From scratch: A chef and former farmer escapes an abusive relationship and builds a food business and supportive place to call home in West Virginia
I’m excited to invite you to my conversation with Melissa Rebholz, a chef, farmer and the passionate driving force behind Midge’s Kitchen in Wheeling, West Virginia.I initially connected with Melissa back in 2015 when she was farming solo in the rural Appalachian town of Greenville, Tennessee. Several years before I visited, Melissa had left NYC to learn to farm. She moved around to different farm jobs, including a stint in California working at Green String farm.The cost of living in California, paired with her desire to be closer to her family in upstate New York inspired her move to Tennessee to grow for a non-profit farm. Several years after I visited Melissa in Greenville, she had to leave the home and farm she had built to remove herself from an abusive relationship and start from scratch. The inner strength Melissa has harnessed to break free from that toxic relationship and start anew is inspiring.Melissa has moved several times since leaving Tennessee and planted roots in Wheeling at the beginning of the pandemic. The pandemic made Melissa realize that she needed to stop postponing her dreams and go after them - there is no sense waiting for the right time because there is no such thing as perfect timing. In 2020 Melissa left her job and enrolled in a small business incubator program so that she could put together a plan and finally build her own food related business. She encourages anyone wanting to start a small business to listen to their own community's wants and needs because the ultimate goal of any small business is fix a problem or fill a hole in local offerings.Melissa is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to growing food, farming, building a community and a business in a new place. My hope is that Melissa's entrepreneurial will inspire others to consider betting on themselves and working towards building their own business. I highly encourage anyone who finds themselves in Wheeling, West Virginia, to go eat at Midge's Kitchen. To read Melissa's Urban Exodus feature from 2015 and see images of her culinary delights and kitchen garden visit the Urban Exodus Blog.Support the showSign up for Apple Podcasts premium or our Patreon Membership for ad-free listening, rapid-fire guest interviews & our new mini-pod Ditch the City. urbanexodus.com | @theurbanexodus | buy the book