Lodged within long dirt-path roads and tall shady trees as a little boy, Bill Lester, 51, learned how to make better food decisions for his family while living in a Southern Ohio food desert.
Bill has planned to retire in the area — a town named Miller that can be passed in under a minute — but a place that allows him to point over in the woods to the direction of his childhood home.
“It’s home, and it’s where I was born. It’s familiar and where my mom and dad live; it’s where my wife’s mom and dad live,” Bill explained. “The person that decided to move here two or three generations ago, they kind of started that for our family.”
An outsider could be easily lost in the woods of Lawrence County, Ohio, with no map.
However, Bill is no outsider. He has never lost a connection to his family and roots of Appalachian heritage for the past five decades.
Miller has a Dollar General within a 5-7 minute drive in each direction of Route 7 but is only considered an emergency destination for the Lester family. While Bill didn’t have Dollar Generals growing up, his family would still have to drive to bigger cities for what he knew as the “weekly giant trip.”
“No such thing as a Walmart Supercenter [here]. When I was first born, we didn’t even have a Kroger’s around here. We just had locally owned grocery stores,” he said “Once a week, the buggy would be heaped up with all the stuff. There were no words out there like organic or anything like that.”
Bill said that there would be the occasional snacks and ice cream, but the home would quickly run out of the “fun stuff,” and the simple meals were what his family grew up with.
While working in a bigger city 30 plus minutes away, he is able to have access to daily groceries and even make his own sourdough bread, satisfying his family's love for bread — his wife and two kids in their early 20’s. Bill said he often has to buy groceries daily to continue to eat fresh food that would typically be “bad” after a few days.
He knows that making homemade bread isn’t convenient for everyone — as there is a three day process and the need to compare store-bought resources — he still considers himself no different than anyone else who lives in the country.
“We’re all just people, aren’t we,” Bill asked himself when realizing that while stereotypes are created for people in the region — that could be true or false about specific individuals — everyone has their own relationships with food, health, and financial security.
“That’s been my experience when I go to other places. Appalachia has a reputation but I’ve found that there are people like what is described in media, to be everywhere,” Bill mentioned about his travels to Florida, Michigan, California, and Texas. “I’ve seen little towns out in the middle of nowhere, where there’s some kind of little store and people living in a squalor… it doesn’t seem to me that they’re really different.”
Even while living in a technology-focused society and having a dependable career, Bill bought his first smart phone in 2018. When a family member was in a nursing home with dementia, he realized that he needed to stop avoiding the tool and began to capture his life through photos.
Bill created an Instagram in early 2020 to document his progress with sourdough bread. With over 350 followers as of summer 2022, people all over the nation like and comment on the bread that he creates in a three-day span from his little white kitchen.
The power of simplicity and homemade Appalachia meals are frequent in the house, and the Lester family relies on it.
The family attributes to the long process of homemade bread, and eats simple meals of fresh greens, potatoes, soups, and grass-fed red meat. The family uses the bread with butter and makes occasional home-made pizza.
“When you pull that pan out of the oven… and you see that thing bloomed up there like a big flower, it’s a good feeling,” Bill said. Now he’s able to make and bring bread to his family and friend’s homes and show them a way that has changed his cooking forever.
June 2022