Ashland Meat Company @ Cross Bros. Managing Partner Chris Stem (Image by Sarah Lockwood)
My sojourn was short but purposeful: I was hunting homemade blackberry jam, sleuthing food shops within a 5-mile radius of downtown Ashland. The big-box stores probably wouldn't have locally made sweet treats, I reasoned; brand-name jelly is all right in a pinch, but nothing goes better with snow-day biscuits than the quivery goodness of fruit spreads made from berries grown and picked somewhere just down the road or around the corner.
Ahead of the forecasted snow a few weeks back, I beat a path to Cross Brothers', the eclectic little grocery store hunkered close to the train tracks that, as a girl, I’d visited regularly with my mom and grandma. We could always find what we needed at Cross’.
Cross Brothers' Grocery was established in the tiny railroad town of Ashland in 1912. Brothers Herbert and Walter Cross developed a reputation for their butchery by providing high-quality, fresh beef, pork and chicken sourced from nearby Hanover County farms. Over the century that followed, Cross Bros. grew into a community anchor, offering to customers not only fresh fruits, vegetables and dry goods, but also neighborly warmth and old-fashioned charm.
"We still know all of our customers' names, and we tried to keep on as many familiar faces as we could as employees," says Chris Stem, one of several partners managing Ashland Meat Company @ Cross Bros., the butchery business now operating inside the original Cross Brothers' Grocery space at 107 S. Railroad St. in the heart of downtown Ashland. Stem owns Harlow Ridge Farm, a family-run operation in Montpelier, which supplies Ashland Meat Co.’s pork products such as rosemary-garlic sausage and pork chops. Stem's is one of many local farms providing provisions to the new business, which opened in May of this year.
"What we have committed to doing is furthering the original vision of the Cross brothers," says Stem, a Henrico County native. "We're providing local, quality meats to the community [that are] produced in the community. We're bringing it full circle."
Image by Sarah Lockwood
What the Cross brothers probably didn't envision happening inside their store 100 years ago: kids' yoga classes on Saturdays and exhibitions by homegrown artists. Stem says the store began hosting these offerings and others — pottery classes, club meetings, special events — this fall in the converted, connected event space next door dubbed The Depot. The 3,000-square-foot space The Depot now occupies dates back to the 1950s; the original brick interior wall and the old-school produce cooler dominating the front center of the room are reminders of days gone by and call up feelings of nostalgia for guests, says Stem.
"People tell us they remember coming in here with their grandparents during the holidays; this place brings backs happy memories for so many folks," says Stem. The partners are keeping the store's traditional holiday magic going by selling the Cross Brothers' Grocery original Christmas hard candy over the next several weeks, but new traditions are on the horizon. Hoping to add to Ashland's burgeoning arts culture — which includes an art gallery, history museum, live music venues and the fully revamped Ashland Theatre, set to open with a series of red carpet premiere events Dec. 26 — The Depot will host an exhibition of paintings Dec. 28 entitled "Feminine Forms." The artist, Mallory Nuckols, is an Ashland native whose collections of paintings will depict "the female form in an empowering, positive way, accentuating the beauty found in the body's shapes, curves, shadows and crevices." The exhibition, like some other community events slated at The Depot in the future, is free.
Image by Sarah Lockwood
Ashland is changing. Incorporated in 1858, by the turn of the century there were barely more than 1,000 people living in the “Center of the Universe,” as locals call the western Hanover County town. Today, more than 7,000 people live in Ashland; its identity as a college town, thanks to the presence of Randolph-Macon College, and its proximity to Richmond make it an ideal destination for families, and a welcome change of pace for urbanites looking to escape the city. These folks want good food and hip places to hang; Ashland Meat Co. @ Cross Bros. and The Depot are poised to appease a wide range of interests and tastes.
If your tastes, like mine, include fresh-baked bread and homemade jelly — I brought home a jar of Concord grape jam made by a local woman in her kitchen — there’s still a little store by the railroad tracks in Ashland bearing the Cross Bros. name, and these days, it’s a delicious combination of the old and new, of flashbacks and the future.
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