edible COLUMBUS | Fall 2013 | Issue No. 15

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Issue No. 15

Celebrating Local Foods, Season by Season

Fall 2013

Fall Comfort Food OBERLIN • GRANARIES OF MEMORY • INTEGRATION ACRES • STONEFIELD NATURALS SCHMALTZ • THE APPLE • WILLOW BASKETS • OHIO’S HISTORIC BARNS

Fall

Contents 2013 Features

Departments

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Letter from the Publisher

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Heritage hogs flourish at Stonefield Naturals By Nancy McKibben, Photography by Catherine Murray

Letter from the Editor The Seasoned Farmhouse

The Poetry in Pigs

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The Apple Autumn’s gift enriches us in so many ways By Debra Knapke, Graphics by Brooke Albrecht

Delicious Collaborations Local and In Season From the Kitchen

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Into the Woods Ohio craftsmanship re-imagined at The Willow Farmer & Mount Vernon Barn Company

By Colleen Leonardi

Young Palates Worth the Trip

Recipes 18 Grilled Pear Salad with Spiced Seeds and Dried Cranberries • 21 Squash Panzanella

Local Foodshed Food Forward Edible Traditions

Salad • 22 Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup • 23 Chipotle Sweet Potato Gratin 26 Soffritto • 36 Pawpaw Ice Cream • 40 Traditional Chopped Liver 43 Grilled Pork Tacos with Avocado and Toasted Pecans • 54 Pears in Honey Caramel with Pine Nuts • 51 Local Grilled Cheese with Apples and Honey • 51 Apple Chips

Columbus Cooks Edible Nation Advertiser Directory Last Seed

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About the cover: Sarah Warda captures fall fruits and foliage from Athens, Ohio, including (from top center green foliage) spice bush (the green leaves and limecolored green berries), Bosc pear, shiitake mushrooms, buddleia (also know as butterfly bush), dill, pawpaw, apple, oyster mushrooms, oak leaf hydrangea, lavender and elderberry.

Learn more about Sarah’s work at sarahwarda.com.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

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letter from the publisher

edible Columbus Publisher & Editor in Chief

Tricia Wheeler Managing Editor & Editor

Colleen Leonardi Copy Editors

Doug Adrianson • Susanna Cantor Editorial assistant

This is my favorite time of year. I love the transition from late summer ingredients like peppers, tomatoes and eggplants to the fall harvest of squash, pumpkin, greens, pears and apples. In the kitchen, the possibilities are endless.

Since opening our new cooking school in Clintonville, The Seasoned Farmhouse, I have been fortunate to be spending a lot more time in the kitchen—teaching classes, hosting groups for team building, having events and testing recipes make me feel I am exactly where I want to be.

There can be so much love and joy created in the kitchen and magic to be had around the table.

We want to spread this feeling!

Speaking of good feelings, I have to thank all of our wonderful neighbors in the Clintonville area who have warmly welcomed us to their community. I have enjoyed all of your visits and your warmth and enthusiasm have been very much appreciated!

In this issue of Edible Columbus our talented writer Nancy McKibben tells the story of Stonefield Naturals and introduces you to Al Dolder, a man I admire. Al is doing work he is passionate about and is keeping old-line pork genetics alive for future generations.

of pork and describes how one of our biggest suppliers of pork, Smithfield Hams, started raising, selling and butchering hogs itself instead of buying from family hog farms. A lot of small suppliers went out of business and the flavor started to be bred out of pork. Smithfield Hams is in the process of being sold to China’s largest meat producer, Shuanghui International Holdings, for $4.72 billion. I feel better buying from Al. I hope I get a chance to connect with you during this season. We have a full lineup of fall classes.

Some of our classes feature our rock star local farmers and producers and allow you to interact with them in new ways, while other classes celebrate the season and still others welcome wellknown culinary names to our area. Michael Ruhlman and Betty Rosbottom will be making their first teaching appearances at our school this fall. Find details on all our classes on page 8.

Wishing you a joyous autumn.

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Design

Melissa Petersen Business Development

Shelly Strange WEB DEVELOPMENT

András Rátonyi Contributors

Brooke Albrecht • Laura Watilo Blake Liv Combe • Nijma Darwish Christopher Fink • Claire Hoppens Debra Knapke • Colleen Leonardi Brad Masi • Nancy McKibben Deborah Madison • Catherine Murray Jessica Opremcak • Michael Ruhlman Donna Turner Ruhlman • Doug Trattner Carole Topalian • Sarah Warda Teresa Woodard • Leah Wolf • Robert Yoder Contact Us

P.O. Box 21-8376, Columbus, Ohio 43221 info@ediblecolumbus.com ediblecolumbus.com Edible Columbus

@ediblecbus

Advertising Inquiries

Tricia Wheeler

Connect with us at: ediblecolumbus.com Facebook.com/EdibleColumbus Twitter.com/ediblecbus theseasonedfarmhouse.com Facebook.com/TheSeasonedFarmhouse

Pork purchased from Al not only tastes better but is an investment in the future of our oldest earlyAmerican heritage hogs. Al discusses the evolution

Leah Wolf

tricia@ediblecolumbus.com shelly@ediblecolumbus.com Edible Columbus is published quarterly and distributed throughout Central Ohio. Subscription rate is $25 annually. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without written permission from the publisher. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. Thank you.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

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bet we all share an appreciation for the season when we experience a perfect Ohio fall day—the kind of day where the sun is shining, the leaves are changing colors, the air is crisp, the Buckeyes have won and we get to pull out our warm wool sweaters.

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spent time this summer with a Native American educator and artist who told me again and again, “You have to know the story of the land.”

As she shared her stories of the region where we were working together, I was reminded of the dignity, integrity and fierce intelligence found in someone who knows why one tree grows the way it does in the winter to protect itself from ice, why certain weeds grow leaves the way they do and why some flowers are edible, and to what purpose, and why others are not.

The Perfect Holiday Gift!

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These stories stay with me as I continue to question what brings people to the sustainable local food movement and the multiple points at which politics and the production of food on this planet intersect.

Like my colleague, I want to know the stories of the land where I live, and have lived, because I want there to be stories for the next generation, and I want there to be land for ALL of the children of the future so they can experience these stories firsthand.

and why we should use schmaltz in contemporary cooking in his new book The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat. Craftsman like Doug Morgan of Mount Vernon Barn Company and Howard Peller, the Willow Farmer, also have a deep respect and sense of stewardship for the stories about the land where they live. Together with their families, they choose to restore and recreate this history through the practice of “making something honest with your hands.” Their offerings to our communities, while not edible in the literal sense, are objects of beauty—a most nourishing object for the soul.

We share these stories and many others in our fall issue because autumn, for us, is a time of remembering and harvest. So here is an invitation, then, to remember stories from your life about the land where you live, the land where you and your ancestors once lived. For in remembering these stories, you are remembering who you are and, ultimately, what the Earth once was and what it can become in the hands of all us stewards engaged in “knowing where your food comes from.”

What we do to our land we do to our body.

Stories about the land are, ultimately, stories about us.

With gratitude,

Subscribe online at: ediblecolumbus.com, or mail a check for $25.00 payable to: Edible Columbus, PO. Box 21-8376, Columbus, Ohio 43221

Chris Chmiel of Integration Acres knows the stories of the land where he lives in Athens, Ohio. He is a revolutionary in bringing foods from the Southeast Ohio forests to the people, including the pawpaw and black walnut, and making a thriving business for himself and his region.

Colleen Leonardi

Edible Columbus is supported by our advertisers and subscribers. With your paid subscription, you help support our mission to tell the stories of our local farmers, chefs, growers and food artisans.

Al Dolder of Stonefield Naturals knows about the poetry found in American pigs after transitioning his landscaping business into a hog farm and raising Hampshire hogs, “possibly the oldest early-American breed of hogs in existence today.”

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The apple, an autumn staple, has a storied past, too, and originated not in America but in Asia Minor. Schmaltz, a long forgotten fat from the Jewish cooking tradition made from chicken scraps, is sourced from chickens for a specific, historical reason. Author Michael Ruhlman wants to remind us of that reason

PHOTO BY © SARAH WARDA, SARAHWARDA.COM

letter from the editor

the seasoned farmhouse

The Seasoned Farmhouse, created by Chef Tricia Wheeler, is a recreational cooking school, learning garden, cookbook library, specialty culinary boutique and private event space located in Clintonville. The year-round cookery, gardening and educational programming celebrates seasonal ingredients from the bountiful farms and artisan producers throughout Ohio. The school’s changing roster of instructors come from near and far to share their craft and their passions. We believe nothing is more rewarding than cooking for those you love. The Seasoned Farmhouse is a place to learn and connect with our food and our community.

Private Events: The Seasoned Farmhouse is available for private events from corporate team building to special birthdays. Whatever you’re looking for, we are here to help you create a memorable event. Our space is designed for groups to cook together, to dine together and to gather for private cooking and gardening demonstrations. We have plenty of options when it comes to customizing your event.

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October 2: Taste of Fall

This hands-on class focuses on the different ways that you can stuff and fold delicious pasta so you can impress friends at your next dinner party.

Come join us for a celebration of the best ingredients of fall! This class will be full of our favorite fall flavors—from squash and pumpkins to apples and pears—and as a special treat we’ll feature pork from Stonefield Naturals.

September 29: Dried Flower Workshop Learn what flowers dry best and how to turn dried flowers into beautiful wreaths in this hands-on class that invites you to design and create a wreath of your own.

October 5: Fall Gnocchi Learn about everyone’s favorite little dumpling. We will talk about the history and anatomy of gnocchi while you make your own potato gnocchi and sauce.

October 1: Classical French Training Our Etoile Series, also known as Classical French Training, consists of 30 weeks of Tuesday daytime classes. This series is our highest level of teaching and learning, with an intensive hands-on focus that will build new skills and techniques. The Etoile Series is based on the French Culinary Institute Professional Curriculum, and will be offered once a year, avoiding the summer months.

October 10: The Organized Kitchen and Pantry In this class, we will help you streamline your kitchen, share our essential pantry ingredient list and provide on-hand meal ideas.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

We hope you will join us for classes at our French Country–inspired cooking school at 3674 N. High St. near the Clintonville Farmers Market. Email questions to classes@theseasonedfarmhouse.com.

For full class descriptions and to register, please visit theseasonedfarmhouse.com.

September 21: Fall Stuffed Pasta

October 10: Favorites for Entertaining Acquire a variety of entertaining tips for your next event, pick up some new techniques to add to your cooking repertoire and learn how to make new recipes to wow your guests—all while enjoying a delicious meal.

October 12: Renaissance Recipes from a Florentine Farmhouse Step back into Renaissance Italy and learn to make fail-proof pasta dough for Florentine Walnut Spaghetti, cook an antipasti starter and make a Candied Fruit and Almond Panforte for dessert while taking a virtual tour through the Tuscan countryside.

Special Event October 9: A Night with Michael Ruhlman: Featuring The Book of Schmaltz We are delighted to present this event with James Beard Award-winning author Michael Ruhlman, who will be lecturing on his culinary pursuits and his newest book, The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat. You will also get to enjoy recipes from The Book of Schmaltz cooked by Chef Bill Fugitt from White Rabbit and will receive a signed copy of the book with your registration.

Instructor: Author Michael Ruhlman and Chef Bill Fugitt from White Rabbit 6-8pm, $75, demo class

October 27: Handcrafted Soap for Beginners

November 17: Homebrewing Beer, Mead and Hard Cider

In this class we’ll show you how the fermentation process works and then you’ll make your own jar of sauerkraut and beet kvass to take home and ferment. We will also sample a variety of fermented foods in class.

In this hands-on class, learn to make coldprocessed handmade soap the old-fashioned way and leave with your own personal creation—a small container of soap that can be cut into bars at home, cured for four weeks and enjoyed.

In this hands-on class, we will demonstrate how to make beer from grain and send everyone home with a ½ gallon jug of wort, honey or cider to ferment at home into beer, mead or hard cider.

October 23: Puttin’ Up Apples

November 9: Bean to Brew

Learn the secrets to keeping apples fresh for up to nine months, discover how to dry apple chips, and make a jar of applesauce in class to take home.

This interactive class will begin with an overview of coffee’s history and less visible aspects of the coffee process. Then, participants will observe coffee being roasted, will taste and compare coffees from different growing regions and will create a personal blend.

October 20: Vegetable Fermentation

October 24: French Bistro Date Night Bring your loved one to come and cook a delicious, hearty fall meal inspired by a classic French bistro menu. We will create Salade au fromage de Chevre, Beef Bourguignon, Potato Gratin and Crème Brulee for you to enjoy.

