This week on Inside Appalachia, we meet a West Virginia high school student whose love of reading inspired her to bring books to young children. We also check in on people who were displaced by historic flooding in Kentucky. What’s happening now that we’re deep into winter? And we find advice for people navigating the difficulties of caring for aging parents.
This week, we meet a West Virginia high school student whose love of reading inspired her to bring books to young children.
We also check in on people who were displaced by historic flooding in Kentucky. What’s happening now that we’re deep into winter?
And we find advice for people navigating the difficulties of caring for aging parents.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Maybe you’ve heard about food deserts. These are places where there’s little access to fresh food, but there’s another kind of desert in our region that affects the literacy rates of young children. Book deserts are areas where there aren’t libraries or bookstores.
Rania Zuri, a senior at Morgantown High School in West Virginia, is the founder of an organization that provides books to preschool children across the state.
Sit For A Spell In The Story Parlor And Hear A Story
Appalachians love telling stories. Lies, yarns, and good ole fashioned tall tales. In fact, the International Storytelling Center is based in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Just across the state line in Asheville, North Carolina, a young family is cultivating another place for people to gather to share stories. Matt Peiken at Blue Ridge Public Radio reports.
How To Help Manage Legal Issues For Aging Parents
Helping aging parents can involve a lot more than getting them to the doctor, church and the grocery store. It might mean managing their checkbook, their bills and their treatment.
WVPB News Director Eric Douglas explores care giving in “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents.” He recently spoke with Franki Parsons, a lawyer who specializes in legal and estate planning.
Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony Brings People Together In Moorefield, WV
Moorefield, West Virginia is home to about 3,300 people – about 1 in 10 are immigrants. That includes a small community from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Many work at the chicken processing plant in town, Pilgrim’s Pride. The hours are long and don’t leave much time for socializing. Still, members of that East African community continue to practice a tradition they’ve brought from home: the coffee ceremony.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by The Company Stores, Hillbilly Gypsies, Watchhouse, Long Point String Band and Ona.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens. Zander Aloi also helped produce this episode.
You can send us an email at InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Moorefield, West Virginia, is home to about 3,300 people — about one in 10 are immigrants. That includes a small community from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Many of them work at the chicken processing plant in town, Pilgrim’s Pride. The hours there are long and don’t leave much time for socializing. Still, members of that East African community continue to practice a tradition they’ve brought from home: the coffee ceremony. Folkways reporter Clara Haizlett brings us this story, with help from former West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard.
Trihas Kefele, a native of Eritrea, is one of the many immigrants who live in Moorefield, West Virginia and work at Pilgrim’s Pride, a chicken processing plant in the small town. Although Moorefield, West Virginia has just about 3,300 residents, around one in 10 are immigrants—including Kefele’s small community from Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Due to long shifts at the factory, members of the community don’t have much time for socializing. But in their free time, they continue to practice a ritual that is custom to their region of East Africa—the traditional coffee ceremony.
On a Sunday—Kefele’s day off—she invited a group of friends and family to a coffee ceremony at her home. Incense and candles perfumed her small apartment, along with the smell of roasting coffee beans.
Courtesy Emily Hilliard
Spices used to prepare coffee.
Kefele sat apart from the guests at a low table that was used to prepare the coffee, stirring the green coffee beans on a single-burner electric stove. She wore a floral dress and a wooden cross around her neck.
On the floor beneath her was a green mat, decorated with strips of plastic that look like grass.
“It just makes it look special, like you’re welcoming the guests,” said Kelefe’s teenage son, Finan, translating for his mom.
Three paper plates were lined up on the mat, each filled with a different colorful snack. On another table, fruit, homemade bread, and chilled drinks were artfully arranged. The ritual obviously took time to prepare, with each detail carefully arranged in anticipation of the guests’ arrival.
Women typically perform the ceremony, which can take up to two hours and involves multiple steps—from roasting the raw beans to serving fresh coffee individually to each guest.
Courtesy Emily Hilliard
Trihas Kefele Pours Coffee For Guests.
