The phrase “food-desert” might sound like a landscape of sagebrush and armadillos, but it’s really a place where SlimJims, chicken nuggets and Slurpies count as dinner. A food desert can happen anywhere- we’ve all seen them. People who live in a food desert may be surrounded by food—fast food or convenient store hotdogs, instead of fresh, healthy food.
Even in rural West Virginia, where small farms still dot the roadside, fresh food isn’t available to all people. In some places it can take over an hour just to reach the next grocery store. Reawakening some of the old, small farm traditions– and bringing a new local food movement to West Virginia– is the work of five non-profits that were highlighted by the James Beard Foundation. Groups were chosen based on their work to bring healthy, local food to more people.
“We focus on helping people connect with each other so they can educate each other and be stronger together,” said Spellman.
The coalition trains farmers and advocates for statewide policies that help nurture small farmers.
Spellman says that because West Virginia has the highest number of small farms per capita in the country, there is a unique opportunity here to help transform the local food economy.
Credit Roxy TOdd
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Children with a YMCA camp helping find harlequin beetles in the West Side Community Garden Project in Charleston
“Yeah, and we’re uniquely positioned to show what a small farm state can do because we don’t really have that many large farms. We’re mostly small farms. And people relying on each other and working together.”
It's early morning around 6 am, and I'm standing with Chef Tim Urbanic in the kitchen of the Cafe Cimino Country Inn. Tim grew up in western Pennsylvania…
It’s early morning around 6 am, and I’m standing with Chef Tim Urbanic in the kitchen of the Cafe Cimino Country Inn. Tim grew up in western Pennsylvania in a coal camp, and his mother, Julia Cimino, was a first generation Italian immigrant from Calabria.
“The polenta was a staple in our family. This is a polenta that I’ve known all my life, since I was a little kid. We add to this Romano cheese, fresh butter, and then we use water for the base.”
The night before, Tim cooked the polenta- it takes time for it to firm. This morning, he cuts it in triangular wedges, dusts it in flour and a bit of salt and pepper, and then fries it in oil.
Tim is serving polenta for breakfast, along with an omelet, scones, date and molasses cake, and a fruit cocktail served with fresh mint and peace nectar. The polenta has perfectly crisp corners and a creamy texture inside. It tastes perfect.
Tim has been teaching his son Eli to cook their family recipes, which originated in Calabria. Tim’s mother’ s maiden name is Cimino, and he named his restaurant after her. Julia Cimino is now 101 years old- and Tim brings her freshly made polenta when he visits.
“She just really has brought culture into my life. And so I still bring her a little bite of food. I’m still the baby, she still calls me ‘Timmy.’”
This polenta is from locally grown, heirloom Bloody Butcher cornmeal- grown by Frances Meadows and her 93 year old father in Craigsville. Their farm is called Spring Creek Farm. They’ve had this heirloom seed in their family for about 5 generations. Frances says she grew up eating polenta, except here, in West Virginia, everyone always called it “Corn Mush”.
“Polenta is, you know, it’s just a form of grits. With, you can put different cheeses in there for flavoring. But in the old days, they made grits, but they called it “mush.”
This morning, Tim Urbanic cuts the thick polenta into triangular wedges. He dusts it in flour and a bit of salt and pepper, and then fries it in oil.
Tim discovered this corn when he met Frances Meadows, at a “chef and farmer dialogue” event in 2004. At the meeting, Meadows said that her family’s farm had more than a ton of Bloody Butcher corn, but she couldn’t find a buyer. Tim has been using it in his restaurant ever since.
Credit Allender Stewart
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Larry Mustain grinds the Bloody Butcher corn that’s used at Cafe Cimino
“It’s an antique corn, and the seeds are very very hard to find.”
Indeed, these seeds are very rare, especially because few farmers even use their family’s heirloom seeds anymore. Except for rare farmers like Frances Meadows, this history would be lost.
“It’s family tradition. I think it’s important if you’ve got an heirloom seed like that’s unchanged, I just think it’s everyone’s responsibility to protect that.”
Someone who agrees with Frances is Dr. Jim Veteto, an anthropologist based out of Yancey County, North Carolina. He’s spent the last 15 years researching heirloom vegetables throughout Appalachia.
“My research has shown that actually, central and southern Appalachia is the most diverse foodshed in most of North America. So all the U.S., Canada, and northern Mexico.”
Dr. Veteto also directs a seedbank called the Southern Seed Legacy Project, based out of Western Carolina University. This project helps encourage farmers throughout Appalachia, like Frances Meadows, and Larry Mustain, to save their family’s heirloom seeds.