December 4: Making Holiday Pudding: “Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding”

November 10: Pastry 101 for Young Chefs Discover how easy it is to make flaky and delicious piecrusts filled with sweet and savory fillings and wow your holiday guests with easyto-make pastry creations. Ages 8–14.

In this hands-on class, students will learn a little about the history of plum (Christmas) puddings and make their own traditional pudding to be steamed at home.

December 7: Creating Gifts from the Kitchen Come make some wonderful holiday gifts to take home and share! Tricia will show you how to make several unique seasonal gifts inspired by her French Culinary training and will share tips on perfect wrapping techniques.

December 8: Holiday Wreath Making

Special Event November 12: A Magical Night in Venice with Betty Rosbottom Explore Venice with author Betty Rosbottom as she cooks up a mouthwatering menu inspired by her trip to Venice several years ago. While there, she learned how to prepare our glorious main course from a talented Italian cooking teacher who taught in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. That dish and Baked Risotto with Butternut Squash, Sage and Crispy Prosciutto will be featured in her newest book Sunday Casseroles, to be published in the fall of 2014. Enjoy a bounty of delicious food as you learn how to make Betty’s Creamy Artichoke Soup with Whipped Parmesan Cream; Lelia’s Venetian Chicken with Wild Mushrooms; Baked Risotto with Butternut Squash, Sage and Crispy Prosciutto; Roasted Fennel Wedges; and Individual Tiramisùs scented with Espresso and Garnished with Shaved Chocolate. Our retail area will have several of Betty’s books, should you wish to buy one and have it autographed.

Just in time for the holiday season, make your own wreaths from greens, berries, pinecones and other farm-foraged natural accents found at Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, and learn about other plants you can grow at home to spice up your decorations.

December 14 & 15: Holiday Shopping and Lunch Soirée At this exclusive farmhouse event, we’ll be featuring our retail boutique filled with our favorite finds for the gift-giving season, as well as special holiday baked goods for purchase from some of our local artisans.

Tricia will share tips to make holiday gift giving more personal and entertaining easier, and she will serve a delicious holiday lunch for you to enjoy! This is the perfect holiday outing for you and a cherished friend!

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delicious collaborations

Ohio’s Farm to School Network

By Nijma Darwish “Farm to School happens with champions throughout the community. There are opportunities for everyone to be involved,” says Julie Fox, program director of direct food and agriculture marketing at the Ohio State University (OSU).

Fox is stationed at the OSU South Centers and works as a statewide research and extension specialist for the Farm to School local Ohio network.

Farm to School programs are growing all over the state. An increasing number of schools and districts are relying on locally sourced foods to help nourish the younger generation. This statewide movement is part of a nationwide initiative funded by federal, state and local government, as well as corporations, foundations and community partners. For nearly a decade, this plan has provided youth, pre-K through college, with access to nutritious meals and hands-on education, while supporting Ohio’s local food communities.

In September 2011 the state leadership transitioned the Ohio Farm to School program (once located at the Ohio Department of Agriculture) to the OSU Extension, which was better equipped to handle the growing demands at a local level. It continues to develop with the guidance of local, state and national collaboration.

The Ohio Farm to School Advisory Group operates entrepreneurially, leveraging a variety of resources for education, outreach, research and development. Some of the Advisory Group’s collaborators, including OSU’s agriculture, health and education departments, submitted a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant proposal; awards are scheduled to be announced in October.

As interest in local foods expands into school cafeterias and classrooms, Farm to School projects continue to evolve throughout Ohio. A tool kit was designed to help farms, schools and community members meet their farm-toschool goals. It features success stories and the importance of the program in the system, while drawing together Farm to School tips from other in-state and national network partners.

“The tool kit is one resource to help advance Farm to School in Ohio cafeterias, classrooms and communities,” says Fox. “We’re fortunate to also have some terrific resources from other states and some merging resources from USDA and the national network.”

One of those resources is the Ohio MarketMaker, launched in 2008. Its purpose is to help all businesses in the food supply chain make connections, “This free, easy-to-use, Web-based resource makes it easy for food buyers to

find local products and connect with those producers,” according to Carol Smathers, OSU Extension specialist. MarketMaker “will simplify the process of finding food products for a school’s cafeteria or finding schools that want to purchase products from local farms.”

Family and community members can celebrate food culture and work together toward healthy food choices, stresses Fox. “From my observation, Farm to School projects are most successful when they are connected with the entire local food community.”

To learn more about Farm to School programs in Ohio, visit farmtoschool.osu.edu.

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delicious collaborations

SolerCool Aims to Help Farmers Chill

By Nijma Darwish

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10-foot-long solar-powered refrigerated shed is helping revolutionize how farmers in parts of the world are conserving their harvest.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOHSEN REZAYAT

The lack of electricity and refrigeration has forced farmers in India to throw out a large portion of their produce before it gets to market.

According to studies conducted by the Indian government, 30% to 40% of crops are lost due to heat-related spoilage, but a Cincinnati invention is putting this problem on ice—literally.

A new local business, SolerCool (which is a joint venture of Solergy LLC, SimpliCool Technologies and a local international attorney) has developed a solar-powered refrigerated storage unit designed to keep crops fresh. This venture has also been empowered through collaboration with nonprofit OMID organization, and students and faculty at University of Cincinnati’s College of Business.

“We created this unit because most of the places that do the farming don’t have access to the [electric] grid, so we developed a solar-powered system where food and dairy products could be stored at the place of production,” says Mohsen Rezayat, PhD, who helped gather all the technology needed to produce the refrigerated shed.

Rezayat is a chief solutions architect at Siemens PLM and an adjunct professor at University of Cincinnati’s engineering school.

The unique refrigerated shed is powered by batteries that charge during the day via eight solar panels delivering 1,000 watts of electricity. This allows the system to be run even at night or during the cloudy days. The system also features a batteryhealth monitoring system that can determine well in advance if a battery is in danger of failing.

Rezayat says the cooling unit used for the system was initially designed for vending machines, to make it easy to repair them on site. “It’s a 12

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modular cooling unit that you can replace in a vending machine in a matter of minutes.”

Turns out what’s good for a vending machine is good for saving produce on a farm in India. A prototype has recently been sent there and has yielded excellent results thus far. According to John Borchers, president of SolerCool, India is a natural market to test this prototype.

“It’s a perfect candidate for solar panel technology because nearly nine months of year there it’s sunny.” Researchers were surprised, however, to find that the system was being used for more than just storing produce. “It wasn’t even two days when the farmer realized that SolerCool’s shed can also be used to store milk overnight, easily turning this into a 12-month requirement.”

SolerCool’s shed has been designed to provide cooling at the individual farm level. As of now the unit is a bit costly but Rezayat says he doesn’t

see that being a barrier, “It costs $6,000 to $8,000 to make one of these systems now, but there is a need for such a product and farmers see the need for it.” He adds that the engineers are currently working on ways to make it more affordable. In addition, national and state governments in India are subsidizing products which support the cold chain and/or utilize solar power.

SolerCool could be in production by the end of the year; leaders on the project are looking for a manufacturer and distributor in India and hope to reveal the final product at the Cold Chain Alliance conference in India in late December.

“Hunger and the price of food are increasing on a daily basis; therefore, saving 30% to 40% of crops is extremely critical to both the producers and the consumers, and we hope that SolerCool’s shed will help both groups,” adds Rezayat.

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delicious collaborations

Shamrock Vineyards and the Delaware Grape

By Teresa Woodard

“Back in the late 1800s, this Delaware guy made a fortune selling grapevines,” says Creasap.

The 31-year-old vintner first learned of the infamous grape as he worked as a teen for his grandfather, Thomas Quilter, the now-late founder of the 28-year-old Shamrock Vineyards and local physician who started growing the Delaware grape as another of his vineyard experiments.

Creasap recalls that Donna Meyer, a Master Gardener and local historian from Delaware County, came to visit Quilter and Shamrock Vineyards with a gardening group. Since she knew Quilter grew Delaware grapes, she shared her research on the grapes’ history and their ties to her ancestors.

According to Meyer’s records, Ben Heath moved from New Jersey to Ohio in 1837 and brought along his grapevines. Planted on his property in Delaware, the grapevines thrived in the area’s clay soil, tolerated its late frosts and resisted the powdery mildew that plagues many grape varieties. Fast forward 12 years, and Heath had a chance to share his tasty grapes with the wellconnected Abram Thomson, a fellow horticulturalist and publisher of the Delaware Gazette.

Thomson became an immediate fan of the grapes and eagerly touted them to various horticulture

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groups, including the Massachusetts and American horticulture societies, which ended up naming them the “Delaware Grape” and awarded him a silver goblet, a medal and a lifesize portrait painted in oils.

As the grapes gained worldwide fame, Thomson saw an opportunity to market them for Gold Rush–style profits. No doubt, grape growing was big business in Ohio in the late 1800s. The Commissioner of Agriculture’s report for 1862 shows Ohio was the largest producer of wine in the U.S. with 563,000 gallons per year, followed

by California at 343,000 gallons.

Thomson teamed with propagators George Campbell and Frederick Vergon to launch his scheme. Campbell used his homestead—now the Delaware Arts Castle—to serve as the major seller of Delaware Grapes worldwide, while Vergon assisted as a supplier for Campbell. The native grapes’ versatility combined with the industry’s rising “grape fever” led to the trio’s wild success, selling enormous amounts of plants for as much as $5 each—or $360 each in today’s market.

While it has now been more than a century since this grape fever gripped America, Creasap would love to see a revival of the Delaware grape today.

“I’d love to see the Ohio grape industry adopt the Delaware grape as a state grape and showcase its versatility with the many different kinds of wines that can be made from it,” says Creasap.

While Creasap makes a Pinot Grigio–style wine, others use it for ice wines, Riesling-style wine and sparkling wine.

Creasap’s passion for the Delaware grape is just one example of his ardent support of the local community. His latest project is the regeneration of the century-old Concord grapevine planted by Florence Harding at President Warren G. Harding’s Home in Marion. He’s nurturing the original vine and plans to take cuttings to grow additional ones to eventually supply grapes for wine for Harding House fundraisers or grape juice for school group tours.

At Shamrock, Creasap hosts charitable fundraisers, organizes local tourism activities, opens the vineyard for pruning lessons and harvest days and partners with local businesses for popular vineyard events like Flatbread Fridays and Twilight Dinners. Flatbread Fridays are held on the fourth Friday of each month (April–November) and feature wood-fired pizza from Stix & Stones Mobile Wood-Fired Pizza, wine tastings and live music. The Twilight Dinners offer wine, sirloin steak dinners catered by All Occasions Catering and music by local dulcimer musicians.

“These are our friends, our neighbors and our community,” says Creasap, “so the more I can help them, the more successful I can be.”

Shamrock Vineyards 111 County Road 25 (Rengert Rd.), Waldo, Ohio 43356 740-726-2883 shamrockvineyard.com

PHOTO BY © JESSICA OPREMCAK, OPREMCAKPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

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sk Van Creasap about his vineyard’s Delaware wine, and you might think he’d tell you about its sprightly bouquet or delicate flavor.

Well, think again. The owner of Shamrock Vineyards in Waldo would rather share the fascinating back story of this wine’s legendary grape.

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delicious collaborations

The Toasted Oat

By Leah Wolf

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rika Boll started her new business, The Toasted Oat, in an effort to provide more options for people who avoid eating gluten.

Transforming her grandmother Margaret’s peanut raisin granola recipe, Boll has struck gold in the most delicious way. The origin of Boll’s recipe reveals the important role family has played in the formation of her company, but it goes even deeper: She started the business as a way of doing something she loved while maintaining her family as a priority. Her family’s use of healthy, unprocessed foods throughout her life made it easier for her to adapt to her gluten-free lifestyle and started her on the road to a healthier relationship to food that she wants shares with consumers through her business.

“Combinations of proteins, produce and dairy is how I was raised, and how I still eat today,” Boll says. “It’s how I approach all of the ingredients and recipes in The Toasted Oat varieties.”

The Toasted Oat’s flavors include blueberry and flax, white chocolate macadamia and cashew apricot, and were inspired by Boll’s dad, her husband and her own favorite flavors. Boll is dedicated to unprocessed, nutritious ingredients, including the handmade brown sugar she makes herself, and she looks to local sources for both food and packaging when a local option exists.

“She is a force of nature and her passion for what she is doing is unbridled,” says Williams. “We believe that passion trumps everything for a small business person and those are the clients we love to work with.”

