Episode 3520

- This time on Tennessee Crossroads we head to Watertown in a downtown coffee shop with a special mission. Then meet a pair of talented natural woodworkers who are sharing their trade secrets. Then it's off to run to a different county in search of the perfect holiday tree. Finally, a visit to a landmark drug store soda shop in north Mississippi. Well, of course the name of this show is Tennessee Crossroads. I'm Joe Elmore happy to have you. When you live in a small town you don't have a coffee shop or bakery on every corner, but in Watertown as Tammi Arender discovered, there is a coffee house that not only serves great Java and food, it's also giving back to the community at the same time.

- Here is the vanilla. We fell in love with Watertown. My business partner and I both lived out this direction and we both just kept saying like Watertown just needs, it needs a neat little coffee place. Someplace that the community can go and just be.

- All right there. There you are.

- [Tammi] Ali O'Reel and her business partner, Austin Floyd were wooed by Watertown in Wilson county. The two grew up just down the road in Gladeville.

- All right thank you.

- All right. You have a great day.

- Thank you. All right, here's that ice marathoner, dear. There you go, love.

- Thank you.

- You are welcome. See you later.

- Bye.

- [Tammi] Watertown is a small map dot, but with a big heart.

- We feel like we're the heart of the community here. We're on the center of the square, right on the corner, people walk in any day or time and realize, "Oh, this is good. This feels like home."

- [Tammi] Ali and Austin own The Adopted Farmhouse Coffee Company.

- It was kind of born. It really wasn't something that we planned out. In fact, the building that we found available for rent, we rented it with half my husband's tip money, half her husband's tip money. It's really very interesting. It was kind of an accident.

- [Tammi] The ladies call it The Adopted Farmhouse 3.0 because it's the third location. Although the address may have changed a few times, the vision is still the same.

- We actually started right over on the Square, on the other side of the Square, I should say, and then a few doors down next to Nona Lisa Pizza, that was farmhouse 2.0 and then there is farmhouse 3.0 And this was our dream space. We love this space. There's so much history. We call it The Farm House on Mountain Block and we love all the windows. It's just so homey in here and just such a great place for the community and it's just peaceful.

- [Tammi] Their goal is to offer an oasis for people to come in, sit a spell, have a great cup of coffee and conversation, share a meal or a sweet treat. But there's much more to this menu than meets the eye and it's found in the name.

- Adoption also for us we take it very literally that we are adopted in. So in God's word it talks about us being adopted in and Romans 8:15. So we are adopted in and so that was another part of it for us, but also farmhouses our theme. And when you think of a farmhouse, coming home, the comfort, the peace there, that's a really big part of it for us.

- The coffee shop ended up playing a really big part of helping her bring her son home Alex. And we helped to walk through the fundraising. The community just really stepped in and just really helped to provide the funds to bring him home. We decided after that we wanted to help other families do that as well. So we called it the adopted farmhouse so that way we could walk through that adoption journey with other families.

- [Tammi] Austin and her husband were adopting Alex, their oldest son, who can often be found helping out at the coffee house when they first opened the store. Adoption is very expensive and exhausting. Well, with all the paperwork, legal hoops to jump through and travel, so the two thought it would be great to help others navigate that complicated and costly process.

- We've even had people come in and I've sat down with them and coach them through grant writing for the adoptions because I experienced that myself. So that's a huge part of our heart and our vision and something we'd like to continue to do on both a national and an international level.

- [Tammi] So several times a year, there will be designated donation days where a portion of the proceeds go to help other families hoping to give a forever home to a child in need.

- That's probably our favorite thing that we get to do here. We have customers that have eventually become family, and we've been able to help with a few adoptions already.

- [Tammi] The other part of the name, farmhouse, comes from not just the decor, but the decision to use area farmers when possible.

- We partner with a local honey company called High Flight Honey, it's named that because her husband is actually an international pilot. So super cute. They have 200 acres here in Watertown and they have some of the most incredible honey I've ever tasted. Then we have local produce, local eggs. We really try to pull in local as often as possible.

