Local Food Story Archives - Page 3 of 3 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Historic Salt Company Is Alive Again in Malden

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.

Nancy Bruns is actually a 7^th 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.”

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.”

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.

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)

3. Carrot Greens Pesto with JQD Ricotta, Crostini
(WV Homegrown Farms, Nancy Bruns)
4. JQ Dickinson Ricotta, Lavender Salted Almonds, WV Honey
(Cucina Luisa, Thistledew Farms)

Tools of the trade and fresh cut flowers

5. Egg Salad Tea Sandwiches
(Hudson Farm)

6. Cucumber Mint Tea Sandwiches
(Gritt’s Farm, WV Homegrown Farms)
7. Roasted Sweet Potato and Butternut Salad
(SCRATCH, Hudson Farms)
8. Jewel Box Tomato Salad
(WV Homegrown Farms, JQD Salt)

9. Salted Caramel Apple Crisp with Salty Caramel Cream (Martinsburg, WV)

Children Combat Hunger in West Virginia

Tom Toliver has seen people with children who are hungry, searching for food in dumpsters in the alleys of Charleston. And he isn’t the only one. At the Union Mission where Toliver has been donating fresh vegetables, the president and CEO Rex Whiteman says hunger is on the rise throughout the state, and in Appalachia.

“Yes, we see people that are hungry, people that have not eaten for several days, and will come in our doors saying, ‘can you help me?’. And that is overwhelming, in a society and in a world of abundance, that we have people that are literally starving to death. With the mines closing down, and many of them closing in recent months, that’s just created a new wave of hunger and new people that are in the pipeline, asking for help,” Whiteman said.

And these new people mean that new food is needed all the time. Healthy food, like the type of produce Toliver has been growing in his garden. And this week, staff at the YMCA were inspired by Toliver’s vision and brought 22 kids from summer camp to help him harvest vegetables and deliver them to the Union Mission.

Before the YMCA youths arrived to help, one of Toliver’s gardens was about to become overwhelmed by harlequin stink bugs.

“We’re drowning the bugs, and we’re harvesting all the beans and the plants that are ready to be harvested,” said 11-year-old Hannah McCune. She was dressed in a brightly painted hanker-chief, green socks, and pink tennis shoes. She was also wearing garden gloves for what is sometimes a dirty job—finding and killing stink bugs.

It’s not a pretty job, but it’s a necessary one because the volunteer gardeners are committed to using no pesticides on the food they grow. It takes a lot of time to pick out the orange and black bugs by hand.

Stephanie Hysmith is the master gardener supervising the volunteers. She’s had experience with harlequin stink bugs and squash bugs, which can devastate vegetable gardens if ignored. “Last year I started with my zucchini going out and looking under the leaves. And I discovered [squash bug] eggs that were underneath the leaves.”

Hysmith is one of the volunteers most involved with Toliver’s gardens this year. On Tuesday, she taught the children from the YMCA summer camp about the various plants that grow throughout the garden.

One of the children asked her, “what do you do to the plants in the winter?”

“Well in the wintertime the plants go dormant. These are called annuals because they bloom once and then they die. You can save the seed from the fruit, and grow the same plant next year,” Hysmith explained.

Excitement erupted nearby when a blue tailed skink emerged from one of the raised beds and dove back beneath the beans.

In one morning, they harvest about 25 pounds of chard, collards, cucumbers, green beans and zucchini, which they deliver to the Union Mission the next day.

There, they learned about the somber realities of hunger in West Virginia.

And Tom Toliver was visibly moved from the response he’s received in the last week. His project has gotten a number of calls from people, wanting to support his community gardens.

“My big thought, my big vision, is to rub out hunger, totally, through community gardening. And that’s my strategy—is to start in Charleston, Kanawha County, West Virginia, America—encouraging people to live off the land. And you have seen yourself how easy it’s been to grow food,” Toliver said.

The vegetables that the YMCA kids harvested will be served or given away to families in need who come to Union Mission hungry. Some of these people will not have eaten for days.

The first part of this story about Tom Toliver’s West Side Gardens can be found here.

Mapping Appalachia's Food and Farm to Table Destinations

Agri-tourism is not a new concept to Jennifer "Tootie" Jones. A fifth generation farmer, she raises grass fed beef on Swift Level Farm in Lewisburg. She…

Agri-tourism is not a new concept to Jennifer “Tootie” Jones. A fifth generation farmer, she raises grass fed beef on Swift Level Farm in Lewisburg. She was one of the farmers who attended yesterday’s event at the Capitol Market. She sells beef to 14 West Virginia restaurants and several retail stores, some of which are featured on a new online map, called Bon Appétit Appalachia, a project by the Appalachian Regional Commission. There’s also a print map, which lists 283 food destinations across the region, including:

Capitol Market, Charleston
The Wild Ramp, Huntington
South Side Depot, Parkersburg
The Custard Stand, Webster Springs
Swift Level, Lewisburg
Thistledew Farm Proctor
The East End Bazaar, Charleston

The map was distributed to tourism agencies and ran in a magazine called Food Traveler. The premier of this map was celebrated at an event yesterday at the Capitol Market in Charleston.

