Blue Ridge Food Ventures
“Honor the land and those who till it; our lives depend on the fruit of their hands.”
North Carolina lost more farms in 2005 than any other state in the union according to the Farm Prosperity Project, a conglomeration of seven regional, state, and national organizations. As farmland has been consumed by development, shifting markets have caused additional pressure for the farmers who have remained. In Western North Carolina, for example, the Gerber plant (maker of baby food) had been the largest purchaser of apples for many years. When the plant closed, apple growers had to find new markets for their fruit as well as new apple products to sell. In 2001, the N.C. Department of Agriculture sent Smithson Mills to explore ways of developing agribusiness in Western North Carolina. Mills had formerly served as the Asian trade specialist for the state and knew firsthand the need to connect producers with outlets for their products. He found that Western North Carolina growers needed assistance with value-added food processing (new ways to process farm produce for sale). Mills began to look for solutions.
In the past, one of the solutions for farmers who needed to process quantities of a food product was to build a community kitchen. Later, community canneries were built at a central location for whatever produce was in season. Both were aimed at processing food for each family’s use. The modern version of the community kitchen or cannery is known as an “incubator kitchen,” the difference being that incubator kitchens assist commercial growers to process farm products for sale. Mills was familiar with the concept of incubator kitchens. With the help of the Advantage West Economic Development Group, he and several local representatives made a visit to an incubator kitchen in Athens, Ohio to see how it worked. Mills found funding for the project and a building for lease at the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College’s Enka campus. All he needed was a facility director. After speaking about the project at a local non-profit organization, he learned about Mary Lou Surgi. He quickly realized that her extensive training and experience would make her uniquely equipped to head the complex organization known as Blue Ridge Food Ventures. She was soon hired as executive director.
Mary Lou Surgi’s life history reads like a travel log thoroughly seasoned with good food.
“Everyone there is passionate about food,” says the New Orleans-born chef of her hometown. In her 20s, she joined the Peace Corps and served in Malaysia, where she found that the average Malaysian was as passionate about food as she was. Their cooking traditions are a melding of Indian, Chinese and Malay cuisines, and she found her way into the kitchen of anyone who invited her to dinner so she could learn how to prepare their specialties.
In the years that followed her Peace Corps experience, she ran food centers in Somalia, worked with farmers on pig production in Haiti, spent a year in Europe, and worked in Indonesia and West Africa. During these years, she also obtained two master’s degrees, one in public health and one in food administration. For 10 years, her overseas work with women and agriculture was funded by federal grants through Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, which became her home base. In 2001, she enrolled in the culinary school at A-B Tech in Asheville, where she describes the program as “rigorous and challenging, an invaluable experience.”
She knew that being a restaurant chef was not for her. Right before her final exam, she learned about the proposed incubator kitchen. Because the project was still on the drawing board, she had the time to visit other incubator kitchens and learn more about how they were organized.
Blue Ridge Food Ventures
Blue Ridge Food Ventures opened in February 2005. Within three years, it had become the Southeast’s largest incubator kitchen, hosting businesses from Tennessee and the Carolinas. Farmers are not the only beneficiaries. Others found a home at this facility, a place where they not only create their food product but also receive expert help in every aspect of production and marketing. Since its opening, over 100 small businesses have used the facility and its services to create products ranging from mustard to cider, from pickles to Italian marinara sauce, from salsa to chips to organic chocolate. There are jams and jellies, olive oils, apple products, baked goods, herbal cosmetics, gelato, and chicken pies. Some of the business owners, like the makers of Lotus Chips and the producers of bamboo pickles, were already making their product in other settings and found that Blue Ridge Food Ventures offered better space and support for them.
Prospective entrepreneurs start off with a facility tour and an overview of the services provided. They pay a one-time orientation fee and an hourly rate for the hours they are in production. Help with regulatory issues, packaging and marketing are all part of the services provided. Users can also rent storage space in coolers, freezers or dry storage to help them efficiently use their time in the facility.
The facility has two commercial production kitchens, one “dry” for baking and one “wet” for other types of food preparation. If the business owner needs a piece of equipment or an innovative approach to some aspect of the processing, Surgi steps in. She had noticed how much time it took to hand-mix dried tea for various products, so she located a small cement mixer to facilitate the process.
“It’s probably the only FDA-approved cement mixer in the country,” she says.
When an apple grower needed a pasteurizer, cider press, and chilling tank, Surgi was able to obtain them. A large room in the facility houses this equipment as well as an enormous lettuce washer and an 80-gallon steam kettle for canning. Initially, the jars were placed in the kettle one by one and removed with tongs. When Surgi realized how time-consuming the process was for the “bamboo ladies” who make and can bamboo pickles, she had a huge steel basket welded to fit the kettle and obtained a hydraulic lift from a local auto mechanic’s shop, thus cutting the production time down by many hours. The facility also provides extensive space for storing products to be shipped out. It offers cages for rent so businesses can store their own smaller production items (bowls, cutting boards, cooking utensils) or staples such as flour and sugar. There are two walk-in refrigerators and a number of freezers, including two which can be used to quick-freeze food.
Scheduling for the production facilities is handled online by Surgi. Some, like the producers of cider, salsa, bamboo pickles, or tomato sauce, work on a seasonal basis. Others like Ulimana, creators of organic chocolate products, come several days a week. Kanini’s (two young chefs featured in the dining section of this issue) prepare their meals twice a month.
