first sustainable wood Jayne used to build a guitar. According to Wayne, Doc said using environmentally sustainable wood for his guitar was just fine.

Jayne plays one of her dad’s favorite instruments — a ukulele she made for him as a birthday gift. The ukulele has special meaning for Jayne.

“The present was, ‘Look what you did for me,’” she said. “You know, ‘See what you showed me, that I can make something really special and that’s just ‘cause of you.’”

As “Freight Train” ends, the chords linger briefly in the shop. Each strum tells a tale of family legacy, sustainability and heartfelt dedication to luthiery and to each other.

Wayne Henderson and his daughter Jayne Henderson outside of Wayne’s shop in Rugby, Virginia.

*Credit: Margaret Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

North Carolina’s Amy Ritchie Shares Her Love For The Art Of Taxidermy

For some people, taxidermy – preserving and mounting dead animals – can seem a little bit creepy. But for others, taxidermy is a serious art form that’s growing in popularity. One expert practitioner in Yadkin County, North Carolina enjoys sharing her work with others.

This story originally aired in the May 28, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

I felt a little apprehensive as I walked up to Amy Ritchie’s workshop in Hamptonville, North Carolina. Especially after hearing the message on her voicemail.

Ritchie’s confident voice was bright and clear on the recording. “Hi! You’ve reached Amy of Amy’s Animal Arts. I’m probably skinning a bobcat or sewing up the neck of a giraffe. Please leave me a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can stop and pull off the rubber gloves.”

Ritchie is an award-winning taxidermist. Her studio is located in her four-bay garage. It’s large, bright and airy…with about 150 deer antlers hanging from the high ceilings. Everything is neatly organized. On one side, power tools hang on a wall next to shelves filled with paints and adhesives.

Over 150 deer antlers hang overhead in Ritchie’s studio. One by one, they will be paired with their corresponding deer capes (the head, and neck of the deer), which are stored in Ritchie’s freezer.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef*/*West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The other side of the studio is a veritable zoo. A few giraffes, lions, armadillos, bears, coyotes and foxes in suspended motion. They seem so vital, I couldn’t help but reach out and touch them. They felt soft and real.

“I’m really passionate about taxidermy,” Ritchie said. “I think at my core, I just love it. It’s what I was meant to do.”

Ritchie grew up in rural North Carolina, homeschooled by her mom. She said that gave her plenty of time to follow her interests.

That included animals… particularly dead ones.

“When I was 13, I found a roadkill snake and wanted to turn it into a belt,” she said. “I asked mom if I could have a knife from the kitchen to skin the snake and she said, ‘Just please wear gloves so you don’t get a disease.’”

It was a king snake with a white-chain pattern. Ritchie taught herself how to skin and tan it.

“I was able to find the information online, how to use glycerin and some different products from just the pharmacy to be able to tan that…And there I was… [wearing a] snakeskin belt,” she said.

Ritchie admitted she was an unusual child with unusual interests.

“I like being unique. I mean, why be like everyone else? And I never have been.”

Ritchie said her dad also supported her interest in taxidermy. He had a second job delivering newspapers early in the morning.

“He would find all the fresh roadkill,” Ritchie said. “So that’s how he would bring home raccoons and possums and things for me to practice skinning.”

When she was 16, Ritchie’s dad encouraged her to enter a national taxidermy competition. Her entry was a red squirrel mounted on a bed of leaves as if it was sleeping. Ritchie competed in the open division. And even though she was a novice, she walked away with third place.

She’s gone on to win many awards over the years. Now at 36, she’s a highly skilled taxidermist in demand. She makes her living mounting animals for hunters and collectors.

Ritchie continued our tour. She showed me what she was working on.

”We got some of the actual messy stuff going on. This is a wild boar someone brought in just yesterday.”

The bones and bulk of the meat had already been removed. Ritchie started by preparing and tanning the hide. She grabbed a knife.

“We have to take this meat off. And so I’ll hold the knife and work it. Down like this… it’s fascinating and kind of satisfying to slowly shave this off,” she said.

Ritchie is small, just over five feet tall. She wrapped the exposed hide tightly on the edge of her work bench and scraped the knife along the boar’s hide in rhythmic motion.

