On this West Virginia Morning, WVU professor and researcher Emily Garner looks into micro-organisms in water systems, and a children’s book on urban farming and getting kids excited about growing their own food.
On this West Virginia Morning, most of us turn on the water faucet and clean water comes out. But you may not realize the water pipes that deliver the water to you have micro slime inside them.
WVU professor and researcher Emily Garner has a grant from the National Science Foundation to look into micro-organisms in water systems. She spoke with News Director Eric Douglas to explain what she is finding.
And, from The Allegheny Front in Pittsburgh, their latest story about a children’s book on urban farming and getting kids excited about growing their own food.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
ul Smith is one of two West Virginia chefs in the running for one of the most prestigious awards in the culinary world. Reporter Randy Yohe spoke with Smith, who said it’s a humbling honor just to be nominated.
Charleston Chef Paul Smith is one of two West Virginia chefs in the running for one of the most prestigious awards in the culinary world.
Reporter Randy Yohe spoke with Smith, who said it’s a humbling honor just to be nominated.
Yohe: Chef Paul, you’re a semifinalist for the 2023 James Beard Award. What does that recognize?
Smith: This is for the best chef of the southeast. The James Beard Foundation recognizes culinary expertise in numerous different areas, not only in the country, but also in different facets of the business. So this is Best Chef. It is South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. So it is a huge honor for us, as you know, my family of restaurants. So 1010 Bridge, The Pitch, Barcadas, Ellen’s Ice Cream. This is a win for all of us. It’s really a team effort. I get to be the window dressing for it, but it really is a huge honor for all of us.
Yohe: This award is selective and prestigious, isn’t it?
Smith: It absolutely is. I would say it’s the equivalent of the Academy Awards to the chef community. So for me, the nomination is the win. James Beard nominated chef, is basically saying Oscar nominated actor or Academy Award nominated actor. So for me and for our team, it’s great for the city. It’s great for the state. You know, I’ve already won as far as I’m concerned.
Yohe: There’s more to being a chef than just working at a cutting board, a stove or a grill, right?
Smith: Oh, absolutely. I usually go to the gym at about 5:30 in the morning. I’m at one of the restaurants, probably between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. It’s about setting yourself up for success. It’s about everything in place. It’s about not only your physical, but also your mental needs. It started when I was standing on the milk crate with my grandfather, probably about the same time I learned to walk – to stir in the Sunday gravy with him. That really has culminated in operating in these restaurants.
Yohe: They serve a wide variety of food at your restaurants to a variety of customers, tell me about that.
Smith: 1010 Bridge is mostly, we say, Appalachian cuisine with a little bit of a low country flair, but kind of nouveau Appalachia. It’s taking indigenous ingredients from this area and elevating it to a point where it’s fine dining, but it’s also approachable fine dining. We don’t have white tablecloths. The service and the drinks and the cocktails and the mixology and how we play it is all fine dining, but you can wear jeans and a T-shirt.
The Pitch is thoughtful Bar food. We source our ingredients locally from our area farmers. It’s still pizza, burgers, wings and fun appetizers, but it’s just done with that fine dining attention to detail. Barcadas is a Filipino restaurant. So you know that Filipino flavor profiles, the vinegars, the soy sauce, the ginger, the garlic, the scallions, but also making it approachable.
Chef Paul Smith giving a culinary arts demonstration at Charleston’s Capital Market. Courtesy Paul Smith
We’re in West Virginia, so we have to make it a little bit of something for everybody. So we’ve got burgers and wings, and kind of one of our favorite dishes is our Fili Cheesesteak, you know, Filipino. It’s got soy and a little bit of garlic and ginger, and calamansi, and it just kind of elevates it a little.
Ellen’s was a staple here in Charleston for 25 years, and she trusted us to keep the brand going. With all of our ice cream flavors, we’re thoughtful about it. We source locally, and we support local. I think it’s all about supporting the local community. If someone asks me what kind of chef I am, I say I really support the community and I’m the community chef. I’m not really farm to table, I’m not fine dining. I don’t have a specific genre of food that I like to cook. It’s about creating the experience for the guests.
Yohe: You’re known as a chef ambassador for West Virginia. I’m told that’s also something you take great pride in.
