THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607260087
SECTION: HOME AND GARDEN PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 184 lines
LITTLE EMERALD GREEN and garnet red hot peppers from local fields sparkle though handsome glass cruets of champagne vinegar.
Sapphire blue blueberries make gleaming jams.
Golden scuppernong grapes give jelly the look of pure gold.
Even elephant garlic, creamy like alabaster, lifts vinegars and jellies to the realm of ornaments too.
Now Hampton Road's jewels of summer are becoming year-round gems. Although some are almost too pretty to eat, locally produced jellies, jams, vinegars and herbal blends can be found adorning gourmet shelves in grocery stores, at roadside produce stands and at area craft shows, as well as farther afield.
Enterprising folks like Juanita Burns of Pungo Blueberries Etc., Linda Xenakis of Linda's Garden and Vickie Chappell of Vickie's Jelly Jar, all in Virginia Beach, and Sharon Patterson of Hickory Blueberry Farm in Chesapeake have taken home canning to a high level.
Although produced in numbers, the condiments retain their down-home flavor for many reasons. First, for the most part, the ingredients are home-grown on the women's farms or in their backyards.
Then the preserves and flavored vinegars are homemade, right in the family kitchens. Most of the recipes have been developed by the women or are old family recipes, like Chappell's Ole' Fashion Pear Preserves.
Lastly, these treasures are bottled, labeled and shipped right from the women's houses. All bedeck their products using such things as straw ties or patchwork cloth lid covers.
They have their own labels and logos too. Xenakis' label is the rising sun over a farmer's field. Patterson uses her home computer to create descriptive tags that feature a blueberry logo.
All but Patterson use part-time help on occasion, but these businesses definitely bear their owners' imprint. As though they were under the scrutiny of a jeweler with his loupe, each creation is carefully monitored from start to finish.
It's that long road from seed to jelly jar that makes the business so satisfying, Burns said.
``It's all the way from putting that little garlic clove in the ground, harvesting it, cleaning it, bringing it into the kitchen, chopping it, making the jelly, to having a delicious leg of lamb,'' she explained.
Burns and Patterson began creating their delicious gems as a result of their family farms that feature pick-your-own blackberries and blueberries, among other produce. Both also raise, cure and sell elephant garlic, which produces heads with large, plump, creamy white cloves.
Xenakis, a Master Gardener, started making vinegars and herbal blends because she raises a variety of herbs and sells the plants from her Creeds farm.
Chappell is the only one of the four who doesn't hoe the fields. She takes advantage of the scuppernong grape vines and pecan, pear and apple trees that were on their Princess Anne Road property when she and her husband, John, purchased it years ago.
The pecan trees inspired Chappell to develop a pecan jam, which has become her biggest seller. The pecans and apples are the jewels in her apple rum cake, another unusual product, which is baked and sealed in a canning jar.
Golden scuppernong grapes that trail along an arbor in her backyard produce the big round traditional Tidewater grapes that she uses in her jelly.
Chappell also buys strawberries and peppers from Pungo Produce up the road from her home for her strawberry jam and her red, green and hot jalapeno jellies. In all, Chappell makes about 13 homegrown, homemade delicacies, averaging about 20,000 jars a year She just received the ``Virginia's Finest'' gold seal from the Virginia Agriculture Department.
Her kitchen is very small, not much bigger than a pullman kitchen. Her stove, new in June, replaced one 25 years old. Although still just a family-size appliance, it has a convection oven that she can load up with cakes-in-a-jar rather than baking just six at a time as she had been doing.
Chappell's carport has been remodeled into two rooms. One is a showroom for wholesale customers where she displays her products in pretty gift baskets and boxes. She also shows her wares at festivals and craft shows and fills phone orders for gift packages. The other room is a labeling, shipping and packing room.
But the business is encroaching on the rest of the house. The sun porch is full of shipping boxes.
``And my china cabinet is full of jelly!'' Chappell said. The jelly sparkles as pretty as any crystal would.
In the shade behind Xenakis' home on Campbells Landing Road, pots and pots of herbs are lined up on picnic benches and tables. Herbs are everywhere, in beds and greenhouses too. Xenakis grows more than 200 varieties of spicy smelling plants, which she sells to the public each spring.
Two years ago, the herbs inspired her to turn her spring business into a year-round effort. She gathered armloads of sweet-smelling basil and other herbs and began experimenting with vinegars and herbal blends.
Now she produces more than 10,000 herbal gems a year including six vinegars, a purple basil garlic and a rosemary hot pepper among them. She also makes seven herbal blends, including one Cajun and one Italian, which can be used in dips, dressings and as seasonings for grilled meat.
Like Chappell, Xenakis markets her blends and vinegars at gift and craft shows and through several local garden, farm and produce centers. She also sells them at her farm during herb season.