Diagnosed with celiac disease and armed with a personality that craves a good challenge, Boll started researching and gauging interest in her idea for The Toasted Oat in November 2012. She began food tests and package design this past spring and started sending her products to stores in May.

“My time in corporate retail was essential to the skill set I have applied to launching this company,” she says. “I managed the design and procurement of all visual elements in stores. It taught me how to develop a concept into an idea, and the steps necessary to take the idea through the production and distribution process.”

Erika enjoys the new sense of community she gained from her transition away from retail. She gets to be on the inside of the gluten-free community, including participating in the 26th annual Celiac Conference this year, and is grateful for the welcome she’s received from the food community.

“Coming from retail, it is very different—super supportive, collaborative and inclusive,” Erika says. “It has been a breath of fresh air. I have realized that everyone is willing to help if you just ask.”

“That first store launch was when I thought to myself: ‘This is really happening,’” she says. “I am still surprised at how quickly everything has taken off. It is very exciting and very humbling at the same time.”

Toasted Oat granola can be found at both Hills Market locations, Raisin Rack, Cele-

Boll takes all of the demands of a small business in stride. Her passion for her product and her 15 years of experience in retail is a perfect combination.

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brate Local, Whole Foods Market Upper Arlington and Whole Foods Market Dublin.

Learn more at thetoastedoat.com, or visit facebook.com/TheToastedOatllc.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

In addition to the support Boll has received from her family, she’s had help from Marsh Williams, founder of Shout Out Studio, who works with her to develop an online marketing plan to get the word out about her new business. Williams works with many small businesses around Columbus and loves the entrepreneurial spirit and the community that emerges from it, but he believes Boll has something extra special.

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local and in season

What to look for from September through October

Grilled Pear Salad with Spiced Seeds and Dried Cranberries

Fruits: Apples, Blueberries, Apricots, Blackberries, Cantaloupe, Grapes, Peaches, Pears, Plums,

By Tricia Wheeler Serves 4–6

Strawberries, Watermelons, Tomatoes 2 firm pears, sliced lengthwise

Greens: Collard, Mustard and Turnip Greens; Lettuce, Kale, Spinach

1 bunch fresh spinach, cleaned ½ cup dried cranberries ½ cup green hulled pumpkin seeds

Sprouts, Cauliflower, Radishes

Favorite cheese (I like Roquefort on this salad.)

White Pear Balsamic Dressing: 1 small can pears in syrup

Root Vegetables: Beets, Celery, Green Onions, Leeks, Okra, Onions, Carrots, Parsnips, Potatoes, Garlic Last of Summer: Herbs; Hot, Bell and Sweet

⅓ cup white balsamic vinegar (Can substitute regular balsamic vinegar if needed.) ½ cup olive oil Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Mix all dressing components in a food processor or blender.

Peppers; Sweet Corn Grill pears on a stovetop cast-iron grill pan, or on a grill. Assemble spinach, grilled pears and

Squashes: Yellow Squash, Zucchini, Winter Squash, Pumpkins 18

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other salad components and drizzle with White Pear Balsamic Dressing.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKITCHEN.NET

Cabbage Crops: Broccoli, Cabbage, Brussels

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from the kitchen

Fall Comfort Food

Squash Panzanella Salad

By Tricia Wheeler

By Tricia Wheeler Photography by Catherine Murray Serves 4–6

This is my take on a fall panzanella salad. The squash, dried figs and greens are brought together with a simple sauté of greens and the maple dressing adds a nice sweetness.

1 medium squash (acorn or butternut), cleaned and cut into cubes 6 cups mixed greens (I use chard, kale and mustard greens.)

6 dried mission figs, cut into slivers ¼ cup dried salted pistachios 2 cups rustic croutons* 2 tablespoons olive oil Salt and pepper

For dressing: 1 small shallot, sliced thin 4 tablespoons maple syrup 8 tablespoons olive oil 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar Salt and pepper to taste

Put all dressing ingredients in a Mason jar and shake until combined.

You can either roast your squash, drizzled with some olive oil, in a 400° oven until soft—usually about 40 minutes—or cook the squash until soft in simmering water or broth. This can be done ahead.

When ready to serve the salad, heat up your skillet with olive oil, toss in greens, wilt for a minute and set aside greens. Pan-sear squash for a few minutes until warmed through and toss back in greens, dried figs and pistachios for a minute. Drizzle with dressing, toss in pan, add in croutons at very end and then arrange salad on a plate and serve. *Kitchen Tip: Rustic croutons are made with olive oil, sea salt and dried herbs of your choice. Cut bread into chunks—day-old bread works great— toss with olive oil, salt and herbs. Bake at 400° for about 5 minutes, until crisp. Keep an eye on them so they don’t overcook. These keep in a sealed bag for a few days.

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Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup

By Tricia Wheeler Serves 4–6 I love coconut milk in soups—it adds a creamy texture without being too heavy. Coconut pairs great with squash. Garnishing this soup with some toasted coconut and pumpkin seeds would also taste great!

1 large butternut squash 1 can coconut milk 2–3 cups chicken or vegetable stock Juice of 1 lime 1 small yellow onion 2 tablespoons butter 2 small or 1 large apple, diced 2 tablespoons local honey 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper 2 teaspoons cumin 2 teaspoons curry powder ¼ teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon smoked paprika for garnish Salt and pepper to taste

1.

Peel butternut squash, cut lengthwise, scrape out seeds and cut into 1-inch chunks. Peel and dice apple and onion.

2.

Put the butter in a heavy stockpot over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook until soft.

3.

Add the squash, apple, cayenne, cumin, curry powder, cinnamon and honey, and stir until vegetables get slightly browned—add more butter if needed.

4.

Add the chicken or vegetable stock, season with salt and pepper; cook until vegetables are soft (about 15 minutes).

5.

Once squash and apples are cooked through, use a slotted spoon to transfer the vegetables to a food processor or blender. Add coconut milk and lime juice to the blender and process until smooth.

6.

Add blended mixture back to the soup and whisk gently over low heat until heated through. Season with salt and pepper and add additional spices if needed. Garnish with a dash of smoked paprika.

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Chipotle Sweet Potato Gratin Adapted by Tricia Wheeler from a recipe by Bobby Flay Serves 6–8 I was looking for a way to change up my traditional Thanksgiving side dishes when I came across this recipe by Bobby Flay for a spicy sweet potato gratin. I have made it many times since—guests always like the unexpected smokiness paired with the sweet potatoes.

3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into ¼-inch slices 2 cups heavy cream (I prefer Snowville heavy whipping cream.)

1 smoked chipotle pepper in adobo sauce* and some juice from can Salt and freshly ground pepper

1.

Preheat oven to 375°.

2.

Mix heavy cream, chipotle pepper and salt in a food processor until just blended.

3.

In a 9- by 9-inch casserole dish, arrange the potatoes in even layers. Drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the cream mixture and season with salt and pepper. Repeat with the remaining potatoes, cream and salt to form layers.

4.

Cover and bake for 30 minutes; remove cover and continue baking for 45–60 minutes, or until the cream is absorbed and the potatoes are cooked through and the top is browned.

* Found in the Mexican section of most grocery stores

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young Palates

A unique project brings Ohio food traditions to Italy

By Christopher Fink Illustrations by Brooke Albrecht

I

find excitement about food on a number of fronts. The smell of a soffritto gently crackling on my stovetop, the excitement of trying a local specialty, returning to my grandmother’s house for her chicken potpie or an engaging academic discussion about authenticity in food all bring a smile to my face.

Imagine, then, my excitement as doors started opening to embed this passion for the multi-disciplinarity of food into my scholarly work as a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) in the department of Health and Human Kinetics. In 2011 I taught a course examining the social, cultural and environmental factors related to obesity, and the class traveled to

Italy to compare these factors with those in the United States. During that time we visited the University of Gastronomic Sciences (Universita degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche, UNISG) in Pollenzo, Italy. UNISG was begun by Slow Food and its founder, Carlo Petrini, and is aimed at the interdisciplinary academic development of the gastronome: “skilled in production, distribution, promotion and communication of high-quality foods” (UNISG, 2012). This was where I was introduced to the Granaries of Memory (Granai della Memoria) project.

The mission of the Granaries of Memory project is to collect food-related memories and traditional knowledge from around the world using video interviewing. “It is necessary to collect the memories ... before they are lost.

Once, there was the oral memory that guaranteed the transmission of this treasure,” Petrini said regarding the importance of the project. “Today, we need authentic ‘granaries’ to fight such a famine of ideas, to contrast the dominant and massified culture that has silenced the precious knowledge of our fathers.”

My exposure to this work while in Italy led to another course I have offered on two occasions at OWU. The course focuses on contributing to the Granaries of Memory project by collecting stories and traditions from Ohioans for inclusion in the Granaries database. Over two semesters, my students have interviewed 16 individuals from Delaware County, Ohio, examining their family histories, food traditions, memories about food and how these were woven into and across their lives.

The stories they shared could fill volumes. One theme that united them, however, was their engagement with food. It was clear across all of their stories that these individuals have a passion for food, and that their lives are enriched by this involvement and engagement.

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For one individual, engagement with food was exemplified through sharing.

Even looking back on her younger years, she reflected on an instance when sharing French sorrel helped to build a connection with the military officers ranking above her husband. For another couple, the key to engagement with food was wholesomeness. They maintain this wholesomeness through longstanding gardening work and provision of garden food for family and neighbors alike.

I’m especially excited about this project because it’s not over. In fact, we will continue to collect memories and traditions, and share them with our partners at UNISG. During our recent visit to UNISG, a special digital archive was created for this work, titled “Granaries from Ohio Wesleyan University.” And while, at the core, I am still an academic in the field of health promotion, I have certainly found a complementary passion in the realm of food studies after developing this class and working on this project.

For each interviewee this engagement has led to traditions, both old and new. From Slovenian lamb dishes to Swiss noodle recipes that were passed down from previous generations, our interviewees have held on to their heritage while incorporating and adapting to new traditions as well.

Through the lens of food I have forged a number of valuable close professional and personal relationships, and I am thrilled about the relationship with UNISG and Slow Food. It has also given me the opportunity to work side-byside with our exceptional students on important research. It’s difficult not to sound trite, but this project has truly been one of the most meaningful in my career. Here’s hoping for many more years of delicious discoveries!

From our research, tradition took on an entirely new meaning based on the findings of the students. One food tradition that was shared illustrated the complexity of the concept of tradition perfectly. The various ingredients of a daughter’s rose geranium cake recipe brought together important familial food traditions. The daughter combined her own recipe for white cake with raspberry filling; placed rose geranium leaves (one of her mother’s favorite plants) in the center and added her grandmother’s famous white frosting to round out the connection.

To learn more about The Granaries of Memory Project visit granaidellamemoria.it/ilprogetto.aspx. And to learn more about the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy visit unisg.it/en/.

Christopher Fink is an assistant professor and department chair of Health &

While a project like this has its pedagogical and philosophical goals, one of the most enriching aspects is working with students in this manner. Students were forced to break out of their preconceived notions about food, and consider the variety of meanings that individuals hold with respect to food that move far beyond just sustenance, health and enjoyment. One student stated that the process “has helped me to gain a better connection with food overall. I also will think more about how food and culture interrelate.”

Human Kinetics at Ohio Wesleyan University, and teaches courses in the areas of health behavior and health promotion, food studies and qualitative inquiry.

His research interests include studying the relationship between the socio-cultural/physical environment and health behaviors, and health behavior change.

He also recently directed the 2012 Sagan National Colloquium at OWU, titled

Bite! Examining the Mutually Transformative Relationship Between People and Food. He lives in Delaware, Ohio, with his wife and two children, and enjoys translating his food experiences from Italy into dishes he can share with his family and friends.

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Soffritto Makes a Tasty Beginning Recipe courtesy of Christopher Fink The Italian soffritto is a close relative of the French mire

poix—a mix of onions, carrots and celery slowly cooked in butter in a 2:1:1 ratio. Although mire poix is the

base for many successful French recipes, the Italian version seems to have more variant ingredients, including some that I particularly like. I also enjoy the soffritto because of the instant sensory gratification: Very little stirs the appetite like this simple recipe starter. As an added bonus, any dinner guests will be greeted with its scent, which kicks off the culinary compliments straight away!

A soffritto recipe can be tricky to find in a cookbook, because each Italian cook seems to have her or his own version, and regional differences abound. Even the fat that is used can vary—I’ve seen butter used in the northern reaches of Italy, and olive oil in Tuscany, Umbria and points south. Aromatics can vary as well, so use your imagination (and your garden).

