It’s 9:30 a.m. The scion of S. Wallace Edwards & Sons is not at his desk. Nope. S. Wallace Edwards III is next door at the plant, wrist-deep in sausage. Wearing khakis, a white lab coat and company ball cap, he stands in one corner of a cavernous room flanked by a pair of deep sinks and a stainless steel table. Scores of Virginia country hams dangle from rolling, wooden racks at the back of the room, each voluptuous hunk cured to mahogany and gold in time for the Easter rush. The air smells faintly of bacon and hickory smoke. This morning, the company’s mustachioed president is focused on a perennial problem: how to turn a profit from literally tons of country ham scraps, delicious debris left after the 86-year-old company’s signature products are deboned and dispatched to customers across the country. Continue reading →