Smyth County, Virginia, located in the mountains of southwest Virginia, offering outdoor adventures and small town charm.

Details online at VisitSmythCountyVA.com.

[uplifting music] [Chef Missy] My first memory of eating delicious food was simple.

It involved a cast iron skillet, chicken thighs, usually rice, cooked in stock and chicken fat, and my mother.

I was a ballet dancer for all of my school years and on the swim team for many summers, so I was always hungry.

For many, eating is about survival, but for me, eating has always been about pleasure.

My mother was not a great cook, but there were a few things she did very well, and chicken was one of them.

The chicken is a kind, unaggressive bird.

If you're a meat chicken, your life is pretty short.

Some are blessed to live on grass and peck at insects and seed in the sun until their final day.

If you're an egg layer, you are a most beautiful bird, but your entire life is spent with a bunch of other females.

Constant yard gossip and laying eggs is your fate.

Regardless, chickens are smart.

They can't fly long distances, but they are super-fast and can turn on a dime and they never sweat.

They have incredible memories and can recognize over a hundred faces.

They teach each other and love to play.

Whether roasted, fried, or basted on a fire spit, chicken joyfully marries sweet, salty herb spice and acid with bravery.

Rustic and devourable, chicken inspires sentiments of consummate home cooking.

Hi, I'm Chef Missy and I'm the French Magnolia, a true-blue southern gal with French ancestry running through my veins.

My husband, Thomas, is a wine expert and hospitality veteran.

Throughout our careers, we've worked for some incredible restaurants and hotels from Atlanta to New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, to the edge of a mountain at a five-star Relais & Chateaux.

But pretty soon, the French Magnolia, a luxury movable feast company was born.

We pour into your home and set an elaborate stage for a multi-course culinary and wine experience.

We settled in Bristol, Virginia, a good place to live.

And when we're not working, we love connecting with local farms and Appalachian culture.

From farm, field, garden, and stream to Chef and Somme to the table, all in one day.

This is the French Magnolia Cooks.

Today, we are with Amy and Will Campbell at Old Rich Valley Farm in Saltville, which is about an hour from Bristol in beautiful Southwest Virginia.

Will is a third-generation farm boy, who convinced his wife to be a farmer too.

So, together, they raise pigs, cows, and a whole lot of children.

But their specialty is chicken.

Amy and Will have been teaching me all about raising meat chickens.

And now, I'm gonna learn how to process a whole lot of farm-raised chicken au naturel.

-I'm Halle Campbell, and this is Old Ridge Valley Farm.

-How many chickens are in those crates?

-One-hundred-and-forty-four.

-One-hundred-and-forty-four!

No way.

-We put these chickens in the kill cones.

-What are they called?

-Kill cones.

-Kill cones, oooh.

That sounds very ominous.

Okay, so the first thing is we probably-- we slit their throats, right?

-Yeah.

-I know.

And then, we put them upside down?

-Yeah.

-Okay.

Why would they go into the kill cones upside down?

What happens?

-Because the blood has to drip.

-The blood has to drain out, right?

-Yeah.

-Okay.

Very smart.

So, how long are they in the kill cones?

-For probably one minute or-- -One minute?

That's not very long.

-Yeah.

-And so, all of it comes out in just one minute?

-Yeah.

This is our scalder.

You put 'em in here, and it loosens up all the feathers.

[Chef Missy] Okay.

-'Cause it's so hot.

-We come over here.

-And this is the plucker.

-This is the plucker?

Whoa.

So, it's getting washed two times, so it's getting-- -Yeah.

-Really?

'Cause we want it super clean, right?

-Yeah.

Then, we put ice in here to chill them off.

-That's fun.

Are you ready to process some birds?

-[Halle] Yeah.

[Chef Missy] So, this is your life?

-Yes.

-Is it fun?

-Most days.

Yes, I mostly enjoy it.

-What are we doing?

-We are cutting the oil gland out.

-Okay.

-And that has the oil gland, which helps oil their feathers.

