Local farmers and musicians spend time relaxing and playing music Sept. 9 outside the farm stand at the Lansing General Store.
LANSING, W.Va. — A new community hub has sprouted in the New River Gorge region to provide local farmers a place to sell their produce in a general store setting.
Owner Sierra Hattier said she purchased and reimagined the Lansing General Store as an avenue to provide better food to locals, seven days a week.
“Not everyone can make it to the Saturday farmer’s market to buy or to sell, and they need a place to find seasonal crops,” she explained. “We are supporting our local farmers and can appreciate local food a little more because it is grown with care.”
Hattier said the general store is meant, as in the past, to serve the adjacent campground as well as be a local grocer for the community. Because her family has food allergies, she said it was important for her to provide whole grains, whole food options, gluten-free flour and organic options for the community.
The store also sells an assortment of regional and microbrewery beers as well as wine, tobacco and convenience products.
She also plans to slowly expand local artisan goods and homeopathic remedies.
Hattier moved with her small family to West Virginia from Salt Lake City in 2013 after her father, a longtime rafting guide nicknamed Burley Ray, passed away, and she took over his campground business.
“I had never lived full-time in West Virginia but I visited my father over the summers since I was age 6 or 7,” she explained. “It was always a special place for me to come and go out on the river.”
She said she spent a few years running the campground, but still hoped to homestead or find an outlet for her interest in health and whole food.
While living outside the state, she remembers seeing Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution,” which shined light on Huntington’s high child obesity rates.
The general store had always been a nearby fixture of her childhood, and it made sense for it to become a community resource for an in-and-out, convenient location to make “real food more available.”
She said she’s happy to have visitors stop and to direct them to Fayetteville or around the corner to the Burrito Bar.
“The more sound our community becomes, the more people will want to come here because it is thriving,” she said.
The Lansing General Store is at 349 Lansing Edmond Road, Lansing.
Hours through mid-October are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 to 8 p.m. Sunday.
For more information, follow Lansing General Store on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LansingMarketPlace/ or call 304-574-1654.
— Email: [email protected]; follow on Twitter @Sarah_E_Plummer