The soffritto serves as a wonderful base for pasta sauces, vegetable sautés and soups, and can also be an excellent topping for roasted meats.

My basic recipe (for a small batch) looks like this: 2–3 tablespoons olive oil ½ medium sweet onion* 2–3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped* 1 stalk celery or 1 medium fennel bulb* 1 teaspoon dried green anise (my secret ingredient—not Italian, but really fantastic)

* The classic ratio here is 2 parts onion to every 1 part garlic and celery (or other vegetable), but precision is not critical to a good soffritto!

Pour the olive oil into a sauté pan and heat on low-medium heat until the oil starts to bubble slightly. Be careful not to heat the oil too quickly, as olive oil has a relatively low smoke point. Add the onion and sauté until slightly softened (2–3 minutes), then add garlic and celery to soften the remainder of the way.

At this point, you should cook on low heat (patience!) for upwards of 30 minutes, at which point the vegetables and aromatics will combine into a synergistic base for your sauce or soup recipe. If I am planning to add this to meat, or to sauté other vegetables with it (such as zucchini, tomatoes, etc.), I will often go with a shorter cooking time, so that there is still a distinct texture and profile to the ingredients.

Many like to add other fresh herbs to the recipe as well; I particularly enjoy using thyme. In that case, I would likely substitute for the anise, but you can follow your taste preferences.

Buon appetito!

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worth the trip

Modern-day Oberlin A liberal lineup of attractions await in Oberlin

By Liv Combe, Photography by Laura Watilo Blake

t first glance, Oberlin might seem like little more than your typical college town: impressive stone buildings peeking over the trees, immaculate green lawns covered with students playing Frisbee and reading, town and gown alike filling up the restaurants on the few small blocks that make up the historic downtown.

A

available—is what you don’t want to miss. It’s served every Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 3pm. If the wait is too long, head right across the street to the Black River Café, an equally charming and delicious spot for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner, offering a number of local and organic food options.

So what makes Oberlin worth a trip? The high quality of what it has to offer.

Oberlin boasts many other culinary options for the hungry visitor, from Agave Burrito Bar & Tequileria, featuring many locally sourced ingredients; to Cowhaus Creamery, for artisan ice cream from grass-fed cows; to Magpie Pizza to excellent Chinese food at Tooo Chinoise. On any given night at Slow Train Café, an alumni-owned and operated coffee house opened three years ago to unprecedented popularity, you can often find yourself sipping a glass of wine and listening to performances by some of the best jazz musicians in the world from the Oberlin Conservatory. And start the morning with Slow Train’s sister café, The Local, to enjoy some choice coffee roasted in nearby Cleveland and freshly baked bagels.

The first American institution of higher education to accept both men and women of all races as students, Oberlin College was founded in the same year as the town, both designed to be a kind of haven away from the rest of the world. Since 1833, the college and town have grown together, intertwined and inseparable. With year-round cultural, artistic, scientific and creative influences from the college, Oberlin is more than an excellent place to spend four years. And at just over 100 miles from Columbus, it’s also an ideal place to spend a weekend.

Arriving in downtown Oberlin takes little more effort than choosing which of the crisscrossed main streets to park on. Main and College are lined with shops and restaurants, quite a few opened by alumni of the college. For general store needs, Ben Franklin, the town’s five and dime, has it all—from potato chips and chocolates to gardening and kitchen tools. The craftier of visitors will want to stop by Bead Paradise, with an ever-changing and always-eclectic stock of beads, candles, clothing and jewelry.

For a meal, be sure to swing by the Feve, one of the town’s best bars, restaurants and brunch spots all rolled into one. A lunch or dinner of a burger and tater tots is the stuff of Oberlin legend, but brunch—which changes every weekend based on the cooks’ culinary whimsy and what local ingredients are Clockwise from top left: The 70-acre George Jones Memorial Farm combines vegetables, fruits, composting and free-range livestock, while also preserving and restoring the natural habitat, Peters Hall dates to 1887, The Local coffeehouse

Modern-day Oberlin would not be the same if it weren’t for the town’s abolitionist and progressive history. To find out more about Oberlin’s role as a crucial stop along the Underground Railroad, visit the Oberlin Heritage Center and sign up for one of the famed walking tours of the town. Afterward, see a movie at the Apollo Theatre, which, excepting a recent twopart renovation process to move Oberlin’s cinema studies department onto the premises, has been showing films nonstop to Oberlin residents since it presented its first talkie in 1928.

For more culture, the Allen Memorial Art Museum is home to more than 11,000 works of art, comprising nearly all media and gathered from around the world. To see where many Oberlin residents get their fresh produce from the summer CSA, make a stop at the George Jones Memorial Farm, a 70acre research farm and nature preserve located just outside the town’s limits, and take a tour. This community farm and learning center works to create a

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The Feve 30 S. Main St., Oberlin, OH 44074 • 440-774-1978 • thefeve.com

“truly sustainable food web” by maintaining the land and combining vegetable and fruit production and vermi-composting with efforts to “restore topsoil, wetlands, forest and meadows.”

Slow Train Café 55 E. College St., Ste. 3, Oberlin, OH 44074 • 440-774-7570 slowtraincafe.com

The Local Coffee & Tea 23 S. Main St. (basement), Oberlin, OH 44074 • thelocalcoffee.com

Black River Café 15 S. Main St., Oberlin, OH 44074 • 440-775-3663

For more adventures into nature, visit the Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, a green building designed by William McDonough, featuring native and edible landscapes appropriate to home or urban-scale production.

A trip to Oberlin isn’t complete without a foray outside of it. Cleveland, at a drive of 30 miles away, is chock full of good music, great local food and a thriving craft beer scene. Closer to Oberlin, a quick drive will take you to the Vermilion Valley winery, offering Fall Harvest clambakes and a chance to enjoy the 23-acre farm and winery. Vermilion is also home to Chez Francois, considered one of the best restaurants in Ohio by many a palate.

Apollo Theatre 19 E. College St., Oberlin, OH 44074 • 440-774-3920 • clevelandcinemas.com

Oberlin Heritage Center 73 S. Professor St., Oberlin, OH 44074 • 440-774-1700 • oberlinheritage.org

Savor the apple orchards—several of which you pass by on your drive up from Columbus—that have corn mazes, hay rides, apple picking and pumpkin patches, not to mention homemade apple butter and frozen custard. Stop by on your way in or your way out; just be sure to try the Black River pancakes before you hit the road.

Allen Memorial Art Museum 87 N. Main St., Oberlin, OH 44074 • 440-775-8665 • oberlin.edu/amam Having recently graduated from Oberlin College, Liv Combe is working for a year George Jones Farm and Nature Preserve

as the editorial fellow in the college’s office of communications. After spending

44333 State Rte. 511, Oberlin, OH 44074 • cityfresh.org

this year learning more about the food scene in Ohio, Liv plans to make like

Hours: 10am – 6pm daily or when the gate is open

Huck Finn and light out for the territories (San Francisco, hopefully). Check out more at about.me/liv_combe.

Vermilion Valley Vineyards 11005 Gore Orphanage Rd., Wakeman, OH 44889 • 440-965-5202 vermilionvalleyvineyards.com

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BRAD MASI

local Foodshed

Lessons M from the Field

y work in local food systems often reminds me of an ecology class that I took in high school.

I remember being intrigued by the diagrams of “food webs� in my textbook: A squirrel eats acorns from an oak tree, which later sheds its leaves in the winter. The oak leaves decompose and become food for earthworms, which then become food for robins, which then become a meal for a bobcat.

With no outside inputs other than rain and sunlight, a food web depicts a highly interconnected and diverse system capable of regenerating itself in perpetuity.

Weaving local food webs in Northeast Ohio

By Brad Masi

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I have often used the term local food web to describe a similar pattern that I observe in the development of local food systems. A healthy local food system works through an intricate web of collaborations and exchanges between farmers, processing or distribution businesses, consumers and waste managers. It minimizes outside inputs of nutrients and energy while maximizing synergies, such as utilizing food waste for composting or bio-gas energy production.

I have seen many examples of how communities evolve their own local food webs, creating pathways for sustainable local economies. In Cleveland, for example, there is a growing network of independently owned restaurants that feature locally grown or prepared foods on their menus. Increasingly, much of this food is grown within city boundaries.

The six-acre Ohio City Farm, located near the West Side Market, supports five urban farm enterprises that employ recent immigrants, adults with developmental disabilities, recent college graduates and area residents. Produce is literally walked down the block to restaurants like the Flying Fig or the Great Lakes Brewing Company. The brewery contracts with refugees at the farm from Bhutan, Burundi and Liberia for vegetables and hops for specialty beers. In turn, the brewery delivers spent grain from the beer-making process to the farm to boost the fertility of its soil.

East of Cleveland, a new local foods initiative in Youngstown combines urban farming with the development of a kitchen incubator. Like Cleveland, Youngstown has been investing in its local food economy as a part of an economic revitalization strategy following decades of loss in steel and manufacturing. The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. partnered with Common Wealth to get support from the national Healthy Food Finance initiative. This program includes Iron Roots Farm, an urban market farm occupying 1.5 vacant acres of abandoned land. A vacant house on the property will be turned into a training center to encourage residents to farm vacant lots in the city.

To complement this, Common Wealth developed a cooperative kitchen in a former restaurant and bar that can be utilized by urban or rural farmers or aspiring food entrepreneurs. Together, these initiatives hope to turn the abundant vacant land and buildings in Youngstown into assets for the local food economy.

an effort to transition toward a post-fossil-fuel economy. Growth of local food systems is a part of this strategy, which includes a comprehensive plan to increase local food processing and distribution, utilize waste as an input to local agriculture and promote urban agriculture. In the past year, the Oberlin Project has organized a network of local farmers who are exploring new production techniques that store large amounts of carbon in soil and plant biomass. This provides a promising solution to climate change, offsetting the carbon releases of the community through investments in farms in the surrounding area.

From large cities to small towns, these local food webs signal a new approach to community economic development, rooted in place and based on the coming together of diverse players. These food webs provide powerful tools for communities to improve access to local foods, strengthen farm-to-table networks, utilize vacant land in cities or respond to the threat of climate change. What’s more, there is increasing collaboration between communities who often share experiences and best practices with each other.

Over the past decade, I have witnessed an incredible growth of local food efforts across Ohio. Like those food webs in my high school textbook, each of the communities I described has its own web of complex connections that add up to healthier and more resilient communities and local economies.

Inspired by what I was seeing as I visited different communities, I organized NEOFoodWeb.org as a tool to share best practices and creative solutions for local food efforts. Take a moment to visit the site, see the inspirational work of individuals all over Northeast Ohio and think about what role you’d like to play in your own local food web!

Brad Masi is a writer, filmmaker and freelance local foods consultant based in

Local food efforts can also stimulate economic activity in small towns and rural areas. Located in Wayne County, one of Ohio’s most diverse and productive agricultural counties, the Wayne County commissioners helped to secure two vacant downtown storefronts to help start the Local Roots Cooperative. Local Roots is a “hybrid” cooperative whose membership includes over 130 farmers and over 600 consumers.

Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Jessica Barkheimer, one of the co-op’s founding members, recalled the difficulty of assembling the ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal from local farmers one year. This difficulty in accessing local food, even in an area as agriculturally rich as Wayne County, prompted Jessica and others to form the cooperative. Today, Local Roots improves market access through a retail space for local food, artisan goods or home-produced items in addition to a café and shared-use kitchen.

North of Wooster sits the small college town of Oberlin. Home to a worldrenowned liberal arts college and music conservatory, Oberlin has been on the leading edge of many social movements. An early leader in the education of women and African Americans, Oberlin also was among the first institutions in the country to develop a local food procurement policy in the early 1990s. Today, “the Oberlin Project” involves both the city and the college in Opposite: The Ohio City Farm sits on a bluff along the western banks of the Cuyahoga River, overlooking downtown Cleveland. Its six acres support five inter-linked agrarian enterprises.

Above: A permaculture learning garden surrounds a learning center built with strawbales at the George Jones Farm in Oberlin. The farm represents Oberlin’s historic local food efforts, which began in the early 1990s.

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food forward local partnerships with food producers and farmers, is effectively bringing Athens to the people in a region where fierce resourcefulness and a long history of agriculture dictate a unique culture of food rife with regional ingredients.

When Integration Acres found its footing in 1996, the atmosphere for growing and selling artisan food products was underdeveloped. Chris and his wife, Michelle, having scooped up 18 acres in rural Athens County after graduating from Ohio University, were first enamored, then inspired, to collect the creamy-fleshed fruit they found in abundance on the property. First as whole fruit, then as pulp, frozen and preserved packaged products, Chris processed pawpaws and began the largest operation to do so in the world.