- We use Shop Springs Creamery for their milk and then we also use the Shop Springs farmer's market for their tomatoes and for their produce. We get our raw local honey from a lady just down the road. We have lots of great options from the local farmers. We try to bring them in as much as we possibly can.

- [Tammi] And another local connection is in the naming of the drinks. From Antique Jim's Honey Bourbon latte, to simply Nona's latte, it's all about connectivity to those doing life around you.

- Mr. Jim, who owns the antique store just down the road, he loved our honey bourbon latte, which we make the honey bourbon from scratch so we named it Antique Jim's Honey Bourbon latte. And then Nona Lisa who owns the it's Nona Lisa Pizzeria, she would come in and order the same thing all the time and so we named that drink after Nona, simply Nona latte. And then a farmhouse mocha, everyone refers to us as the farmhouse in town, so we named the farmhouse mocha because it's actually one of our most popular drinks.

- We incorporated into everything all the way through. So our local berries that we get for our baked goods, like the blueberry muffins, blackberry muffins, our kicking fig sandwich which is ridiculously good. We have a Watertown club sandwich, chicken bacon ranch wrap. I mean, really the possibilities are endless.

- Thank you.

- You are welcome.

- All right, I had to order Antique Jim's Honey Bourbon latte, and I'm not even a bourbon drinker but I got to try this. Wow, that is tasty. I love that local honey and you really don't taste the bourbon. Ali and Austin have brought two other ladies in to help run the kitchen, Kim does the savory and Heather does a dessert. All working together to bring this little slice of heaven to the Watertown Square.

- It's so peaceful. We get the word dreamy a lot. We have a lot of people say, it's so dreamy when you walk in. But we just want them to feel at home even if they're not from here. And, you know, we want it to be a spot that they're like, "Oh, I have to go back." When you are coming to someplace new I think people feel lost. Again, as a believer we want people to feel like they're coming home and to know that peace and that peace is definitely here.

- Thanks, Tammi. Our dear old friend Mr. Rogers made a career out of being a good neighbor and an inspiration to us all. Recently, Danielle Allen met a couple of woodworkers who began their business with the goal of being good neighbors to local youth, by mentoring young men teaching them a trade and having lots of fun in the meantime.

- [Danielle] There are three things you will always find at Maple Built in north Nashville. A lot of wood, a lot of sanding and a lot of creative pieces from brothers Will and Schuyler Anderson.

- It's hard to describe an average afternoon in Maple Built because so much of what we do varies day by day. It's always has a general theme of woodworking to it so they're always be sanding, there will always be chop saws going.

- [Danielle] At Maple Built, they make a little bit of everything. Home decor, large mosaics and custom pieces for places around town. But Will and Schuyler are doing more than just reshaping wood. They're also transforming lives.

- Hold this guy down. Lining it up to 14 and a half. I thought was pretty good. So it's good to you?

- Yeah.

- Here, let's start it.

- We roughly say Maple Built is a season of life where we invite young men from particularly north Nashville but or areas to join us here, to employ train and mentor.

- [Danielle] Teenage boys can do a six month apprenticeship here. It's a chance to learn the art of woodworking and some life lessons along the way.

- There's also been afternoons where we just kind of shut it down and talk about, you know, getting shut down for prom. And so sometimes it's just processing high school boy stuff.

- [Danielle] So why woodworking? Well, it's a skill you can use in any career.

- Woodworking is such a great teaching tool because it's immediate response. Is if you do something well, you see it immediately. If you do something poorly, you also see it immediately. And there's something different about doing something and being a part of something that when it's finished you can be like, "Wow, I made that."

- [Danielle] Will got the idea for a woodworking shop back in 2012. He had just moved to the Seven Town area and he was on a mission to answer one question, how can I be a good neighbor?