Credit Frances Meadows
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Spring Creek Farm in Craigsville, W.Va.
“Most people I talk to talked about, ‘well this is a part of our cultural heritage. It reminds me of my grandmother, who I used to farm with, I think of my mother. I think of my lost uncle.”
That’s why Frances is growing her family’s Bloody Butcher. Not only to help preserve her family’s history, but to continue the food history that her family is connected to.
“I mean, that’s what America was started out on, and I think the younger generation needs to keep that tradition going.”
In southern West Virginia, Reed’s Mill has been stone-grinding local cornmeal since 1791. It’s one of the few gristmills that has been in continual operation in this country, and it grinds a local heirloom corn that has been passed down for generations.
There’s a mesmerizing sound of tumbling corn kernels, as Larry Mustain shows me an overflowing handful of Bloody Butcher corn. The dried corn is multicolored and magic–in his hand are a dozen seeds of red, purple and yellow that have been passed down at Reed’s Mill for generations. The corn may even go as far back to when Reed’s Mill first opened in 1791.
And there is something perfect about eating cornbread made from Larry’s coarsely-ground meal. It has a unique gritty texture. The butter clings to the bits of grit, and there is an earthier, more complex taste than commercially ground cornmeal.
Spiderwebs cling to the wooden rafters above us as Larry pours the Bloody Butcher corn into an electric stone grinder. The mill’s old water turbine, behind us, is rarely used these days, although earlier this spring Larry did get it running briefly, when creek water swelled with heavy rains.
Credit Allender Stewart
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Larry Mustain
Historic Mills of Second Creek:
Along Second Creek, there were once 22 mills that ran by the rushing waters, some were lumber mills, and woolen mills, but most were grist mills much like Reed’s Mill.
Today, only this mill is standing. All the others have been closed for decades. The old buildings have all burned or are in disrepair. A couple of years ago, Larry drove me to see one of these abandoned mills, called Nickel’s Mill, that was still standing. A swampy forest had grown up between the old wooden floorboards. I stumbled into knee high water just outside the mill’s main entrance. Now, that mill has been torn down too.
Credit Allender Stewart
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Nickles’ Mill, which has now been torn down.
Gone with the Wind:
Larry says he used to drive his mother around these old back-roads to see the abandoned mills, just before she passed away. With a heavy heart, she used to sit and stare at the decaying old buildings, expressing a deep nostalgia for her childhood, when Second Creek and nearby Gap Mills were thriving communities, with dozens of prosperous farms.
“And it was like a scene out of the old south. And she’d say, “It’s just looks like Gone with the Wind. Same thing down there at Nickels mill where we just were. She’d say, it’s just like Gone with the Wind. It’s all gone now.”
Credit Fred Ziegler
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Wagon photo from the Second Creek/Glace area, from a book called “Carriages of Monroe Co. WV”. A new Carriage House Museum opened in Union recently, where historic carriages are on display.
But it’s not all gone, not as long as Reed’s Mill is still in operation. There are still plenty of customers every Saturday, when the mill is usually open (Larry sometimes opens the mill other days too, if a group or a tour bus calls ahead). But Larry is now 77 years-old, a retired schoolteacher. And though he doesn’t plan on retiring from the mill anytime soon, he does admit that health issues have slowed him down in recent years.
Credit Allender Stewart
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Honey at Reed’s Mill
Losing Last Year’s Crop
To complicate matters, Larry is losing a battle against the geese and deer. Last year, they ate his entire crop of Bloody Butcher corn. He claims the animals prefer the heirloom Bloody Butcher corn to the hybrid corn that grows in all the neighboring fields.
Most of the customers who come to Reed’s Mill seem to prefer the heirloom corn, too. They claim it has a different texture and taste, compared with the yellow hybrid corn he also sells at the mill.
One of these customers is Lowell Lewis, of Frankford, who learned how to bake salt rising bread and cornbread from his mother.
Credit Allender Stewart
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One of the old farms that once flourished along Second Creek
“She wouldn’t use any store-bought cornmeal. It had to be stoneground from Reed’s Mill. And I still use that today,” said Lowell.
Another Bloody Butcher Farmer in West Virginia:
To be able to continue selling heirloom corn at the mill, this year, Larry found a nearly identical corn in Craigsville, at Spring Creek farm. Frances Meadows helps her father Edgar Meadows run the farm.