“People did laugh at me, at first, about the pawpaw,” Chris says. With time, amusement turned to admiration.

Pawpaw operations segued into goat’s milk cheesemaking and harvesting of black walnuts, ramps, mushrooms and other forest-farmed crops.

“When we work with all these things that are available everywhere, we bring more diversity to the market and the community,” says Chris. “It’s broadened our basket just a little bit.” Rather than plant and harvest according to traditional farming models, Chris works in tandem with the seasons, the land and those species that grow wild, with or without human cultivation.

An Athens Original Chris Chmiel of Integration Acres

By Claire Hoppens, Photography by Sarah Warda

I

n Athens, a tight-knit food community charged with collaboration, Chris Chmiel is a pioneer of indigenous plants and processes. He’s best known for bringing pawpaws to the people, founding the annual Pawpaw Festival at Lake Snowden 15 years ago.

Yet his influence extends further, into the championing of spicebush berries, farm-fresh goat cheese and locally harvested black walnuts, among other local edibles. Chris, through his farm Integration Acres and a number of

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If Chris could strike gold in a fleshy fruit, so could his neighbors, combining their wares for processing at Integration Acres. Leslie Schaller, director of programs at the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet), has watched Integration Acres’s network expand through the years to collaborative business relationships.

“He’s been a very dynamic innovator overall, from first looking at embracing pawpaws as viable commercial fruit that more people need to know about to figuring our how to create a value-added supply chain, working with land owners, training them, teaching how to source and handle pawpaws.” Says Warren Taylor, founder of Snowville Creamery, “There is no way to overstate Chris’s contribution to the Southeast Ohio sustainable community. His creation of the Pawpaw Festival as a way to utilize foraged forest products was followed by his developing a black walnut collection business, which scores of locals utilize for autumn pocket money.”

Warren tells the story of Chris, in the thick of black walnut season, thumbing off $100 bills for neighboring Appalachian farmers, payment for the bushels hauled in on the beds of their pickup trucks. Walnuts, once littering the land, quickly found value and a local marketplace thanks to Chris’s vision.

In farming and sharing these little-known ingredients, Chris bridges the gap between native people and plants. He not only utilizes unfamiliar plant species but makes them as available as his means allow, sharing them through his own or other community-driven products, or at his market stall.

“We’ve been able to sell everything that we make,” says Chris. That, and “the Athens market keeps getting bigger.”

“People did laugh at me, at first, about the pawpaw,” Chris says.

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Pawpaw Ice Cream Recipe courtesy of Chris Chmiel and Warren Taylor

This ice cream recipe was created by Warren, utilizing Chris’s sweet, almost creamy pawpaw pulp. Warren and Chris collaborate regularly. Since Integration Acres is only a seasonal dairy, Chris utilizes fresh milk from Snowville Creamery for cheese when the goats’ production slows. Warren’s daughter, Celeste, helps Chris and his wife, Michelle Gorman, milk their 70 goats. As neighbors, longtime friends and collaborators, Chris and Warren are fellow warriors for the Athens food community.—CH Approximately 1 gallon of custard mix makes 1½ gallons (3 quarts) of handcranked ice cream.

Use a heavy stainless-steel kettle, if available. If your cooking pan is thinwalled, be sure to stir well, scraping bottom and sides of pan. It is easy to burn the custard if too much heat is applied, and/or too little stirring.

3 quarts half and half (11% butterfat coffee cream) 1–2 cups sugar or alternative sweetener 1 dozen whole eggs 3–6 cups ripe or overripe pawpaw pulp (a worthy substitute would be mango or a mango/strawberry combination) Making the custard: Mix all ingredients together thoroughly in a large pan. If using a hand-held mixer, you may continue blending in the pan as the mixture is heated and stirred on the stove. This improves the heating, reduces burn-on and gives a rich, creamy mixture.

Cook the custard, which should be heated until it starts to thicken (at about 150°F.), and then cooled immediately in a sink of cold water. If it is overcooked, the custard can break.

Many flavoring ingredients, including other fruits, cocoa or chocolate, can be added to the custard mix before it is cooked.

Refrigerate the mix overnight before attempting to freeze it. (Aging an ice cream mix for a day or two is one of the secrets of old-time fine ice cream making.)

Hand crank or use an ice cream maker, following the manufacturer’s instructions. Any sort of flavorings, nuts or good liquor, can be added to the ice cream mix before it is frozen.

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Most recently, enthusiasm has blossomed for fermenting and pickling produce from the summer garden, including dilly beans and kimchee. The construction of a second kitchen accounts for these expanding interests at Integration Acres, and separates cheesemaking into its own quarters.

Though it’s a business through and through, Chris believes in the need for and the ability of the land to sustain its people. It’s a timeless idea that, today, sounds fairly revolutionary. Take the spicebush, for instance, which produces red peppercorn-like berries once dried and used for allspice during the Civil War. Between the lowly shrub and its myriad uses, there’s Chris: disseminator of information, harvester, distributor and enthusiast. He’s not just popularized the native plants, he’s helped an entire region to discover, or to embrace, an effective means of eating.

Through the work of Integration Acres, his products and festivals (2013 marks the third annual Spicebush Festival), the farmers markets and his role as an agricultural activist, Chris is bridging the gap.

“You look at the way that Chris has worked with others to help them identify ways that they can create pawpaw products, or other products as well, from the forest,” says Leslie. “It’s this endless opportunity for collaboration that occurs within our local food community that is marvelous and inspiring.”

Among the partnerships: Athens bakery Crumbs crafts a ramp pasta from Chris’s bounty. Snowville Creamery experimented with a spicebush yogurt.

Jackie O’s brewery turns out a pawpaw beer each year. Even Jeni’s Ice Cream got into the mix with a black walnut divinity ice cream, sourced from Integration Acres, as noted in Jeni’s cookbook.

Lately, Chris’s hands are full with his new role as an Athens county commissioner, a seat he was elected to last year.

“As county commissioner I have a lot of roles I could play in helping the economy here,” Chris says. Primarily, he’s focused on how individuals involved in local economic development look at, and ultimately work with, the local food economy.

“We have this mentality that our economic development people work with these big high-tech companies. Yet the local food people have been building strong, multimillion-dollar sales with no help from econ development people. How could we actually support this stuff?”

“Chris has always been a leader and positive provocateur, pushing and coalescing the community’s good intentions into meaningful action,” says Warren. “For all his contributions, the greatest is in uniting and energizing the community, bringing out the best in all of us.”

Integration Acres: 9758 Chase Rd., Albany, OH 45710; 740-698-6060; integrationacres.com. Pawpaw pulp is available at Dublin Whole Foods and can also be ordered from the Integration Acres website.

Raised in a nomadic and adventurous family, Claire Hoppens called five states home and attended three colleges before earning her degree in magazine journalism from the Scripps School at Ohio University in 2011. Claire is currently in training as a managing partner for Northstar Cafe, one of the many Columbus mainstays to solidify her love of people, food and our vibrant city.

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edible Traditions

Rendered Useful Schmaltz deserves a comeback

By Doug Trattner, Photography by Donna Turner Ruhlman

I

n the pecking order of maligned fats, the lowermost rung is reserved for schmaltz. In fact, you might say that schmaltz is the chopped liver of lipids. Whereas olive oil is the golden child, butter is wholesome goodness and even lard is making culinary inroads, rendered chicken fat will always be early-grave food destined for the dustbin of cookery.

Not if Michael Ruhlman has his way. The Cleveland-based author wants to resuscitate schmaltz from its regrettable reputation. His goal is not only to grant a guilt-free pass to Jewish home cooks who might have given it up for perceived health benefits, but also to share its charms with lovers of great food everywhere regardless their culinary culture.

His new book, The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat, aims to prevent schmaltz from going the way of the lowly knish. The book is Ruhlman’s 20th and it began life as an e-book, gorgeously illustrated by his wife, Donna, and released as an iPad app.

October 9 at The Seasoned Farmhouse: A Night with Michael Ruhlman: Featuring The Book of Schmaltz We are delighted to present this event with James Beard Award– winning author Michael Ruhlman, who will lecture on his culinary pursuits and his newest book, The

Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat. You will also get to enjoy recipes from The Book of Schmaltz cooked by Chef Bill Fugitt from White Rabbit and will receive a signed copy of the book with your registration. See page 9 for more information.

On the electronic version, readers can click a link to hear the author’s kindly Jewish neighbor, Lois Baron, say the word “schmaltz.” Like all Yiddish words it sounds exactly like what it means: spreadable pleasure. It was Baron’s frequent endorsements of the long-snubbed fat, in fact, that ultimately motivated Ruhlman to act.

“I’ve always been curious about schmaltz and fascinated with its Jewish history,” Ruhlman explains. “That, combined with my love of fat in general, led to this book.”

The author explains in the book that schmaltz came about in typical usewhat-you-have manner. Owing to kosher dietary laws, Jews are precluded from using lard, which comes from pork. Even butter, being a dairy product, becomes treif (non-kosher) when a meal includes meat of any kind. And in early 20th-century Europe, you couldn’t exactly walk to the nearest 7-Eleven to grab a tub of margarine. Hence schmaltz, which could be rendered down from the Shabbat roast chicken.

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Traditional Chopped Liver Recipe courtesy of Michael Ruhlman Makes about 2 cups Ruhlman says that good chopped liver is “every bit as fine as a French country pâté.” If you are going to go to the trouble of making chopped liver, he adds, buy very fresh livers from a farmers market rather than the grocery store—it makes all the difference. Gribenes are the crispy bits of skin, meat and tissue that are the delicious byproduct of making schmaltz.—DT

Serve with toast or crackers along with some dill

In a small saucepan, cover the eggs with 1 inch of water and bring to a boil over high heat. When the water

pickles or pickled red onions as a snack.

reaches a full boil cover the pan and remove from heat. Let the eggs sit in the covered pan for 12–15 minutes, then place in an ice bath to cool.

3 large eggs ¾ cup schmaltz, or more to taste

Meanwhile, in a large sauté pan over medium heat, melt a third of the schmaltz and cook the onions in it

1 Spanish onion, thinly sliced

until they’re completely tender and on the brink of browning, 10–15 minutes. Transfer the cooked onions to a plate.

1 pound chicken livers 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for sautéing the livers

Add a little more schmaltz to the pan, increase the heat to high, and sauté the livers, salting them as you do, until they are warm throughout with just some pinkness remaining, 7–10 minutes.

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (optional)

Peel the eggs. Run all the ingredients through a meat grinder fitted with a small die into a mixing bowl. Add

Gribenes (optional)

1 teaspoon salt, the pepper and the vinegar and stir to combine. Stir in ½ cup of schmaltz plus the gribenes, if using (you can also wait and sprinkle them on top as a garnish) and continue to stir until all the ingredients are well incorporated. (This can also be done using a food processor.)

Taste it and add more schmaltz, salt, vinegar, and pepper as you wish. Chill completely.

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Like Ruhlman’s Twenty, The Elements of Cooking and Ratio, this is no run-ofthe-mill cookbook. There are just a handful of recipes, categorized as “traditional” and “contemporary.” A good portion of the book is devoted to teaching about making, storing and cooking with schmaltz.

“I’m not interested in big cookbooks with hundreds of recipes,” Ruhlman says. “I think there are too many recipes out there already. What we need more of is technique. I want to teach people how to cook.”

Schmaltz is slow food. Home cooks can’t just walk up to the local grocery and grab a pound of rendered poultry fat along with their quinoa and couscous. It must be made at home from the skin, scraps and trimmings from one or more chickens. The process is labor intensive, and the resulting liquid is particularly perishable—not exactly a compelling argument for its resurgence.

“What schmaltz has going against it is also what it has going for it,” says Ruhlman in fine Jedi fashion. “You can’t buy it in a grocery store, you can only make it at home, and it doesn’t last forever.”

He says that the practice fits right in with newly fashionable cooking trends like pickling, canning, smoking, fermenting and charcuterie. But above all else, making schmaltz simply is the sensible thing to do.

“We have this chicken, fat is useful and nutritious, and we’re certainly not just going to throw it away,” he says.

While schmaltz might not be convenience food, it ranks above all other fats in the most important categories. “Schmaltz has a flavor like no other fat,” asserts Ruhlman. “It has a roasted flavor built right into it. It has much more flavor than pork fat, and it’s remarkably versatile to cook with.”