“I have to press down with this knife and shave this down,” she explained. “So, big job right here.”

At this stage, the hide was stiff and unwieldy.

“It’s hard. I can’t even fold the hide. By the time I’m done, it’ll be soft and I can. It will not take up as much space in my freezer.”

Amy Ritchie braces herself against a workbench as she shaves meat off of a wild boar hide before she wraps it tightly in a bag to store in her freezer.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The freezer. It’s the part of the tour I was most curious about. Ritchie has seven chest freezers. She opened a freezer lid, and I pulled out one of about 50 gallon-sized Ziploc bags. Inside was something called a deer cape. It was compact. It felt like a frozen roast.

“Yeah, it’s just the skin, and it’s the head and the shoulders of the deer and wrapped up really tight.”

After Ritchie treats the hide, she crafts the animal shape. She carves muscles, veins and bone mass out of a foam mold like a sculptor. She sands the mold, applies adhesives and wraps the skin around it. Then she smooths out irregularities before sewing it up with artfully hidden stitches. She uses glass eyes.

“You got to detail the eyes so that they look realistic,” Ritchie said. “So they have expression… those things that separate, you know, just hide a similar from an artistic taxidermist.”

Ritchie says when she was starting out, she didn’t know many other women in the field. But she says that’s changed in the past few years. And she’s helping to train a new generation through her Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Ritchie is also training a new generation through an apprenticeship. Ritchie introduced me to her first apprentice, Mariah Petrea as she helped Petrea carve a foam mold with a deer mount. They’ll sand and apply adhesives before pulling a deer cape onto the form.

Mariah Petrea carves a foam mold to make the shape unique to the deer cape that she’ll wrap on the mold with adhesives.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Petrea started out as a customer. She came to Ritchie’s workshop a couple of years ago to drop off a deer to be mounted and the two hit it off. Mariah was a little uneasy with the work at first.

“Being an animal person myself, I was like, ‘Oh, my heart’s going to get in the way. Will I be able to clean this cat? Because it looks like my pet cat in a way just a little bit bigger,’ and you get to come to terms with things,” Petrea said. “What’s lying there, it can’t feel anything. And after you do it once, it’s just a motion you go through.”

Now Petrea works part-time with Ritchie and hopes to start her own taxidermy business. She says her favorite part is breathing life into her subjects.

“It has been amazing how you can make a piece of foam with some clay look realistic,” Petrea said. “And that is the start of everything, just taking something that looks lifeless and making it look realistic. When you saw it out in the woods or a picture.”

Like Mariah, most of Ritchie’s clients are hunters who bring in deer trophies or bobcats. Ritchie says she rarely hunts — though she doesn’t have a problem with it as long as the animals are legally obtained.

“I’m here in the South where really, if you haven’t seen a deer head or know what taxidermy is, you know, how are you even a Southerner?”

But Ritchie’s most prized mounts are from a trip she made to Africa. It includes the head and neck of an adult giraffe looming over ten feet tall in her studio.

Hunting giraffes is controversial. Ritchie says the animal was an older male that was beyond breeding age and had been attacking younger giraffes. She also has a mother and baby giraffe that were donated by a zoo after they died of natural causes.

Amy Ritchie poses with a baby giraffe donated by a zoo after it died from natural causes. Ritchie enjoys sharing her animal menagerie with others, especially kids who haven’t been able to see some of the animal types before.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Ritchie enjoys sharing her collection with others, especially kids.

“They come in here and they’re like wow, mom and dad, what’s that? What’s that? And I love to tell them, it’s, you know, this animal that you’ve never seen before,” Ritchie said. “And it really gets you more up close than you would even in most zoos… And how many kids get to pet a baby giraffe?”

Ritchie says she’s constantly looking for new ways to expand her craft. More active poses, more detailed scenery. She says part of the pleasure for her is the transformation. Like when she turned that snakeskin she found on the side of the road into an eye-catching belt.

“I think the fascination with just thinking, wow, that would have just been thrown away. And I have done something with something that would have rotted. And maybe that’s why I like taxidermy so much,” she said. “The idea that you can make something from nothing.”

For Ritchie, it’s more than just preserving animals. She enjoys sharing this art form… whether it’s with her clients or with people who just stop by to marvel at her studio.

