Lillie Belle Farms - Chocolate to Die For
What is an former LA chef and B&B owner to do when midlife crisis hits?
Move to southern Oregon, buy a two-acre, defunct berry farm in need of lots of work and start a boutique, hand-made chocolate company of course.
First, you need to plant some fruit - gold raspberries, marionberries, boysenberries, purple raspberries, red raspberries, three varieties of strawberries, blueberries and four varieties of grapes - farm organically, make deals with a nearby sustainable-certified dairy, and source top-quality ingredients like organic chocolate couverture.
Then you start with amazing fruit preserves and work your way up to making chocolate truffles out of your home kitchen (legal in Oregon) and sell them at local farmers’ markets out of the back of your pickup truck. The rest is history, as they say.
