Story Photos
 At the Locke Modern Country Store in Millwood, Va., regular customer George Ohrstrom juggles for owner Juliet Mackay-Smith. Michael Williamson / The Washington Post
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Local food movement breathes life into small-town market
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 11:39 PM PDT
By David Hagedorn
Special to The Washington Post
Printable version
E-mail this articleMILLWOOD, Va. — Before Juliet Mackay-Smith bought the Locke Modern Country Store six years ago, the owners’ idea of “modern” was selling bait and hardware along with bologna sandwiches.
Mackay-Smith interprets the word a little differently. Sure, she has turned the gathering spot 70 miles west of Washington. D.C. into a combination coffee bar, wine shop, bakery, deli and grocery store.
Sure, the freckle-faced, jeans-clad 46-year-old has become a rural version of Martha Stewart. But more important: With the store as the backdrop, she is the linchpin of a hyper-local network of sustainable food production.
Just off Route 50, Mackay-Smith is selling locally produced food; holding regular tastings of affordably priced wines (including many from Virginia); working on a cookbook; trying to produce a line of dressings, chutneys and sauces; and refurbishing the building next door so it can become a restaurant.
That’s when she’s not overseeing her 130-acre farm 10 miles away, where she tends her horses and, with her husband, raises two teen-age daughters.
The town, like the store owner, is unassuming and charming. Among nearby structures are an antiques store open “by chance or appointment” and a restored, water-wheel-powered grain mill that dates to George Washington’s time.
Mismatched picnic furniture and pitchers of sweet tea rest on the front porch of Mackay-Smith’s neatly painted clapboard shop. When you walk into Locke, which occupies a site where a general store has operated since 1836, a door chime signals your arrival.
A look around the 1,800-square-foot space takes in good things to eat and drink in every nook and cranny: local honeys, apple juice and vinegar; coffee roasted in Rappahannock County; hot sauce made in homemade barrels; bloody mary mix; dairy products in glass bottles from an all-natural, certified organic creamery in Pennsylvania. Mackay-Smith’s mother even gets into the act with a terrific tomato ginger marmalade and those pitchers of “Wizzie’s” sweet tea.
The store’s cases and shelves speak of history.
Mindy Biddle, 46, handles most of the cooking duties, with a particularly deft hand at baked goods. Her tart and pastry crust is durable yet delicate, not an easy balance to strike. Double chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies and peppermint patty brownies never stick around there long. The apple cake and gingerbread cake are irresistibly moist.
And then there are the wines. Mackay-Smith handles the program, always making an effort to educate herself, always looking for value. A dry-erase board lists more than 70 bottles under $15.
“Juliet has a great eye for quality,” says wine distributor Fran Kysela. “She has the ability to discern real value and seek out the interesting.”
Mackay-Smith’s talent showed itself at a young age. She remembers her love affair with food beginning at age 9, when she first inverted a cast-iron pan to reveal a glistening pineapple upside-down cake. “The moment of doing that will always be magical to me,” she says.
Though her mother was, and is, a good cook, Mackay-Smith didn’t refine her cooking skills until just after college in Boston; for a year and a half, she worked for a caterer and took to the business quickly.
Her commitment to sustainability began when she moved to Clarke County more than 20 years ago. Her father had grown up there, and she knew it would be a perfect place to raise a family and connect with the land.
Mackay-Smith began growing her own produce and raising poultry and hogs. She and other community growers formed a farmers market that still operates.
During the formative years of daughters Isabel and Ellie (now 17 and 15, respectively), Mackay-Smith developed recipes for the chutneys, sauces, pickles and preserves she routinely put up. She also started a catering business that helped her amass a large local clientele.
Store manager Peggy Simon remembers a game-themed bash for 375 people that Mackay-Smith threw for wine distributor Kysela.
“Rack of yak, squirrel, wild boar, kangaroo,” Simon says. “You name it; we had it. I don’t think she had even made any of those things before, but she pulled it off. It was theater.”
Mackay-Smith dropped the off-site catered affairs about 18 months ago because they distracted from the rest of the business. But Locke offers a handsome assortment of takeout party foods for at-home entertaining, all made in the store’s humming, cozy kitchen: terrines, dips, spreads, focaccia, savory tarts, sundry salads, sandwiches, boxed lunches, dinner/lunch/brunch entrees, vegetables and baked goods.
The in-store deli and bakery cases hold soup, lunch and dinner features that change daily.
One key to making Locke work — and keeping prices low — has been Mackay-Smith’s insistence on hiring others who are as committed to sustainability as she is.
At last, she says, everything is coming together. “People are getting it, this thing about supporting local business and knowing where your food comes from. I have a really good mix of people who are passionate in their roles but understand that we need to be working toward an entire system.”
David Hagedorn is a chef and former restaurateur.
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