Ryan and Julie Thornburg are proud to call The Fruit Belt home. Natives of Southwest Michigan, this talented husband and wife duo have been creating preserves and maple syrups for their business, Thornburg and Company, for quite some time now. While the company itself is relatively new, Ryan has been working with local area farmers for over 20 years and is applying his culinary background to their artisan small-batch preserves, maple syrups, and variety of honeys. Provenance staffer Nathan was able to talk with Ryan and Julie about their regions rich agricultural history and why they love working with locally sourced produce.
1 Thornburg and Company is a relatively new business but the syrups, honeys, and preserves you’re making are keeping with a cooking tradition going back generations. As natives of southwest Michigan living in the agriculturally rich Fruit Belt you believe in making a product that utilizes local produce and supports local family farms in the process. With this kind of mentality, what do you hope to accomplish with your products?
Our goal from day one has been to support local, small family farms and bring awareness to what the area is capable of producing. We live in a beautiful area and believe that Southwest Michigan has the best agricultural growing conditions. There is a story to tell with that and it resonates with our customers.
2 As a husband and wife who share backgrounds in hospitality and food, starting and running your own business of this kind seems like the natural step. Is it because of those backgrounds that you started Thornburg and Company or was there some other way you got to a business creating fruit preserves, maple syrups, and honeys?
Our love of food was always evident, but we wanted to take those relationships with the farmers to the next level. I know these farming families well and have been using their produce for 20 years in the restaurant. So Thornburg and Company was created to support these families and keep the agricultural heritage of Southwest Michigan alive and growing.
3 Being raised in a region so abundant with fruit production, has that been your main focus for work over the years or were you both involved in other ventures totally different from where you find yourselves today?
We both have restaurant backgrounds, but Thornburg and Company is different in that it reaches a much broader audience. It allows us to get our message out and is really just an extension of our daily lives.
4 With such close ties to your community and a sense of pride in making a product that takes advantage of high quality fruits and honey from the area, it’s clear to us Thornburg and Company is passionate about what it makes. As kids was this something you saw yourselves doing when you grew up?
My family always had a large garden and fruit trees. I remember my father always being passionate about it and asking us to help. I grew up in an agricultural community and a lot of my friends came from farming families so it definitely has always been with me.
5 Having such a fantastic variety of produce to choose from in your neck of the woods, do you find there is always a new preserve to try making and do you attempt something new every year? With that in mind, are traditional recipes something you draw inspiration from with your products?
I think there is something to be said about tradition. There is staying power. So yeah, we draw a lot of inspiration from classic recipes and put our own unique twist on them. We never have to travel more than 50 miles to source our fruit, that’s how diverse our area is. We utilize about 20 different varieties of fruit in season, mostly on a limited basis, and a core of 8 seasonal preserves.
6 For anyone who has ever preserved or canned their own food they know how rewarding it can be, especially when you get around to eating it later. Was there a particular moment or maybe a mind-blowing batch of maple syrup you whipped up that made you realize this was what you wanted to do for a living?
Not that I can think of. I think the opportunity to preserve great produce in season is truly special and rewarding. Thornburg and Company has always been about utilizing local agriculture to make a unique product.
7 Are the farmers you connect with and purchase from a source of inspiration for, say, your Fruitbelt Preserves? Where else do you draw inspiration from for your products?
They are the inspiration! Relationships are everything in our business. We want to share the joy of local agriculture through food and to build strong, long lasting relationships with our customers, vendors, farmers, and staff.
8 You've stated you’re in the business of “creating genuine artisanal foods in a traditional time-honored manner.” Our customers are getting access to not just a fantastic product but to a historically significant and age-old method of how we eat and preserve our fresh produce. What is another major benefit you think your company offers to customers?
We create foods in that manner because we believe it is the best way. Creating artisanal foods may be new to us but has been around for centuries in other countries. That’s a real inspiration & sense of pride for us.
9 The growing and harvest seasons are exciting and busy times in your area. Hand selecting your produce from local farms must be a real highlight of the job. What would you say is your favorite aspect of running Thornburg and Company?
That’s it! I look so forward to June when those first earliglow strawberries come in, anxiously waiting on the call from the grower. That’s what drives us to create our product line, whether it is fruit, honey, or maple syrup. But are eyes are always open for unique produce grown in our area that we can utilize.
10 Is a low-yielding growing season a major headache for your business or is there something else you would have to say is your least favorite part of your line of work?
We are conscious of the possibility of a bad growing season like 2012. We chose to not work with stone fruit last year because they were not available locally, but we made plenty of berry preserves. Unfortunately, having a bad growing season is part of the agricultural business. But we love what we do, so it doesn’t always seem like work.
11 Thornburg and Company, despite how young a business, already offers such a great line and range of items to choose from. In what ways do you hope to continue to grow and develop?
I’m always telling people that if you just open your eyes there is a whole world of food in your own backyard. We love to work with as much produce as we can because that is the joy of it. I come from a culinary background so maybe I view things differently, but if it grows in southwest Michigan we will probably work with it. We want to continue to offer high quality products and hope that customers will like them.
BTW, we do have some exciting new products for 2013 so stay tuned!
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