For Jonathan Simmons of Jonathan’s Spoons, running a cottage industry that creates and sells handcrafted, natural wood products is more than business. It’s an extension of his personal philosophy, which prizes independence and fair trade over all.

“It means I am free to do what I want,” said Simmons, 58, “but it’s more than that. It’s being free to take my ideas and make them into something. My mission is to take at least some of the ideas and bring them into the physical world. Ideas are spiritual things. They rain down upon us and it’s up to us to do something with them.”

If the emphasis on spirituality in a capitalist context seems odd, Simmons is comfortable with the incongruity; his father was a pastor in the Swedenborg Church who would remind his children that life is best enjoyed when utilizing the bounty of nature in a meaningful way while acknowledging the greater power that provides it.

Jonathan Simmons – Photo credit: Arts Business Institute.

“It’s very satisfying to have things out of my imagination be created in the physical world,” Simmons added.

The pastor’s son was serving as an apprentice to a furniture maker in the mid-70s when he created his first wooden spoon, a matter of necessity because he had forgotten to pack a spoon in his bag lunch that day.

It would be a few years later, while casting about for ideas for his own business in Maine that Simmons flashed back on that simple moment of invention. By 1979, Jonathan’s Spoons was a bona fide business based in Kempton, Pennsylvania, where native hardwood is plentiful.

“At my first national craft show,” Simmons recalls on his website, “I underpriced my spoons and sold out my years’ production in the first hour of the show.”

Originally, Simmons crafted his spoons from lilac, plum, and honeysuckle woods. However, he found cherry wood to be best suited for its durability, color and grain. Soon, his spoon product line had grown to include spatulas, tongs, spaghetti forks and spreaders, rendered in the Arts and Crafts style. He even features spoons for left-handed chefs.

However, it was several years before Simmons and wife Julia agreed to expand their modest operation and hired a friend as the first employee. “I had to accept the role of owner and take ownership of my own business.”

Working conditions at Jonathan’s Spoons reflect the sensibility of the founder.

“People work better with more freedom,” Simmons said. “I want the people who are doing the work of making the spoons to enjoy it. I have no intention to use slave labor, as it seems most companies are doing. Freedom is just very important to me. My employees are free to come and go, as they want; we have a very open schedule.”

Moreover, employees are free to earn more or less according to their efforts based on a piece rate system. “I treat them as if they are operating their own mini business within mine.”

Of course, all hands must be on deck in the early fall to fulfill Christmas orders. Directly after the holidays, the workshop is again at full tilt, creating inventory for the wholesale season and trade shows.

Seven years ago, Jonathan’s Spoons faced its first full-on crisis: a former employee launched a line of knock-off spoons. While Simmons initially tried to stop the competitor, he decided to withdraw from the battle.  Good fortune, he said, unexpectedly intervened; kitchen guru Rachael Ray gushed over Jonathan’s “Original Lazy Spoon” on a televised segment and sales doubled overnight.

“It was a karmic thing to let go of a fight,” Simmons said, “and wonder what was going to happen in a tough economy and then have it turn around so amazingly. It was a lasting effect; it was beyond a flash in the pan.”

Additional products join the line thanks to equal parts instinct and whim, not due to extensive focus group research. Simmons has created wooden boxes. One of his five children suggested hand tooled stands for iPhones and iPads. Simmons is currently weighing the feasibility of a line of furniture, crafted for assembly without glue. His latest brainchild is a pen spoon “that you can write with – and eat your yogurt. Not sure whether it will fly but it’s something I have always wanted.”

Prone to understatement in his work, Simmons doesn’t emphasize that he only uses wood harvested through sustainable practices.

“We utilize as much of the wood as we can. But I don’t talk about it a whole lot with [customers]. I haven’t hyped that. I don’t feel I’m very good at hyping stuff. I’m just trying to make an honest product.”

Feeling inspired to get in the kitchen yourself? Check out our exclusive collections from Hudson Made, featuring one-of-a-kind items paired with some of our most popular kitchen products:

Flame-Blackened Wide Ladel	Jonathan’s Spoons Set	The Deluxe Kitchen Set

Jay Blotcher, a longtime writer for magazines, relocated from New York City to the Hudson Valley in 2001. He is currently at work on Holding On, a new musical about Harlem life in the 1960s with composer Neil Klein. www.holdingonthemusical.com

Weary of the urban work-for-life equation, I relocated to the Mid-Hudson Valley in the summer of 2001. True, the economy up here had been anemic for some time, as industries like IBM downsized and other businesses like farming continued to fade.

A view of the Mid-Hudson Valley captured by Michael Gross

But the lower cost of living in this region actually liberates people from unwanted jobs. Most people I came to know enjoy hyphenate occupations: artist-masseur, caterer-craftsman and so on. While lucrative jobs here are in short supply, living costs are much lower than in New York City and people are able to cobble together careers for themselves that more readily draw from their talents. In this region, cottage industries are often the norm.