“The Bloody Butcher Seed is a very unique seed. It’s been in our family for probably five generations. My dad is 93 years old and he grows the Bloody Butcher every year.”
This year, she sold Larry Mustain about 1,200 lbs of Bloody Butcher to grind at Reed’s Mill. Frances Meadows also gets Larry to grind some of the Bloody Butcher into a coarsely ground polenta, which she sells to chef Tim Urbanic at Cafe Cimino Country Inn, in Sutton.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Tim Urbanic’s breakfast of Bloody Butcher Polenta (similar to grits), fried ham, cucumbers, and an omelet
To visit Reed’s Mill, call Larry Mustain: 304-772-5665. The mill is open on Saturdays and by appointment. Reed’s Mill is located on Second Creek Road. Heading south from Lewisburg on US 219, as you cross the Monroe County line, Second Creek Road is on your left. The mill will be on your right about a mile down the road.
Tomorrow, in part two of this story, we’ll travel to Cafe Cimino to find out how chef Tim Urbanic makes Italian polenta using the Bloody Butcher cornmeal.
Helen Kershner’s Cornpone:
Frances Meadows says her family has been eating this Bloody Butcher cornmeal for generations– using it for cornbread, stuffing, corn mush and cornpone (the cornpone is her favorite way to eat it.) If you’ve never had cornpone- the West Virginia variety at least, it’s a thicker, sweeter cornbread-type dish. Meadows says her family sprinkles pieces of bacon into theirs.
When I lived on Droop Mountain in Pocahontas County. My neighbors, Helen and Betty Kershner, gave me their family recipe for cornpone and cornbread:
2 cups cornmeal
1 1.2 tsp. salt
2 cups boiling water
mix corn and salt, and pour in boiling water. Let sit overnight, or at least for a few hours.
Then add the other ingredients:
½ cup flour
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. salt
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup butter
Cut in the pieces of butter and fold the egg in gently and mix, but don’t beat it. Pour into a greased pan or a cast iron skillet and bake around 375 degrees until the top is golden brown.
Betty Kershner’s Cornbread:
1 cup cornbread
1/2 cup flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. baking soda
5 tbs butter
1 cup hot water
Mix dry ingredients together. Then cut in the butter. Fold the egg, don’t beat it. Put in water and buttermilk. Don’t overmix. Pour into a greased pan or a cast iron skillet. Bake in a 350 degree oven till golden brown.
In 1851, salt from the Kanawha Valley was awarded the world’s best salt at the World’s Fair in London. Now, more than 160 years later, one of those old salt companies has been revived by brother and sister Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne. Last weekend, the JQ Dickinson Salt-Works celebrated their 1-year-anniversary. I toured the salt-works and talked with Chef April Hamilton as she prepared food for the salt soiree.
Credit Lauren Stonestreet, of Elle Effect Photography
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harvesting salt
Nancy Bruns is actually a 7th generation salt maker- but she didn’t realize the significance of her family until her husband was researching local history for his master’s thesis.
“He was looking at the Salt industry, and while I knew the family had been in salt, I didn’t know a lot about it.” She was already involved in the culinary food industry, and while she and her husband were learning was learning the industry’s past in W.Va, she also began noticing the rising trends in gourmet salt across the country.
“It just struck me as an ‘ah-ha’ moment: we needed to be making salt again. It just made sense in so many different ways. I called my brother Lewis, I said ‘I have an idea for a business, I’d really like you to partner with me and do this.’ And he said ‘yes’, and here we are.”
Credit Lauren Stonestreet, of Elle Effect Photography
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Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne.
Nancy and her brother Lewis revived their family’s 200 year old salt-works. A geologist helped them drill a new pump. They built solar-powered evaporation houses, where the salt crystals take about three weeks to separate from the salty brine.
“I think of salt in a similar way to wine, where you taste the Terroir of what’s coming from the ground. So we consider our salt an agricultural product, which is really an expression of the minerals that are in the earth.”
Credit April Hamilton
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April Hamilton in one of her cooking classes with kids
Nancy and her brother are now selling about 500 pounds of salt a month. Chefs from Nashville to Baltimore have begun using it, and restaurants in West Virginia, like Cafe Cimino in Sutton, have begun cooking and serving Dickinson salt too.
Another favorite customer is Chef April Hamilton, who was named a “Food Revolution Hero” by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver for her work helping kids in Kanawha County eat healthier. April says she’s been cooking with JQ Dickinson salt exclusively and says the salt has been a huge success for her.
