Chris Chmiel keeps a methodical daily schedule, a set routine. But there’s adventure built into that routine, just like there’s a climbing wall built into his house — the house he built himself on the farm he built to cultivate the business he built. Like everything in his life, it’s all interconnected. That’s why Integration Acres is the perfect moniker for his one-of-a-kind enterprise.
The DIY King
When it came time to pick a college, Chris had already experienced life in small town Indiana and the big city of Cincinnati. He preferred the small town, and so he chose to attend Ohio University where he created his own major: Holistic Transition to Sustainability. The specialized studies degree included courses in botany, anthropology, biology and economics.
Chris’ studies led him to Mexico where he came across the guanabana or soursop tree, an evergreen that produces tropical fruit used in juices, candy and even ice cream. Its flavor is a tasty amalgam of strawberry, pineapple, banana and maybe a little coconut thrown in. It’s sometimes referred to as the “prickly custard apple.”
And it reminded Chris of a fruit he’d seen rotting on the ground in the forests of Southeast Ohio. The pawpaw became Chris’ passion.
Pawpaws to the People
Established in 1996, Integration Acres is now the world’s largest supplier and processor of pawpaws.
Chris attributes his success to one simple act: “I got involved.” He started researching the pawpaw and its nutritional value; he attended conferences and met people. He founded the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association and currently serves on the board of the national Pawpaw Foundation.
If you find yourself in Athens County in mid-September, you’ll have to take in another of Chris’ creations, the Ohio Pawpaw Festival, now celebrating its 10th year. It’s your chance to sample pawpaw beer, popsicles and lots of other regional flavor.
“Nobody anywhere is doing as much to get pawpaws into the hands of the people as we are,” Chris says with pride.
Diversification by the Season
Man cannot live by pawpaw alone. And if nature abhors a vacuum, she loves integration.
Integration Acres uses agricultural techniques in harmony with nature and its cycles. So the farm adheres to an annual schedule, harvesting products that share mutually beneficial relationships with each other. Of course diversity makes good business sense too; if one crop is down in any particular year, the others pick up the revenue slack.
Black walnuts were the first addition to the farm’s repertoire. Like pawpaws, Chris grows them and buys them from local families who certainly appreciate the supplemental income from what’s naturally occurring on their land anyway.
The farm has a machine that hulls the walnuts, which are then sold to a company in Montana. Thanks to a USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant, “Black Walnut Hulls: Turning Trash into Treasure,” the crop’s waste is now lucrative as well. Hulls are composted or turned into mulch and sold off. Chris refers to this particular revenue stream as part of the “earth bank.”
An additional SARE grant, “Using Animals to Manage Pawpaw Patches,” brought goats to Integration Acres, making it one of just a handful of farmstead goat cheese producers in Ohio. The grazing animals help tend and fertilize the farm’s orchards, but they leave the pawpaw trees alone because of powerful natural chemicals the trees produce to defend themselves from predators.
Making chevre and feta from the goats’ milk is a family affair. Chris counts on help from his wife, Michelle, and their two young children. Three-year-old Hazel loves to help salt the feta. And the farm’s pigs, Sloppy Joe and Sloppy Jane, love to eat the whey, a byproduct of the cheese-making process.
Nothing goes to waste at Integration Acres.
Integration: To Make Whole
Chris Chmiel and Integration Acres have repeatedly remixed and reinvented business, but always with the utmost respect for nature and the “interconnectedness of life.”
Chris considers himself an eco-entrepreneur and permaculture activist. It’s no surprise that these labels integrate multiple concepts. Permaculture, a word that blends permanent agriculture with permanent culture, is all about thoughtfully planning your place in the environment. That’s certainly what Chris has done.
“I live by the triple bottom line,” he explains. “Family, health, happiness.”