Latkes fried in schmaltz come out ridiculously crispy and delicious. Matzo balls made without schmaltz are substandard imposters, he says, and just try to whip up a respectable batch of chopped liver without a healthy dose of onion-infused chicken fat. Can’t be done.

It’s not just throat-clearing Jewish recipes like kreplach, kugel and kishke that benefit from schmaltz. It is equally delicious schmeared atop grilled bread, it turns humble spuds into the world’s tastiest home fries and it transforms brioche from a cloyingly sweet treat into savory dinner rolls loaded with umami. Unbound by religious dietary restrictions, Ruhlman was free to uncover modern uses for the ancient fat.

“I wanted to be able to explore the uses of schmaltz and not be restricted by the way it was in the Old Country,” he explains. “And let’s face it: In the wrong hands, so much of Jewish cooking is terrible.”

What made Schmaltz, the cookbook, so appealing a project for Ruhlman to tackle is that schmaltz, the ingredient, has become a useful, novel and appetizing new tool in his culinary tool belt. For a chef, can there be a better reward?

Doug Trattner made his way into food writing the usual way, via the practice of law. In addition to his work in Scene (and before that, Free Times), Trattner is managing editor of Fresh Water, author of the guidebook Moon

Cleveland and

co-author of Michael Symon’s second cookbook, Carnivore. He lives in Cleveland Heights with his wife, two dogs and four chickens.

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columbus cooks

In the Kitchen with Ann Fisher

By Nancy McKibben Photography by Catherine Murray

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“I love lemons!” exclaims WOSU radio host and producer Ann Fisher with the same passion she brings to her daily public-affairs talk show, All Sides. “I always have lemons—and butter and cream—in my refrigerator.”

“Cooking gives me a different kind of focus for my brain,” says the former Dispatch journalist, who says that about 10 of her shows a year are food-related. “I like the independence of cooking, and the freshness of the food.”

A tattered 1969 paperback Betty Crocker cookbook provides recipes for many of the “gazillion” Christmas cookies that Ann bakes annually. She cans from her garden: “I made green tomato relish, and the whole house smelled like vinegar for a week!”

A self-described “latchkey kid,” Ann’s first humble cooking task was “putting cream cheese on the celery.” Her maternal grandmother, a gourmet cook, owned a SubZero refrigerator and freezer before it was trendy and did not hesitate to serve the grandkids Baked Alaska.

“Everything was beautiful,” Ann remembers, “but she was not a fun entertainer.”

Ann Fisher’s Grilled Pork Tacos with Avocado and Toasted Pecans Serves 6

3 tablespoons lightly packed achiote paste 1 tablespoon chipotle purée 1 teaspoon ground cumin ½ cup fresh lime juice (about 4 limes) ½ cup vegetable oil 2 pounds pork loin, sliced into rounds about ¼ inch thick 12 corn tortillas or small flour tortillas 2 ripe avocados, fruit crushed 1 cup toasted pecan pieces Combine achiote paste, chipotle purée, cumin, lime juice and oil. Put pork in heavy-duty sealable plastic bag. Add marinade. Marinate for up to 24 hours. Keep chilled.

Divide tortillas into 2 piles. Sprinkle with water and wrap tightly in foil.

Place on side of grill or campfire to warm for about 10 minutes.

Drain pork, then grill over medium-hot coals for 2–3 minutes per side.

Stack pork and slice into strips.

Stuff pork in tortillas, then top with crushed avocado (salt and pepper to taste) and toasted pecan pieces.

Her dad liked to execute complicated meals, but “he was a pig in the kitchen.” Ann decided early on that she would be a relaxed cook and hostess who always cleaned up as she worked.

Ann’s current favorite dish shows her mother’s influence, with an emphasis on fresh and simple: “I like to pound down a chicken breast, season and sauté it with a little wine. I like to make sauces, and improvise. There’s always a bottle of wine near the stove.”

Nancy McKibben is happy to combine her loves of eating and writing with the opportunity to advocate for local food in the pages of Edible suspense novel, The

Columbus. Her Chaos Protocol, the first book of The Millennium Trilogy,

was a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award for Fiction in 2000. The second,

Blood on Ice, followed in 2012 and the third is in the works. (The series is set in Columbus, and the books are available at amazon.com.) She is also a poet and lyricist, the mother of six, and the wife of one. View her work at nancymckibben.com; contact her at nancy@nancymckibben.com.

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The Poetry in Pigs Heritage hogs flourish at Stonefield Naturals

By Nancy McKibben Photography by Catherine Murray

A

l Dolder grew up in Columbus, far from rural life. Nevertheless, he dreamed of becoming a hog farmer.

He is a man who finds poetry in pigs.

On our way to Al’s Stonefield Naturals, photographer Catherine Murray and I drive south, then east of Columbus, meander along country roads and eventually pull up to a long driveway flanked by old stone pillars. At the end of the drive stands a faux Tudor home, modest but well landscaped.

The day is beautiful with birdsong, sunshine and wildflowers. We pass two black pigs in a field before we arrive at our destination, where Al, wearing overalls and a welcoming smile, climbs down from his red truck and greets us as we unload cameras and muster notebooks.

After high school graduation in 1974, Al moved to the farm that his father had purchased to grow nursery stock, working with him in the landscaping business and raising commodity hogs on the side. In 1982, he married wife Bonni and sold his animals.

Landscaping was steady, but Al still dreamed of hogs. After 9/11, when landscaping business began to slide, Al and Bonni decided to focus on a business centered on need—food—rather than want. In 2003, he purchased an “old-line ge-

“I always loved the history and lore of the old-time Hampshire hogs and the men who bred them,” says hog farmer Al Dolder. “They were rugged and tough hogs and equally tenacious breeders.”

netics” (see sidebar) Hampshire sow named Miss Annie from Joe Malone of Lancaster, Ohio.

“Sis,” he says reprovingly to one, seeming a little embarrassed at this display of hog mischief.

Al had always been intrigued by Hampshires, which the National Swine Registry calls “possibly the oldest, early-American breed of hogs in existence today.” They are a black-skinned hog with erect ears, belted in white around the middle and forelegs.

Al has one boar and five sows, which he breeds in turn to produce one litter of eight to 12 piglets per month. When we step into the barn, a sow heaves herself to her feet and her piglets scatter.

They are cunning at 1 month old, weighing just 15 pounds.

“I wanted sows that could raise piglets outdoors,” says Al. “Modern hogs can’t—their legs are too short. You need a sow with mobility.”

Al had to alter his vision of little pigs running free after he saw the coyote tracks outside the barn. He now keeps them safe inside until they weigh 75 pounds, big enough to make a coyote think twice.

Meat packers want conformity. “On the kill floor, every hog needs to be the same, because it’s mechanized,” Al says. “My hogs are not all the same.” Butcher Dale Phillips from Zanesville processes Al’s hogs.

Hog meet We walk out to the field to meet some hogs, who turn out to be the two black pigs we passed earlier in the car. Their white belts are hidden by the mud they’ve wallowed in—in that, at least, they match the stereotype—and they follow Al and a bucket of feed to a more picturesque portion of the field, so that Catherine can get a shot of pigs in clover.

But the hogs, which stand waist-high and weigh 450 pounds at this point, are curious, and Catherine and I beat a retreat over the kneehigh electric fence, as Al swings a plastic bucket to discourage them from sniffing us with their muddy snouts.

Sows can weigh up to 700 pounds, and Al describes with reverence how they ease down on their elbows, listen to make sure there are no pigs underneath, then slowly lie down, careful not to crush their relatively tiny offspring.

“That’s good maternal behavior, and I can select for that,” Al says. Sows that are raised in confinement, of course, can hardly stand up in their close quarters, and are separated from their piglets by barriers. Maternal behavior is, in effect, being bred out because it isn’t needed.

The sow silhouettes herself against the open door of the barn. “With the morning light shining,” Al says, “you can see the pink of their skin.” I can’t see it, but perhaps the light isn’t quite right. Or perhaps Al looks at his hogs through different eyes.

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The Hampshire Hog: Modern and Old-Line Genetics The Hampshire hog developed from the Old English Breed imported to Kentucky from

“Breaking Even Is Not an Option” Despite the poetry, raising hogs is an expensive proposition. Corn costs rise. Hogs have to be trained to the electric fence. Marketing is difficult.

Britain around 1825. Good mothers and foragers, they were easy to raise outdoors.

“I always loved the history and lore of the old-time Hampshire hogs and the men who bred them,” says hog farmer Al Dolder.

“They were rugged and tough hogs and

Al’s meat has received stellar reviews from OSU’s Steven J. Moeller, professor and swine extension specialist, who evaluated a carcass at the University’s Meat Science Laboratory; from Adam Welly of Wayward Seed, for charcuterie; and from Jim Budros, for porchetta.

equally tenacious breeders.”

However, in the 1990s, when food trends stigmatized fat, farmers began breeding Hampshires with the Belgian Pietrien, a heavily muscled, lean hog. In Al’s opinion, “it reduced flavor and fat and made the meat grey.”

That’s why he raises animals bred from oldline genetics rather than modern stock.

“Genetics are everything,” Al insists. “The best way to keep the genetics good is to look

Still, Al and Bonni were ready to kiss the hogs goodbye, so to speak, when Adam suggested another route. Today Al sells at the Worthington Farmers Market and his Stonefield Naturals products include organically grown vegetables as well as pork: whole, half or by cut.

“Twenty years ago, I would never have believed the food scene today,” Al says. “Thank goodness for farmers markets and the opportunity to sell people one pork chop at a time. Then they realize what pork should taste like.”

at the carcasses and select daughters from the sows who have the best meat qualities in their pigs.”

According to Al, Smithfield Hams “destroyed

He would like to expand, but not to the point where he again becomes a commodity breeder, his economic destiny determined by the whims of the packer.

the hog market in 1988” by refusing to buy commodity pork from farmers and becoming “vertical integrators,” raising and butchering the hogs themselves. “A lot of family hog

“For me, satisfaction is a fine sow raising a large litter of pigs, and knowing that I have done my genetic homework.”

farms went out of business.”

When a huge company like Smithfield controls the quality of pork, Al says, “after a while the consumer doesn’t know what pork should taste like.”

Al cannot resist a final metaphor. “If I don’t stray off the path that these Hampshire hogs have cut through the brambles of modern pork quality, they will be here for the next generation after I am gone.”

With his old-line Hampshire hogs, Al is working to change that.

Purchase Al’s meats and vegetables at the WorAuthor’s note: On May 29, 2013, Smithfield

thington Farmers Market. Phone him for custom

Hams agreed to be bought out by China’s

orders. Al Dolder Jr., Stonefield Naturals: 1499

largest meat producer, Shuanghui Interna-

Blacklick Rd., Baltimore OH 43105; 740-862-

tional Holdings, for $4.72 billion.

3165; stonefieldnaturals.com; stonefieldnaturals@gmail.com.

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The Apple Autumn’s gift enriches us in so many ways

By Debra Knapke Graphics by Brooke Albrecht

“Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple....” ―J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

F

or many people autumn is synonymous with football, but for me it is all about apples. Apples bring back childhood memories: eating Early Transparents off a neighbor’s tree; picking apples at Patterson’s in Chesterland, Ohio; and peeling apples in preparation for making applesauce and pies.

This fall marks the 32nd year that our family has picked apples at Lynd’s fruit farm. Our children grew up with apples in the fall and our granddaughters are just beginning their lifelong relationship with apples.

Eating an apple is a very sensual experience and everyone has their preferences. What is your favorite apple, and why? Is it sweet, tart, acidic, with hints of pineapple, melon or pear? Is it crunchy, juicy, creamy? Maybe the apple’s perfume draws you in—a nod to the apple’s cousin, the rose.

I wonder: What did the first apple taste like? Who was the first to cultivate and select tastier, prettier, bigger fruits? While we do have native crabapple species, most of the apples we eat today—Malus domestica—are complex hybrids bred from species that originated in Asia Minor. European colonists brought the apple to North America in the 1600s. In Colonial America, the apple was often valued more for its products of cider and applejack than for fresh eating and cooking.

We have John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, to thank for the spread of apples throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. He planted apple seedlings in areas that were ripe for settling. Thousands of varieties originated from his apple groves; most do not exist today.

Growing apples—conventionally or organically—can be a challenge. There are many pests and diseases that attack apple trees and their fruit, yet when we buy apples we have come to expect them to look perfect and unblemished. Fortunately, there are many references that can help you if you decide to take the leap and try growing your own.

The first step is to look for cultivars that are resistant to the big three apple diseases: apple scab, fire blight and cedar apple rust. This guided my selection of Liberty (1955) and GoldRush (1973) for my own garden. This 48

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year, after three years in the garden, my trees will yield 8–10 apples each: I will not stop picking apples at Lynd’s anytime soon!

