Culinary Concerts

Funding for this program was provided in part by the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Convention and Visitors Bureau. It's at the heart of adventure, the heart of fresh eats. the heart of unforgettable memories. At the heart of the Eastern panhandle, Berkeley County, West Virginia.

Get to the heart of it all! (upbeat music) -

Marion

Our first stop this morning is in Indian Water Maple Company in New Creek, West Virginia. -

Karen

We started on the kitchen stove in 1987. We made our first batch of maple syrup, about a gallon, And then the next year we got involved with Don Estridge. He was a Forester and he sold us a homemade flat pan, And we made about 40 gallon that year. We just thought that was a big deal.

And well, I like, I grew up in town and I didn't maple syrup came from a store and it was, it was not really maple syrup. And then when we started this, I was really amazed at the number of people that might just make five or 10 gallon and use it for their selves or give it away at Christmas. But it was really amazing to to learn how many people make maple syrup in, in our state. It seems when I was doing the research for this, I was reading that West Virginia is in the top 10 states for maple trees that can be sugared.

-

Karen

Yeah -

Marion

But we're the lowest production of that top 10. And it seems like this is something that's just waiting to explode. And one more thing that can bring a little more success to farming in West Virginia. So how much sap do you have to bring in to cook down for the produce how much maple syrup?

Well, it actually depends on the sugar content of the sap at the time you're cooking it. If you have a, a good sugar content which would be over 2%, you, it might only take 40 gallons. Whereas if you have a sugar content that's 1% it's gonna take a lot more syrup are a lot more sap to make a gallon of syrup. And once it gets too far, your your cost is more than what you could get out of it.

Right. The cost of making, it would be more than what you could get out of it. Yeah. How many miles of tubing do you have running over the property?

When we were driving up the road coming up past the pretty little creek and all there it was just like all these tubes. How do you keep the deer from running through them and knocking 'em down? -

Karen

Well, we have to go through and, and repair, you know connectors and the squirrels can be hard on 'em the squirrels like to chew the tubing. Oh yeah. Yeah. I can see that.

So And so we've been lucky. We haven't had a lot of squirrel damage, but I I have friends that the squirrels tear up their tubing. Oh, well Some people bring their tubing in. Maybe your friends need to be eating their squirrels and take care of that.

So, would slow that down a little bit. Well, I, I gotta say this was all really informative. There was a lot that I didn't know about this and I learned a whole bunch today. Well, I'm so glad you came by.

Thank you so much for your time. You're quite welcome though. (Karen laughs) -

Marion

After we pick up our maple syrup here at Indian Water, We're going go back down to Holler, jump on route 50 and over the mountains and down to Aurora, West Virginia where we're going to Snowy Creek Dorsets. (lamb bleating) All right. We're up here (Marion Laughs) We are with our local farmer here Lindsay Teets Can y'all get that over the noise going on behind us? Are we picking that up?

All right. Sweet. So, Lindsay, can you tell us a little bit about this? How long have y'all been here on the farm?

Okay. And go from there. So this is actually the farm my mom grew up on. So, it's been in the family since at least the mid 1800s.

-

Marion

Very cool. -

Lindsay

And when we raised dairy heifers here first and then when I went off to college and said I wasn't gonna farm, they switched over to sheep. So they've been doing, they've been raising sheep since 2000, started with eight. And now we're up to 300. That's what I was ask.

How many heads you're running here? 300 sheep Yep, so we're running 300 head of breeding age use, and then we're in full lambing swing here. That's why it's really so noisy in here. Yes.

-

Lindsay

Oh, Hey, look at that. So yeah, that's how that happens. (people laughing) Did we get that? (laughs) And it's about that fast.

-

Marion

You had said you went away to college and said you weren't coming back to farming. And, and now you're back. How was being the new generation of farmer? Where does technology come into this?

How does this affect the progress in farming? -

Lindsay

So, one of the things, I think, people don't really think about with technology is that anything that you make to make your job easier is, is technology. Whether it's, you know, the pitch fork or for us since they came back, we, we implemented a identification in our sheep that uses radio frequency. So we can identify all of our sheep with a, a little scanner. And then we sort them out by various categories.

You know, any, any item that we want to basically say we wanna sort our sheep by, we can put that in to a computer and we can and sort them out in real time. And so that's made things a lot easier. So when I got back, my parents, when we would send stuff to the stockyard, we would catch lambs individually. And it took us about four hours.

And since we've got that, it takes about 20 minutes total time, you know, 30, 40 with set up. But you know, and one person can do that where it took three of us to catch. We still weigh everything before it leaves. So we know the consistent weight.

We try to be very consistent when we go to market which is what consumers want. We've we've never left farming. No, we haven't It goes back 300 years here and it's never stopped. It's been consistent all along.

Yeah. Cause this is, you know, I said we've had this since the 1800s, It's always been a farm, you know? And that's that's part of it is is really how else do you be a steward of the land? You can't, you can't steward this property and not have it as, as a working farm.

