Family secrets flavor the Fishers Winter Farmers Market

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Fishers Winter Farmers Market hosts several dozen merchants Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon at Roy G. Holland Memorial Park. Owners of Grandpa's Beef Jerky and Mathoo's Eggrolls, inspired by family recipes, rely on weekly business at the market. Jenna Watson/IndyStar

To the average patron, the ubiquitous Saturday farmer’s market means an early morning stroll along an improvised agrarian Main Street, a lot of browsing and, maybe, shelling out a few bucks for a bag of apples.

But to the vendors selling fruits, vegetables, honey, meats, oatmeal and bath salts, it can be an entrepreneurial launching pad that catapults their homemade creations from hobby to business.

That's true at the Fishers Winter Farmer’s Market, now in its second year, where local businesses dominate and family recipes reign supreme for two Fishers residents.

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At Mathoos Egg Rolls, Bea Gustin sells the egg rolls her Lao mother taught her to make. Jacob Piercy peddles beef jerky recipes he learned from his grandfather, an avid hunter, at Grandpa’s Beef Jerky.

Both items have been among the best sellers at the summer Fishers Farmers Market, which Gustin and Piercy credit for their success.

“The Fishers market is why we are in business,” Piercy said. “Without it, we could not have grown.”

“It’s where I sold my first egg roll,” Gustin said. “And the city helped me jump through red tape and hoops to cook them on site.”

While the Fishers summer market has been around 18 years and is up to 63 vendors, the nascent winter market outgrew its old digs in one year. So this winter, Fishers moved it from the Billericay Park Building to Roy G. Holland Memorial Park. Since resuming Nov. 4, the attendance has averaged 460 people a week compared to 180 last year,  said Casey Cawthon, a spokeswoman for Fishers.  

The winter market averages 23 vendors a week.

Gustin’s egg rolls often draw the longest lines, with customers raving about their crispiness and freshness. She makes only one kind — pork — with carrots, cabbage and onion, tightly rolled and gently lowered into a deep fryer.

Gusitn’s mother, Khamphong Hanlotxomphou, made the egg rolls at home since Gustin was a child and later sold them at her factory job in Fort Wayne. 

“That helped get me through college,” she said.

About eight years ago, Khamphong taught Gustin to make the make the egg rolls over the course of year — and in 2011 she began selling them at the Fishers market. They were an instant hit because they come out of a deep fryer hot, fresh and ready to eat.

“The vegetables are always fresh, and I pick up the pork at three times at a locally sourced butcher,” at Munsee Meats, in Muncie, Gustin said.

Gustin said rolling the egg rolls tight is the key to preventing them from getting too greasy. Delicate handling in the fryer is important, too.

In the summer, the rolls are wrapped and cooked at the market; in the winter, they are prepared at a nearby kitchen and brought over still hot. The start at $2 a piece. 

Gustin's success at the farmers markets, including Brownsburg and Noblesville, has allowed her to branch out. She has a three-person operation at a kitchen in Noblesvlille and sells the egg rolls on the internet at Marketwagon.com and at Moody’s Butcher Shop in Geist. Three restaurants now serve them as appetizers; Pinheads in Fishers, Grand Junction Brewing in Westfield and the Tin Plate in Elkhart.

Piercy reminders tagging along with this grandfather, a conductor on Conrail freight trains, during deer hunting trips near Winamac. With the venison, Lloyd Miller would make jerky and hand it out to his eight children and what soon numbered 20 grandchildren.

“There was always jerky around,” Piercy said. “I don’t do much hunting but would sit in the deer stand with him and eat jerky or in the boat on fishing trips."

Miller retired in 1989 and soon stopped hunting, so he started making jerky from store-bought meats, which satisfied the family’s carving.

But when Piercy took a job at a newspaper in Charlotte, N.C., in 1999, he discovered he couldn’t find beef jerky to his liking in the South. When he came home to visit, he’d eagerly grab as much of Miller’s as he could.

“Once I took about three bags, and he got mad," Piercy said. "So I said, 'Why don’t you just show me how to make it?' "

Over a five day period, Miller showed his grandson how to buy the meat, trim it, cook it and bag it. When Piercy got back to work at the newspaper he sold bags to editors, photographers and reporters and did so until he got laid off from another paper in 2009. Over the years he tinkered with flavors and recipes. He returned to Indiana and, in 2012, decided to try to sell his jerky at the Fishers Farmers Market.

“It’s been amazing,” Piercy said. “I’d say sales have increased about 20 percent each year.”

Piercy now offers several flavors that he said Miller, who died in 2007, would not recognize.

“If he knew I was putting blueberries in the jerky, he would go crazy,” Piercy said.

The blueberry jerky is combined with habanero peppers for a hot and sweet combo, one of Grandpa’s biggest sellers. The other big seller is a flavor his son concocted, ghost pepper. Piercy said he is able to remove much of the heat to keep the jerky edible and preserve the flavor of the peppers.

“Those two usually sell twice as many as the others,” he said. Grandpa’s also sells original hickory, Cajun and teriyaki jerky.

Piercy's beef jerky is for sale for at the market for $8 or three bags for $20. They are also for sale in about two dozen stores, mostly specialty shops, in Central Indiana, and he is trying to get major outlets to sell it.

Piercy has a full-time job in digital design in Indianapolis, and his father runs the day-to-day jerky operation.

"It's become a full-time, part-time job," Piercy said. "But I'm not complaining."

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at 317 444-6418. Follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Fishers Winter Farmers Market

When: 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays through March 10.

Where: Roy G. Holland Memorial Park, 1 Park Drive, Fishers.

Contact: http://www.fishers.in.us/farmersmarket.

What's available: More than 20 vendors selling baked goods, produce, meat, poultry, cheese, eggs and ready to eat food and drinks.