Amy Ritche’s truck reflects her enthusiasm for her art form. It is unmistakable in Hamtonville, NC, complete with a specialized license tag.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Amy Ritchie sewing a bobcat.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

A taxidermy African Porcupine.

*Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

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Communion Wafers And Apple Butter Inspire Chefs’ Work At Lost Creek Farm

At Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, husband-and-wife duo Mike Costello and Amy Dawson hone in on the stories behind recipes served at their famed farm-to-table dinners. Including a curious appetizer that's a mashup of two unassuming food traditions from their childhoods.

At Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, husband-and-wife duo Mike Costello and Amy Dawson hone in on the stories behind recipes served at their famed farm-to-table dinners. The foods served are rooted in Appalachian traditions.

Recently semi-finalists for the prestigious James Beard Award, Lost Creek Farm was an outlier in a category typically reserved for conventional restaurants.

Lost Creek Farm isn’t a restaurant. Costello and Dawson aren’t hosts and waiters as much as they are stewards and storytellers.

Folks come from all over for a taste of their cuisine and knowledge, including Yo-Yo Ma and the late Anthony Bourdain. But it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are from because dinners at Lost Creek Farm are about connecting with community.

In fact, two community experiences from Costello and Dawson’s childhood inspire their work at Lost Creek Farm. Costello and Dawson typically kick off dinner events with a curious appetizer that’s a mashup of two unassuming food traditions from their childhoods: communion wafers topped with apple butter. The combo is symbolic of the farm-to-table dinners themselves.

James Beard Award semi-finalists chefs and storytellers Mike Costello and Amy Dawson welcome guests at a dinner event.

Memories Of Making Food As A Community

As I arrived at Lost Creek Farm the birds were chirping and the sun was shining over the rolling meadows. After being greeted by Costello and Dawson, they took me on a tour of the farm.

While visiting the chickens, Costello told me about some of the projects they’re working on.

“We’re building a fruit orchard,” Costello said. “There were some apple trees here on the farm when we moved in, some pear trees. A lot of wild fruit. A lot of wild blackberries, elderberries, raspberries, those kinds of things.”

Costello and Dawson have lived on this land for six years. But it has been in Dawson’s family for close to 150 years. Dawson learned a lot about working a farm when she visited her grandparents.

“Growing up, my family always had a big garden. And we always would can. And so most of my summers were spent essentially doing food prep,” Dawson said. “If you live on a farm, you just do food prep all the time, and food preservation.”

When Costello and Dawson inherited the farm, it had been neglected for years. They devoted themselves to getting the farm back in working order. The couple raise meat rabbits and laying hens. They forage for foods in the surrounding woods. They raise vegetables from heirloom seeds entrusted to them by community members. And they’ve got their fruit orchard.

Costello took me below the vegetable garden and chicken yard to the orchard. “A lot of these trees that we have down here are regional varieties,” Costello said. “Apples we grafted yesterday — we grafted 21 trees that will go into the orchard — we’ll plant them later this year.”

The couple will use these apples for a few different things, including apple butter. Dawson described the apple butter as caramelized and tastes sweet. Costello likes to play around with flavors and often adds bourbon and sage to hit some fiery and herby notes.

For Dawson, making apple butter takes her back to her childhood. “Apple butter is one of the first memories that I had, like, as a family — it being kind of a community, like it wasn’t just my family that did it,” Dawson said. “It was friends and, you know, extended family would come and make the apple butter in the fall.”

Places are set and ready for dinner at Lost Creek Farm where heritage-inspired Appalachian cuisine will soon be served. As folks dig in, chef Mike Costello will talk to guests about the stories and cultural significance behind each recipe.

The seasonal ritual of making apple butter helped Dawson understand the connection between food and community. It’s a daunting task to peel, core, and chop bushels of apples, and then stir them for hours over heat before canning.

If ever an event called for community effort, it is one like this one. Time spent cooking with large groups of neighbors and friends is as social as it is productive.

Dawson isn’t the only one of the couple to grow up with memories of cooking in community.

