MONTAGUE CENTER — Paul Voliand is feeding his passion as he kneads dough for his “Darker Side of Oatmeal” bread.
About a year after opening his Red Fire North market on Route 63 just outside the village center where he’s lived for nearly 30 years — and where his son, Ryan, first got a taste of organic gardening on a grand scale — Voiland is turning out whole-grain breads, pastries, pizzas and other baked goods in his new stone-lined oven.
Every day at the store, which also features a daily soup, sells pizza slices and samosas, while also selling vegetables and groceries, Voiland is turning a mix of Italian flatbread, whole-wheat or rye breads. There’s even a sourdough bread made with a starter that dates back 40 years to 1979, when he first ran a bakery, in Cortland, N.Y.
“Here, everything is more than 60 percent whole grain, and the sweeteners – the maple syrup and honey – come from right here,” says Voiland, wearing a flat-top newsboy’s cap, work shirt and jeans as he works in the baking area behind a counter that was originally part of the bar from the Montague Inn that occupied this space from 1953, off and on, until it closed several years ago.
His trim beard now turning gray, Voiland got his start in the 1970s running a Midwest natural-foods store that became a distributor for which he was operations director.
Elm Street Bakery, which he bought in 1979 in central New York state, had a 15-by-15-foot hearth oven built by an Italian baker who became his mentor.
“He showed me the old Sicilian style, and I merged that with whole grains, no artificial sweeteners or flavors,” remembers Voiland, who turned out breads, granola and other baked goods for several years, before moving to the Pioneer Valley and working as grocery manager at what was in 1986, Bread and Circus. He’d become skilled at mechanical operations as a jack-of-all-trades back when he’d started at the co-op, and after leaving the supermarket, he used those skills to work as a licensed refrigeration technician and gas fitter, when he moved to Montague in 1988.
It was Ryan who, at age 11, began growing the family garden into his own full-scale farm co-op.
“I had some pumpkins one year, and I said, ‘Why not take these out to the road and sell them?’ “ Paul Voiland recalls. “He was very entrepreneurial, and he sold them all in one afternoon.
After that, the boy read Eliot Coleman’s, “The Market Gardener,” and approached his father with an idea: “Dad, if you did things differently, you could sell vegetables all summer long. Paul Voiland was encouraging, he says, but then surprised when he found that his son, by now 14, had bought a pickup truck, and was even more surprised at being told, “We need it, because we need go to the farmers market in Greenfield.”
“Who’s we?” he asked, before finding himself being awoken at 4:30 on Saturdays to set up for the Greenfield market in the years before attending Cornell University and returning to set up Red Fire Farm in Granby, and then, on Meadow Road in Montague.
While Red Fire North Market is a separate entity, with the elder Voiland as owner, the store sells produce from the farm, along with its frozen pesto, frozen ginger and its tomato puree —which is also used, along with its garlic, basil and onions, in organic pizza that Voiland bakes Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 4 to 6 p.m., and also sells by the slice for lunch daily.
The farm’s blueberries are also used in the market’s muffins, which, like other Red Fire North baked goods, are made from organic New York State flour.
Focusing on local and organic products, the store tries to offer one-stop-shopping to its customers, says Manager Hannah McDonald.
In a sit-down cafe area that offers wireless service and Dean’s Beans Coffee, Ryan Voiland’s state tomato contest trophies are on display as Voiland serves up cookies, muffins and other baked goods, some of which he even makes with unsweetened chocolate he sweetens with local maple syrup
There’s Mapleline milk from Hadley, eggs from Montague and Northfield, Chase Hill Farm Cheese from Warwick, Kitchen Garden salsa from Sunderland, Real Pickles products and Full Moon Ghee from Greenfield. There’s maple syrup from Waidlich Farm in Millers Falls and Warm Color Apiary honey, as well as Saw Mill Site Farm horseradish from Deerfield, Appalachian Naturals dressings from Goshen, and even locally made cards and goat’s milk soaps. There’s even homemade granola and an array of natural herbs and bulk goods.
Open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily in the winter, and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in warmer weather, Red Fire North is fed by Voiland’s conviction that good nutrition and eating locally is important.
“So many of our health problems in America are really diet caused by eating lots of junk food,” he says. “The science solidly supports whole grains, unrefined sugars and minimal processing of food. When I add up all the information I see about food and its availability, and how much we can get per acre, it argues very strongly that people have to eat more plants and more plant-based foods. … Natural foods are very critical. And, the idea of being able get food directly to the community, in terms of the environment and the healthful quality of food, are principles I stubbornly cling to.”
Plans call for planting a small garden at the store for spinach, radishes, flowers and more.