Family Recipes Give Birth to Ole Pioneer's Kitchen

It was depressing.

Grace Brock was an older worker who found herself unemployed when the government contract that paid her salary was not renewed. The longtime software analyst spent months looking for work, but things were not going her way.

“I got only three interviews,” Brock laughed. “Two of them were with very, very young people. And you know, they look at me like, ‘Are we ready for this dinosaur?’”

Her husband convinced her to retire. “When you retire,” Brock said, “you start doing things that you always wanted to do.” She threw herself into organizing the home the couple shared with her beloved cats. Eventually she rediscovered her grandfather’s recipes. Her father gave them to her when she left Argentina for the United States in 1968.

Brock used one of the recipes to make sausages for friends and family at a holiday gathering, and this time a friend convinced her to get back to work.

In 2005, Ole Pioneer’s Kitchen was born. This is the first year the company’s meats are available at the Kingstowne Farmers Market.

“I found that the customers that go to Kingstowne are very selective with their meat products,” Brock said. A steady stream of repeat buyers apparently appreciates how selective Brock is, too.

“My products are made with very good cuts of meat, and we use only natural spices. I actually make my products in small batches so I can preserve the freshness of it because I don’t use any preservatives. No preservatives, no colorants. I trim all the fat I can out of the meat, so they find this a very unusual sausage.”

In addition to her grandfather’s recipes, Brock experimented with other sausage formulas and took courses, including earning a food safety certification. That knowledge was especially helpful as they stepped up their processing in a special facility at her home.  “The safety of the customer is very, very important,” she said.

Brock gets a great deal of help with the processing and Kingstowne sales by Michelle Covington, whose husband is deployed in Afghanistan. “I kinda put her under my wing, so to speak,” Brock laughed.

Brock said providing high-quality meats does something similar for her customers. “Commercial stuff? God knows what’s in it,” she said. Her products “taste fabulous … you will definitely taste the difference.”

There is also a difference between the Brock that found herself unemployed not so long ago, and the entrepreneur who enjoys selling sausages and other meat products today.

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Ole Pioneer’s Kitchen

1838 Clovermeadow Dr., Vienna, VA 22182, 703-938-0505, http://opkfoods.com/

Kingstowne Farmers Market Hours: Fridays, 4:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.