Costello grew up in Elkview, West Virginia, and he often accompanied his grandmother to Emmanuel Baptist Church to make communion wafers. “I have a lot of fond memories of when I was a kid, my grandmother and the other elderly women in the church making communion wafers on Thursday and Friday mornings for Sunday service,” Costello said. “She would take my brother and I down there on those mornings, and we would sort of watch all these women rolling out these big sheets of dough and making these communion wafers.”

As an adult, Costello had put the wafers out of his mind, until he discovered his grandmother’s recipe. “When my grandma died, I got her recipe collection. And I found this recipe in there for those communion wafers,” Costello said.

For him, the significance of this recipe has little to do with religion. “We did not go to church with my grandma on Sundays,” Costello said. “I never had any sort of idea of the religious significance of them, I just thought they were this tasty kind of snack. I kind of had forgotten about them.”

Discovering the recipe brought back memories for Costello. “What came to mind for me was, you know, that image of all those women making those communion wafers, and how it sort of represented to me, the first memory that I have of people, here or anywhere else, making food as a community,” Costello said.

Mike Costello and Amy Dawson top communion wafer crackers with homemade apple butter for a dinner event. The couple serves story-rich, heritage-inspired cuisine at their dinner events, including these two recipes.

Two Food Traditions Merge

In their work today, Costello and Dawson have merged these two traditions and are sharing them with others. Last year, they made an online video tutorial of how to make the wafers. In a playful exchange, they note how curious people think it is that the two snack on communion wafers.

But the wafers are more than a simple snack. In the video, Costello and Dawson explain the significance of the wafers.

“People who know us or are familiar with our work know we like to hone in on the stories behind the food that we make. That’s what makes these communion wafers so special to us,” Dawson said in the video.

In the recipes for both the apple butter and wafers, there is one ingredient that isn’t tangible but is just as important as the others.

It’s the group effort aspect of these recipes — the shared ritual of making food together. For Costello, this is especially true for the communion wafers. “I love to put those crackers on a plate, to open our events,” Costello said as we walked. He later explained more as we wrapped up the farm tour.

“When you can consume that at the dinner table and can consume the story that goes along with it, you know… you’re connecting with people,” he said. “And you’re connecting with thousands of years of history of that being in all the hands and all of the communities that it has passed through to get to that point.”

String lights illuminate the communal table at Lost Creek Farm in preparation for hungry dinner guests.

Lost Creek Farm Inspires And Creates Community

The apple butter and communion wafers are symbolic of the dinner events themselves, a place where people come together around Appalachian foods and traditions.

Arriving at the farm, guests are greeted with music and a warm fire burning outside. Under string lights and bright stars, folks are seated around the communal table, some meeting for the first time. Some of the foods served are simple, like apple butter and communion wafers. But there is more to it than that.

“If you just look at the ingredients, you look at the recipes, apple butter and crackers, not that big of a deal, right? But, there’s so much meaning packed into it,” Costello said.

Part of that meaning is the communities of people who have shaped these two food traditions. And the new communities Costello and Dawson are creating at Lost Creek Farm.

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West Virginia Beekeepers Say Their Tradition Is About More Than The Honey

People in West Virginia get into beekeeping for all sorts of reasons: to protect the pollinators, to make lip balm and other beeswax products, and of course, they do it for the honey. Regardless of what brings people to beekeeping, there’s a vast network of support—both formal and informal—to help people learn the craft.

It seems that beekeepers in West Virginia have as much to learn from honeybees as they do each other. Beekeepers in the state are getting much more than honey; they are gaining knowledge and insights from their close-knit community.

In Summers County, West Virginia, Mark Lilly grew up watching his grandfather and relatives keep bees. Today, Lilly works as a master beekeeper for the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective, a non-profit that helps train beekeepers in economically depressed regions in West Virginia and Virginia. On a recent sunny day, Lilly showed me his honeybee hives. Against the backdrop of the steady hum of busy bees, he lifted the box of a hive to check his swarm’s honey production.

“This colony is doing real well building up for the spring. We’re probably three weeks plus before the flow would hit,” Lilly said.

The flow Mark was referring to is the honey. Honey from West Virginia is often tree honey. Bees collect nectar from flowering trees such as black locust and tulip poplar.

“I think we could probably prove that the Appalachian area provides world class honey,” he said.