Smith: So this is the inaugural for that designation. The governor and the West Virginia Department of Tourism announced the Chef Ambassador program. I represent the Metro Valley. It’s a huge, huge honor to work really closely with the governor’s office, the Department of Tourism, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, to really spread the word and to utilize local but to really get the word out. We have some of the best culinarians in West Virginia. We have some of the best restaurants that I’ve ever been to in West Virginia, and to be able to showcase that and be a part of the fraternity of chefs and represent West Virginia to the best of my ability is huge.
Yohe: What have you learned, and where have you traveled, to know how to please a palate, if you will?
Smith: I started my culinary journey way back with my grandfather on Fridays at the Glen Ferris Inn helping him with the Italian nights. I think that’s where I got my start. I worked at Dutchess Bakery through high school, baking bread and honing my baking and pastry skills. I went to culinary school at the CIA in Hyde Park, New York – the Culinary Institute of America – for two years and then I continued my education in Napa Valley, studying pastry and wine and really getting, you know, immersing myself in the hospitality culture that is Napa. That’s kind of where everything clicked.
I was classically French trained. But everything was farm to table and all the resources were there, the fresh produce, the viticulture, the hospitality culture. It was just awesome. Then I was recruited as the pastry chef for the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. So I was a pastry chef at the Biltmore and went to work at the Ritz Carlton in Naples, Florida, which was one of the most valuable experiences. Their culinary team was second to none. At that time, it was the best hotel in North America.
I learned a ton there and went to the Windsor Club in Vero Beach, Florida, which was huge. It’s a very small, but very prestigious club, so that was a valuable experience. Then, I went straight to the opposite. Not really the opposite as far as cuisine goes, but the opposite as far as paying attention to the food costs. I was the executive chef back home at the University of Charleston for three years. That allowed me to really learn the business side of it and pay attention to food costs and utilizing not just the rib eye, and the tenderloin and the strip, but the other cuts where you have to get very creative in what you’re doing.
And then I was a corporate chef at Buzz Food Service. I will say that Dickinson and Angela Gould really gave me the platform to really be who I am today. That’s when people really started calling me Chef Paul. And that’s when I represented Buzz, to the best of my ability, and helped them to get to that next level. I got to work with so many great chefs around the great state of West Virginia, and learn and teach and consult. And I was always preaching this rising tide. We all need to work together to raise all of our ships.
It’s just been a wild and fantastic journey, doing some consulting on a couple of different projects in Lewisburg and my philosophy is helping. So we’ve got to help each other. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel and learn and learn from some of the best chefs in the country. Now my job is to teach and help everybody to get to the level that they want to get to.
Yohe: The James Beard award finalists are announced next Wednesday. Then what happens?
Smith: They select five, and again, I’m not really under any delusion that I’m going to be going to Chicago to the gala. It would be exactly like the Oscars of the chef world. You get dressed up, there’s an award ceremony, and I get to rub elbows with the best chefs in the country, which just blows my mind. I mean, it’s funny when I was talking to friends, and to my wife, and people in the restaurant, and I’m naming off the chefs, the 20 chefs that are on the list, and I’ve been to a couple of their restaurants. I’m like, man, these guys are a big deal. And they’re like, dude, you’re on the list. You’re a big deal. I don’t really look at myself that way. I have to stay humble. Now is when the real hard work starts. You have got to bring your A game every day.
When people come to 1010, or they come to The Pitch, or Barcadas, or Ellen’s, they’re going to expect a higher level than they already did just because my name is attached to it. I just want to make sure that everybody knows that my teams in all of these restaurants and my partners and all of these ventures, they’re the ones that are doing all the heavy lifting, I get to be nominated as Best Chef in the Southeast, but it’s a huge team effort. West Virginia went from just an absolutely wonderful place to live to a food destination overnight. I’m honored to just be in the same sentence with some of these chefs around the country. I mean, it’s a huge, huge honor.
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Ramin Mirzakhani of Laury’s Restaurant in Charleston is also a James Beard Award semifinalist.
More than $1.3 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will go to four agricultural projects designed to strengthen and expand access to local and regional food businesses.
More than $1.3 million from the U.S.Department of Agriculture will go to four agricultural projects designed to strengthen and expand access to local and regional food businesses.