But if you cook it, it kind of taints the meat so we're loosening up the windpipe and the crawl.

And you're gonna just stick your finger in there and loosen that up.

-All right.

-And then you'll go, we do keep the hearts-- -I got the heart.

-So, your lungs are in the bottom.

-Okay.

-And they're hard to get.

And this is where I just check for any feathers.

-Look how cute you are.

That's a good eats right there.

Tell me your favorite part about working a farm.

-Just having my kids with me on the farm and Will, you know.

We get to do everything together.

I don't have to go to my nine to five.

We move the chickens to get 'em to fresh grass every day.

So, they, as soon as we move them, they start eating all the grass and the bugs.

They love when we move them.

And if not, they also will have too much-- their poop is-- will provide too much nitrogen in one spot.

And so, it will actually, if we move them every day, they're fertilizing the grass as they go.

But if we leave them for too long, then they'll actually kill the grass with that much nitrogen.

-Truly sustainable.

-[Amy Campbell] Yes.

-[Chef Missy] Yeah.

-So we started selling directly about five years ago.

We've got about a hundred families that do participate in our herd share, and then we sell at the farmer's markets and just to the other people.

And so, yeah, we just love being in that community with other families that appreciate and want to know where their food is coming from, and appreciate how it was raised.

-This guy looks pretty darn good.

I'm getting the hang of it.

Something else to put on my resume.

-Yeah.

[♪♪♪♪♪] -I know.

God bless you.

That was harder than I thought, emotionally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was hard.

We got John Gurley on premises.

I'll come get you, give you a neck hug.

[John Gurley] Give me a chicken hug.

[laughs] -Hi.

-How are you?

-I'd touch-- I'm good.

-All right.

-Processing some birds.

You wanna give it a try, John?

So, did I do it-- -So, you wanna get the feet up?

-You did good.

-Okay.

-[indistinct] [♪♪♪♪♪] Look at that little guy.

Like Lucille Ball, "Speed it up."

-Uh-oh.

-[Chef Missy laughs] [Will Campbell] Non-farming type stuff.

Just the distribution, the email and communicating, the bookkeeping.

Like there's lots of things that are not out here in the field but are still important to the farm.

Poking and dunking.

[Chef Missy] Poking and dunking.

-Yep, you wanna-- You wanna do that?

-[Chef Missy] Oh, no.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Thank you, Halle.

-Yeah.

The reason that we raise 'em seasonally is because the growing season is better for the chickens and it's better for the soil.

And so, we just try to raise enough during the growing season that we have enough to sell through the off season.

-These are our egg-layer chickens.

They are very different than the meat birds.

These chickens are-- it was a white rock male crossed with a Rhode Island red female.

[Chef Missy] I love it.

They're so beautiful.

We have 21 chickens, and we get about 18 or 19 a day.

Let me see what you have going on here.

-So, the chickens will come and lay in their brooder box.

For it to-- an egg to turn into a chicken, it has to be fertilized.

So, you have to have a rooster that is mating with the chicken, and then you'll have fertilized eggs.

And then they'll sit on those fertilized eggs and then they you can hatch out your own chicks.

-Yes.

Aw.

You are so beautiful.

Aw.

We've got ourselves some local southwest Virginia beef hamburgers today for lunch because we're not really in the mood to eat chicken today for lunch.

This is a fabulous smoker.

Kind of a little jealous.

It's awesome.

-[Will chuckles] [Chef Missy] You grew up here, right?

-Yep.

I grew up in the valley.

I grew up on the farm that my dad grew up on.

-Nice.

Well, you want a job?

I'll give you a job.

-Well, I'll tell you what, if this farm thing doesn't work out, we'll take you up on it.

[Chef Missy] Okay.

How did you talk Amy into living this life with you?

-No kidding, right?

I'm still trying to figure that out.

-I mean, she grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, right?

-Yeah, she did.

So, she wasn't-- -She was just a regular person.

-A regular person.

-Living in the regular world.