Lilly is in his sixties and grew up in Raleigh County. He’s been keeping bees for over 25 years. Recently, there has been an increase in new beekeepers in West Virginia. According to Shanda King, the State Apiarist, beekeeping is on the rise, as is the number of colonies per beekeeper.

Sarah Ann Mclannahan of Charleston is one of them. “Getting into my hives the first time…they always say that they can smell fear. No, I was too excited for that,” Mclannahan said.

She recently took over her aunt’s hives. After lifting the top off one of the hives, we saw an army of bees gathering on the top edge of the hive. She pumped a smoker to calm the agitated bees. “We are going to force these guys to go down,” she said. The bees became listless as we inspected the hive.

Folkways reporter Margaret Mcleod Leef learns about beekeeping in Summers County, WV at Appalachian Beekeeping Collective.

Mclannahan had a lot of help learning to keep bees. She has a co-worker who has hives, and he’s become her mentor. Mark Lilly also had a mentor early on. His grandfather was big into bees. He kept bees in hollowed-out logs. He usually used gum trees which decayed from the inside out, making them perfect for honeybee hives.

“When my grandfather was doing it, it was a section of a log with a piece of wood or tin on top of it, and comb in there, and he would just take a big aluminum dishpan and a bread knife and cut out the top which is where the honey was stored,” Lilly said.

Lilly’s grandfather kept bees for the honey. It brought the family together when he’d plunk the aluminum pan with honeycomb on the center of the table beside fresh biscuits. But beekeepers in West Virginia today are getting into beekeeping for more than the honey. And Lilly should know. As the master beekeeper for the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective, he teaches free classes via Zoom to new beekeepers. That includes teaching how beekeepers today keep their swarms.

In his beekeeping 101 classes, Lilly covers everything from equipment to potential problems with swarms—things have changed since his grandfather’s day. “Generally, beekeepers around the world use a Langstroth Hive. It’s universal so it’s easy to get equipment. They have to have movable frames to be inspected. To check for disease you have to be able to pull the frames out,” he said.

While Lilly absorbed a lot about beekeeping by watching his grandfather, he discovered much of what he learned through his own research and by attending statewide conferences. He’s now part of a tight knit network of beekeepers around the state. And so is Mclannahan. She’s connected with beekeepers around the state through social media.

Mark Lilly inspects a frame of his honeybee hive.

“Facebook groups have been amazing. I have learned a lot about bees by going to the Women Beekeepers retreat in July,” said Mclannahan. The retreat she attends each summer is hosted by Phyllis Varian who founded the Women Beekeepers of West Virginia.

Varian noticed beekeeping in West Virginia was male dominated. She started the retreat to give women hands-on experience with bees. She also created a Facebook page that the women use to get help with their beekeeping quandaries. Mclannahan is a big fan of the group.

“Some people have questions, and I’m just like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s really cool. Let’s see what everybody says.’” Mclannahan has bonded with people from all walks of life through beekeeping. And the same is true for Lilly in his work with the collective.

“The beautiful part of the collective is it’s a great cross section of society. We’ve got young teens, all the way up to more senior citizens, different ethnic backgrounds. I’d be comfortable in saying at least 50 percent of the collective members are ladies,” Lilly said.

This diverse group of beekeepers, they tend to share their knowledge. “We all can gain something from hearing about other people’s successes and their mistakes. We can learn from that, too,” Lilly said.

For both Mclannahan and Lilly, sharing their beekeeping knowledge also means teaching the next generation. Mclannahan spends time in the bee yard with her nine-year-old son. His favorite part of the process? Enjoying the honey.

“My son is a peanut butter and honey sandwich eater every day. He eats probably a jar a month, and I can’t hardly keep it in stock,” Mclannahan said. And Lilly spends evenings working the bees with his kids and grandkids. He hopes they will share his admiration for the bees and the way they work together.

“Something as simple as insects and a box—that’s what we can learn and what we can teach others,” he said. “They’re working to improve their society—this hive is their community. And they all want to see it prosper. And that’s for the community or the hive, to be healthy, to produce everything it needs, food wise, to protect each other. I think we can all learn to get along like honeybees.”

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This story originally aired in the Aug. 5, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation.

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