Small businesses, big impact on Floyd food scene 

Jon Beegle starts a lot of work days tinkering with logs on his Floyd property and ends a lot of them loading an 84-inch smoker with Boston butts.

The shiitake mushrooms he grows with his wife, Dana, have little in common with the barbecue they sell at Bootleg BBQ, but both jobs help to support the couple and their five children — and that’s pretty important to them.

Like a lot of folks in Floyd, the Beegles make a living by patching together the income from several different small businesses. When they aren’t harvesting mushrooms or hawking homemade barbecue from a mobile kitchen in the heart of town, they’re running Beegle Landscaping & Lawn Care or tending the cattle and chickens on their 70-acre property.

Dana, 42, also freelances technical writing jobs and just started a master’s program in agroforestry at Virginia Tech, where she earned her undergraduate degree in forestry.

Just thinking about all that work is exhausting, and that doesn’t even include the time they spend with the kids: Olivia, 12; Forest, 9; Quinlan, 6; and twins Annika and Izzabel, 3.

Despite all that, the Beegles recently invited me to come see their mushroom crop and loiter around the barbecue trailer so I could learn more about how they’re filling two fascinating niches in the Floyd food scene.

Putting ‘fun’ in fungus

The Beegles owe their aunts and uncles a wee bit of credit for inspiring them to start both food businesses.

Dana, who was born in Illinois, has an aunt and uncle who grew multiple varieties of edible mushrooms for several years and sold them in the Chicago area. Although their operation was much larger and the investment much costlier than what the Beegles are doing, their climate-controlled mushroom houses left an impression on Dana.

Meanwhile, Jon, a Texas native, recalls spending some vacations and family reunions in a community called Lick Skillet, Ala., where his two uncles smoked whole hogs — as many as 30 at one time.

“It was just a lot of fun to do it with your family and I kind of learned it from them,” said Jon, 50. “They did it for over 30 years, and they’re still doing it, but not as much as they used to.”

The Beegles are new to shiitake farming, so this year has brought their first harvest. It’s been a great year, though, as Jon figures they’ve sold about 100 pounds so far through Good Food-Good People, a Floyd-based local food distributor.

Most of the logs on which they grow mushrooms are oak. That’s common in shiitake production because the wood is very hard and doesn’t break down as quickly as other wood. The logs are “inoculated” the year before, a process that involves drilling holes and filling each one with a small wooden dowel that has been infused with mushroom spores.

The holes are then sealed over with wax to protect the logs from contamination. The Beegles have about 150 logs, most of which are stacked in log-cabin formations under the canopy of trees behind their home.

In spring, the Beegles soaked the logs in cold water, which simulates a rainfall and causes a flush, or blooming of mushrooms. The fungus feeds off the sugar in the wood and mushrooms pop not from the wax-filled holes, but from natural cracks in the logs.

Shiitake mushrooms can be forced this way over and over again. Eventually — say, in five to 10 years — the fungus will break down the logs and they will stop producing.

Several mornings every week, the Beegles traipse out to the woods to check on the mushrooms. If they are closing in on harvest time, the logs are covered with a plastic sheet to protect them from rain, which is absorbed by the mushrooms and degrades their quality.

The Beegles are always on the hunt for slugs, which slither onto the mushrooms and chomp away large sections. If these interlopers are seen, they are quickly dispatched.

Come harvest time, the Beegles pluck or cut the mushrooms away from the logs, pack them gently in a box and take them to Good Food-Good People. Aaron Deal, the chef at River and Rail in south Roanoke, said he’s been buying about 15 pounds of the mushrooms each week. He cooks them slowly in butter with herbs and garlic, then serves them atop a hanger steak.

“In my opinion, they taste much better” than white mushrooms, he said. “They’ve got more of that wild mushroom characteristic.”

The Beegles have had so much fun growing shiitakes that they hope to increase their harvest in the coming years. They particularly love being able to work in the woods.

“It smells good down there, it sounds quiet, and it’s very cool,” Dana said. “I’ll tell you, it beats picking bush beans and weeding around the tomatoes.”

Mind the beans and ’que

Being on Jon’s barbecue trailer is the opposite of cool, as he continually stokes the fire that sends curls of hickory smoke over the meat. It does, however, smell pretty darn good.

When the economy took a hit, so did the Beegles’ landscaping business, so they decided to pursue the barbecue business Jon had only dabbled in up to that point.

“I remember sitting in the living room saying ‘That’s the only thing I can think of. You need to just start cooking,’ ” Dana said.

Jon had a small smoker already, but for the business he purchased the Lang 84-inch model, which can cook 300 pounds of meat at a time. He designed his mobile kitchen, which features sinks, refrigerators, a freezer, several warming compartments and stained wood siding. The guys at Joe’s Garage in Floyd built it to his specifications.

Most of the time, the Bootleg BBQ trailer is parked in a gravel lot on Locust Street, next to the Winter Sun Music Hall. It is open for lunch and dinner on Tuesday through Saturday. Jon is able to tow the kitchen to festivals, which they do on a fairly regular basis. This year, they vended at FloydFest for the first time.

The menu at Bootleg BBQ includes pulled pork, baby back ribs, smoked chickens, brisket, rainbow slaw and smoked beans. A crowd favorite is the “Cowboy Cocktail,” which consists of a layer of pork barbecue, a layer of beans and a layer of coleslaw in one container. The Cowgirl Cocktail is the same, but it’s made with chicken barbecue.

Another hot seller is the Atomic Buffalo Turd, which is abbreviated to ABT — either because it’s faster to say or because it sounds more appetizing. The ABT is a large jalapeno stuffed with a cream cheese blend, wrapped in bacon and cooked in the smoker.

Last Thursday, Keith Elder of Floyd stopped to pick up lunch for himself and his two sons. Lunch consisted of barbecue chicken wraps and eight ABTs, which the guys planned to divvy up. Elder said he stops at Bootleg BBQ about once a week.

“The chicken is really, really great and the ribs are, as well,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll grab a rack of ribs and a couple of sides and those will be good for a couple of days.”

Jon’s barbecue can be dressed up with one of his four homemade sauces, which are also bottled and sold in local stores. Floyd Firewater is spicy and vinegary with a lemony twist; Alabama White Lightning is mayonnaise-based and quite peppery; South Carolina Hooch is mustard-based, and Red Moon Rising is a sweet, thick tomato-based sauce. Jon bastes the meat in Floyd Firewater as it cooks; that’s the sauce recipe he inherited from the uncles.

Jon and Dana have been surprised by how quickly the barbecue business caught fire. If Dana’s favorite job is working with the mushrooms, Jon’s is manning the trailer, where he hears from customers who praise the food.

“It’s something I’m having the most fun with right now,” he said. “There is a lot of gratification that goes along with it.”

As Dana progresses in the agroforestry program, the Beegles hope to “use the land for its intended purpose,” as Jon put it, by finding other crops they can grow in the woods or along the creek on their wildflower-tufted property.

They put in long hours, but they love being a part of what makes Floyd such a unique town.

“It’s a real entrepreneurial spirit,” Jon said. “People are working hard, but they’re working on Floyd time.”

On the blog

Find out why experts advise against washing raw chicken at blogs.roanoke.com/fridgemagnet.

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