Heart Of The Bulk Meat Sale
Catherine Lang | Nov. 12, 2025
Warren Wilson College’s (WWC) Farm held its bi-annual bulk meat sale on Saturday, Nov. 8.
Shoshanna Caldes, the Farm’s bulk sales and office manager, has been preparing for the sale since the beginning of the semester alongside Jules Moreno, the Farm’s general store and online sales manager.
“I think this event is really cool and really fun because it's very student-involved,” Caldes said. “For me, it's really fun to be in this position and to plan this event because [I] see it from literally birth to plate.”
Senior Shoshanna Caldes, bulk sales and office manager of the Warren Wilson College (WWC) Farm, talks to customers at the WWC Bulk Meat Sale in Swannanoa, N.C. on Nov. 8, 2025. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
As Caldes and Moreno pulled handwritten order slips from an accordion envelope, volunteers collected shares of ground beef, bratwurst and hot Italian sausage, and carried the boxes to customers’ vehicles.
“This is very much a traditional thing for the Warren Wilson Farm,” Caldes said. “The reason that it's all pretty much paper is [that] it's [an] old time tradition, and people around here love that, especially a lot of the older folks.”
Crew members from the Forestry, Herb and Fiber Arts Crews each filled tables with student-made products for sale, including ginseng tinctures, homegrown turmeric powder and hand-dyed wool yarn.
The Farm generated approximately $29,000 from pre-order bulk meat sales alone; in addition, visitors purchased over $5,000 of meat from the Farm’s General Store. This total far surpassed the Farm’s goal of making between $12,000 and $15,000 from the event. All revenue from meat sales is directed into the school’s common pool of income.
Caldes attributes the Farm’s success to proactive marketing. She began in early September, putting up posters around Black Mountain, Swannanoa and Asheville, and running ads on Nextdoor, a location-based social networking app. For Caldes, the event meant “emailing, lots of emailing.”
Chef Gavin Baker, who has previously catered the bulk meat sale, returned to serve complimentary hors d'oeuvres to the event’s patrons. His hyper-local menu included handmade bao buns with green walnut char siu, pig head and dumpling soup paired with sumac-dusted bacon skin cracklings, and a pannacotta infused with paw paw, dogwood fruit and lemongrass from the school’s garden.
Through his project ReHarvest, Baker recruited a team of student volunteers, including current sophomore Erica Ostling and WWC alumnus Rosemary Thurber. Baker worked with Ostling and Thurber to prepare ingredients for several days leading up to the event, after trialing the menu alongside Thurber for a month and a half.
Baker, Ostling and Thurber cooked and prepared bao until 3 a.m. on the morning of the sale, returning to work again only three hours later.
Sophmore Thi Hyunh, senior Elder Waters and Warren Wilson College (WWC) alumnus Rosemary Thurber volunteer with ReHarvest serving food at the WWC Bulk Meat Sale in Swannanoa, N.C. on Nov. 8. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Sophomore Thi Huynh, who had previously attended a talk by ReHarvest, was stationed behind a large steel pot over a hot plate, ladling bowls of soup upon request.
“There's so much love and care and intention in every step of the way, that [somebody] can't tell just by getting the food,” Huynh said.
The concept behind ReHarvest is that there are many food products, such as bacon skin or a pig’s head, that food producers and restaurants will waste due to a lack of cultural appeal or capacity to prepare correctly. By approaching uncommon food with creativity, Baker can divert food from waste, and encourage others to rethink what they consider scraps.
Through seven trials, Baker calculated a preside method of dehydrating bacon skins that retained just enough water for them to expand, or “puff” when placed in a fryer.
When asked why he has committed so much of his time to unpaid work, Baker responded without missing a beat.
“I love it,” Baker said. “It's my purpose on the planet. This is my life's work.”
Thurber highlighted the pea sprouts that were used to garnish the pork bao. Peas were sown as a cover crop by the school’s Garden Crew, a legume that fixes nitrogen in the soil for future plantings.
“They're enriching the soil, but they're also delicious on the food, enriching all of us,” Thurber said. “It's a concept of joy. We're all just doing this for free and it's very important to us that the food is accessible to anyone that wants to try it.”
Approximately 3,000 lbs of beef, pork and lamb left the Farm on Saturday, filling the freezers of over 60 families.
Blair Thompson, the Farm’s manager, described his role as “just holding that long term vision,” while turning over the work of running the event to the students. The bulk meat sale has been a tradition of the WWC Farm for over 20 years; while the event hasn’t changed much since its origin, the addition of ReHarvest and the creativity of each generation of students has given the sale’s long-time patrons a reason to return each year.
The majority of customers came from Black Mountain and Swannanoa, though one family drove over 100 miles from Davidson, N.C. to pick up their order.
“This is where the people who make up our local community get to interface,” Thompson said. “For our neighbors, the ones who put up with us moving cattle on the road and all that, it's cool for them to get to participate with us in this way.”