GRAPHICS OF APPLES FROM CHASE BROTHERS COMPANY, NEW ENGLAND NURSERIES, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, 1923, NO. 1531

Apples are propagated by grafting a desired cultivar onto a rootstock. Rootstocks have been developed to influence the growth of the preferred apple cultivar. They can control the tree size, disease resistance, productivity and stress tolerance. My trees are on one of the dwarfing rootstocks, which will keep the trees small and allow me to stay closer to the ground when picking from the mature trees. One other growing note: It is best to have at least two different cultivars that bloom at the same time. Apples, especially heirlooms, “prefer” to be cross-pollinated. Many of the newer cultivars are pollen-fertile, meaning that they can self-pollinate.

Depending on whom you consult and what period of time you reference, there are or were anywhere from hundreds to thousands of apple cultivars.

As Liberty Hyde Bailey said in The Apple Tree (1922), “Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many folks.” He gleaned 878 cultivars from nursery catalogs in 1892, and then rated 107 of them for where they would best grow in the United States. The names of these cultivars are snapshots of people who grew or found them, apple and tree characteristics, apple “parents,” bloom or ripening time, and places. Scott Chaussee (orangepippin.com) has posted notes for approximately 700 apple varieties. His descriptions may entice you to search out apples that are less common.

Below are a few of my favorite apples. Some make the best applesauce. Some hold their shape when cooked while others are best eaten raw. Some store well while others should be eaten soon after picking. All are available either as a tree or as the fruit.

Cortland has bright white flesh that offers a satisfying crunch; slow to brown

when cut; sweet and tart at the same time with a creamy texture when baked. Does not store well; make applesauce if you still have some after 6–8 weeks of storage, or when the texture becomes mealy.

Dolgo (crabapple) is one of the larger crabapple cultivars (crabapples are under two inches in diameter; apples are bigger than two inches). Resistant to the “big three” apple diseases. Very tart fruit that makes an excellent jelly or apple butter; ripens in late July to August.

Fuji was developed in Japan, but both its parents were U.S. apples. It’s crisp, sweet and stores well. I’ve seen recommendation for its use as a cooking apple, but I feel that the texture and taste deteriorate; it is better eaten fresh.

I look for a lopsided apple that is red and yellow with a brown undertone— there is another form with streaky skin color that tastes different to me.

GoldRush was developed by the cooperative breeding programs of Purdue, the University of Illinois and New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations.

Their goals for cultivar development are disease resistance, long storage and

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good to excellent flavor. GoldRush has a complex tartness, stores for at least four to five months. It is a beautiful apple that bakes well.

Honeycrisp was developed in the early ’60s by the University of Minnesota in

its search for cold-hardy apples. It is very CRISP and tart initially; it sweetens as it can be stored for up to six months. It doesn’t have the best disease resistance, so may not be the best choice for a home orchard.

Jonathan is a beautiful dark-red apple that has a spicy tart flavor and is one of

my favorites to use in combination with other apples in pies and applesauce; often is in the cider you buy. Like Honeycrisp, Jonathans are susceptible to the “big three” apple diseases.

Liberty is a modern hybrid that has excellent disease resistance and a good flavor reminiscent of McIntosh. Can’t wait to experiment with cooking them this year.

McIntosh is an heirloom and my favorite apple. The flesh is pale green with a

lovely perfume. Excellent fresh, baked and in pies. It does not hold its shape, so it forms the “sauce” in pies and crisps. It has been the parent of many heirloom and modern cultivars.

Melrose, the official apple of Ohio, has yellow skin that is overlaid with red.

Some may find the russetting (brown dots or netting) a bit harder to chew, but that makes it less palatable to insects, too. This is an apple from my youth that made its way in to many pies. Its slightly acid flavor deepens as it stores. Good as a fresh apple and a cooking apple.

Stayman Winesap is either one apple or two apple cultivars. It depends whom you talk to. Both are harvested late in the season, usually in October after a frost. It is a starchy apple, with a spicy-floral fragrance, that sweetens as it stores. Good for eating and for baking where the starch turns into sugar.

Yellow Transparent (Early Transparent) is the sweet-tart-crisp apple we ate off the tree in the summer. Best for sauce or cider as it doesn’t hold its shape and doesn’t store well.

Two excellent books that can guide your apple growing choices: The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips and The Fruit Gardener’s Bible by Lewis Hill and Leonard Perry.

Thank you to Robin Rinaca, owner of Eastern Shore Nursery of Virginia, for sharing her experiences with apples.

Debra Knapke is a teacher, lecturer, garden designer, photographer and gardener. Her gardens are eclectic combinations of trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals that she has stuffed into ⅔ of an acre. She is the co-author of five books and is a Heartland Gardener: heartland-gardening.com.

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Local Grilled Cheese with Apples & Honey

By Tricia Wheeler Apples and cheese—a perfect classic pairing made even better with a smear of your favorite mustard, a generous drizzle of local honey and two slices of crusty bread.

Butter Slices of crusty bread Dijon mustard Honey Favorite cheese (I prefer Canal Junction Charloe.)

Apple slices (I prefer a crunchy, tart apple.)

Melt butter in a heavy-bottom skillet—dip one side of each slice of bread in butter. On the side with no butter, smear mustard on 1 slice of bread, honey on the other, and then layer on cheese and apples.

Put back in skillet and toast on each side until cheese is melted and bread is brown and toasty. Slice and serve.

Apple Chips

By Tricia Wheeler Dehydrate local apples for a healthy snack! Slice apples thin and dry out in a dehydrator or low oven on cookie sheets covered with parchment paper. The apple slices are finished when crisp and crunchy. I like to sprinkle my apples with cinnamon or a little sea salt before drying.

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edible nation

The Exceptional Bounty of Fall Fruit

By Deborah Madison Photography by Laurie Smith

I

love making desserts and I like eating them, too. I’ve worked as a pastry chef on several occasions and have always included plenty of desserts in my books, so it was largely a matter of time before I wrote a book devoted to nothing other than the last course of the meal.

Seasonal Fruit Desserts from Orchard, Farm and Market started out with the working title, Desserts for the Pastry Impaired, partly because I consider myself to be somewhat pastry impaired.

When I see a picture of a chocolate cake in the shape of a pyramid, its ganache coating mirrorsmooth and perfect little rosettes all lined up in a row, I know profoundly that this is not something I want to undertake. Desserts that require enormous patience and skill are just not in the cards for me. Instead, I prefer to approach desserts in a more relaxed fashion, that is, as a cook. I like desserts you can roast and sauté, season and taste, and this approach led naturally to fruit along with a few easily managed doughs, creams and fruit-based sauces to transform fruit into full-fledged desserts that don’t require hours of solitary concentration.

I view fruits pretty much as I do vegetables: Both are produce and, in my kitchen, both are seasonally based. But more than vegetables, fruits (citrus being somewhat of an exception) must be seriously wedded to place if they’re to have flavor and perfume. Fruits don’t travel nearly as well as vegetables do, and while our freewheeling ways with shipping coast to coast have at last been seriously questioned, it’s far easier to get your hands on a good parsnip than it is to find a good plum. Fruit has suffered poorly at the hands of industrial agriculture and our habit of having everything all the time doesn’t help us see the world of fruit close up, that is, the fruits that thrive where we live.

Because season and place overlap, we in fact have hundreds and hundreds of little seasons in our large country, not just the big four. While my

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Pears in Honey Caramel with Pine Nuts Serves 4 Though very easy to make, this dessert does ask you to pay attention to what’s happening in the pan because it will never be the same twice. If your pears are on the dry side, your caramel will form more quickly than if you’re using pears that exude a lot of juice. Making this for two will be different than making it for four. It’s all about adjusting for the needs of the moment.

Serve this with a fresh tangy goat cheese.

2 large or 3 medium pears, such as Bosc, Bartlett, Anjou, Comice, Packhams 3 tablespoons unsalted butter 3 to 4 tablespoons mild honey 2 tablespoons pine nuts Pinch of salt

Peel the pears neatly with a paring knife. Cut

California friends might be enjoying apricots in May, in Santa Fe, at 7,000 feet, we won’t be seeing them until July. Rhubarb may be the first “fruit” (it’s actually a vegetable) to appear, but what a national magazine won’t say is that it persists in many places throughout the summer and can be paired just as nicely with blackberries as with the early strawberries. Peaches are finished in Phoenix by mid-May but not getting started until August elsewhere, and so it goes.

But despite the myriad of climates in our country, there do persist some general seasonal expectations. Fall, my favorite season for fruit, is not when we’re thinking of peaches, but when our attention shifts to pears and persimmons and new crop nuts.

The persistence of heat at the start of the fall season means we’ll still be enjoying some tender fruits—the second crop of figs, the late raspberries, melons and the last of the ever-bearing strawberries. I’ve found the latter in many places, including an orchard stand in Vermont in midOctober, where I also found a Holstein apple, about the best apple I’ve ever eaten.

them lengthwise in half and remove the cores with a scoop or a pear corer, including the fiber the runs up to the stem.

Select a skillet large enough to hold the pears snugly. Melt the butter over medium-high heat, allowing it to brown a little around the edges.

The last of the melons are especially stellar, as are grapes. I’m thinking of Concords, the lovely thin-skinned violet and green Bronx Grapes now boarded on Slow Food’s metaphorical Ark of Taste, Swenson’s Reds, and black or golden Muscat grapes.

Add the pears, cut side down, and drizzle the honey over them and into the butter. Slide the pan back and forth to combine the butter and honey, then reduce the heat to medium- low.

Cover and cook until the pears are tender, 12 to 15 minutes, or until a paring knife inserted meets just a little resistance. Take a look after 5 minutes or so. If you have a pretty dark caramel by then—high heat and a thin pan will do it— add a few tablespoons water, give the pan a shake to mix it in, then cover again and continue cooking until the pears are done, adding water again if needed.

Remove the cooked pears to serving plates.

But the approach of cold weather means that fall also gives us the first leathery-skinned pomegranates, apples galore, Fuyu persimmons then the Hachiyas, Yali pears and Western pears and, above all, the aromatic quince. The Satsuma mandarins from California’s Sierra foothills appear in November and the fresh crops of nuts also arrive. Depending on where you live, you’ll see almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, shagbark hickory, butternuts or pecans. Green pistachios, whose shells are still soft and whose meats are oddly squeaky and damp, show up in October in Southern California, as do dates in their wet, or rutab, stage.

Raise the heat under the pan to medium-high and add the pine nuts and salt. If the pears have given off a lot of juice or the added water hasn’t cooked down, continue cooking until you have a bubbly brown caramel, anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes. Serve the pears with the sauce spooned over them or into the cavity of each pear, and a wedge, slice or scoop of cheese.

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The possibilities are rich and varied, and that’s just fresh fruit. What about a late-season raspberry tart, a Concord Grape Foldover Pie or Quince Braised in Honey and Wine?

Fall fruits have had the summer to soak up heat and nutrients from the soil, and their colors are gorgeous, all those hues of deep purples and reds, rusts and orange, violet and gold. But to find taste, perfume and general goodness, you’ll once again be heading to farmers’ markets because industrial fruit is not about flavor, or texture for that matter. It’s crisp, not soft; dry, not juicy; and so almost devoid of taste that it’s hardly worth the money you’ll spend. But while you’re at market keep your eyes open for such things as seasonal cheeses, those nuts I mentioned, freshly ground cornmeal, native wild rice, maple sugar, interesting dried fruits which have a hundred uses in the sweet kitchen, fine jams, and perhaps even some local butter or cream.

The fruit might not be front and center, as it is in Roasted Mission Figs with Honey, but will appear on the side, as in the Cornmeal-Almond Cake that is paired so elegantly with Dried Figs in Pedro Ximenez. Fall vegetables also play in the dessert kitchen, as in the Sweet Potato and Coconut Pudding or a Winter Squash Cake with Dates.

Fall is simply a great season for dessert.

Another fall treat is the pineapple guava, a modest little fruit with a stunning aroma and nondescript beige flesh that tastes of the tropics.

A fruit platter in early fall might include fresh figs and raspberries and toasted new crop almonds to enjoy with anise liqueur. Or sliced Fuyu persimmons and russet apples, a beautiful bunch of Black Hamburg grapes, milky-fleshed new-crop walnuts and a slice of ripe Crane melon might take up residence on a dessert plate.

