ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 8, 1996 TAG: 9602080097
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PICKAWAY, W.VA.
SOURCE: SU CLAUSON-WICKER SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Two years ago, Harvey and Cristy Christie jumped out of their corporate-job security nets to grow and sell herb products from their two-acre yard in this hamlet between Union and Ronceverte.
They wanted to create their own business at home in West Virginia, and to work as a family team. To do it, they exchanged secure jobs with retirement plans and paid vacations for 12- or 18-hour days standing over a hot kettle or scratching in the garden.
If anyone said they were crazy, the Christies weren't listening. They were too busy making sage vinegar or mint honey or rosemary peach preserves.
"Yes, we have job satisfaction," says Cristy, who still gets notices from her college placement office inquiring whether she needs help marketing her finance degree.
Or maybe it's just plain satisfaction, seeing the fruits of your labors pile up on the shelves. And being able to take a break from gardening to greet your daughter when she gets off the school bus. And seeing your business grow to the point where it can take three United Parcel Service trucks to pick up a shipment.
Now they're bringing in about $10,000 a year from those dooryard herbs, plus several times that amount from the honey, fruit, vinegar and popcorn they buy, process, and resell.
"Value-added products," says Harvey, who has given seminars on the topic for West Virginians seeking greater economic independence.
The couple's business, Diversified Nature Associates - DNA, incubated in Harvey's mind for 10 years while he worked as a technician for IBM, installing, servicing and repairing telecommunications equipment. Wherever he traveled, he made a point of checking out herb farms.
He began by making herbal vinegars in his mother's kitchen and selling them at craft fairs and gourmet food shops. One of his lucky breaks came when a representative from the five-star Greenbrier resort spied his products at the West Virginia State Fair and asked if he would supply vinegar for The Greenbrier's pricey shops.
Perhaps the biggest break for Harvey's fledgling business came when he went to his Roanoke job one day and found a Virginia Tech student working IBM's switchboard for the summer.
"There was this cute girl wearing a Greenbrier East [High School] ring just like mine," Harvey says. "I ended up asking her out."
Cristy finds it ironic that Harvey's younger brother had been one of her pals in high school and that friends joked that she would marry him so her name would be Cristy Christie. She had never met Harvey, who is seven years older and was living in Maryland when Christy was in high school.
The two often spent their dates making vinegar. Even after Cristy graduated from Tech in 1993 and took a job with the Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services' fiscal office in Richmond, she went back to Pickaway every weekend to help Harvey with the business. She worked in the garden, ran the craft shop, made jam and generally helped out where she was needed.
"If it weren't for Cristy and her Virginia Tech education, the books would be a mess," Harvey says.
When the couple married in December 1993, DNA was supplying The Greenbrier's kitchens with all their jams and jellies, some of their fresh herbs and some of their vinegar. The company also was selling potted herbs, vinegars and preserves through The Greenbrier's shops. And they were selling their products to other shops under the Greenbrier label, thanks to a licensing agreement with the resort.
"The Greenbrier folks had asked me if they could have exclusive rights to the special herb vinegars they sold," Harvey says. "I was doing a good business with them, but not enough to support myself, so I said I'd have to think about that. Then they came back ready to grant us the rights to use their label on our product wherever we sold it. That's opened doors for us. Whenever I go to a retail gourmet show, customers say, 'If it's good enough for the Greenbrier, it's good enough for me.'''
The Christies now produce vinegars for a California winery, Viansa; salsa for the Silly Chili restaurant in Lewisburg; and a variety of preserves, vinegars and salad dressings for the upscale Red Fox restaurant near Snowshoe resort. They are working on an herbal product basket for a major department-store chain and have private labeling deals in negotiation with 10 other gift shops. They market the Greenbrier and Red Fox products nationally. The Greenbrier items are available in the Roanoke Valley at Provisions Kitchen Gourmet and Oxford Mercantile.
Harvey develops many of the product recipes himself, usually on a whim late at night.
"I like to cook things up about 2 a.m. when the phone isn't ringing," he says. "One of the great things about my relationship with The Greenbrier is I have access to chefs at a five-star restaurant. I can call them to bounce around ideas about a recipe I'm testing."
The trout with hot pepper jelly that he cooked up for a Greenbrier workshop at his farm soon will be offered on the resort's menu.
The Christies are generous souls, willing to share general techniques, equipment suppliers, and even product ideas, but clients' recipes are always top-secret.
"When 70 percent of the children at Union Elementary School are on public assistance, I don't worry about who's going to make money off my ideas," Harvey says. "Anything that helps someone helps the local economy. I must have taught 150 people how to make herbal vinegar.
"But I don't share client recipes. I never sell the same product under different labels. Let's say a new client wants to make a hot pepper and rosemary vinegar like Greenbrier's. I can't do it - not unless the recipe is at least 25 percent different."
The Christies have three kitchens - two FDA-approved stainless-steel kitchens, and another upstairs in their two-story farmhouse that they use for their own meals. DNA is purchasing a new warehouse and converting a nearby bar into a production facility.
When production is in full swing at the preserve kitchen, outside the house in a former meat locker, everybody is involved. Even Kate, Harvey's 8-year-old daughter by his first marriage, is adept at attaching labels. The new baby, due in March, will have a nursery within earshot of the kitchens.
The Christies use a 40-gallon double boiler for jams and jellies. The filling, labeling and capping are carefully monitored. Each jar is handled and inspected at least five times.
Harvey speaks with awe of the 2,000-gallon kettle used by the Smuckers company, but says he'll probably never give up the control afforded by smaller quantities. He and Cristy can process 1,500 jars a day - if they don't mind making that workday last 15 hours.
The company employs four part-time workers, plus two or three more in the summer. They've developed a relationship with several Future Farmers of America students in the local high school; they receive horticulture training and plants from the Christies in exchange for a percentage of the herbs they produce. DNA hires the handicapped at sheltered workshops in Camp Creek and Ronceverte to build decorative crates for their honey and to pack large orders.
They also network a lot. They borrowed a bottle capper from Wilson Ward, owner of Fisher Ridge Winery, so often that Harvey says Ward thought they owned it. They exchange information about marketing possibilities with friends at craft fairs, in the West Virginia Department of Agriculture and in the West Virginia Herb Growers Association. The veterinarian next door donates horse manure, and the Christies pass compost along to whoever needs it.
Although the Christies grow dozens of herbs - 28 varieties of rosemary alone - they are especially partial to a bushy, three-foot rosemary plant named Ethel.
"Ethel is the mother of my farm," Harvey says. "I've had her for 15 years, and her clippings have produced about 1,300 children and grandchildren."
Ethel enjoys a central position in the main greenhouse and is protected from bugs by two half-grown peacocks - the great-grandchildren of peacocks that Harvey raised as a teen-ager when he lived three miles down the road.
The original peacocks, he says, came from the farm he owns now. He says things tend to be interconnected, circular, in West Virginia - kind of like him and Cristy.
"We came back," he says. "We had to make our own jobs, but we came back."
LENGTH: Long : 153 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Christy and Harvey Christie ofby CNBPickaway, W.Va., in their greenhouse with Ethel, their prized
rosemary plant, from which they've grown hundreds of other plants
and built a business around herbs, vinegars, jams, jellies and
preserves. 2. Kitchen manager Tammy Ford (above) pours strawberry
preserves into jars; they were cooked in the 40-gallon kettle behind
her. 3. The Christies run Diversified Nature Associates - DNA - from
their home (above right). 4. The Christies' company, DNA, made these
herbal vinegars for The Greenbrier resort. color. Graphic: Map by
staff. color.