Cracking Local Eggs

By Jim Minick

09/02/2008

Cracker Barrel Restaurants work hard to create a "down-home" feel. You can sit in a comfortable rocking chair on the long front porch or shop in the "general store" while you wait. In the restaurant, country décor of antique signs covers the walls. And the food is usually flavorful, maybe like how your grandmother cooked.

But the "home" in that "down-home" has largely disappeared, paved over by subdivisions, roads, and well, more Cracker Barrels. The chain wants us to forget that underlying story of disappearing homelands as we sit in rocking chairs made in Tennessee, buy t-shirts from China, and eat steaks raised and butchered 2000 miles away.

If we want to hold onto a real "down-home," we need to buy into a different economy, one that values community health over corporate wealth. From Annapolis to San Francisco, more restaurants and stores are taking small steps to do this, but few are wholly focused on promoting local products, few fully commit to cracking just a local egg.

Steven Hopp is cracking just that egg. He's created the Meadowview Farmers Guild, a mercantile and restaurant located in Meadowview, Virginia. The Guild's primary goal is to build local community and to do that by sourcing as much local goods as possible, from hardwood flooring used in renovating, to baskets for sale in the store, to all of the eggs, meats and cheeses that make up the restaurant's fine fare. The Guild is Hopp's answer to a mega-truck-stop threatening to open at the nearby exit, and so far, his business is booming.

Hopp co-authored the best-selling Animal, Vegetable, Miracle with his wife Barbara Kingsolver and their daughter, Camille Kingsolver. The book chronicles the family's year-long effort to sustain themselves with local foods from their garden, the farmer's market and the turkeys they raise and butcher, turkeys named by their youngest daughter, "Mr. Thanksgiving, Mr. Dinner, Mr. Sausage." What would happen, Hopp wondered in a recent interview, if everyone ate as locally as possible? How would our communities and local economies change if we kept the money flowing into as many nearby hands as possible instead of only a wealthy few far away?

Hopp took his share of the profits from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and is attempting to answer these questions. On the town square he renovated two adjoining buildings complete with boardwalk porches and wooden facades from the 1920s. And he began the difficult work of finding sources for all of the restaurant's needs. He realized that Meadowview historically was an agricultural community, and though that farming economy has declined, enough regional farmers still exist to provide food for this growing eatery. So beef, pork, lamb, along with eggs, several kinds of cheese and all sorts of vegetables have been relatively easy to find. But rice and grains Hopp still has to ship some distance, though he did find a source of rice on the South Carolina coast, grown there for over 100 years. Hopp hopes to find local farmers who will grow wheat for him, cutting down on the shipping costs of bringing it from the Midwest while saving the "home" in "down-home."

Are these products more expensive? Yes, but not always. And then again, for too long we've held a too narrow definition of expense. Slowly we're growing aware of the hidden costs of shipping food around the world-the expense of petroleum depletion, carbon build-up, water and air pollution. These costs have become a credit card debt we're handing over to our children's children. The Meadowview Farmers Guild offers a viable alternative.

It offers surprises as well. Take lemons, for instance. Hopp originally said never would he serve these exotic fruits, but then a local farmer brought lemons from his greenhouse. The restaurant served lemon meringue pie for as long as it lasted.

Or take the rocking chairs in the mercantile. Each is solid hardwood and handmade within 10 miles of the store. Customers can sit and rock while waiting, and they can also buy these chairs for $140. At Cracker Barrel, similar rockers sell for a similar price, but these are made in one place, Tennessee, and then shipped all over the country. And, as Hopp points out, Cracker Barrel probably paid very little for each chair.

Hopp continues, "There's the difference between us and them. Our chair is absolutely local, absolutely authentic, solid oak, same price. I like that example. People want to find a component of the economy that they feel is genuine, authentic, and what we're offering here is all of that."

More demand for authentic local ventures can truly change our economy, our watersheds, our very own health. Do your part to seek out such businesses and support them so we can truly save all of our individual "down-homes."