There are ten store departments within the Brattleboro Food Coop: Beer and Wine, Cheese, Deli, Grocery, Bulk Department, Meat and Seafood, Produce/Floral and Wellness, Safety and Customer Service.
While any of the 160 or so employees at The Coop could be the focus of this profile as they all have their stories, this profile is about Anna Edson. And as such, this is a profile of a sausage maker, a whole LOT of sausages.
Anna was born in 1966 in Houston, Texas. In 1982 her family left Houston and moved to the Bay Area for seventeen years. As a young adult, finances forced her to quit her studies in photography and chemical oceanography three classes short of a degree. This was a great disappointment to her as well as to her father, a Russian/German and first generation born in the US. (His career had been in electrical engineering: he had earned a degree as a computer engineer in his early 70’s. (He worked for NASA in Florida on the very first space shuttle in the 1980’s.)
But it was Anna Rempel, born in Germany and Anna’s grandmother, who had the most impact on this young woman. Grandma was very poor, self-sufficient and as a young American immigrant, lived in Watts/Englewood, California. Even then she raised animals for consumption. Anna had taught her son (Anna’s father) how to cook starting at an early age. He in turn taught his daughter how to cook, to preserve foods and meats beginning at age 3. “I’ve been cooking as long as I’ve been reading.”
“When I had to quit my education, I first worked in a credit union, a financial form of a cooperative, and in retail.
“Having visited Brattleboro with friends for Las Vegas, I saw Brattleboro as a teeny-tiny San Francisco in its diversity. But, unlike SF, I found it slow-paced. I found as I vacationed in Bratt that I could be myself here. I was accepted. I moved here in 1998 with some friends and have been here since. By September, 1998 I took a job at the Food Coop when it was in the AGI building further back on this lot.
“I started as a produce clerk and stocker for 3 years or so, was a cashier for a while and then worked in Shareholder Services and Marketing. At the time I started there, The Coop was selling between six and seven million dollars worth of food with 60 employees. Today we sell over twenty million dollars requiring 150-160 employees.”
So what is Anna doing at the Coop now? Sausages – anywhere from 200 – 350 pounds of sausage a week with help from a co-worker. She works with her assistant Arthur Smith. “We make individual sausages as long as ten feet long and then Arthur ties them into individual ones 6” long. Each recipe we prepare usually results in about 100 to 150 pounds of that particular sausage, all of which we immediately freeze and display for sale in a freezer right across from the fresh-fish display area.”
And who do you sell to? “Local people – especially around major holidays – but also special orders, or people who make special trips from NY, CT, MA, ME – you know, neighboring states and from all around Vermont.
“And what they especially like is our food is clean: pork or chicken – now and again beef - meat that is humanely raised, some on small farms, using no growth hormones, antibiotics or preservatives and, ideally, only from Vermont farms although we bring in items like North Country Smokehouse products up near Hanover, NH.”
“We also use other local ingredients in our recipes: Hidden Springs Maple from Putney, Grafton Cheddar, Scott Farm Apples from Dummerston, Piccadilly Farm from Winchester NH for herbs and onions, Side Hill Farm for jams and jellies, Singing Apiaries for honey, and cooperatives like Equal Exchange for teas and herbs where livable wages are guaranteed for all workers….
“Around 40% to 45% of our meats are local. But you will also see me shop here at The Coop for Spring Linden Honey from Shaftesbury, local beers, chicken from Misty Knolls Farms in New Haven, VT, Hardwick Beef, Sweet Pickens Farm in Putney….”
“I also develop rub and marinade recipes, with a little input from co-workers in the meat department and deli kitchen, for pork, beef, poultry or fish. Rub our blends onto meat, veggies or tofu before cooking: Buttermilk Ranch on potatoes or chicken, Sweet Tea Rub or lemon herb on poultry or fish, Fette Sau Dry Rub on pork, Thai or Tex Mex…. We’re cookin!”
And what sausages at The Coop are customers looking for these days? “Texas Hot Links, our Mexican inspired Chorizo (spicy!) and other sausages made several ways, spicy foods with ginger, spicy peanut chicken. And we always try to keep allergens to a minimum, although we do use them. We also sell to a Mom and Pop restaurant in the area: chicken breakfast sausage. Look for our physically, and mentally, warming ginger-scallion sausages in winter, chicken parmesan, rosemary-porcini mushroom. And it’s quality that sells it. The tastes are clean, fresh. The flavor is not weighed down by preservatives. We take pride.”
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.