-

Marion

Absolutely. -

Lindsay

There's there's no other way to keep this up than than through farming. Thank you very much Thank you for coming. We really appreciate this. Again, we are at the lambing shed at Snowy Creek Dorsets.

We're on our way to Wellsburg, West Virginia to Family Roots Farm. The history of this farm dates back to the 1770s. When Henry Harvey tomahawked 400 acres The sheepskin deed is signed by Patrick Henry himself. How cool is that?

Britney is the seventh generation to farm this land. Back in the day, it was a merino sheep farm, They raised various grains, then dairy farming and now beef. It also works as a small diversified farm. While maple syrup production is their main line.

Their uniqueness is they make a large variety of products that are derived from maple syrup. Their maple sugar won an international award in 2015, And again, a blue ribbon of excellence along with some of their other products at the international competition in 2018. This is the best maple sugar in the world, folks. Certified, verified and guaranteed.

So there's a lot more to maple syrup than just pancakes. And we create a lot of value added products here at Family Roots Farm and our most popular value added would be our maple sugar. We make maple sugar by taking our pure maple syrup and we bring it up to a higher temperature and then we stir and it makes the natural granulated sugar. Our, our most popular product that we make with our maple sugar is our maple cotton candy -

Marion

For the music for this one, I called my old friend Jamie Lester and his band Lords of Lester. Jamie and I have been friends going back 15 years now. I'm a big fan of his art and his music and and just Jamie as a person. Jamie's just good people.

So we, the Lords of Lester are going to be entertaining us with a nice musical round here shortly. But first of all, we're gonna work on some of the food for this. All right, we will start this with a nice salad, I think, we have these greens over here. Yeah.

This salad's made with this stuff, right? I was thinking about doing it with the lamb actually, but, yeah, do you think it's a better idea that we use the, these greens over here? Gorgeous greens. -

Marion

We'll start. (laughs) We'll start prepping on for the next version of the entree. For the entree here, I'm thinking, we've got this lovely Swiss chard. Lamb is, was of course, a very rich and somewhat heavy meat.

It tends to be sweeter, so we will use the chard as a bit of a bitter counterpoint for that. A bit of a bitter counterpoint. Can I say that? A counterpoint.

We'll definitely use that for a bit of a better counterpoint. So Scott, if you would like to take this lovely chard, look how pretty this chard is though. So, what I want you to do with these, brother, is just hold em down, trim these off in little bit increments right here and then we'll do a rough chop on these. The next thing we will do is while this is working and while this is working, we are going to whip up a little vinaigrette for this salad.

Let me reach across. Yes, Please mix that and toss some of that lovely spinach in there with it also. Now, we're gonna start off with this maple syrup from Indian Water Maple Company over near Kaiser again, and this, this stuff is quite amazing. Look how tight this lid is.

Look how dark, this looks like molasses. This is dark, And I know there are five or six grades of maple syrup. A is the lightest work. And it's down through B, B plus or something of that sort for the heaviest.

This looks like it must be like a D or an F, it's so dark. This, this looks like molasses. This is beautiful. We're just gonna pour some of this in here like this.

And we have a little bit of this maple mustard that came from Family Roots Farm up near Wellsburg. We're just gonna use a drop of this in here as an emulsifier, this will hold your vinaigrette together. Just a little bit of that in there. Now, this is gonna have a place later, I have an idea.

Remember, we're making this up as we go, We have some ideas here. Let's see, David, could you grab me that bottle of oil? That's right there and the vinegar that's, yep, that's the vinegar also, thank you. Yeah.

Alright. We're just gonna do a simple little maple vinaigrette here with a little bit of olive oil. This is not local. Nobody's grown olive West Virginia yet, but we're working on that.

Give us a little time and we'll have everything going here in some way. We got a little bit of olive oil. So you're just improvising here, you have no plan. We're just winging it.

Yeah, this is very, we're doing a very cold train sort of thing here. This is all, all improvisation as we go. We'll be doing a little bit improvising later, too. Nice.

Very cool. What, what songs do you have planned for us today? I know there were a couple maple syrup songs that were on the playlist. There's a Scott Joplin song, a really wonderful song, Maple Leaf Rag Old school, very cool.

Yeah. And a and a song called When the Maple Leafs Are Falling. So three maple heavy, we're very maple heavy today. Very nice.

Is it true, I just recently read that the term rag in the in music parlance actually came from being something that's ragged. They make it up as they go, Is this true? Oh yeah Can you oh, can it means ragged and that's how it became a rag. Oh, I don't know.

I play punk rock, so I don't know anything about like real music though, It has to be considered. It's a lot like this, We just make it up Yeah, its not like this is your first vinaigrette. This is very true. But yeah, you can just make it up, and its a bit more passion in there.

-

Marion

You'll notice how the bit of the mustard in here has pulled it all together. It makes, makes the maple and the oil and the vinegar and everything emulsify and stay together. So without the mustard in it, that would separate. Good, works every time.

