Erie store sells locally grown produce

ERIE — Tammy Klenklen has always given of her time to support her community through volunteerism, assisting her community by serving on committees such as the Erie Dinosaur Park, Main Street Memories and the Erie Community Garden.

However, supporting her community in one of the most important ways did not register with her until 2012, when G&W Foods abruptly closed the only grocery store in Erie. The community was without a grocery store for two months, until the building owners David “Stub” and Shirlene Mahurin, who had operated Stub’s Market prior to leasing the building in 2011 to G&W Foods, agreed to reopen their grocery after the city promised incentives. G&W Foods reportedly told Mr. Mahurin the store was not profitable, resulting in the closure and G&W Foods backing out of the five-year lease it had signed with the Mahurins.

“That was not easy,” Klenklen said of the store closing. “If we needed something we had to drive to Chanute or Parsons. St. Paul finally opened a store, and we would go there and shop. Now I buy very little from Wal-Mart and buy everything I need in town from our local businesses. I appreciate the fact that they are here.”

Last year, Klenklen became reliant on others reaching similar deductions in supporting local businesses when she gave up her job of 16 years driving for FedEx and became self-employed, farming produce and selling homemade items through her Oz Mercantile Store.

A city girl who grew up outside St. Louis, Klenklen’s grandparents were from Erie, and when she came to visit, she sometimes helped her grandfather with his small garden.

“He grew grapes, and he’d make jelly out of the grapes,” she said, recalling her childhood. “I came back here after I graduated from high school and just never left. A few days after I came here I met my husband. Two years later we were married. … His parents had a huge garden. Fifteen years ago, we bought this property, and 13 years ago we moved into town. Kevin wanted to have a garden. We had a garden, but I told him I don’t want to can. I’m a city girl. Then my mother-in-law passed in 97, and my father-in-law wanted me to learn. I told them, ‘I’m not doing it.’ But, I finally gave in and canned green beans. They turned out pretty good.

“Then Kevin was planting tomatoes. We had tomatoes everywhere — so many I was having visions at night of tomatoes in jars. My kids were young, so I figured I’d make own spaghetti sauce, salsa, pizza sauce. I didn’t want to make anything, but I learned. I canned it and read every book. Then I started canning other things, canning meat,” she said. “I found out I really enjoyed it.”

As her interest in gardening and canning grew, the Erie Farmers Market caught her attention.

“I started making jellies to sell, then taking produce. Other people were taking strawberry and grape jellies, so several years ago I started out with root beer and jalapeno jelly. I said this is my ‘jelly experiment.’ My son and I were going through old cookbooks from the 1940s and found root beer jelly. You can make jelly out of anything,” she said. “My son wanted orange Crush, so I just switched the soda out. I did some I don’t do anymore. I’d do funny things to see how it turned out. I kept kind of expanding.”

Klenklen eventually named her line of jellies The Jelly Experiment.

Her passion for gardening growing, Klenklen took a class at Oklahoma State University, and the instructors shared how there is a large movement of people who want to buy local and know where there food comes from.

“You go into a store and you just don’t know,” she said.

Growing enough produce for her own family and selling extra to generate revenue to reduce costs were two different concepts, but she decided to give up her job to do large-scale gardening and drive a school bus part time to supplement her income.

“I looked at my bills and thought, ‘I can do this and pay my bills.’ I don’t want to lose my home. We built this house ourselves with our own two hands. Our kids were always saying ‘Go big or go home.’ We always work together as a team and accomplish a lot,” she said.

She found out about a grant for equipment through Natural Resources Conservation Service, qualifying as a first-time farmer. Her grant application approval allowed her to purchase a high tunnel, a sort of quonset hut-shaped greenhouse with flexible sides that can be raised and lowered to adjust the temperature inside of it.

“It flipped my world upside down,” she said.

She and her husband then worked with Better Built By Barnes to design a storage shed, different from what is typically sold, for her to be able to have a place for commercial kitchen and sales and display area for her produce and jellies.

“It was just a shell. My husband and I finished the inside,” she said. “It’s not large enough at all, but we’re making it work.”

Seven years ago, Klenklen and her husband started beekeeping as a hobby. The insects are beneficial for the gardens, but Klenklen said in the midst of everything else developing, she decided to take the beekeeping a little more serious.

“A little over a year ago, one daughter has eczema, and she said she was interested in making body butter. I had been doing research and bought a filter box for the beeswax to make body butter. A lot of people making it are buying their beeswax. I played with it. You have to melt and clear it several times to get any dirt out, but it’s not hard. It just takes lots of time,” she said. “Then I decided to make lip balms, too. It’s really easy.”

Inside her Oz Mercantile Store are shelves filled with lavender and gardenia body butter and lip balms, beside which is a shelving unit filled with jellies, labeled bubble gum, cotton candy, Mountain Dew, candy apple, corn cob, tomato. Another shelf contains jalapeno jellies flavored with bacon, peach, blueberry, raspberry, mango, blackberry, strawberry and pineapple. On the bottom shelf are jams from more traditional blackberry, strawberry and blueberry to chocolate cherry, cinnamon peach and strawberry banana.

The jellies have become more of a focus in fall, given that she now has 13,000 square feet of garden space, including the portion under the 30-foot by 72-foot high tunnel.

Beginning in January, her house is aglow with grow lights, as she starts her plants from seeds, which will go into the ground in February inside the high tunnel.

“It’s not big enough yet, I can tell you that,” she said. “I’m learning about double planting (planting short-season vegetables between long season) because I am out of room. When I started gardening I planted a garden for me. Now that I am gardening for other people, I’m planting in stages, so every few days I’m able to harvest some. You just can’t predict what people will want. I couldn’t grow enough radishes and onions this year.”

Klenklen went through a lot of trial by fire, not getting to plant all her outdoor crops this first year, and even losing her first tomato crop to freeze because of trying to grow them inside the same high tunnel as other cold crops that needed to be grown at cooler temperatures.

“This was a struggle, a learning experience for sure,” she said. “But I think I will have a better handle on it next year.”

Unable to obtain a grant for another high tunnel in her last application, Klenklen looked at other people’s concepts using recycled materials and came across enough used trampoline frames to construct another smaller tunnel about 12 feet by 50 feet to help her avoid similar problems this coming year.

Klenklen said she is not really in direct competition with her local grocery because she is providing items not even sold at the grocery and is serving those people who choose to not buy most of their produce from a grocery.

“I try to practice organic practices because I’m a beekeeper. I have had to put some stuff on potato plants for potato bugs. There comes a point where you have to sometimes. If I spray anything, I will tell customers, but I try not to,” she said.

She found a fabulous response from area farmers markets — without which she would not have made it this first year.

Selling produce in the evenings and on weekends at farmers markets, with the help of her husband and daughter is fun, but Klenklen said there is a deeper joy for her in being able to take her customers out into her backyard to the high tunnel, so they can watch her cut their produce before taking it back to the kitchen to wash, bag and weigh it.

“You can’t get any fresher than that,” she said.

Klenklen said some community members have been very supportive of her new business venture, and the community as a whole is working toward being more supportive of local businesses. Businesses in Erie are working more to support and promote one another, and many individuals are doing the same, via social media and good old-fashioned word of mouth.

“I see a lot of businesses now in Erie, and I think they are doing pretty well,” Klenklen said. “We are hoping to see them continue to do well. … For us, it has been a journey to get where we’re at. We’d like to be able to do other things, but, baby steps. You never know where this is going to end up.”