Jack's Mountain Q&A with Myron Stoltzfus

A: Jack’s Mountain is a mountain in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania that has been called Jack’s Mountain for over 200 years. It begins in an area called “the narrows,” which is at the beginning of Big Valley, which is where Belleville is located. For me personally, Jack’s Mountain is significant because Belleville is where my grandmother was born and lived until she married my grandfather. My grandfather traveled to Belleville as a young man with friends to hunt deer during hunting season. While there, my grandfather went to an Amish “singin’” and he met my grandmother. In the time that he courted my grandmother, he would travel from his home in New Holland in Lancaster County to Belleville by train. By doing so, he passed through the gap in the mountains known as the narrows and the foot of Jack’s Mountain. Something about that mountain is nostalgic to me knowing that he passed by it often. I feel a connection to that area.

 

A: I ended up building a smokehouse at our family cabin, which is located at the foot of Jack’s Mountain, for some of my own personal curing and smoking of meats. As a family project with my children and grandchildren, we would sometimes smoke meats in that smokehouse. We used the long, slow, time-honored process of deep smoking the meat, which yielded a product that I remembered eating as a child. It had a depth of flavor that was just incredible. I was able to duplicate that process to a larger scale so that we could offer a line of Jack’s Mountain products from our wholesale plant to customers. Basically, we created something we loved and wanted to share it with everyone. That is kind of at the core of everything we do. Everything we make is something we’re proud of and want to share with others. It’s deeper than just selling great meat products; I consider it an expression of my personality and a way to share hospitality with those I care about.

 

*Side note: if you want to see Myron's handmade smokehouse in action, you can watch him smoke a personal batch of bacon in this video.

 

A: The Jack’s Mountain line is certainly a more “hand-crafted,” “artisan-style” line than most of our other products. This line is more heavily smoked and has a greater focus on the smoking process. I would call it more of an art than a science and something that reflects old-fashioned traditions of the smoking process.

 

A: For the beef bologna, I wanted to create a product that was shelf stable, or doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and to enhance the flavor of our traditional sweet bologna. A major component in producing Jack’s Mountain beef bologna is the smoking process, which again, is a deeper, denser smoke. Personally, I think this Jack’s Mountain beef bologna is one of my favorite products that Stoltzfus Meats makes. While our sweet bologna is an award-winning bologna, this ratcheted that quality up to a new level. We took something great and made it even better. I’m excited to be getting some really good feedback on this product and we’re happy to start sharing it with everyone! I’m also looking forward to continuing to develop some other products to add to this line in the future.