- Big part of being a good neighbor was asking my neighbors what they thought instead of showing up and then just kind of declaring this is what my neighborhood needs. Because honestly, the things that I probably would have prescribed as needs, like are not things that the neighborhood would have identified for itself. But I heard a lot of concerned, you know, concerned moms and aunts and grandmothers worried about, you know, what came next for the young men in their families. And so Maple Built as we are, it we're a step in the process of just trying to continue to address that need of creating a space where young men can figure out what comes next.

- [Danielle] Now, if you want to know the entire story behind Maple Built, you have to start with skateboards. That's what got this whole thing rolling.

- Started as a skateboard company and that's what we did for about four years. And we did skateboards exclusively. And in 2016, we wanted to be able to do more. We had started tinker around in the wood shop doing more projects and for the sake of kind of brand confusion, we started Maple Built.

- [Danielle] There's a skateboard park right next to the building, and you can find Will showing off his skills every now and then. But, don't expect to see Schuyler out there.

- I cruise. I had a lot of skateboard accidents growing up. And I mean, now that I'm on my own insurance, that I am adult, I don't like paying deductibles. So...

- But you end up doing it.

- But I ended up doing it anyway. So I cruise around, I don't necessarily hit the park anymore.

- [Danielle] With new designs like this Dolly Parton skateboard, Will and Schuyler are staying true to their roots, but they never shy away from a challenge.

- Honestly, it's just kind of been figuring it out as we go along just taking increasingly difficult projects. Like yesterday we had a client who asked for something and as we were sitting at the desk. Schuyler said, "You know, we can pitch them something we know how to do, or we can pitch them something that scares us a little bit."

- [Danielle] No matter what Will and Schuyler create, there's one thing that they're most proud of.

- I love that the work that I spend a majority of my life doing, like does something good and provide something good for my city and my neighborhood and like my streets. I love that I can leave at the end of the day, I can be tired, I can be covered in sweat and dust, but know that like those kind of skills are important.

- Thanks, Danielle. You know, the weeks leading up to Christmas can be hectic. Deciding on gifts, planning events, with all the to-do lists it's inevitable that something gets forgotten. Well, if it's that tree you forgotten, it's not too late. Miranda Cohen went down to a Rutherford county to find a top of the line tenant bond.

- [Miranda] Just off Cut Off Road in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, it's beginning to look a lot like, well actually it looks like this year round. The Country Cove Christmas Tree Farm started back in 1998 and has been owned by Joe and Jan Steiner since 2008.

- We used to come to this exact farm with our young girl.

- Well, it's a family affair. It's a family adventure for us. The kids were little at the time and it was just something fun that we could do.

- [Miranda] Like the beautiful trees themselves with lots of hard work and TLC, the business continues to grow. 35 acres, nearly 25 of those acres covered in the spirits of Christmas future.

- [Jan] We're busy year round. Trees get planted, trees get fertilized, the fields get mowed constantly in the summer, shearing and topping goes on in the summer, in the heat of summer cause the trees have to be prepared to be sold. So we're very busy here.

- [Miranda] There are Christmas trees as far as the eyes can see. Carolina sapphires, Leyland cypresses, white pines and many others.

- [Joe] We try a lot of different species. But I started with the white pine which is what the prior owner had been growing. It's native to Tennessee.

- [Jan] We've had some Turkish fir in the ground for 10 years and they are no bigger than three feet. So they grow very, very slow but they are beautiful trees. Therefore like I said, they're the only fir that we can grow in this part of the state.

- [Miranda] The perfect tree doesn't just appear overnight. It will take years for these saplings to mature and grow into the jolly hollies we all love.

- We start out with what they call liners, which is basically about this tall. Put them in pots if we have to or we plant directly into the ground. In the spring, always in the spring, open up the ground, put the sapling in it, close it, and then hope it survives. Usually about 80, 90 percent do.

- This actually one of the faster growing trees on the farm. This little tree was planted last spring, and it will take approximately four years before it turns into a beauty like this.