Xenakis dries her herbs in an electric dehydrator and mixes her vinegars and makes her blends in the family kitchen, which is redolent with the smell of garlic and herbs. Bottles and boxes have escaped the kitchen and line the walls and hallway back to the bedrooms.
This year, she moved an old trailer to the property to serve as an office for herb sales and for storage of equipment.
Juanita Burns is the old hand in this. She and husband, Robert, began raising pick-your-own blueberries on their Muddy Creek Road farm 15 years ago. Since then they've added blackberries, raspberries and elephant garlic, among other produce.
Burns got the idea for making jellies to use up end-of-the-season blueberries and then began making strawberry jam with berries from Henley Farm. Now her jams have been sparkling on the shelf behind the weigh-in stand at Pungo Blueberries Etc. for more than eight years, and she has had the ``Virginia's Finest'' seal of approval for several years.
Burns' prize concoction is elephant garlic vinegar, made with garlic, vinegar and spices. Developed five years ago, she sells the vinegar at roadside stands and at Taste Unlimited.
``It's the only one I won't give the recipe away for,'' Burns said. ``It's my ace in the hole when I get too old to work!''
Last year, Burns developed a hush puppy mix to sell at Pungo Ponds, a catch-your-own-fish pond that they operate.
This year, she began making elephant garlic jelly. (Try both hers and Chappell's garlic jelly on a bagel before you turn up your nose.)
Although the blueberry farm is on Muddy Creek Road, the Burnses live in Red Mill Farm where Burns and daughter-in-law Beverly Burns do their chopping and cooking. They set up a 6-foot long folding table in the breakfast area for bottling and labeling.
When not in use, cooking supplies are stored in a cabinet in the laundry room. Empty and filled jars are stored on shelves that line the walls of the Burnses' two-car garage. An upright commercial freezer keeps the garlic fresh until after the season is over and Burns finds time to make vinegar and jelly.
``I take up half the double-car garage,'' she said.
Sharon Patterson is the newcomer among the four. She began this year to create jellies and vinegars from the blackberries, blueberries, elephant garlic and hot peppers she and her husband, Charles, grow at Hickory Blueberry Farm on Head of River Road in Chesapeake.
In 1985, they planted their first blueberries. Now rows and rows of carefully tended berries hang heavy with the sapphire blue fruit. Blackberry season is over, but a small garden full of hot peppers, tomatillos and other unusual vegetables is coming in. Elephant garlic, which is cured in the attic of their equipment shed, is also for sale.
Patterson can step out the backdoor of her home and pick her peppers and other fruits and vegetables. She uses the elephant garlic in her four-basil vinegar, which glimmers clear garnet red in a decorative Italian vinegar bottle, and in her French Tarragon/Elephant Garlic Vinegar.
For now her products, many packaged in beautiful gift bottles, are available only at the farm. Although all the women's condiments are pretty enough to be presents, Patterson has designed her vinegars specifically as gifts. They come in shapely cruets, cut-glass bottles and even a tall, elegant bottle with a brass spigot.
Patterson has begun to take over the small home office where she and her husband once operated a military resume-writing business, storing bottles and boxes in there. Still, there are boxes on the kitchen floor and beautiful bottles decorating the counter tops.
But for these enterprising women gardeners, the gems they produce more than make up for the messes in the family kitchens. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Steve Earley/The Virginian-Pilot
Sharon Patterson tends blackberry vines at Hickory Blueberry Farm
Sharon Patterson makes products using fresh ingredients from her
Chesapeake farm. These vinegars contain things such as hot peppers,
elephant garlic, basil, blueberries and French tarragon
Color photo by D. Kevin Elliott
Jaunita Burns holds jars of her Elephant garlic jelly, bluberry jam
and Elephant Garlic Vinegar.
Color photo by Richard L. Dunston
Linda Xenakis displays some of the herb vinegars she makes from
home-grown herbs.
B\W photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
Vicki Chappell makes jellies and jams from the scuppernong grape
vines and pecan, pear and apple trees on her property.
Graphic
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
Juanita Burns, Pungo Blueberries Etc., 3477 Muddy Creek Road,
Virginia Beach, 468-5204 or 721-7434
Linda Xenakis, Linda's Garden, 1436 Campbells Landing Road,
Virginia Beach, 426-5303. Products are available at several local
garden, farm and produce centers or mail-order requests will be
taken by phone or through the web site - http//cyber9.com/herbs -
or send e-mail to herbs(AT)cyber9.com
Vicki Chappell, Vicki's Jelly Jar, Virginia Beach, 721-0873 to
place phone orders
Sharon Patterson, Hickory Blueberry Farm, 929 Head of River Road,
Chesapeake, 421-9398 by CNB