Appetite Appalachia Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Iraq War Veteran Finds Peace Through Maple Farming

This story was produced by the West Virginia Department of Agriculture as part of a collaboration among the agency, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Inside Appalachia.

Iraq War veteran Jeremy Ray was looking for a hobby to help fill his time. What he found was a way to heal his wounds. Ray is the proud owner of Gauley River Maple, and this year is his first season as a maple producer. He heard about maple syrup through the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s Veterans and Warriors to Agriculture Program, aimed at retraining veterans for careers in agriculture.

He took one maple syrup producer’s class, taught in part by a seasoned maple producer, named Brandon Daniels, and was hooked.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about anything,” Ray said.

You couldn’t find anyone more surprised about this venture than Ray himself. The 43-year-old grew up on this land but joined the Army National Guard right out of high school. He was looking for adventure, but then came the war in Iraq and he was deployed oversees.

“The day I was deployed was the day my oldest son was born,” he said. “I was with him for 24 hours, and then I wasn’t back until he was 17 months old.”

Ray doesn’t talk much about what happened in Iraq and the things he saw — only that the experience changed him.

He worked for 14 years as a Nicholas County sheriff’s deputy, all the while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. He managed the depression, flashbacks and anger. But in 2011, his boss called him in the office and told him to hand in his badge. When he went home to tell his wife, she too had had enough and walked out with their two sons.

“I lost everything I ever worked for on November 11, 2011 — Veterans Day of all days,” he said.

It took years of intense therapy and a lot of self-reflection, but he and his family reunited. Now on medical disability, Ray said he’s looking for a new normal. That’s where maple syrup comes in.

“I’m a disabled vet. I really needed something to take up my time. I needed to get my mind busy on something, and I also wanted to find something where my kids could help and enjoy so we could get some more time together,” he said.

W.Va. maple camp, where students learned the basics of maple in the field.

His new workplace is far from the office atmosphere that triggered his anxieties. Outside with his maple trees, there’s a sense of peace.

“I’m by myself in the woods. It’s very relaxing,” he said.

West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt, a veteran himself, said Ray’s story is not uncommon.

“When you think about what the unseen wounds of war do to our veterans, and what agriculture can do to help them heal, veterans with that affliction don’t want to be in an office,” Leonhardt said. “They don’t want to have windows and doors and be around a lot of people. They want to be outdoors. That’s why maple syrup is ideal therapy.”

Ray is a maple novice, but he said he sees growth potential in this industry. He said he hopes more people will consider becoming maple producers here in West Virginia. “Nobody around here knows about [maple farming] but everyone around here could do it if they wanted to,” Ray said.

“In West Virginia, there’s untapped potential. If a crazy, disabled vet can do it, anybody can.”

Including Ray’s six-year-old son Jackson, who tags along with his dad every chance he gets. Ray said one day, Gauley River Maple will belong to Jackson and his older brother, a legacy of love born from the wounds of war.

The West Virginia Maple Syrup Producers Association is expecting a better season this year than last. The goal is to top 10,000 gallons of syrup for sale. The average cost for a gallon of West Virginia maple is $60. But what you’re getting is pure, maple syrup, no additives or flavoring. Producers, like Ray, say it’s well worth the price.

This Saturday is “Mountain State Maple Day” in West Virginia. Sugar shacks and maple operations around the state will open their doors to the public. Fifteen locations across the state are included in an interactive map.

Maple Syrup Production is Growing in West Virginia, Thanks to New Technologies

This story was produced by the West Virginia Department of Agriculture as part of a collaboration among the agency, West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Inside Appalachia.

This Saturday is “Mountain State Maple Day” in West Virginia. Sugar shacks and maple operations around the state will open their doors to the public. Maple syrup has a long tradition in the high mountain regions of our state, and the industry is growing. As part of our ongoing series called “Appetite Appalachia,” this week we’re highlighting two stories about maple syrup farmers in the Mountain State. It’s part of a new collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting and the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.

In this first story, Chris Williams introduces us to a producer who has been making maple syrup for nearly 30 years.

Brandon Daniels is a busy man. He works two jobs, and is also responsible for 2,300 maple tree taps.

“It’s extremely hard work. You can choose when you cut hay, but can’t choose when the sap runs,” said Daniels, who’s been making maple syrup in Greenbrier County for 28 years, and makes around 6 to 800 gallons every year.