“Those crystals are unique, and they taste incredible. It’s hard to describe, but most people who try it, their eyes just light up, and they go, “this is not just salt,it has flavor beyond the flavor of salt. And it’s got that texture that you kind of swish it around in your mouth a little bit.”
To help JQ Dickinson celebrate their 1-year-anniversary, April helped prepare a dinner at the farm last week. The food she made was almost exclusively of local ingredients, allowing the natural flavors of the fresh food shine with the simple taste of Dickinson salt. The main course was slow roasted, salt rubbed pork shoulders, which came from Gardner farms in Waverly, West Virginia. The pork was served with a BBQ sauce made of local maple syrup and Smooth Ambler Bourbon.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Roasted red peppers and eggplant for Caponata
Many of the other dishes were made from local produce that April collected from farms nearby. She says that with salt, it’s about finding the right balance, and paying attention to the subtle flavors. Like this simple salad, made from fresh tomatoes and just a dash of Dickinson salt.
“I’m calling it jewel-box tomato salad. Chad Smith from West Virginia Homegrown Farms has the most delightful, delicious little tomatoes, about the size of a marble. They’ll just be rinsed and tossed with olive oil and some JQ Dickinson Salt. I mean, they just burst with flavor and natural sweetness and sunshine. I mean just taste the sunshine, so good.”
And this sunshine bursting flavor is released thanks to salt from an underground ocean that lies beneath the mountains of West Virginia.
Menu: Salty Soiree (for more info, visit Chef April’s website ) 1. Salt Rubbed Pulled Pork with Cracklins and Brioche (Gardner Farms, Smooth Ambler bbq sauce)
2. Caponata with Crostini (KISRA, Charleston Bread)
On Thursday at the Clay Center in Charleston, four Romanian high school musicians and three of their teachers met with musicians from Wahama high school in Mason County. The students are participating in a year-long project exploring the connections between Appalachian and Romanian folk music.
Teacher Emanuela Tulpam says there are geographical similarities between Romania and West Virginia too. “We come from Targu Jiu, which is in the Gorj district, southwest Romania, by the mountains. We have a gorge valley, as I hear you have here.”The Romanian students will spend the next 13 days meeting folk musicians in Beckley, Huntington, Charleston and Elkins. The Romanian group will experience a full day of performances and master classes at Davis and Elkins College.
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Visiting students Alina Marina Gorun, Elena Cristina Lăcătusu, Ion Cristian Munteanu and Teodor Marian Foanţă will spend significant time with 25 music students at Wahama. Both the students and teachers will interview the participating musicians to help begin working on the next stage of the project – producing digital stories about the two cultures.
The general public will also be able to hear and see these master musicians who are working with the students – two from Romania and local guitarists Robin and Dan Kessinger – as part of the Charleston Area Alliance’s Brown Bag Concert series on Friday, Oct. 10 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Davis Park in downtown Charleston. In case of inclement weather, the performance will be moved to the Center Court area of the Charleston Town Center Mall.
In the spring, four Wahama High School students, Cadence Weaver, Aubrey Lewis, Jacob Petry and Garrett Greene, along with their teachers and Clay Center representatives, will travel to Romania. The students will study the culture and heritage of their counterparts and share West Virginia traditions with other students in the program.
It’s fall, and for most gardeners it’s time to finish harvesting plants and begin preparing beds for the approaching frosts. For those who grow garlic, this is the time to plant bulbs. It’s also time to learn what you can do with some of the herbs you may have grown this year.
The Fall Herb Festival at Jackson’s Mill begins Friday. Twenty-seven teachers will conduct workshops about making herbal honey, growing edible gardens, and making simple cleaning and skin care products. There will be a workshop, taught by a massage therapist, about doing herbal facials.
Melissa Dennison is the president of the WV Herb Association and is organizing the festival. She says one of the new teachers this year is Victor Skaggs, of Marion County.
“He’s going to teach us how to develop your own kitchen garden, of the herbs that you use in your cooking,” Dennison said.
Credit W.Va Herb Association
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Lobelia flowers
And if you’re new to cooking with herbs, there will be workshops for this too. “We really want to educate the public so they have some kind of awareness, and it’s very affordable.”
The festival is all open to the public, and costs $15 per day, or $20 for the entire festival. For members in the W.Va. Herb Association, the festival is $5.
The two day event begins Friday. That evening, Mimi Hernandez of Frostburg University will be the keynote speaker. She will be speaking about medicinal and edible plants of Appalachia.
For more information about registering for the Fall Herb Festival, click here or call Melissa Dennison, (304) 364-5589.