Individual businesses are inspected either by staff from the Buncombe County Health Center who enforce the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources Food Service rules or by the N.C. Department of Agriculture which enforces FDA food manufacturing regulations. In addition, the Blue Ridge Food Ventures facility itself is inspected by both regulatory agencies. Each business is required to meet a detailed list of standards for sanitation and clean-up to leave the facility in good shape for the next user.
Farm Outreach Project
Surgi’s goal from the beginning was to reach out to the wider community and connect not only with food entrepreneurs but with farmers in order to help them find additional ways to market their produce. For the first three years, she did all of the outreach on her own. Then in the fall of 2007, she formed a farm outreach project team with project manager Laura Dominkovic and product developer Jill Frazer. Dominkovic, who is Croatian, had extensively studied the impact of the family farm on society as part of her Ph.D. in anthropology. Her work convinced her that family farms can sustain themselves and strengthen the surrounding community through all kinds of political and economic stresses. Jill Frazer’s background as both chef and nutritionist allows her to assist farmers with new recipes and testing as well as keeping an eye on local markets to see what is in demand.
Typically Dominkovic and Frazer (often accompanied by Surgi) meet with the owners on their farm to see what produce they raise and to offer ideas about value-added products. If the farmer already has an idea (a family recipe, for instance) Frazer can assist them in testing it. They help determine the market for a product and look at production costs. The recipes are tested at the facility’s kitchens. Frazer, Dominkovic and Surgi help determine the final cost of the product and assist with developing a design for labels and packaging.
Farmers Kenneth and Marilyn Cole
The Coles knew about the Blue Ridge Food Ventures project when it was in the earliest planning stages.
“We were so excited as farmers,” Marilyn Cole said. “We thought ‘This is the answer.’”
She and her husband Kenneth had plans and dreams for all sorts of delectable products made from their apples and berries, but there was no facility in which to make them in quantity.
“To be able to can 100 jars of jelly or apple butter at the time instead of the 10 or 12 you can do in your own kitchen makes such a difference.”
The Coles were already traveling to festivals and fairs throughout the mountains with their “Old Ken Cole’s” old-fashioned churned ice cream. They started with apple ice cream and now make eight flavors.
When Frazer met the Coles, they began brainstorming ideas, sharing recipes, discussing various aspects of processing, packaging and marketing. The Coles now make apple butter at Blue Ridge Food Ventures as well as black raspberry jelly. But they are looking at a variety of new products from candies to syrups to a delightful fruit “jerky.” Marilyn Cole quickly admits she cooks “by ear” and needs Frazer’s expertise in developing the precise measurements needed for preparing recipes in quantity.
In spite of an extreme drought, the Coles remain excited about the prospects for their organic farm. They are passionate about the contributions farms such as theirs can make to the health and well-being of communities in the area. Though the drought has affected the size of the apples, they are still delicious and plentiful enough to provide fruit for ice cream, apple butter and other delights.
Family farmers like the Coles offer real alternatives to pre-packaged food trucked or flown across great distances. At the same time, appreciative consumers allow the family farm to thrive. It is the connection Blue Ridge Food Ventures aims to keep making.
The Lotus Chip ladies
The Lotus Chip ladies are about as much fun to meet as their chips are to eat. They wear pink and black when they cook, reflecting the sassy packaging of their products. Their business began in the fall of 2001 when the two friends Jane Burns and Harriett Kinard formed a partnership. Their first variety was the sesame chip Jane had perfected. But they now offer cinnamon sugar, rosemary balsamic vinegar, and a new one they call “tropical.” They will not allow photographers into the kitchen while they work but are delighted to provide samples. The chips are so delicate, they are practically transparent.
The Bamboo Ladies
How in the world does a farmer in Wilkes County, N.C. in the 1940s begin planting and harvesting bamboo, and how did it turn to pickle-making?
That is the story told by “Bamboo Lady” Carla Squires from Raleigh, N.C. Her grandmother was from Wilkes County. During World War II, one of her friends was in the Women’s Army Corps and was sent to Guam. She returned home with some bamboo shoots which she planted on her land. Gradually neighbors, including Squires’ grandmother, began acquiring bamboo and experimenting.
None of them knew about Chinese cooking, which had long used bamboo shoots. They developed various pickle recipes using young bamboo just after its rings began to form, rather than digging up the shoots. Squires was the only grandchild who helped make the pickles. She laughs as she remembers being home from college and sent out to the field with a machete, a raincoat and work boots.
“The machete was to cut the bamboo with,” she says. “The raincoat was to keep the chiggers off, and the boots were to protect from snakes.”
She still harvests bamboo from that same farm each May, sometimes with her mother’s help. They cut the bamboo and shuck it on the spot. It is then carefully sliced into thin rings, put into plastic bags, and rushed to the kitchen at Blue Ridge Food Ventures. It must be washed several times and cooked for hours. Then it is hand-packed in jars. The pickling brine is poured over it (her grandmother’s recipe) and canned. Squires inspects each jar, labels it, and packs it for shipping. In a good year, she can produce up to 2,500 jars of pickles. She sells them at gourmet shops like Dean and DeLuca, A Southern Season, and organic groceries like Greenlife and Whole Foods.
More information
Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) publishes a free Local Food Guide listing Tailgate Markets, CSA’s, U-Pick Farms, Grocers, Bakers, Apple Growers, Family Farms, Farms to Visit, Restaurants, Caterers, Vineyards, and B&Bs. This guide is available at tailgate markets and organic groceries throughout Western North Carolina.
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, based in the area around Boone and the Blue Ridge mountains, publishes a newsletter called “Local Food Connection.”
There is a smaller incubator kitchen called the Clinch Powell Community Kitchen in Hancock County, Tenn.