-[Will Campbell] Yep.

-[Chef Missy] As a farmer, what's your biggest challenge?

[Will Campbell] Biggest challenge, just the uncertainty is probably our biggest challenge.

We're trying to sell directly to people, to families.

-[Chef Missy] Sure.

-[Will Campbell] -And we're not in a very highly populated area.

We definitely look up to Joel Salatin in Polyface and just his perspective on farming and life.

And so, we've definitely tried to implement parts of what he's doing to what we're doing.

You know, God created living things with a purpose.

You know, there's diversity in nature, and a lot of our farming practices today are mono species and kind of removing that diversity and removing the purpose of these, you know, living things within it.

The way he was talking about diversifying and how, you know, cows and pigs and chickens can all benefit each other and benefit the land, it was like, man, that just makes sense.

And we live in a special place, not just because it's geographically special, but there's some good people.

You know, it's good.

[Chef Missy] Southwest Virginia is a good place to live.

[Will Campbell] It is.

[Chef Missy] It's God's country, I'll tell you.

[♪♪♪♪♪] This has been a great day.

I have learned so much.

It's a beautiful process.

And when you are here, you experience joy in the air.

I'm grateful for today, and I feel like I've made friends for life.

Today, we're gonna make homemade French mayonnaise, tangy, fatty, delicious, and perfect with a Crudité platter but also beautiful and perfect with roast chicken in a pot, which we're gonna make later this afternoon.

The first thing you wanna do is get everything out, mise en place, which means everything in its place.

Get some lemon going.

You're going to use about six tablespoons of lemon, which is about three lemons.

Because once you get started, you're not gonna want to stop to make the lemon juice.

After the lemon juice, we are going to get the yolk of six eggs.

Two.

Beautiful.

Okay, next step.

You've got these six yolks.

Get a nice, good balloon whisk and just beat these yolks... just for about a minute.

I'm gonna go ahead and salt the yolks first.

Just a nice generous pinch.

Now, we're gonna go ahead and add the French Dijon mustard, nice strong horseradish finish.

A heaping tablespoon, little plus-plus, and whisk that into the yolks.

Now, we're gonna slowly add in the lemon juice or any acid really will work.

Just a Chardonnay, white wine vinegar.

Whisking.

We're just gonna slowly add the acid into the proteins.

A little at a time, just making sure everybody gets along, be delicious.

And I'm a southern gal, so I love mayonnaise, but I think you're really gonna love the flavor profile of the egg yolk mayonnaise.

There you go.

These egg yolks are ready to be courted... by the organic extra virgin olive oil.

Your job is to get these egg yolks to fall madly, deeply in love with this olive oil.

Now, the egg yolks don't want the olive oil to just be dumped on them, so you have to court the egg yolks a little at a time, drizzling the olive oil, and then whisking very, very quickly at the same time.

Drizzling a little, a little at a time, whisking very quickly.

The process of making homemade French mayonnaise is very similar to making a French sauce.

So, if you can master these basic principles, then when you go to learn a Beurre Blanc or any other French sauce, you're gonna really understand the principles behind it.

Gotta shake it out every few minutes.

[laughs] The last little bit.

I'm very excited.

Boom!

Awesome, whoa!

Now, for the tasting.

Mmmm!

It's perfect.

It's tangy, fatty, and it has that tiny bit of horseradish kick from the Dijon mustard.

Mmmm!

Whew!

Tom is gonna love that.

Okay.

All right.

This is gonna chill beautifully in the refrigerator.

Hi.

-Hi.

-Hi.

-Mmm-mm.

That looks delicious.

-Hello.

-Is that French mayonnaise?

-It is.

-[Thomas] -All right.

-Actually, will you put this in the refrigerator?

-Of course, yeah.

-Chill that.

We're gonna have your favorite.

The alpha and the omega.

-Oh, yeah.

Chicken and mayonnaise?

-Chicken and mayonnaise.

[laughter] -Awesome.