Friends and neighbors may be working irregular hours, but they are doing what they love. In this realm, I also found liberation; I launched Jayboy Greetings, a greeting card business from my collage art designs, and for three years I sold them in stores locally, as well as Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco. I even had several designs picked up by a company that sold them nationwide.

Challenging economic conditions require ingenuity. Mid-Hudson Valley residents have responded with a resurgence of independent businesses. Handcrafted wares or artisanal foodstuffs are displayed at farmer’s markets, gift stores, seasonal fairs and online. Local business development groups as well as Cornell Cooperative Extension hold seminars to teach cottage industry folks how to carve a niche for themselves through marketing of their unique products.

Here is a survey of three Hudson Valley-based cottage industries that embody the Hudson Made aesthetic, both in their top-notch products as well as their passionate, responsible and sustainable business practices.

(From left to right) Jenifer Green (Director of Sales and Partner), Don Green (Designer and Partner), and Susan Riesen (Director of Production) of Greentree Home Candle. (Photo credit: Greentree Home Candle)

Greentree Home Candle in Delhi, NY in the upper Catskills originated as a home furniture business, created by a husband and wife team originally based in Philadelphia. They realized that college art degrees (he in sculpture and she in painting) didn’t guarantee a livelihood. Once the furniture took off, they branched out into smaller accessories, notably candleholders and then candles. Greentree Home Candle inventory has evolved from one style of taper to more than 25 in 18 different colors. All candles are crafted from 100% beeswax.

The pair relocated to the Hudson Valley, said co-owner Jennifer Green, recognizing it as a supportive place for small business for myriad reasons: affordable real estate, beautiful views and the concentration of  “like-minded artists and crafts people in the area.” Ironically, the high price points of the artisan candles price them out of this region’s economy.

Their work is labor-intensive, Green said. Each candle is hand-poured and hand-finished. “We’re not a factory; this is a studio.” Literature with each product emphasizes the East Coast-sourced beeswax candles, which have longer burn times, as well as the use of recycled packaging materials. (Green explains to retailers that commercial candles use petroleum-based paraffin — a suspected carcinogen — and hyper-allergenic chemical scents.)

Greentree, now a five-person business, wants to remain small. Furthermore, they are pledged to support other small businesses.

“We’re never going to sell to a Big Box store.”

A look inside the workshop of veteran woodworker Joshua Vogel, founder of Black Creek Mercantile. (Photo credit: Steffen Thalemann)

Based in Kingston, NY, Black Creek Mercantile is the personal enterprise of veteran woodworker Joshua Vogel, 42, who relocated from Brooklyn four years ago to launch a business that makes sculptural woodwork and focuses on small pieces. They also produce cutting board oil that extends the life of their handcrafted cutting boards, a sideline that brings in a steady income.

Joshua Vogel, founder of Black Creek Mercantile. (Photo credit: Steffen Thalemann)

The decision to move to the Valley to launch this business was a simple matter of supply.

“The biggest thing as a woodworker at heart is the abundance of wood upstate,” Vogel said. “Every time there is a storm there’s a tree that falls over. I said to myself: I’m in the right spot.” Vogel also cites a furniture making tradition here in the Valley that goes back centuries.

As a cottage industry, Vogel doesn’t have to create elaborate ad campaigns to promote product, most of which he sells online; he lets the work speak for itself.

“We don’t consciously fabricate a story to put out there. We just try to do what we’re doing and try to let that show through. With cottage industry, transparency is a given. We make everything that we do. There’s not any hidden middleman. The honesty and openness work really well for general marketing.”

Like Green Tree, Black Creek finds its price points are a barrier in its own region. “Not all of my neighbors can afford the work that we do.”

Pure Honey from Lucky Star Industries features prominently in Hudson Made gift sets.

Lucky Star Industries Honey of Ardsley, NY, is a side project of veteran TV commercial producer Ed Fountain who has spent three decades creating special effects for clients like Dunkin Donuts, Denny’s and KFC.

Lucky Star was launched 20 years ago, stemming from an apiarist hobby that Fountain learned at the knee of his father in Westchester as a child. (The name was originally used for his sound effects business.)

Fountain maintains six hives that annually produce between 200 and 500 pounds of honey. Originally, he would bring the honey to TV shoots and sell to his industry colleagues. But his supply was growing and he needed to move it more effectively. The notion of standing at a table of a farmer’s market weekly did not entice Fountain, so he had looked for other venues, even designing his own labels.

“People love local honey,” Fountain said. “It has more complex flavoring than the commercial honey. Local honey contains local pollen so it helps with local allergies.”

Until now, Fountain has been content to keep Lucky Star Industries Honey as a sideline business. Output from six hives accounts for 15 percent of his income. However, within four years, he plans to retire from the TV business and the honey business will provide his sole income, which would be a sweet and welcomed change of pace.

Jay Blotcher, a longtime writer for magazines, relocated from New York City to the Hudson Valley in 2001. He is currently at work on Holding On, a new musical about Harlem life in the 1960s with composer Neil Klein. www.holdingonthemusical.com