We're gonna put little bit of salt and pepper in here just for that. (bowl tinkling) And ma'am would you like to taste that and tell me if it needs more vinegar? Dip my finger? Absolutely, we ain't fancy More vinegar?

Yeah. I thought so. What we want this is to be is very rich, but not too sweet. And the acid will counter against that.

Let's try that again. The danger here is we may need to add more mustard. -

Nadia

Well, we did a very big salad, so it's fine. -

Marion

Yes we do. Now, what do you think? Oh yeah. Yep.

I'm feeling it all over. Let's see, we have this beautiful lamb here. What we are going do with this is we're gonna rub this down with this maple mustard. Okay, once again, we're making this up as we go but that's kind of the idea behind everything that we do artistically, whether it's food whether it's music, whether it's a working artist like Jamie, who is actually pretty meticulous with his art I've seen him work, but is that we're just gonna work with what we have here and try to find flavors and try to make everything work together.

We're just gonna rub all this stuff together cause this is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Look at this. -

Jamie

And Marion, When we're writing a song we try to have different components a balance of different materials Precisely. And what would you say this part would would be maybe I,I was thinking the base. This is absolutely The fat and the meat is the Yep this that forms the base It's absolutely the base. It's the backbone of everything.

It's the heaviest thing here. This holds everything down. It's the richest of the Yeah it's the richest of the sound on your palette, if you will, And I suppose you guys probably need to go get warmed up a little bit and get, get ready to play. Speaking of some, getting some fire going Absolutely Take all this inspiration here that we've seen the creativity and just channel that right up on stage Jam like a chef, brother.

(everyone laughs) All right, from this point on we're going to grill these lamb chops off. We've got the, the grill cranking back here, got all kinds of heat going. We're gonna sear these really hard, We're gonna char all this fat, get some flames all flaring up back here. We're just gonna leave these with in the marinade with the, with the, the maple mustard on there.

We're just gonna top those off with a little bit of this J.Q. Dickinson Salt, West Virginia craft salt, really tasty stuff. real nice folks down there. And we're just gonna top those off that and grill 'em.

while those are grilling, we're going to go ahead and toss these salads together, And the last thing we're gonna do here is the bigger twist, we're gonna do with this is we have this lovely maple syrup cotton candy and the cool thing with the lamb is, again, it's a fairly sweet meat. It's really, really rich. It's fairly heavy. And instead of doing another sauce on that so we've already got that.

We're going to top each of these lamb chops with a nice big pinch of this maple cotton candy and top that with this hot spicy hot pepper, and sprinkle that right on there. So we're gonna go ahead and get to grilling these lamb chops and get ready to eat. In these hills you wait for me In these hills you call In these hills you whisper to me In these hills you are In these hills you Whisper to me In these hills I am Here I am (country music) When the devil tried to tempt you Just like he said he would You did not turn away from him Nobody ever could It was not long when you returned The hills and mountains of joys They always knew that you'd come back to here They whispered always In these hills you wait for me In these hills you call In these hills you whisper to me In these hills you call In these hills you Whisper to me Whisper to me In these hills I hear you Hear you calling (country music continues) Then you went and left again, never to return And now you roam those hills of heaven So much like those hills Oh oh oh In these hills you wait for me In these hills you call In these hills you whisper to me In these hills you call In these hills you Whisper to me Whisper to me In these hills I hear you calling Hear you calling ("Maple Leaf Rag") Let's eat. Let's taste it.

Okay. You don't have to ask me twice. Everybody pass things around. So dig out, dig my spicy cotton candy on the lamb chops.

-

Nadia

Is that what that is, wasn't it? It's cottons, maple cotton candy with mere salt and pepper Yeah. Called it. What, what exactly?

What, what flavor note here is the clarinet. (people laughing) That's a wild card Which one? Which one is it? I'll let you know in a little bit (laughs) Yeah.

It depends on how you view the clarinet. Is it decoration on the top or is it like more, is it more part of, I gonna say it's the whiskey. The whiskey? Oh, actually I think that's great.

(people laughing) Yeah, this is good. -

Marion

I like that a lot. This is music to my taste buds. (everyone laughs) Cheers to that. Isn't everything just vital.

-

Marion

Yes, exactly, It doesn't matter You, you, whether you should play music, whether you're good at it or not, you should just make music and you should cook food for that whether you are good at it or not, you should just cook food. -

Jamie

Right, create. Create whether you're good at or not. And you know what? You're not.

I heard somewhere. I heard someone say, you're not the judge. If you're creating something you cannot be the judge of whether it's good or bad. All you're doing is creating it.

And if you bogged yourself down with that judgment of whether it's good or bad, you're missing the point. The point is creation. We thank y'all for your time. I'd like to thank all the farmers we'd like to thank the Lords of Lester, again, a little bit for Lester, and a lot for the Lords.

And we'd like to thank the Lord. He said we had, we had to have a prayer, right? Yeah. And again, music is life and life is music.

Thanks a lot. Y'all goodnight. (upbeat country music) Funding for this program was provided in part by the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Convention and Visitors Bureau.