- Joe planted some trees behind us over here last week, Those are Carolina Sapphire. We expect those to be ready in five years, they should be six to seven feet tall which is usually the size that people would like them to be.

- [Miranda] And there are more than a few grinches Steiner has to deal with like tree disease, fungus, insects, stubborn clay soil, constant mowing and the searing Tennessee heat.

- [Joe] We do not water. The people ask that and we just can't keep up with watering.

- [Miranda] The Steiner's will be hard at work preparing for the most wonderful time of the year for 12 long months, starting in January with the cleanup.

- February we're planting, March we're planting, April we're starting to work on fertilizing cause we've got a hand fertilizer all the trees. Mowing. May we are doing some more mowing. And then June is the shearing season. Start that process July shearing. And then we start our field prep cause that takes about a whole month to get the fields ready for the next year. And then September, we're reshaping the trees that have grown during the summer. And then October we are doing some fungicide.

- [Miranda] Then in early fall, the trees will reveal their evergreen glory and authentic field of dreams. The familiar aroma fills the air. And if you think this looks like a holiday postcard, you're right.

- We just love Christmas and it's just gives you the Christmasy feel out here.

- [Miranda] In July, folk start booking their southern version of the Winter Wonderland shoots, from Labor Day until mid-November.

- I think it's authentic. We have real trees out here in the field. People love to get their Christmas cards done here. We've got our old truck which is super popular. It doesn't run, but it's really a cute setup.

- Loving it.

- [Miranda] Debbie Karsner of Key Moments is a professional photographer who loves capturing the holiday magic and turning it into a family heirloom.

- I just love all of their cute little vignettes and of course Christmas trees and the fun truck. So we love it out here. It's a magical time of year and it really has everything for your family photos. You get the best out of people outside. It's not so warmer.

- [Miranda] Even during the grueling months of summer, the farm is fully decorated by mother nature herself, a breathtaking backdrop for portraits.

- [Jan] Do a summertime for about six weeks in the past we've done sunflowers. Sunflowers have been really popular for us.

- [Miranda] And after Thanksgiving, it is all holiday hustle at Country Cove. The last season, nearly 2,000 Pines spruces and firs became beloved family Christmas trees.

- [Joe] And they are the ones that we don't have enough trees. We can't get them out fast enough and quick enough for our customers to enjoy. I thought you could double our tree production I think we could sell.

- [Jan] Well, they look for height, width, natal retention and especially if you're getting a pre-cut tree you wanna pull on the stem and if needles fall off past that one by, seven to eight is our most popular height. And scent, these Carolina sapphires that we're standing in. They have a wonderful orange citrus smell. It just will sent up your house.

- [Miranda] Choosing a tree and taking it home, a cherished family memory or maybe a new tradition. The Steiners are happy to help bring a little more magic into the lives of their neighbors and friends and they will work all year to do it. Jan Steiner says her husband Joe is as hardy as the trees themselves and is dedicated to the farm that brings so much joy to others.

- [Jan] I use the energizer bunny. He never seems to slow down. He works in the heat with the 18 year old kids, and I'm not gonna tell you how old he is. But he can stick with them. He just loves Country Cove. He just loves preparing the trees for our customers and he works very hard to make them perfect for the people that visit our farm every year. This year has made us realize how important family is and how important togetherness is. And people are really, really excited to come to the tree farm this year or any tree farm and just experience the tradition or start a tradition or continue their tradition.

- Thank you Miranda. Despite our name, sometimes the road we travel crosses a state line. In this case, a few miles south of the state line into Mississippi in a town called Corinth, and I'm glad we did. You see what was more like time travel than highway travel. And that's all thanks to the timeless magic one discovers and a seventh generation attraction. Founded at 1853, Corinth has been called Mississippi's gateway city due to its location in the northeast corner of the state. It's got a town square that's loaded with history, including our destination which is across from the Alcorn County Courthouse. Established in 1865, Borroum's is the oldest family owned drugstore and fountain in the state. A step back in time? Well, that's an understatement. With its art deco bar, antique soda fountain and original showcases, it's also a museum of local history, a gathering spot and a destination for far away visitors.