The coffee ceremony isn’t just for special occasions. Among family and friends, it’s a common pastime that involves sharing coffee and food, listening to music, and just enjoying each other’s company.
“You cannot just make coffee by yourself,” said Azeb Mekonnen, a guest originally from Ethiopia. “You call people. That’s how it’s fun.”
Mekonnen explained that the tradition is passed down by family matriarchs.
“My mom learned it from my grandmother and my grandmother learned it from her mom,” she said.
A couple of years ago, Kefele began teaching her 14-year-old daughter, Nebiat, how to make coffee, even though she’s lived most of her life in the U.S.
“I just watched my mom do it and I just learned from it,” Nebiat said.
Now, every evening, Nebiat makes coffee for her parents before they work the night shift at Pilgrim’s.
Courtesy Emily Hilliard
Cups and Plates Used in Coffee Ceremony.
The poultry plant is what brought Kefele and her family to West Virginia. Before coming to Moorefield, they lived in a rural part of Eritrea, farming vegetables. More than 10 years ago, they decided to leave their home and immigrate to the United States.
“We wanted to have a better life, better freedom and my dad was the first one to come here,” said Kefele’s son, Finan.
Kefele stayed behind with their children until her husband got settled. Their migration process was long and difficult. But after five years of separation, the family was reunited in the U.S. Now they’re all in Moorefield.
“It’s good and free… and it’s also free of violence,” said Kefele. “It’s always safe here.”
Kefele and her husband both work at Pilgrim’s Pride. Her job is to cut and debone chickens. She works long hours and it’s hard work—even harder, she says because of the language barrier. She mainly speaks Tigrinya.
“Whenever you go to work, you struggle with English a lot,” said Kefele as her son translated. “Even out of work, out of your house, you go somewhere, you struggle.”
Kefele hopes that learning English will make her life in Moorefield easier. So after each night shift, she comes home, showers, and goes directly to a 9 a.m. English class at an adult learning center.
It’s hard to make friends with native English speakers, she said, but the classes offer a chance to build community with immigrants from other parts of the world who are also learning English. They’ve even done coffee ceremonies together as a class.
“Everybody that goes in that class is her friend right now, ” said Finan.
Courtesy Emily Hilliard
Guests Socializing at Coffee Ceremony
The coffee ceremony also plays an important part in maintaining social ties within their East African community in Moorefield, where Mekonnen said there aren’t many outlets for leisure activities.
Mekonnen, who worked for eight years at the Pilgrim’s plant, said her life in Moorefield has primarily consisted of work, spending time with family, and more work. There’s not much else to do.
“Maybe you go Walmart; where can you go?” she said. “Maybe you go somewhere in Ponderosa or somewhere here, you know?”
For Kefele, who comes from a small village in Eritrea, rural life hasn’t been such a big adjustment. But Mekonnen is from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and lived in Atlanta, Georgia, before coming to Moorefield.
When Mekonnen gets the chance, she goes over the mountain to cities in Virginia like Winchester and Harrisonburg, where she can find ingredients from East Africa, like green coffee beans. She said the coffee ceremony helps alleviate some of the tedium of her life here.
“Like get together like this and make coffee—I love that,” Mekonnen said.
Mekonnen often hosts her own coffee ceremonies, but that Sunday she was a guest – sharing snacks, coffee and conversation at Kefele’s home in downtown Moorefield.
After roasting the beans and brewing the coffee, Kefele moved around the room with her coffee pot, serving each guest. She poured the coffee from up high into little espresso-like cups.
The coffee was strong and sweet. It tasted of cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger, which Kefele ground and stirred together with the beans.
As Mekonnen sipped her coffee, she explained the coffee ceremony’s significance in her community in Moorefield.
“With ceremonies you think you are back there still. Your mind go back there,” she said. “So we feel like we are back home.”
On Monday, Kefele and most of her guests would be back at work at the chicken plant. But for that hour or two, her living room was full of guests and conversation, fueled by coffee and the warmth of hospitality.
