{"id":2356,"date":"2012-06-29T15:12:44","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T20:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=2356"},"modified":"2012-06-29T15:13:55","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T20:13:55","slug":"whos-your-farmer-georgeanne-ross-oxfords-original-grit-girl-from-tlv-159","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/whos-your-farmer-georgeanne-ross-oxfords-original-grit-girl-from-tlv-159\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Your Farmer? Georgeanne Ross: Oxford’s Original Grit Girl (from TLV #159)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Article by Sarah Reddick – Photos by Newt Rayburn<\/em><\/h3>\n

\"\"Georgeanne Ross<\/strong> was living with her husband Freddie<\/strong> in the Mississippi Delta in 2000 when she became a grit purveyor quite by accident. She\u2019d suggested to her husband that they grind corn into cornmeal as a hobby. Freddie found an old grist mill, refurbished it, and taught Georgeanne about making cornmeal, something she enjoyed learning about because, as she put it, \u201cI grew up in Memphis. If they didn\u2019t sell it at Kroger, I didn\u2019t think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"They would grind 20 pounds of corn once in a while in order to keep their machinery oiled and working properly, and then they would give the cornmeal away to neighbors. One day a Memphis chef was fishing near them and Georgeanne gave him some of the cornmeal. He called later and asked her for 40 pounds of grits. \u201cI had to tell him, hey, I\u2019m not in the business,\u201d Georgeanne laughed, not knowing this conversation would set off a chain of events that would firmly place her in the grit business.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Georgeanne discovered that the grist mill could produce several products. When the corn is finely ground it produces corn meal, masa, polenta is a little less fine, and then it also produces grits. In traditional Italian dishes, polenta is turned into a cake similar to hoe cakes made from grits, and the polenta cakes can be served covered in marinara. She also decided to stone grind pure yellow, cracked corn. \u201cPeople were used to white grits, but I decided I would sell mine by telling people they look like melted butter when they\u2019re cooked.\u201d She buys the corn from a Mississippi farm, but further details are a trade secret.<\/p>\n

\"\"The chef in Memphis advised Georgeanne to start approaching owners of \u201cwhite tablecloth restaurants\u201d to ask them if they were interested in using her grits, because people were starting to revert to using products that were all natural, without additives and preservatives. So, Georgeanne began driving to area restaurants and peeking in the windows, looking for white tablecloths. She started out by leaving them a five pound sample bag and then checking back with them later. \u201cI have never advertised,\u201d she said, \u201cIt\u2019s all been by word of mouth.\u201d One of her biggest clients in the North Mississippi area is John Currence<\/strong>. City Grocery<\/strong> uses her grits for their signature shrimp and grits dish, and Big Bad Breakfast<\/strong> recently incorporated her grits into a meal named for The Local Voice<\/em>, which also includes pork chops from Old Thyme Farms and bread from Bottletree Bakery.<\/p>\n

\"\"Georgeanne says the piece of equipment she could not live without is her grit separator. The separator allows the grits to travel through a pipe from the grist mill where it is sifted through several screens to filter out the flour before being divided into categories by texture. The separator can produce upwards of 600 pounds per hour. She said when they first started they would hand sift everything on screens, and that a few pounds of grits could take hours to produce. Given that Georgeanne recently began doing private milling for a company on the east coast that has a standing order for 500 pounds a month, the separator is indeed a vital part of the process. She described a typical work day as, \u201cBusy, and dusty.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she stood looking around at the beautiful farmland her business is located on, Georgeanne said, \u201cYou know, Americans consume about 100 million pounds of grits every year.\u201d She then talked for a bit about farmers\u2019 markets and how she hopes that more and more people turn to purchasing foods grown and produced locally. When asked what she is most proud of this year so far she said, \u201cMy hubby beating cancer.\u201d When asked what she\u2019s most looking forward to, she smiled and said, \u201cA vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can contact Georgeanne Ross via her website: www.gritgirl.net<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Article by Sarah Reddick – Photos by Newt Rayburn Georgeanne Ross was living with her husband Freddie in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[195,68,307,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening-farming","category-local-food","category-local-people","category-sarah-reddick"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}