Fresh produce lines the cases at the new Radish & Rye Food Hub. Below, Dusty James checks the shelves, and bottom, Julia James completes a sale.
Love sprouts into local food hub Story and Photos By Deborah Lynch dlynch@harrisburgmagazine.com
A
couple that buys beef together, stays together. That’s the saying, right? At least, it could be in the relationship of Julia and Dusty James, who met in 2009, dated for a couple of months, and then made their first purchase together — a side of beef from a local farm. Their passion grew — not only for each other, but for local foods — into Radish & Rye at 1308 N. 3rd Street in Harrisburg. The locally sourced food hub, which formerly held down 500 square feet in the Brick Building of Broad Street Market, opened its freestanding store last summer for pickup only, but recently opened its shelves to inperson shopping. The new space also includes a commercial kitchen, where the couple along with chef Mike Bates, are creating their specialties to sell along with produce, meats, cheeses, breads, condiments, spices, and all varieties of locally produced food specialties. “We were local food hobbyists when we met,” Julia James said of herself and her then husband-to-be of the inspiration behind Radish & Rye. “We would go to farmers markets, go directly to farms. … I joined my 18 HARRISBURG MAGAZINE APRIL 2021
first CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] in 2007. That farmer is someone that we work with now [Jade Family Farm].” They loved Broad Street Market, which inspired a pipe dream of imagining things they wish the market had, but didn’t. It was more local food. “We said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place that pulled together food from local farmers — those maybe too small to devote resources to a three-day-a-week stand?’ I was especially interested in getting our hands on local cheeses,” Julia recalls. A friend asked for permission to use their idea to which they said, “Go for it! We want to shop there!” and opened Harvest in the market. After a year-and-a-half, he decided to move on and sold it to the Jameses in 2015, who expanded the footprint and added freezers to what became Radish & Rye. In 2018, they applied for and received a grant through the Local Food Promotion Program under the Agricultural Marketing wing of the USDA that allowed them to begin renovations on their freestanding store. What at first seemed as easy as “slapping a coat
