The first-ever “Taste of Appalachia” food festival took place during ETSU’s Fall Family Festival Saturday, making Homecoming a tad more homey this time around.
Regional cheese-makers, salsa chefs and candy-makers, among others, gathered on the lawn between the old Sherrod Library and Gilbreath Hall to distribute their food and talk about some very Appalachian values – hard work, family and the ties that bind them to the area.
“It’s a kind of connectedness,” said Chris Owen, owner of the Spinning Spider Creamery, a goat dairy farm in Marshall, N.C., that produces a variety of goat cheeses.
“There’s a real value in buying local food. It’s fresher, and local dollars go directly into the local economy,” she said. “It’s also good for the land because it keeps farms from being sold and developed.”
Owen’s business, like many of the companies featured at the festival, is family-owned and operated, giving the festival a special sense of purpose and direction.
Husband-and-wife team Tina and Jim Holtsclaw passed out free bottles of Dr. Enuf, the product of a family-owned Buffalo Mountain soda company. Dr. Enuf is famed for its ability to cure headaches and stomachaches, as well as its late owner’s creation of Mountain Dew, which was later sold to PepsiCo.
“I’d rather work there than anywhere,” said Tina Holtsclaw, one of 15 employees in the company. “It’s like one big family.”
Also at the festival was Red Band Candies – a Bristol, Va., company that started in 1933 and whose mouth-melting peppermint sticks hold a special place in the heart of many Appalachians who remember receiving them at Christmas as a special treat.
“It’s a sweet business,” said Richard Gibian, who bought the 71-year-old Red Band Candies from the Moretz family in 1996. “We still make our candies the old-fashioned way. We hand-stripe them and hand-twist them. It’s a lost art.”
Wells and Linda Sommer started their business in February after friends encouraged them to sell their special salsa to a mass market.
“Everybody told us we should start selling it,” said Wells Sommer. “So we did.”
The couple began marketing their Snappy Pappy’s Chunky “Gormay” Salsa in February using Grainger County, Tenn., tomatoes.
But the most popular business by far at the festival was White Lily Flour of Knoxville, whose hot biscuits caused festival-goers to form a 50-foot line throughout most of the festival.
“[The festival] is a great thing to have,” said James Clarke, who attended the event on the advice of his daughter, Kristn Fry, director of university relations. “What a good idea – to bring out the whole community like this.”
The Fall Family Festival also featured kids’ activities, storytelling, sunspot viewing, art shows, music and more.

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