The majority of the money comes through the USDA’s Local Food Promotion Program for three community programs in Morgantown, Clarksburg and Harpers Ferry.
The largest individual grant of close to $500,000 is for West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition in Clarksburg to help West Virginia food product makers access additional markets.
Another grant of close to $500,000 is for the Yuraction Faction in Morgantown to help connect West Virginia food producers and growers with state institutions through collaborative partnerships that result in stronger local food systems.
Universal Schedule and Booking of Harpers Ferry received $100,000 to support a new online platform that enables local and regional West Virginia food producers to promote and sell their products to consumers directly.
$250,000 will go through the state of West Virginia from the USDA’s Farmers Market Nutrition Program Benefit Delivery Modernization Grants to implement a new mobile system, FarmMarket Direct (FMD), at West Virginia farmers markets.
To help decrease the spread of COVID-19, residents across the country, and here in West Virginia, are being asked to stay home, except to get the essentials such as food and medicine. Although the National Grocers Association assures there’s not a food shortage in the U.S., some store shelves are sparse.
As spring unfolds across the Mountain State, the pandemic is driving an influx of West Virginians back to the garden and to some of the state’s local farmers.
WVU Extension Service has seen firsthand the growing interest in planting and tending a garden. The WVU Extension Family Nutrition program runs an online gardening program called Grow This. It’s supported by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.
Interested participants fill out an online survey and get free seeds for four crops. This year the crops are microgreens, peas, tomatoes and butternut squash. The program is open to anyone in West Virginia and, in recent years, a few hundred people have participated.
“This year, within three days of posting the first post for the year, we had over 1,000 people sign up, and we now have over 5,000,” said Kristin McCartney, a public health specialist with the Extension Service.
Credit Courtesy Grow This Facebook
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In the month since the program went live, more than 25,000 people have requested seeds. McCartney said staff is working from home to fulfill the requests, targeting those most in need.
McCartney’s first post included an image of a victory garden — the war-time morale-booster that encouraged people to plant food at home. In this time of COVID-19, she said the idea of growing more food seems to have resonated with many West Virignians.
“This is the time to pull together as a community and do what we can for ourselves and other people around us,” she said. “Part of that right now is just staying home, and another part is ensuring that our food supplies are secure and people can be fed.”
Credit Courtesy Grow This Facebook
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A screenshot of the victory garden post made by Grow This.
That’s a role some of the state’s farmers are taking on, according to Fritz Boettner, who heads the Turnrow Appalachian Food Collective located in southern West Virginia. The organization serves as a food hub and helps get produce from dozens of small growers into the hands of schools, restaurants and people across central Appalachia.
Some of the biggest markets for Turnrow growers included restaurants and schools, both of which are largely closed due to the coronavirus. That sent some farmers scrambling to find buyers for truckloads of salad greens, for example.
But during this pandemic, Boettner said a new market is flourishing — regular West Virignians seeking fresh produce. Turnrow has seen record sales from individuals placing orders through their online marketplace.
He thinks it highlights the vital role small farmers play in West Virginia. West Virginia is home to about 20,000 farms, and almost all of them are considered small. Ninety-three percent are family-owned, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We need to think about food security and our food system in West Virginia and central Appalachia will help get us through this.” he said “And I think people are wanting to invest in that.”
On a recent Monday, students at James Monroe High School in Monroe County eat french bread pizza, corn, beans and mixed fruit. They also have three, locally sourced salad options to choose from: a spinach salad with bright red cherry tomatoes, a pre-made salad or a make-you-own salad bar.
“We hear that these foods look so much better, put together,” said Kimberly Gusler, the high school’s head cook. She said that since the school began using local salad greens and vegetables and fruits when available, students appear to be eating more of them.
“They love the way the salads look.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
Spinach salad made with locally grown greens on the lunch line at James Monroe High School.
James Monroe is one of a handful of schools in West Virginia participating in the Farm to School program that helps get local food into schools and encourages schools to participate in agricultural activities.
A new bill passed by the West Virginia Legislature this year, will expand the use of local foods to all of the state’s schools and state-led institutions.HB 2396, also called the West Virginia Fresh Food Act, requires beginning July 1, 2019, all state-funded institutions to purchase a minimum of 5 percent of fresh produce, meat and poultry products from West Virginia producers.
