HEADING TO VIRGINIA!

Traveling as I type, we are heading to the Heritage Harvest Festival at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello outside of Charlottesville, VA.  We'll be at booth R12 this Saturday from 9:30am - 6:00pm but there are classes, workshops, tours and lectures all weekend long. We're looking forward to meeting all the brilliant chefs & farmers and connecting with old friends. We'd love to see you there!  

If you visit, be sure to find Blanc Creatives and check out their hand forged cookware and taste the artisanal cider from Potter's Craft Cider.

AMERICA'S MOST ENDANGERED RIVER

The Apalachicola River was recently named America's #1 Most Endangered River.

A little bit about the situation: 
The Apalachicola River plays an important role in the health of not only the world famous oyster beds, but the entire Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Over the past few decades there has been an ongoing "water war," a dispute mostly between the state of Georgia and Florida since the majority of the flood plane that flows to the gulf by way of the Apalachiocola River is located in Georgia. The river's nourishing freshwater is the foundation of a vast and diverse ecology in a region of the southern United States many of us call home and many more enjoy as our playground throughout the year. The freshwater that runs south to the ocean has decreased as metropolitan cities like Atlanta and big agriculture take their toll. When freshwater is restricted and salinity increases, conchs, blue crab and other predators move into the delicate estuary and feast upon the many species (including oysters, bait fish, anchovies & grouper) that reproduce there, in the calm where fresh and salt water meet.

This area is in decline and still recovering from the 2012 drought that was made worse by Georgia’s actions to hoard water. As a native Floridian now living in Georgia, this is a particularly painful truth. Education, awareness, and advocacy, along with the self discipline to individually curb water consumption are necessary to preserve and restore this exceptional habitat.The Apalachicola Riverkeeper is an organization devoted to protecting this area and promoting awareness. If you like eating fresh gulf seafood, then supporting the River’s advocates, conserving water usage and spreading the word is necessary.  If you’re a Georgia resident, consider writing your state congressional delegation encouraging them to reconsider their position on freshwater flow to the gulf and to start working with Florida to protect this beautiful place. Heartwood Forge is committed to preserving this treasure, so we’re donating 10% of the proceeds from the sale of each KH-850 Shucker, designed in collaboration with Bryan Rackley of Kimball House in Atlanta, to the Apalachiocola Riverkeeper. Working together we believe we can affect change and believe that it is each individual’s responsibility to stand up for our environment.

Make a donation to the Riverkeeper here.

When the knife guy met the oyster guy: a story about the world's most perfect oyster shucker

Kimball House co-owner Bryan Rackley shucks literally thousands of oysters a month, but he couldn't seem to find a good-looking oyster knife that actually worked. Enter Heartwood Forge's Will Manning: master craftsman and fellow obsessive. After an exhaustive collaborative process, they've come up with the KH-850: perhaps (finally) the world's most perfect oyster shucker.

Click here to see the rest of the story on The Lovelist!

TASTEMADE VISITS HEARTWOOD FORGE

It's been a while now but I haven't forgotten the crazy day that a super talented and skilled crew visited the shop on their way around the south east. Ever heard of Tastemade? I certainly had but The Grill Iron was all new to me. This entertaining cooking contest aimed at tailgaters puts a whole new spin on gameday eating. I'm not a huge football person but having grown up in Tallahassee and spent the past 5 years in and around Athens, I have certainly grown to appreciate the culture surrounding football and celebrating it with local fresh food gets me way more excited than any touchdown ever will.

 I started off with creating a chefs knife for their winning chef and once they found out they'd be in the area, they decided to see how a knife is made. They were gracious enough to accept my best effort of squeezing it all into a day in the shop - and from there they edited down even further. That all being said, it's a super concise visual story of the creation of a knife and I was just happy to be a part of the process. They certainly did great work and the team was tighknit, efficient and they all had their specialties. You can see the Grill Iron episode below that features Heartwood Forge.

Low and behold, they came back with this, a few months later:

Heartwood Forge from James Mann on Vimeo.

MATERIALS PROCESSING

It's been a long time since I've updated the blog. In short, I've been busy. Busy in the way that detracts from keeping the holistic goals insight, and in a way that makes me a little nervous. However, I’ve been working on keeping my goals realistic, hence the newly instated 12 month waiting list on all new custom orders, for example.  Another way I’ve been finding solace in the level of activity around here lately is to focus solely on knife making and on making knives that perform to the best of my ability.  It’s a simple goal, to make the best knife I can make. And in these busy times (and slow times), that’s the most important goal. Though I may forget the blog, to update a gallery, or in some cases, be delinquent in responding to emails, I will never forget my primary goal.

If you’re the owner of a Heartwood Forge blade, you’ll know that most of them come in a cardboard “sheath”. Upon visiting peoples’ kitchens, I’ve noticed that folks are keeping these to store their knives in for the long haul.  I still recommend a magnetic knife block above all other storage mechanics. However, I’m honored to see these things are appreciated and living out an unexpected second life. I personally hand fashion each one before shipping knives out and the sole purpose is to prevent the points from stabbing their way out of the box through repeated small movements (caused by shipping turbulence).  I keep the sheath in place by wrapping the knife tightly in paper and we haven’t had any complaints yet.  Anyhow, I recently was processing all the 6-pack containers I’ve collected in the past year and thought about how this is definitely part of the process but not part of the process that I ever really talk about. It’s a good thing to do on a cold wet day when you’d rather stay in by the fire.

A lot of what I do at the start seems to be in material processing. Heartwood Forge is a micro-recycling plant in that sense and it feels good to take the dregs of our society and create useful tools from them. From hunting for and trimming up lumber to finding good steel, dissecting and organizing it, it’s not exactly as fun as forging out a knife, but it’s a small price to pay to have very little waste while shedding light on some of the best refuse money can’t buy.  We are all in this together.