- We've had people from everywhere. Everywhere you can think of. somebody come through here and we often wonder how they find this place, but they do. They do. It's amazing.

- [Elmore] That's Lex Borroum Mitchell, fifth generation to operate this remarkable downtown landmark. The first two family owners were doctors, A.J. Borroum and his son J. A. Borroum. Then came Jane III James followed by Lex's mother, Camille who still works here occasionally as a pharmacist. All the Borroum's apparently loved history. The walls are filled with artifacts that include an assortment of civil war guns and rifles, hundreds of American Indian arrowheads, mostly from nearby Pickwick Lake, and early photos of life at Downtown Court.

- That's a lot of old medicine over there that Dave, mama or some of them have kept over the years. And so you can look back at it like Pluto water, you know.

- [Elmore] What was that?

- I lax dip. And a quinine and then she got a quinine bottle over there. But there's a lot of interesting stuff in there where we know, you know, we don't know much about.

- [Elmore] How about this? A 1926 model cash register that still works. No doubt the most popular and busiest attraction is the soda fountain. Now when's the last time you had a fountain drink with syrup and soda water or a handmade fountain milkshake? Those machines are pretty old too.

- All those things I've got a bunch of them. I've got probably 30 or 40 of them. Some they date back to the 40s. I've got some in the late 30s, but those I've got most of them ones I've got work, the winding goes bad in them what typically happens to them and I have to send them off. And then, you know, you wonder, well, I wonder if it was really worth $200 to get to every wound, you know.

- [Elmore] Get this. In 2010, Lex had the vintage disassembled and shipped out for a complete restoration.

- Well, I wanted to keep it. You know, we wanted to keep the history here, we wanted to keep the soda fountain. Part of this soda fountain dates back to the late 30s and part of it dates to the 40s, early 40s.

- [Elmore] By noon the place is packed with thirsty and hungry customers. And they can order everything from chicken salad to cheeseburgers. Today's special was corn bread salad, which includes beans, fresh greens and a secret sauce. Whenever they order, they must like it because they keep coming back.

- We love it here.

- We love here.

- The girls call us by our first name and we'll sit down and talk to us and we just, we enjoy and it's a real good family atmosphere and, you know, you get to talk politics and nobody gets mad.

- [Elmore] Did you know that Corinth is home to a legendary sandwich called the slug burger. Yeah, this is a Borroum's store menu item you gotta try at least once.

- We started during the depression. And they did that because the meat was so high they put a substitute in there like soybean meal or whatever they put in it. And as an extender, I guess you'd call it. And it's deep fried and it's doesn't have a lot of meat in it. The one we've got has got pork in it, but it's pretty good. You know, everybody, most people eat it with mustard onion and pickle.

- They're good. They're cheap. They're like different than a cheeseburger. I like the texture of them.

- There's some newcomers and wonder about that name.

- Oh they do. They do. But it didn't have anything to do with snails. And that's what to come for. Some of them will come here just to try the slug burger.

- And here it is. The onions pickle slug burger. It's time for initiation. it's good. By the way two other generations are involved in the family business, Lex's daughter Leslie is here full time, her brother Alex pitches in when he's not running his construction company, and then there's an 11 year old Lexi, whose quickly learning the ropes of the soda fountain. Borroum's drug store is a bonafide historical landmark. Still thriving, still a family tradition that just possibly could endure another century and a half.

- I would hope so but you know, you can't ever tell. Yeah, but I would hope so. Yeah. I think it will.

- Well back home in Tennessee it's time to say goodbye, but not before a mention of our website, TennesseeCrossroads.org of course. Follow us on Facebook and by all means join us next week.