The bill’s text states the idea behind the legislation is to support West Virginia farmers and allow them to expand, as well as boost access to healthy, fresh food.
By creating a built-in demand by state-led institutions and schools, which alone purchase $100 million worth of food from out-of-state sources according to the West Virginia Farm Bureau, the hope is the bill will stimulate the state’s agricultural economy, said Spencer Moss, executive director of the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, which supported the bill. (In the interest of transparency, we should note that the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition is a financial supporter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.)
“This bill’s a really great way to invest in West Virginia communities, but also West Virginia agriculture and farmers,” she said.
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
Tomatoes growing at Sprouting Farms in Talcott, West Virginia.
West Virginia has a rich farming culture and one of the highest concentrations of family-owned farms in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, the majority of farms aren’t very big. The average farm size in West Virginia is just 157 acres, and small farm sizes and low production present challenges to both farmers seeking to make a living as well as businesses, schools and agencies that want to use locally grown food.
“In West Virginia, we often talk about there being a chicken-and-an-egg issue with with regards to agriculture,” Moss said. “So we know, especially in fruits and vegetables and produce production, that we have a very low supply. And that’s geography related, it’s labor related, but it’s also market demand related. So, farmers need a market if they’re going to scale up their operation.”
By creating a 5 percent purchasing demand from schools and other state-led institutions, the state is effectively creating that demand, Moss said.
Economists that study local food and agriculture have found that investment in local food systems creates an outsized impact to the local economy. It’s called the “multiplier effect,” and the idea is that for every $1 spent with a local farmer, that investment will come back into the community worth $1.40 to $1.80, because when local farmers have more money to spend they will do so in their communities whether it be through investment in their operations or at the local store.
“Whereas, if I’m investing $1 in a company that’s not based in West Virginia, doesn’t use West Virginia product, that money is just gone,” Moss said. “It just leaves our communities.”
Logistics Challenge
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
A refrigerated truck used to help transport locally grown produce.
But while the West Virginia Fresh Food Act creates a new market for locally-grown food, getting that food to state institutions — schools, colleges and prisons, etc. — poses a challenge.
“The prices are higher, logistics are tougher, it’s not what they’re used to,” said Fritz Boettner, the director of food systems for Turnrow Appalachian Food Collective. This food hub aggregates product from about 75 farmers across southern West Virginia and beyond, and helps get it into the hands of people, businesses and schools.
Boettner said, in his experience, everyone wants to use more locally grown food, however, sourcing can be a challenge. Most restaurants and institutions are used to using one distributor, like U.S. Foods, which provides a list of everything from apples to zucchini.
“And all we have are seasonal products,” he said.
Turnrow, and other food hubs across the state, coordinate with many farmers to fill orders. He said selling to state-institutions could be very beneficial, but the success of the effort will largely be dictated by how the West Virginia Department of Agriculture writes the rules for how the bill is carried out and enforced.
It also hinges on the flexibility of state-led institutions to pay more for locally-grown food, and that is not a given.
“Everyone has to work in budgets that are given to them,” Boettner adds.
Next Steps
West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt acknowledges local food may cost more upfront, but in an interview he said local produce is fresher, more appealing and should last longer.
Credit Martin Valent / West Virginia Legislative Photography
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt.
“There should be less waste, they should be able to have a little bit more carryover,” he said. “So in the end, it may even save money to the institutions.”
He also expects it to have a postive effect on the health of West Virginians.
This month, ahead of the July 1 effective date, the Agriculture Department is expected to reach out to stakeholders affected by the bill including farmers, groups like the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition and state-led institutions to talk about what each party needs to make the bill’s mandate a reality.
Leonhardt said he hopes the agency can create a master list of sorts that could help state-led institutions more easily begin purchasing local food. The Department of Agriculture is also in charge of creating enforcement policies, all without any new funding, Leonhardt said.
“This is another unfunded mandate, that we’re going to gladly pick up the mantle and do it, but it’s going to strain our resources a little bit,” he said, adding regardless, he is excited by the possibilities. “I believe once we get all the rules in place, I think that the economic development and the return to the state through that economic development will help more than offset the cost.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
The salad bar at James Monroe High School.
