Gwen Johnson is the Outreach Coordinator at Hemphill Community Center in Neon, Kentucky.
The center, formed in 1968, is a gathering place to enjoy traditional music and crafts. Hemphill generates revenue for the center by providing catering services and recently developed a social enterprise program called program called Black Sheep Bakery and Catering, a brick oven bakery business. Hemphill has blended work to generate income for the center with supporting community members by providing job training to people who are recovering from addiction. They currently have three participants in the program who are working at the bakery.
Folks from Hemphill and Blacksheep recently visited Smoke Signals Bakery in Asheville, North Carolina to learn more about sourdough baking with a wood-fired oven. I interviewed Gwen about the experience:
How are you connected with MACED?
Our friends at MACED have been a help and cheering section for our outreach and efforts at Hemphill Community Center. They have partnered with us in launching Black Sheep Bakery and Catering by helping us train with a brick oven bakery near Asheville, North Carolina for two days, they will be paying for a large percentage of our website, and we are in the process of buying equipment from a closed business in Whitesburg from them at a very fair price. They may also help us finance our proposed solar panels.
What’s the most valuable takeaway from your experience in Asheville?
We came away with a better sense of baking bread the ancient way and a better knowledge of the science involved from growing grain, to baking bread in a brick oven, to marketing the bread. We are excited to try out our newly acquired skills with our newly constructed brick oven.
How do you plan to use what you’ve learned?
We plan to employ unemployed folks from the area including Letcher County Drug Court participants who are in a rigorous program that would make it impossible to have a regular 9-5:00 job, thus our name. We have experienced a “brain drain” in our region caused by opioid addiction. When the drug court began to place some of the court appointed community service workers with us we were astounded to see the creativity and hard work of some of these folks. We began to employ them in our catering efforts on a part time basis. We think Black Sheep Bakery and Catering can employ them on a full time basis. That is our hope as we go forward. We are thankful that MACED is helping us get our footing in this new territory of business.
What are you most hopeful about when you think about the future of your work?
Our hope is that we can establish an outlet from which the bread basket of our region becomes a more healthful locally sourced locally made mainstay. Currently there is no place to purchase whole grain bread in our area except at grocery stores and the available breads are filled with preservatives. We are baking all of our breads without preservatives.
We hope to further build community by having regular events for folks to come and bake bread they have prepared at home. We believe in the ritual of “breaking of bread” as a catalyst for building relationships and community. It is our hope that Black Sheep Brick Oven Bakery and Catering/ Hemphill Community Center becomes a name synonymous with inclusion and free space. We plan to always give the reentry population and any unemployed people a chance for gainful employment and a sense of love and belonging despite any differences in race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or age.
Listen to this piece on Making Connections News to learn more about Hemphill Community Center’s work and to hear more from Gwen and those working at Blacksheep Bakery.