-We are going to make French chicken in a pot, but like Thomas just reminded me, it's really Southwest Virginia chicken in a pot.

[Thomas] It is.

That's where we got it.

-[laughs] I've got a job for you.

-Okay.

What is it?

-I know.

It's time.

-Yes, okay.

-It's time-- -I figured.

-We do this first.

This was here for me, right?

-It was.

It was a special present for you.

-I was afraid of that.

-Okay.

The first thing you need to do, make sure you've got everything you need for your recipe in front of you.

Mise en place, everything in its place.

Celery.

I just take the whole thing.

Fresh, organic carrots.

I love yummy organic carrots.

Just do a light peeling.

That was so much fun.

-It was a lot of fun.

Learned a lot.

-I loved that.

I know.

Amy and Will are amazing.

-They are really cool people.

-Oh my gosh.

I think John's coming.

-Said he was.

-Said he was.

He'll be here soon.

Okay, the carrots.

So, for me, I just like to cut 'em on the bias.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Okay, these carrots are done.

Celery, leeks, garlic, yum.

This is one of our gorgeous Southwest Virginia birds.

Hello, gorgeous.

Okay, the first thing we're gonna do is liberally butter the bird inside and out.

We are gonna cook this chicken in a pot in a dry cooking method.

A dry pot.

-Ahh.

-Yeah.

-That's crazy.

-That's crazy.

I've made him a nice little slit there at the end of the breast right there.

Just cut a hole with scissors and then just tucked him in.

That's my little trick that I learned from Amy.

This bird is between four and five pounds, which we learned this morning from Amy that the reason why your roasting birds that you see in the grocery store at the farmer's market are always between four and five pounds is that's how big they get at the eight-week mark.

And the eight-week mark is when the processing happens.

This is my special mixture of lemon zest, lemon oil, lemon pepper, cracked pepper, really good sea salt, and some granulated garlic.

I'm gonna use a combination of grapeseed oil and organic extra virgin olive oil.

Now, I have the oven preheat and set to 250 degrees.

I have the lowest rack of the oven in the bottom part of the oven.

That way, the dark meat is gonna cook all the way.

Here's why you want a dry pot.

This bird, while it's cooking in the oven, the juices are gonna release out of the chicken, but instead of just falling into liquid, it's going to immediately, because of the dry environment, get sucked back into the bird.

So, the juices and the natural flavor of the chicken is going to stay inside the bird instead of being released and going into broth.

The other way of cooking is braising.

We wanna finish with a roast chicken that is succulent and juicy and delicious, and tastes chicken-y.

We are gonna cook this for 90 minutes at 250 degrees.

It's gonna be perfect.

I'm all cleaned up now.

[laughs] Where's the wine?

-Oh, you want wine now?

-Yes.

-Okay.

What's in the fridge?

You want me to grab it?

-Yes, please.

-Okay.

-I think I've earned a glass of wine.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Just a small one.

[Thomas] Well, this is from the Northern Rhône region and the grape is Marsanne.

-[Chef Missy] What?

-[Thomas] Marsanne, yeah.

-[Chef Missy] What is it called?

[Thomas] It's a hundred percent Marsanne, M-A-R-S-A-N-N-E, I believe is how it's spelled.

St. Joseph is a place in France, northern region of Rhône.

-Ah, okay.

-Okay.

Ninety percent of the wine coming from there is red.

The grape they use for that is Syrah grape, which we both love.

-Ahh!

I love Syrah!

-So, 10 percent of the wine coming from St. Joseph is white, and the grapes use for that is Marsanne and Roussanne.

Usually, they're blended together, but this one is a hundred percent Marsanne.

So, we get to experience this on its own, which is pretty rare to get from this area as that-- with that grape.

So, it's pretty special.

-Cheers.

-Mm.

-Smells like old world.

Doesn't it?

-Mm-hmm.

Old world.

-Smells like it needs some cheese, or chicken.

-It needs cheese or roast chicken.

-[laughs] -Some mineral.

-Yes.

-It's great for food.

