Foodies grow and see green

By Glenda C. Booth

Many of our grandparents made food from scratch — such as jam, biscuits, applesauce, even whiskey. Today, some local entrepreneurs over 50 are confirming that it’s possible to do it and even make a living at it.

With a mindset of “If you can’t find it on the grocery shelves, make it yourself,” these enterprising older adults have built robust businesses making and selling specialty foods, from pies to hot sauce.

Joyce and Travis Miller, for instance, make around 3,000 gallons of hickory syrup a year in their kitchen in Berryville, Virginia.

Eleven years after Joyce retired from teaching and Travis from retail management, “It just happened,” Joyce said. Travis is a “foodie” who had experimented with sassafras, she explained, and got curious about hickory bark.

When the couple researched hickory bark’s possibilities, they learned that Native Americans used it as a medication, adding something sugary like honey to create a syrup to treat headaches, joint pain, inflammation and cramps.

The Millers found a knowledgeable professor in Michigan to advise them, and started tinkering.

First, they clean, toast and cook the bark in water to make a liquor-like substance. Then they let it age a few days, add raw sugar and heat it again.

They age some batches for 100 days in whiskey barrels from Purcellville’s Catoctin Creek Distilling Company so the syrup picks up the whiskey flavor. Then they return the barrels to the distiller, who reuses the barrels for whiskey.

In 2011, on their first retail venture, the Millers took 48 bottles of syrup to a Virginia farmers market and sold out. Today, they make seven flavors of hickory syrup and seven flavors of honey, which they sell at farmers markets, historic sites, wholesale outlets and food shows.

Urging customers to think beyond pancakes and French toast, Falling Bark

Farm’s website has recipes for hickory-flavored entrees, cocktails, marinades, desserts and sauces.

Baking for a living

Grace Banahene learned to bake growing up in Ghana. In 1983, after moving to America, she turned a hobby into a livelihood.

Banahene started a baking business in