Back at James Monroe High School, lunch is winding down. The self-serve salad bar looks like a tornado blew through it.
That makes head cook Kimberly Gusler smile. She said she’d love to see more schools offer locally sourced foods.
“I think it would be a great thing for them, I really do,” she said. “For kids to get more nutrition through their meals because the fresh food is the best food.”
Tracey Lea Frisch loves her pet chickens, which she keeps in her yard on the side of her house in the Hopecrest neighborhood in Morgantown.
“This is Pudding and Vanilla and Mr. Looster and Lucky and Star and Moonlight and that’s Roadrunner, and that’s Fluffy – the big one,” she said as she fed them grapes. “I have one broody; she’s pretending to have chicks. It’s not going to happen.”
But last fall, thirty of Frisch’s neighbors sued her, alleging that the chickens smelled bad, were noisy, ran wild and brought down property values. Locally, the chickens have become a sort of cultural phenomenon. They are now known as the “Hopecrest Chickens” – some dedicated community members have even created a Facebook page and a Youtube channel on their behalf. Fun aside, the issues brought up in the case represented a larger discussion about growing vegetables and fruits and raising livestock in cities, a practice known as urban agriculture.
More cities in the U.S. are experimenting with urban agriculture, by growing crops on roofs or indoors with the help of LED lighting. Rick Snuffer, the state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, said that the USDA’s push for urban agriculture isn’t only fueled by aesthetic and environmental concerns, but by a sustainable one too. As the country’s population grows, there’s less land on which to grow food to feed them.
Credit Jodie Rose
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Morgantown residents Jodie Rose and Jonah Katz dressed up as the Hopecrest Chickens for Halloween in 2015.
“There are six million dollars in food that has to be brought into West Virginia every year that could be grown here in West Virginia,” he said. “It’s imported from other states or countries. And, that’s one of the things the Commissioner of Agriculture is very concerned about – how can we create more of those crops at home?”
Yet urban agriculture is rare in West Virginia, and in Morgantown, a proposed urban agriculture ordinance combined with the Hopecrest Chicken lawsuit has sparked a prolonged debate between neighbors about who can garden what and where. The ordinance first entered the public’s eye in April 2015, and was modeled after an urban agriculture ordinance passed in Charleston.
“It was viewed as an opportunity to put land into productive use that was otherwise sitting vacant, and to encourage home gardeners and others to practice some of their own food production,” said Jim Kotcon, a professor of plant pathology at West Virginia University who also serves on the Morgantown Municipal Green Team. He helped draft the original version of the ordinance. “Given the long-running desire for fresh vegetables and fruits, and the ability to promote local foods, it was viewed as a positive opportunity and many viewed it as such at that time.”
Then, a couple of months before the Hopecrest Chickens lawsuit was served, city council discussed a more restrictive draft of the ordinance. It would put tighter limits on how much livestock residents could own, possibly require permits to build structures like doghouses or trellises and restrict how close those structures could be to the neighbor’s yard. Though some gardeners believe that this ordinance discourages urban agriculture, others appreciate some restrictions.
“They haven’t mowed. They have not weeded at all,” said Kevin Downey, a longtime Morgantown resident, of his neighbor’s front yard. “You can see the watermelons has grown through there so you can’t get a lawn mower in there. The trellis – you can see it’s made out of pipes, metals, plastics, pieces of wood, pieces of anything. I don’t know, personally I don’t think it belongs in the front yard.”
Credit Anne Li / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Axel Anderson, 10, picks raspberries from his mother’s garden in Morgantown.
Kotcon says the issue of who gets to garden what isn’t a petty one at all. On a global scale, being able to self-sustain is important to a country’s national security. On the backyard scale, he thinks gardening is a radical act, and being able to grow one’s own food especially resonates with young people.
“It is the fundamental right of each person to wrest a living from the land, free of any corporate control, working with nature to create their food and perhaps a surplus for sale and profit,” he said. “That is something inherently American.”
It’s unclear when Morgantown’s proposed ordinance will return to the city council agenda. But until then, some residents will continue doing what they love best – growing and eating the food they grow in their own backyards.
