The Story
From the Snake River Valley to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I spent my childhood behind folding tables at farmers markets in Idaho — one of nine kids on a vineyard in the Snake River Valley. I handled the money before I could spell my own name. I had workarounds for the dyslexia I did not yet know I had — counting by feel, grouping coins by size, checking my math twice while pretending to check it once.
I left that life to build a career in federal defense health technology. I was good at it. I spent twenty years doing it. And I never stopped thinking about those mornings — the setup, the first customers, the feeling of handing someone something you made with your own hands.
When my daughter was old enough to need roots of her own, I knew what kind I wanted to give her. We moved to Franklin, North Carolina. Found our place in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And I went back to the table.
Poplar Cove Provisions is what I make now. Wood-smoked trout folded into crème with herbs and capers. Hand-crimped pies with fillings I cook down myself. Living sprouts grown with filtered spring water. Everything from scratch. Everything by hand. This is not a second act. It is a return.
Roots
Two landscapes. One foundation. The off-grid discipline of the Snake River Valley and the deep root systems of the Blue Ridge.
A vineyard childhood. Nine kids. Farmers markets before school. That is the foundation everything here stands on.
Hearth
Heat, transformation, and the center of domestic life. The smoke, the oven, the cast iron. Everything passes through it.
Wood smoke and laminated dough. Fillings cooked down by hand. Nothing leaves the kitchen until it is right.
Harvest
The culmination. Raw ingredients becoming provisions. The table as the point of arrival.
Market day. A folding table. Provisions lined up and ready to go. The same feeling, thirty years later.