Jones’ Swift Level Farm is featured as a destination on the Bon Appétit map. “We love people of all ages coming to the farm, and we have activities for children. They can feed the chickens and collect eggs and feed the pigs and run free in the grass, and not worry about anything except having fun,” says Jones.

Credit Roxy Todd

Pickens Maple Syrup and Homemade Bread from Jeff’s Bakery in Frankford

The movement to promote regional food could help give farmers like Jones a boost by helping them establish their farms as tourist destinations.

Yesterday’s event also celebrated the work of farmers and chefs who have been behind the local food movement in West Virginia for some time.

“My name’s Dale Hawkins. I’m one of the owners of Fish Hawk Acres in Rock Cave. We believe local food is important for the economy of West Virginia because it’s going to keep the money as opposed to sending it out of state.” Fish Hawk Acres is also featured on the Bon Appétit Appalachia Map.

At the event Hawkins displayed local breads, homemade ramp mustard, and one of West Virginia’s most iconic local foods—Pickens Maple Syrup.

According to Mandala Research, nearly 80 percent of all leisure travelers list dining and other culinary activities as a top priority. As local food movements across the country begin to take root and the term foodie has emerged in urban areas, Appalachian festivals, farms, and farm to table restaurants could benefit by promoting the region as a tourist destination.

Credit Roxy Todd

Granola made by Fish Hawk Acres in Rock Cave

The Appalachian food map features businesses and events from 13 states, with events like a Green Bean Festival in Georgia, a Pawpaw Festival in Ohio, and a Liver Mush Festival in North Carolina.

Although the Mountain State is known for its many festivals, only the East End Bazaar in Charleston is listed as an event for West Virginia on the printed map. Other events, like the West Virginia State Fair, are included on the online version, which has about 300 more destinations than the printed map.

Governor Earl Ray Tomlin joined ARC federal co-chair Earl Gohl and state Commissioner of Agriculture Walt Helmick and officials from the West Virginia Division of Tourism to announce the maps.

Something New is Sprouting on Charleston's West Side

The first of Tom Toliver’s gardens is in what looks like an unlikely place—there’s a lumber mill across the street, a busy road without sidewalks, and the garden itself is nudged in between a pawn shop and a DeWalt tool center. Along 6^th street, a mom and her two kids walk by carrying groceries from the nearby Family Dollar. Toliver also lives down the street. He believes that putting gardens in urban areas, like Charleston’s West Side, helps reduce crime and revitalize the neighborhood.

“When you bring in the good, the bad will eventually creep out because they cannot survive together. That’s another advantage of a community garden,” says Toliver.

For about twenty years, Toliver has been a mentor for children whose parents are in prison. Five years ago, he had one of the children over for dinner, and they were serving green beans as one of their sides.

“So my wife said, ‘you know where this food comes from?’ And they said, ‘Kroger.’ They had no idea or concept how food grew.”

Das Menon and Tom Toliver. Green-beans are growing on the trestle.

That’s what planted the seed in Tom’s mind to create gardens throughout his neighborhood in Charleston’s West Side. Toliver doesn’t sell any of the food he grows— in fact, he gives most of it to neighbors or to nearby shelters. So when Sarah Halstead, with the West Virginia State University Economic Development Center, heard about Toliver’s project, she connected him with volunteers from around Charleston who began helping him this season.

One of those volunteers is Stephanie Hysmith. Hysmith is a Master Gardener, which means participated in a series of workshops offered by West Virginia University Extension Service.

And Das Menon, an industrial designer, was also excited to help Toliver with his gardens when he found out about the project earlier this year.

“I grew up in India. I’m at the later part of my life, and I want to do something good for people. You want to feel like you have done something that will help people, and that will carry on for the next generation,” says Menon.

This year, Menon is putting design skills to work and is helping the group create a gazebo for Toliver’s second garden, just down the street on 6^th and Orchard. This garden is a partnership between the West Side Community Gardens and Sustainable Agriculture Entrepreneurs, also known as SAGE. Here, vegetables are not separated by rectangular beds. This is an organically imagined garden with plots arranged in a kind of swirling, starburst design—with sunflowers and other bee-enticing flowers at the center.