-But it's a little funky.

-Yeah.

-And I love that.

-You don't get much funky like that with whites usually.

-I know.

-So, it's pretty unusual.

-Normally, the red burgundy's the one we love, the little funky forest floor, wet leaves.

But this has a little bit of forest floor and wet leaves.

-For a white, that's pretty different.

-Very different.

I love this.

-I do too.

-I love the surprise of it.

-It is unique.

Cheers, baby.

-Here's to you.

-Here's to you.

-[chuckles] Ready to see the bird?

-I can't wait.

-Let's do it.

Gorgeous.

-[Thomas] Whooo!

Beautiful.

Look at that.

-Hello, gorgeous.

That is one beautiful bird.

I'm very pleased with this.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-It's beautiful.

-Very pleased.

-Our father, we thank you for the day.

Thank you for all your blessing.

Amen.

-Amen.

We made it guys.

It's been a long day.

[John Gurley] Having that, you know, Amy and Will and their children and their friends and a community come together to work on that farm and to go through the process with them, and now to be sitting here with you two is a real treat.

[Thomas] Connecting with the farm where the chicken was raised, knowing who raised it, how it was raised, it's just remarkable.

You told me what we were having, the herbs, especially the subtlety of that, it needed something like this.

[Chef Missy] Okay.

-Isn't it?

-[thunder rumbles] [all] Whoa!

-[laughs] -Holy chi-- holy chicken is right.

-Yeah.

Somebody agrees.

-Holy chicken.

-Somebody agrees.

-This is the best chicken I have ever eaten in my life.

Yeah.

-We just had Father's Day.

I was thinking about you, and I was thinking about your situation and how lucky you were to have connected with your biological father later in life.

-I still can't believe the journey of meeting my biological father.

It was-- it's impossible to talk about without tearing up.

-Because it's such a great story.

Do you know, my mom, who was an Atlanta debutante, she went to Holland's College and my dad was at-- [Thomas] Here in Virginia.

-Yeah, in Roanoke, actually.

And my dad was at Roanoke College.

[John Gurley] Which is both great schools.

-Yep.

Great schools in southwest Virginia.

I really think about them so much being here in southwest Virginia.

Right?

Where they met, where they fell in love.

I think what's fun about my parents' love story is that it was young love.

That young love, that first love, can be very powerful.

So, unfortunately, they were young and maybe not that wise at the time, not that mature, fairly immature at the time.

And so, that relationship did not work out.

And my mom-- they divorced, and my mom ended up coming back to Atlanta.

We finally met when I was 48 years old, and it was a big thing.

We had a huge time.

We ended up going on amazing boating trips, and he became kind of my best friend.

And right after I met him, Tom and I met and fell madly in love, instantly pretty much.

[Thomas] He was-- he gave her away at our wedding.

-So, my dad gave me away at our wedding, and then he got sick, and I was with him when he died.

I ended up giving the eulogy at his funeral.

And these are things that just cannot be orchestrated by anybody but God.

He just worked it out so beautifully for me.

It was just absolutely a beautiful, fantastic time in my life.

So, every Father's Day, I think about that healing.

-Well, this Father's Day, I thought about that.

-Aw, thank you.

-Here we go.

-Here's to you being here.

-[John Gurley] Yeah.

-Yay.

I'll drink to that.

It's been a very, very good day.

A very, very good day.

-[Thomas] Here's to today.

-Here's to today.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [Chef Missy] The smell of butter and seasoned roast chicken wafting into a house is an emotional embrace.

It's the fragrance of love, of nurture, of family and friendships.

A well-cooked chicken represents a farming community with merit and virtue.

Its broth comforts and consoles, and its meat speaks of humility and kindness.

Some say that chicken is only a weeknight meal, but that's okay with me, because for me, eating great chicken feels like home.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [music fades out] Smyth County, Virginia, offering a business friendly environment with partnerships like Smyth Strong fostering entrepreneurship and growth.

Details at SmythCountyEconomicDevelopment.c om.