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. 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.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Brian Burcher and Jennifer Maghan, co-owners of the Black Dog Coffee Company.
Coffee has always been a popular drink. It’s been a big trade item for hundreds of years and continues to be one of the leading beverages in the world. Coffee is so popular that many people don’t even care if it’s cheap or low quality; as long as they have that caffeine fix. But more and more people are searching for that higher quality coffee only found in the specialty shops.
Brian Bircher roasts imported, green coffee beans using a massive roaster built in 1931 called, Plutonius. This seven-and-a-half-foot tall roaster was manufactured by a coffee company called Jabez Burns & Sons in New York City. According to the company’s records, this model was the last one made, and Bircher says, it’s one of four he’s been able to find still in use today.
“I first met Plutonius, we have a long history together, I lived in Leesburg back in 1986 in a little apartment overtop of a store, and in 1986 a business moved in there called the Coffee Bean,” remembered Bircher, “and they owned Plutonius at the time, and they moved it into that building, so I used to go down and watch them roast coffee. I always joked this is probably where I caught the bug, because I used to watch people work on this machine.”
Bircher opened his own coffee roasting shop in 2006 in West Virginia, first out of his garage, and then at a bigger, permanent location in 2011.
But in 2010 the Leesburg Coffee Bean closed and the massive roaster, Plutonius was headed to the Smithsonian. After learning this, Bircher went after the roaster and bought it. In 2012, he began using Plutonius full-time to roast all of the coffee beans in his shop.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Two different types of unroasted, green coffee beans.
Bircher’s specialty coffee shop, the Black Dog Coffee Company, is located in Jefferson County. It’s a popular stop on route 9 between Charles Town and Martinsburg, and its mascot is, you guessed it, a big black dog.
Bircher says what makes his product special is its freshness.
“I thought that I was sort of a coffee snob,” Bircher said, “I was buying higher quality coffee and brewing with spring water through a gold filter, grinding right before brewing, doing all the right things. But what I didn’t realize was so important with coffee is freshness. Coffee, it’s at its peak of flavor within the first 10 to 14 days after you roast it. When I tasted that, it really knocked my socks off.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Brian and his dog, Java.
Bircher claims most of the coffee beans and pre-ground coffee people buy from grocery stores may have gone stale months before even hitting the shelves. So if freshness is the key to a truly good cup of coffee, why do so many people still buy the inexpensive or low-quality brands we see in stores?
“Just because a lot of people like very high quality doesn’t mean that everybody understands or subscribes to that,” said Brian Floyd, the Executive Director of the Pierpont Culinary Academy at Pierpont Community and Technical College in Fairmont, “I would liken coffee shops to also the proliferation of local farmers markets and local food production. People have a little more of a connection to not only the product but to the proprietor, or to the people who are frequenting that. And you know, coffee, being roasted locally means that somebody’s taking a specific interest in that, and you might get to know that particular somebody versus it just coming from a warehouse somewhere.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Ellen Allen, coffee connoisseur.
Ellen Allen is the executive director of the Covenant House in Charleston, but she also identifies as a coffee connoisseur.
“I just love the richness, the boldness, and Liz, I started drinking coffee when I was like four or five years old,” Allen said, “it’s not an acquired taste, it’s something I loved immediately.”
Allen says she always chooses specialty and local coffee shops similar to the Black Dog Coffee Company, even if she has to go out of her way to get it.
“Just sipping it and enjoying it,” Allen noted, “understanding even where it comes from. It’s more of an experience than just quenching a thirst. It’s a wonderful experience to enjoy a fresh roasted cup of coffee from freshly roasted beans, and the tastes are so different from growing up as a kid who had Folgers to drinking a cup of coffee that you know came from a family farm perhaps in South America, beans grown from 4,000 feet. It’s different as night and day.”
The Black Dog Coffee Company as well as other specialty shops across the state, continue to see a growing number in the amount of people they serve. While there may always be a coffee section in grocery stores, the trend in specialty shops is on the rise.