One of the neighbors, Sharon Bills enters the garden, walking her dog up the grassy hill. “We walk the dog up here and come check it out. And we all say that it was so neatly done, the way that it waters itself and everything,” Bills explains, pointing to the sunflowers which are in full bloom.

Toliver says their project would like to eventually allow neighbors like Sharon to have their own garden plots so they will be invested in helping raise food for themselves and for people in need. “My philosophy is: begin to help people to grow their own food, eat healthy, it will cause a healthy community,” Toliver explains.

“Nothing hurts me any more than to go into countries, even in America, and see kids eating out of garbage cans, when it’s so simple to grow food. It’s so simple.”

A follow up story about Tom Toliver’s gardens and a group of 22 YMCA children who recently volunteered to help him bring vegetables to a local shelter, can be found here.

This story from West Virginia Public Radio is featured in The Charleston Gazette. Click here to view the article.

Reclaiming the Abandoned: Ohio Valley Grows Local Food Economy

**Music by Sugar Short Wave.

Like many towns across much of the state, Wheeling is home to a lot of abandoned, depressed, impoverished areas susceptible to crime and drug epidemics. The region has depended largely on the coal and steel industries, which are declining. The population is decreasing along with the economy and the vitality of the communities.

A small group is tackling several major projects with the hope of changing all of that. The projects all center around infusing the town with locally grown foods, and educational opportunities to teach residents how these foods are grown. There are eight initiatives already in motion and the fledgling non-profit, Grow Ohio Valley, has raised more than $200,000 so far to support their efforts. They hope that instead of being known as a dying town, Wheeling can become a regional food production hub.

Grow Ohio Valley

A lot of the impetus for the growth in the local food economy has come from Danny Swan, co-founder of Grow Ohio Valley (GrowOV). He came to Wheeling through Jesuit University. He hails from Morgantown. He’s really passionate about growing food, educating youth, and about his community. He says GrowOV is fundamentally about growing and distributing quality foods into neighborhoods, and teaching people, especially kids, where and how that food is made.

Executive director of GrowOV is Kenneth Peralta. A filmmaker with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Peralta blew in from New York City several years ago with a mission to explore food and sustainability. Lucky Wheeling. Since he got here, he’s co-authored a Benedum-funded study that outlined the region’s potential to develop a local food economy.

Now armed with blueprints of how to build healthy, sustainable, economically-strong communities, GrowOV is putting eight ideas in motion.

Farm 18

It’s called “Farm 18” because it’s on 18^th street in Wheeling. Farm 18 has been growing for about 5 years now and is currently the nonprofit’s primary production and training ground. The farm, located under a highway overpass, produces eggs, fruits, and veggies. Last year, the acre plot produced an estimated 10,000 pounds of organic produce, sold and distributed throughout the community. This year, Swan said, with a lot of volunteer effort and resources, they hope to produce 20,000. And all of these organic vegetables are being grown on top of filled-in foundations of a former neighborhood.

Youth Outreach and Summer Camps

Swan and Peralta agree, continuing to develop aand deploy the educational elements of GrowOV is a top priority. This summer plans are in motion to launch a full docket of educational programs for ages 5-18. These programs will focus on gardening, healthy living, and sustainability.
“In the end that’s where the changes come from, is changing [kids’] mindsets,” Peralta said.

Site location of planned Vineyard Hills Orchard.

Vineyard Hills Orchard – a five-acre urban apple orchard

The nonprofit applied for and was awarded a grant through the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. The urban orchard proposal was awarded the highest possible award of $25,000 to get the project started. Fencing and 1,000 dwarf apple trees, as well as blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries will be constructed and planted this spring across what are currently five vacant and unusable acres in North Wheeling hills. GrowOV is working with the Wheeling Housing Authority who owns the property.

Five Apple Factoids: 1. It’s estimated that from 2000 to 2020 the consumption of apples, per capita, will increase by nearly 8 percent. (USDA) 2. Americans eat nearly 16 pounds of apples each year (USDA Census) 3. Wheeling residents consume 223 tons per year, or about 9,300 bushels (48 lbs/bushel) 4. Ohio County School District paid $24/bushel of apples last year (about $30,000/year) 5. On 4 acres, GrowOV projects to grow between 1,200 – 3,200 bushels per year (trees will yield at full capacity in 2018).

Linclon Meadow Organic Farm & Training Center

GrowOV has plans to reclaim an abandoned neighborhood that was torn down in the 1970s and has now grown into a forest in the Middle of Wheeling. They want to take the existing elements, the overgrown roads and these pretty-much-perfect public stairways with hand rails that traverse the entire hill, and turn them into Wheeling Botanical Garden. The plan is to develop over the next several years vegetable, medicinal, and flower gardens, fruit and nut trees, nature trails complete with historical and informative signage, as well as create a teaching garden in the meadow that overlooks the Ohio Valley.