Deborah Madison is the author of 11 books, including Local

Flavors, What We Eat When We Eat Alone and Seasonal Fruit Desserts. A former chef and pastry chef, she lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Into the Woods

Ohio craftsmanship re-imagined one stick and beam at a time

By Colleen Leonardi

The willows are planted in the spring and harvested in the winter to be stored and dried for up to two years. “I harvest willow using a coppicing method,” he says, “of cutting the whips near the ground, leaving a growing stool.”

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The Willow Farmer On a 300-acre historic farm in Roseville, Ohio, sits the creative home of Howard Peller and his wife, Maddy Fraioli. Howard and Maddy own 30-acres and share a portion of the land with local farmer, who grows certified organic row crops. While Howard raises vegetables, runs a number of small beehives and cultivates an orchard for personal use and occasional local market sales, he is an artist at heart.

They came to the land in the 1990s to raise their family amidst farm life while owning and running multiple creative businesses, namely as partners for 25 years at Fioriware Art Pottery in Zanesville, Ohio, and Howard’s formal role as vice president of product design and development at the Longaberger Company.

Among many artistic twists and turns, what has remained constant for Howard is his respect for the land. As a little boy, he describes how his family lived on the edge of a field, and as he walked past it everyday he longed to have a farm one day. That innocent desire (“It wasn’t very practical,” he chuckles.) translated into wanting to influence his kids “to have chores and have a relationship to nature.”

“In Haiti I fell in love with the idea of reaching into the forest, pulling down some bamboo or taking some reeds to work with,” he says.

His passion led to the question: “What can I do here at the farm that I can grow that’s not just food, that I can make something with? I wanted to see how life can have that rhythm where you grow something, harvest it and then make a product from it.”

So amongst his orchard, beehives and plot of vegetables, Howard decided to make his own forest—a winding two acres of colorful, wispy, elegant willow. In his third year of willow farming, Howard has 6,000 willows of about 60 varieties. Willow is a great crop for erosion control, it helps stabilize the soil and some are studying its potential as a renewable source of energy. It’s also, second to oak, one of the top insect-diverse species; the bugs find its chemistry

tasty, making it good for the birds and the ecology of Howard and Maddy’s farm.

It takes a couple of seasons to get the willow growing to a height and tension where Howard can cut it and prepare it for basket weaving. The willows are planted in the spring and harvested in the winter to be stored and dried for up to two years. “I harvest willow using a coppicing method,” he says, “of cutting the whips near the ground, leaving a growing stool.”

Howard then has to soften the willow back up in a warm bath to make it tender enough for the delicate handiwork weaving demands. Once the willow has its bath, Howard has about two to three days to work with it before it hardens again. He leaves the bark on the branch, unlike many European willow basket makers who strip the skin to reveal a creamy finish. Howard waits for the willow to breathe while making sure the bark is clinging

While his kids are all grown up now, Howard’s desire to live in rhythm with the place he calls home is still strong. The seasons live in him. He lives in the seasons. And it’s this regard for the Earth and its daily offerings that led Howard to become a willow farmer and basket maker.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF HOWARD PELLER

It was also a trip to Europe, where he saw willow baskets and fell for their warm glow, lovely look and functionality.

“The baskets feel like they’re still growing,” says Howard as he remembers those first few encounters. “You feel the spirit of nature in them.”

And it was a series of trips to Haiti, India and Jamaica that planted in his imagination the seed of farming willow. For the last six years, he’s lived among local artisans in these regions, “working to aid their designs and improve techniques for making handcraft goods.”

“What can I do here at the farm that I can grow that’s not just food, that I can make something with? I wanted to see how life can have that rhythm where you grow something, harvest it and then make a product from it.”—Howard Peller of The Willow Farmer

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just so to the bone of the branch to allow for that warm, earthy look.

Mount Vernon Barn Company

“The way I appreciate nature—my respect for it, my honor for it—I don’t like to bruise the material,” he says as he talks about his process and the time he takes to make a basket. “I like to go in a slow, methodical pace. I’m not trying to hustle it. I honor the spirit of the material.”

During the 17th and 18th century, Ohio was so dense with forest that a squirrel could jump from tree to tree and make its way across the state without ever leaving a branch. That’s the story Doug Morgan—lawyer, woodworker and owner of Mount Vernon Barn Company—will tell you when you walk into one of his repurposed modern-day barns.

Today, from Howard’s experience, there is a small group of willow weavers in the US compared to the many groups in Europe, making his venture unique.

He hopes to move from decorative and functional willow baskets to more sculptural experiments using other materials such as metals, other woods or found objects. What underlies all of that, though, for Howard is a philosophy about making things from the “forest.”

“I hope to demonstrate some values, a way of living,” he says as we talk about how going slow, living off the land and the traditions of craft seem lost on the Western world.

“I’m always looking at things in a lot of multiple ways. It’s from a life of observation and stewardship. It’s about making something really honest with your hands and the verticality of life.”

Opposite: “We hope that children for the next 100– 200 years will be able to walk into our barns, or run their hands over the top of a harvest table made from a tree that began growing in 1690, and experience the same sense of wonder and awe that we do every day.”—Doug Morgan of Mount Vernon Barn Company Near right: “A huge 1830 handhewn barn (the largest we have ever moved) that was on the verge of demolition. We dismantled and moved it approximately 30 miles, and reconstructed and repurposed it into a family gathering/event barn. It now gets lots of use and loads of memories are being made there. A perfect example of how 19th-century barns can still be relevant in the 21st century.”

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With his palm resting on a beam of aged oak and a twinkle in his eyes, he’ll take you back in time, telling you things about wood you never knew, inviting you to appreciate what a forest thick with timber meant for early settlers in Ohio: beautiful barns.

Doug is a dreamer and saving old Ohio barns, and the craftsmanship it took to erect them, is his dream. Every Saturday for the past 25 years, he has relocated, restored and repurposed historic barns and log houses in Ohio to develop a 85-acre homestead in Knox County, “so that my family could spend time in the country and walk in the woods and play in the stream, and I could plant trees, have a big garden and do woodworking.”

When Doug talks about this dream, his wife, Beth Morgan, stands beside him, smiling as they show me photos of those first few years of Saturdays. Theirs was a shared vision of creating a homestead from old barns and log houses to one day create homes, recreational spaces and more for other families and communities.

Beth and Doug met in first grade in Clintonville. Doug developed his love of woodworking in junior high school where, in the 1970s, it was still part of the required curriculum. This love, coupled with Doug’s interest in history, was the true beginning of Mount Vernon Barn Company, a business that readapts historic Ohio barns for new purposes.

For the same reason a farmer farms the land to have an intimate connection with the place where he lives, Doug and Beth are drawn to Ohio’s old barns out of tremendous respect and awe for the people who created them. They want to better marry the values of old with the present moment by bringing these old structures back to life.

“When we dismantle and work with historic barns and log houses we feel a real connection with the men who built them,” says Doug. “We are amazed that they were able to cut and transport the huge

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CATHERINE MURRAY

Howard taught himself the craft of basketry, spending time training with several basket makers in Germany, France and Denmark— places where the tradition of basket weaving with willow is well-regarded and woven into the culture. Basketry is one of the most widespread and oldest crafts in human history. Here in the United States, willow basket weaving was a part of Colonial times, but it “just never caught on,” he says, to the point that it became a mainstay in American crafts.

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The wood in the barns is so prized, Doug gets calls from builders around the country looking for first-growth timber.

Doug also gets calls once or twice a week from farmers and landowners wanting to have their barns removed because they can’t afford to keep them up. In some ways, the work of Mount Vernon Barn Company is a race against time.

The question of what it will take to save these barns in time to put them back into use guides Doug’s mission. One of his solutions is to inspire others to see the potential in the wood and how reclaimed timber can be used for the home as a coffee table, bookshelf or cabinet so Ohioans can have, if not a whole barn, a piece of its history and character.

“The great age of barns was an important chapter in our Ohio and human history, when families worked the land with simple implements and strong backs and were self-reliant.

Our projects honor the long-forgotten men and women who built and used these great vernacular structures and serve as reminders of the value of hard work and self-reliance,” says Doug.

Beth notes another important detail: The construction of these barns left zero carbon footprint back in the day. Mount Vernon Barn Company continues that tradition by using “a minimal amount of fossil fuel to dismantle, move and reerect a barn. In this day of green initiatives, it is important to note that the early-19th-century barns that we move and repurpose have a zero carbon footprint,” says Beth. “The timbers were cut down, hewn and erected by hand without any fossil fuel. In fact, these structures were built prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine or the advent of electricity.”

Beyond the artisan effort it took to construct an old barn, there is something in the hardwood oak, chestnut, beech, walnut and cherry that speaks to Doug and Beth’s souls. The barns carry the feeling of the forest in them with their firstgrowth timber.

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“These trees grew very slowly and therefore the wood was dense, strong and full of character,” says Doug. “When we take down a barn and handle the timbers someone usually comments, ‘Trees like this haven’t grown in Ohio for over 100 years.’

Ohio’s hardwood forests are a rare treasure.”

Richard Morey, a longtime woodworker, preservationist and longtime friend and mentor of Doug’s, will tell you the same thing about the old barns: the wood has character. When asked what he loves about repurposing barns with Doug, Richard talks about the constant challenge of honoring the wood. He explains the way one beam’s grain will spiral and pool while another beam’s grain reveals line after line, and how he works to position them in a re-adapted barn so the character of both is enhanced.

Doug’s dream of Mount Vernon Barn Company offers a creative home for craftsmen like Richard, Amish woodworkers and others who want to preserve Ohio’s past and contemporize it to keep it alive in the 21st century. Doug says there are an estimated 35,000 barns dotting Ohio’s countryside, but 20 years from now he thinks it’ll be difficult, if not impossible, to find one of these barns to repurpose and restore for continued use.

While Mount Vernon Barn Company continues to repurpose, relocate and re-create old Ohio barns, Doug has another dream up his sleeve: “to create an apprentice program to teach young people timber framing and woodworking. There is something fundamentally satisfying about working with your hands, whether you do it as an occupation or a hobby, and whether it’s woodworking, cooking, gardening, etc. In my mind’s eye, I try to picture a wonderful woodworking shop with young apprentices using chisels, mallets and drills to cut precise mortises and tenons for customers who appreciate and are willing to pay for skills that would otherwise be lost to the world forever.”

A beautiful dream, indeed. We know what Doug will be up to on many Saturdays to come.

Colleen Leonardi is a writer, teacher, choreographer and managing editor and editor of Edible Columbus. Learn more at colleenleonardi.com.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CATHERINE MURRAY

foundation stone, fell 80-foot-plus trees, hew the timbers, do such precise mortise-and-tenon joinery and erect the timber frames by hand with the use of a few hand tools and simple devices that utilized oxen and draft horses.”

“We hope that children for the next 100–200 years will be able to walk into our barns, or run their hands over the top of a harvest table made from a tree that began growing in 1690, and experience the same sense of wonder and awe that we do every day.”

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last seed

An Amish Furniture Builder’s View on How and Why We Do the Things the Way We Do

By Robert Yoder

Having your own small business at home is rewarding in many ways. Most of these shops are small enough that all the employees are just a step away from a window and can watch Mother Nature doing her thing. So we all get to witness the soul-lifting pleasures of seeing that first snow in November, or the neighbor turning his first row of fresh and winterly recharged fertile soil, or my wife and children planting that special first row of peas in our organic home garden.

All of this can be done while we build furniture. This combination puts some kind of mood in a person’s body that cannot be matched by having a computer screen in your face.

No electricity means no computers, no phones, no video games, no TV, no power outages. Yes, we have to walk to the end of the lane to make a phone call. We think nothing of this because we grew up like this. At the end of a hard day’s work, we go to the house and greet the kids, back from their long walk home through the woods from school. I think it is important to help them with a game of tag, riding a sled or building a snowman.

So let’s all stick together and make our towns a stronger and better place to live by buying everything locally made.

We will not only be helping our country today, but will also be teaching our children and grandchildren a valuable lesson of common sense.

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Special thanks to Doug Winbigler at Amish Originals in Westerville for sharing Robert’s words with us and allowing us to reprint them here. Amish Originals is home to quality handcrafted Amish furniture from Ohio. Learn more at amishoriginals.com.

PHOTO BY © CATHERINE MURRAY, PHOTOKICTHEN.NET

It is my concern that every piece of furniture goes out as close to quality and solid as possible. Our goal is to make quality wood furniture that can be handed down from generation to generation. We don’t have electricity for lights and power. Skylights are a big thing in our furniture shops.

I heat all of my shops with 100% byproduct scrap wood.

We also save the shavings for bedding for our horses.