But when he first started, Daniels wasn’t as successful. He said technology has played a huge part in how he and other syrup producers in West Virginia make their product.

West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt tapping a maple tree

“Reverse osmosis has made a huge difference. It takes 80 to 90 percent of the water out of the sap before you boil it. It makes a better-quality syrup,” he said.

Another advance in technology is tubing. Back in the day, maple syrup producers would hang buckets underneath the spouts. They would wait for the buckets to fill up, and then carry them down to their sugar shack. The tubing connects all the trees and uses gravity to bring the sap into one big tank.

The new technology and the vast amount of maple trees have led to a resurgence of maple syrup producer in the Mountain State. And making the product is no easy task. It takes between 50 to 75 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

With more than 2,000 taps, Brandon’s maple syrup production is one of the largest in West Virginia, but neither he, nor anyone else in West Virginia, is getting rich doing it. “If you had in the neighborhood of 10,000 trees, and didn’t hire anyone to help you, you could probably make money doing this.”

The maple season in West Virginia lasts just two and a half months at best, depending on the weather. To produce syrup, farmers need freezing nights and warm days. When the temperature drops below freezing, the maple trees pull the sap out of the roots, and when the temperature warms back up, the sap starts running through the tubing lines.

“If you can get it in the low 20’s at night and the 40’s during the day, that’s ideal,” Daniels said.

Making maple syrup used to be fairly common in Appalachia, something lots of farmers did to help them make sweetener to use throughout the year. Then, as more people began buying sugar and other syrups at the store, the practice faded.

“Many years ago, there were a lot of people who did it, and most farmers made enough for themselves. It was their sweetener, but it kind of went by the wayside,” he said.

But with technology, Daniels thinks maple syrup production may be growing in West Virginia. According to the state Department of Agriculture’s most recent maple survey, there are more than 61,000 thousand maple trees tapped in the Mountain State.

Daniels said he’d like to see the number of producers grow. He’s hosting an open house of his sugar shack on Saturday, March 17, as part of Mountain State Maple Day. Fifteen locations across the state will be offering tastings and events the same day. All locations are also included in an interactive map.

Family Roots Farm: Wellsburg – Brooke County
Bowers Maple Farm: Petersburg – Grant County
Daniels Maple Syrup: Dawson – Greenbrier County
Indian Water Maple Co.: New Creek – Mineral County
Gauley River Maple Works: Summersville – Nicholas County
We Bee Sappen: Wheeling – Ohio County
Cool Hollow Maple Farm: Sugar Grove – Pendleton County
M&S Maple: Upper Tract – Pendleton County
Frostmore Farm: Dunmore – Pocahontas County
Heasley Homestead Maple: Bruceton Mills – Preston County
Blue Rock Farm: Mill Creek – Randolph County
Moonstruck Maple: Brooks – Summers County
Cedar Run Farm: Sistersville – Tyler County
Sweetcreek Sugarworks: Sistersville – Tyler County
Flanigan Family Maple: Prichard – Wayne County

Four W.Va. Communities Highlighted for Successful Local Food Programs

Four West Virginia communities were highlighted in Washington, D.C. this week during a national summit that supports local food initiatives across the country. Local Foods, Local Places is a federal initiative meant to help communities create healthy and economically vibrant neighborhoods.

The event this week at the nation’s capital was attended by 70 local leaders and participants of the initiative. Four West Virginia projects were spotlighted at the summit, making West Virginia the state with the most local food success stories at this year’s event.

The Wild Ramp in Huntington, and the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, were featured for increasing access to healthy foods in their areas, and for boosting the local economy through farmers’ markets

Local food advocates from Rainelle and Wheeling also spoke about their communities’ programs to promote the local food economy – and how their work connects to economic development.

The Local Foods, Local Places initiative is sponsored by several different federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).

Two Bakers Document The Women Who Inspired Them in New Book

Have you ever heard of Salt Rising Bread? Legend has it this traditional Appalachian food, which uses no yeast, was created by pioneers in West Virginia who had very few ingredients.

Bakers Susan Brown and Jenny Bardwell have been working to document the recipes and stories of salt sising bread over the past few years.

Their new book is called Salt Rising Bread: Recipes and Heartfelt Stories of a Nearly Lost Appalachian Tradition. In this interview, they share the stories of the women who taught them to make salt rising bread and the reasons they believe this traditional bread is still worth baking.