Brandon W. Holmes in front of the building on top of Wheeling Hills that will become Friendly City Foods and the distribution hub for Black Swan Organics, GrowOV’s CSA.

Friendly City Foods – A Consignment Farmers Market/Health Food Store

GrowOV is taking a page from the Wild Ramp in Huntington, and creating this year-round combined consignment farmers market/retail local, healthy, natural food store slated to open in July. This building which was recently gifted to GrowOV from another Wheeling-based nonprofit, House of the Carpenter, will also serve as a distribution spot for GrowOV’s super-CSA entitled Black Swan Organics. (For those unfamiliar, CSA = Community Sustained Agriculture. Individuals purchase a subscription, and gain access to weekly distributions of produce from local farms or producers. Distribution is scheduled to begin June 18^th.)

Looking onto the future East Wheeling community greenhouse at the corner of 14th and Wood streets.

Four-Season Garden and Greenhouse

$22,000 in grants and donations from the Hess Foundation and others has already been awarded to support this project. On the corner of 14^th and Wood streets in East Wheeling, construction is already underway. The community greenhouse gets at the heart of what GrowOV is all about because it’s a year-round growing facility building with sustainable building techniques on historic remnants in the heart of a neighborhood in need of some love. The building will be used by residents as a place to grow foods to be sold in town.

Mobile Markets/Farm Stands

GrowOV started putting up farm stands in East Wheeling in 2013. This year they hope to launch a program that allows consumers to receive a 50 percent discount on purchases made using their Food Stamps. With $8,500 in grants from WV Food and Farm Coalition and the Community Impact Fund, Grow OV is sending out roving farm stands complete with cold storage options which sell to everyone from low-income households to high-rise buildings that house elderly residents.

Community Garden Micro Grants

There are about twenty small community gardens growing in Wheeling now, where five years ago, there were just many empty lots in neighborhoods known as a drug and crime hotspots. GrowOV wants to continue the trend by continuing to provide micro-grants and a “Community Garden Retention Program.” The Community Impact Fund has contributed $1,500 to support the effort. Mini-grants are awarded to community gardens that want to grow food, and special consideration is given to applicants who want to grow surplus food to sell at market.

Wild Ramp Makes Move to Central City

The Wild Ramp Food Market will hold a grand opening ceremony Saturday at 9 a.m. as they celebrate a move to a new larger location.

Since opening its doors in July 2012 at Heritage Station in Huntington, the shop that only sells locally grown foods has flourished. With over 100 local farmers, artisans, and bakers producing goods for the market, they have run out of space. So when the city approached the market about moving to a larger location in Central City, Wild Ramp Officials jumped at the chance.

Shelly Keeney is the market manager.

“The community, they haven’t had anything like this before, so yeah it’s going to be somewhat nerve wracking I suppose to help them understand what we’re all about because this is something kind of new and different,” Keeney said.

The new location at 555 14^th Street West is in the heart of the Old Central City commercial district will also house a coffee shop. Most of the small commercial area is made up of antique shops, but in the middle is a building owned by the city that’s housed many different businesses. But it’s the farmers market hosted in the back outdoor space during the summer months that’s succeeded long-term. Moving the Wild Ramp naturally fits two needs, more space for the market and a business that the city thinks can help encourage economic growth.

Keeney said she tries not to think about the pressure of leading the charge for Central City.

“I really don’t feel pressure, I think the first time we moved, yeah there was pressure there just not really knowing, but not really any right now other than we want to come into this community and invite them into our Wild Ramp World and honestly we’re just really excited,” Keeney said.

The Tailgate Farmers’ market will continue to run from the outdoor space behind the Central City market building where the Ramp will be located. They’ll operate from the last Saturday in June until the last Saturday in October. The Wild Ramp Board of Directors and volunteers have been working for several months on the move. JennineBarilla is the President of the Wild Ramp Board. She said there is a level of excitement about what the added space will mean.

“We’ve got so much more space, we’ve got producers that are excited to get down here and be able to bring us more items, we’ve gotten produce coolers donated so we can keep the produce. I think it’s just more of an excitement,” Barilla said.

The Wild Ramp has given more than $400,000 back to local producers. The market has three paid employees and relies on volunteers for staffing. Producers drop off items and sell on a consignment model, getting back 90 percent of the cost while the market retains 10 percent for operating expense.

Krystal Payne is the Operations Manager for the Market. She said they hope there is no apprehension from their current customers on the move.

“I know some of our customers have been a little apprehensive about us moving down here, but I’ve seen in the past month or so people are so excited about our move,” Payne said.

The Wild Ramp will have extended hours at the new location, Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 8 to 4.