Edwards Ham
From the spark of an idea, the Edwards family has built a legacy of taste. SURRY – Sam Wallace Edwards III pulls open the doors and thick gray smoke smelling of hickory and ham rolls…
An Iron Will
HUNTLY, VIRGINIA – Nol Putnam forges wind from iron, his hammer metronomic at 2½ strikes a second, steel against iron against anvil. The angle of the peen and the force of his follow-through shape hot metal the…
God & Gouda
At a Virginia monastery, the labors of cheese-making at times replace hours in prayer and psalm. The sky is dark and the stars mountainside-bright when the first sisters walk through the disinfectant solution at the…
Mike Jabbur
Mike Jabbur’s hands slide over the column of clay, compressing here, pulling there, his fingers scissoring to stretch open the top, the clay contorting in its spinning dance. He pulls a disc of plastic from…
Keepers Of History
In 1749, when most Colonists were scrabbling for the most basic food and shelter, two of Yorktown’s finest sat with elegance and understatement to have their portraits made. William Nelson was a wealthy merchant; his…
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Why I Write
People ask me why I write and I ask how can you not? How do you make sense of the world, hang it on a pegboard with outlines, turn it over in your hands or pin it to the wall to examine later, without the…
A River Of Chips
Mount Jackson, Virginia - Inside a beige cinderblock building half an hour from Harrisonburg up I-81, 15,000 pounds of potatoes a day thunder down a stainless steel chute and through a chamber where they’re tossed by an auger, knocking off farm soil that is then captured…
Hashi Food Truck
Ross Riddle ladles rice porridge as thick as grits from a stainless steel pot, steam billowing. He adds a dollop of butter, then a bit of Virginia breakfast sausage he has dressed up with cilantro and salt, plus sugar and chilies and vinegar, the flavor…
Farming Of The Future
Inside an arched and insulated 60-foot-long building down a dirt road behind Hunt Club Farm in southern Virginia Beach, 8,000 heads of lettuce grow in what its owners call a “plant spa.” John Pierce and Jacob Gold shuffle their feet through a low tray of…
If the Shoe Fits
In its halcyon days, the Craddock-Terry Shoe Company’s Southland Factory Annex in downtown Lynchburg roared and rattled with enormous leather belts that turned axles that turned smaller leather belts that turned the spinning wheels of sewing machines. There were days those belts snapped loose and whipped…