Making homemade bread does take a lot of time, admits Susan Brown. But it’s worth the hours of labor “because one of the things that happens when you bake something yourself and serve it to your friends and family [is] you start creating stories.”

Once a Foodie Fruit, Could Pawpaws Have Economic Impact in Appalachia?

Those who’ve eaten a pawpaw before often say that the creamy, tropical fruit resembles a mix of a mango and a banana, or a mango and an avocado. They often can’t believe that the fruit is native to Appalachia.

“It’s creamy, but you get that tropical fruit taste,” said Katie Wight, a resident of Athens, Ohio, upon eating her first paw-paw. “It’s not really mango, but mango-papaya – that kind of genre.”

To the rest of the country, the pawpaw is little-known. It’s not commercially grown, in part because it’s so tricky to eat – it’s not ripe until it looks rotten on the outside, and ingesting the seeds or the skin causes some to fall ill. But the Appalachian fruit is showing potential.

Katie Wight holding first pawpaw at the Ohio Pawpaw Festival

In Charleston, a locally-owned ice cream shop called Ellens Homemade Ice Cream increased its supply of pawpaw ice cream this fall due to increased demand. And every year, thousands flock to Athens, Ohio, to celebrate the Pawpaw Festival, where they can learn about the pawpaw and buy pawpaw art, saplings and raw pawpaws.

“At my place, a Belgian gentleman comes and buys all my seeds,” said one attendee who traveled from his home in the Netherlands for the eighteenth annual Pawpaw Festival this year. He spoke of the growing market for pawpaws in Europe. “Before that I threw them away but he pays me 15 cents a piece. I ask him (why) and he says he (uses it) for curing cancer.”

pawpaw teapot by artist, on display at the Ohio Pawpaw Festival

According to Andy Moore, a writer who recently published a book called Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit, pawpaws have been consumed in the United States for generations. Towns are named after the fruit, and folk songs, like “Way Down Yonder in the Pawpaw Patch,” have been written about them.

Writer Andy Moore in Phyllis, Kentucky at the Lucky Penny General Store.
Credit courtesy Andy Moore

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In the last few years, pawpaws have started to be cultivated on a very small scale. “People are growing them in orchards now, just like you would any other crop, which will hopefully give people more opportunity to taste it and experience it,” Moore said.

A man dressed as a tree was available to take photos with children at the Ohio Pawpaw Festival

Some pawpaw fans hope that pawpaws can be included in the forest farming or agroforestry movement, which means growing and harvesting crops like ramps or pawpaws in the forest that many West Virginians landowners own. Walt Helmick, the West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture, says that they haven’t looked into pawpaws as a commercial fruit yet, even though they are unique to the Appalachian region.

“We need to see what we can do with agriculture in the forest more than we have in years gone by,” Helmick said.

Want to Eat Local in Appalachia? Here's a Map That Can Help

What does a Cornbread Festival in Tennessee, a Paw Paw festival in Ohio and the Hatfield McCoy Moonshine Distillery in West Virginia all have in common? They’re among hundreds of destinations featured on a map called Bon Appétit Appalachia. The map features Appalachian restaurants, wineries, and festivals serving locally sourced food has just been updated with more listings by The Appalachian Regional Commission. The map has 62 regional food destinations in West Virginia.

The Bon Appétit Appalachia Map was first published in 2014. Since then, hundreds of new listings have been included on the map, featuring restaurants like the Dish Café in Raleigh County. Manager Rosy Corley says customers come for the locally raised beef and fresh veggies. “They’re just so excited to be able to eat what we call real food that’s not processed and I think that trend is becoming more and more popular.”

And that increasing popularity for authentic local food is driving other restaurants across Appalachia to buy food locally when possible, even if doing so can get expensive.

Map from the Appalachian Regional Commission features hundreds of regional food destinations across Appalachia

Another location on the map is Fish Hawk Acres farm and catering in Upshur County, a business that recently expanded, opening a new market and cafe in downtown Buckhannon. Debbie Hubert is a caterer with Fish Hawk Acres. She says the biggest challenge they face trying to buy more local ingredients is the time it takes to find the high quality food items they need on a consistent basis. “We buy as much local food as possible, but if we have to get product out of season, we get it from a bigger food source,” Hubert says.

The Appalachian Regional Commission hopes their Bon Appétit Appalachia map will help encourage more customers to visit small businesses across the region.