[piano intro] - [Narrator] Join us to see what happens when one moment, one opportunity, one event changes the course of a life from an exciting new career to exploring stories of resilience, creativity, and strength.

It's all on "My Home", coming up next.

[gentle reflective music] All across the state, we're uncovering the unique stories that make North Carolina my home.

♪ Come home ♪ ♪ Come home ♪ [upbeat techno music] [objects clattering] [upbeat techno music continues] [upbeat techno music continues] - Boy.

It's an old one.

I think I have three of that one.

[metals clink] I've no idea what this is.

I see an interesting bottle over here.

I never have too many cheese slicers.

[upbeat techno music] I have to have it.

- [Crew Member] You like that one?

- I don't like 'em to look too new.

Those are good.

What, I don't need a receipt, nope.

- Lemme get you some things.

- Great.

[upbeat techno music] If I think I'm gonna use it, I'm gonna keep it.

I mean, I don't hoard other things, but just things that I think I'm gonna make something, a bit for art.

[upbeat music] [soft mellow music] I'd worked very hard, single parent taking care of everybody, not me [chuckles].

After my children left home, I knew I could go anywhere I wanted.

[pensive music] I love old houses and old things.

And when I saw the house at Glencoe Mills, it's an entire mill village that was abandoned in 1954.

Preservation North Carolina was able to acquire it in 1998 and I bought one of the houses in 1999.

People thought I was insane for plunking my money down on the first day I saw it.

Nobody else lived there for two years, so I finished and moved in and still waiting for the other people to do their houses.

I had access to all the properties.

I would just take a metal detector and go walking around.

I mean, if it's in the ground, they don't care if I'd dig it up.

Oh, look at this little rusty thing.

I'm going to put that aside right now.

Start collecting all of this stuff.

[mellow music] My son worked for the town of Chapel Hill and the art people in Chapel Hill had a call for self-portraits, and my son called and said, "Mom, make a self-portrait."

And I said, "I don't have anything.

I don't have paint, I don't have canvas, I don't have anything to do with self-portrait."

But he bugged me about it because he knows I like to make stuff.

Said okay, "I'll make sort of a collage out of things I have."

Things like coasters and little pieces of railroad track, Scrabble letters.

I used a spring to go around to make my hair 'cause I always want curly hair.

[mellow music] It was displayed in the town hall, and it was such a hit.

I was excited that other people really loved it.

Immediately, the spark just took off.

[upbeat music] I started doing three dimensional things.

An old tin, like an old canister that's got a lot of wear on it.

I think somebody may have given me a box of old metal spice tins.

They make a really good base.

[upbeat music] And I just took 'em to show my colleagues.

I didn't take them there for other people.

They sat on my desk and, "Where'd you get that?"

I made it [laughs].

"Can you make me one?"

So, the Spice Girls became sort of the stable of my beginnings.

And I thought, well, I'll make some more.

But then I started making them and then I had nowhere to put them all.

And I would just pile stuff on top of stuff and I couldn't find it.

So I said, "I've gotta have bigger space."

Put my house on the market in Glencoe.

That was enough of that.

I wanted to do something else.

[soft mellow music] I saw this house and the studio.

I thought, wait a minute, this looks like it was designed by me.

Smaller house, bigger studio.

That building is a 1900 oddly mill house.

[door creaks] [mellow music] Luckily, the building has very high ceilings so I can go all the way to the ceilings with all my things.

It's very organized.

Go in and just start imagining what these things could be.

So often though, it is based on what I acquired recently.

Often, people leave things on my porch.

Go that way and reach for this one.

Oh, I have to just let 'em speak to me.

And often, the head is determined by the size.

Not that I'm trying to make him anatomically correct, but I try to steer away from just spheres.

But I'll have to say I spot fall back on that because if you think about what you can find for a head, if they're rusty, all the better in my opinion.

[mellow music] 'Cause I like my guys to look like they weren't born yesterday.

[bright music] This piece, the body is an old sifter, but I thought the patina on it and the little embossing was super.

And I love old clocks and gauges and I have a lot of them, so.

Clocks make really good faces anyway.

Oh these, these are porch railings.

So the feet are pieces of railroad jack from a child's toy.

[bright music] Well, one thing is I didn't know a soul in Hillsborough here and I thought, I've got to get myself known in this town if I'm gonna sell art.

Well, if I paint the building crazy, people will talk about it.

While I was working on it, people stop by and go, "Oh yeah, somebody at the bar told me.

Who's that crazy lady with the colorful house?"

So, it worked.

[cock crowing] - Good morning.

- Good morning, how are you?

- [Visitor] I'm good.

- Hello.

- Hey, how are you?

- Good.

- We're good.

- [Ann] People say, "Oh my goodness."

- I mean, at first you're like, what?

But then as you make your way through, everything makes sense.

- [Customer 2] Absolutely.

- [Customer 1] I believe it's called organized chaos.

It's just so wonderful.

[mellow music] - For me, it's really fun to talk to the people that are interested in the work.

A textile spool, a coaster.

- Popsicle sticks a little bit.

- They have multiple things that appeal to people.

This is an unusual piece because she has this ridiculously long neck, but that neck is part of this thing.

It already was this color with the red dots.

I had to have it, but then I thought, oh, for her head, which again, I go searching for all my stuff for heads.

This one looked like a giant seed pod to me.

And I thought, well if she's gonna be a flower gardener, she needs to have a compatible head.

I found little metal pieces that were shaped like flowers and then the grass is also green electrical wire.

- [Crew Member] You guys are standing in her studio space right now.

- [Customer 1] Yeah, I know.

It's amazing.

- Overwhelming.

- The first time I came here, I walked back here and I said, is this for sale?

Is this for sale?

And she's like, "No, this is my studio."

But I wanted to buy all the things back here too.

Like this horse.

- Being around people, talking with people is as interesting for me as making the art.

[soft upbeat music] But I love the amount of time I spend per day by myself.

I love doing anything where you become so immersed in it that you lose track of time and marvelous.

I just decide and people say, "How do you decide?"

I don't know, I just, I look at it and sort of get an idea of what the guy will be like.

You know, do I like it?

Is there some part of it that bothers me?

These are plastic.

I don't like to use plastic, but he does need a hat.

[chuckling] Oh, here's a choice.

Boy, the hats are just miscellaneous.

[chuckling] Older one in here somewhere.

It's an old Vix Vapor Rub cap.

Yeah, I like the look, but on the color's just not quite right.

- What makes a good hat?

- Something with some personality or design or sometimes it's just the color or shape of it.

Oh, it's a wizard hat.

- [Crew Member] I see all kinds of things that you can use as hats.

- Yep.

Look at that.

Find that one hilarious.

How about an army helmet?

Oh, but I think I see the perfect one.

I just said color and design of that.

Perfect.

I think it's this one.

And it's gonna be called and she had music wherever she goes.

[chuckling] On this one, I did start with this old cracker tin that somebody gave me.

When I was sitting on my table, I thought, "Oh it looks like a drum major's hat."

Always thought being a drum major must be exciting.

So I said a drum major he is.

These are cake decorator pieces that you put the icing in there and it comes out a little tip down here.

And Jello-O molds for his epaulets.

This one has cotton mill spindles, still has some of the cotton left on them.

- [Crew Member] Yeah, you can tell you got into this one.

- I did and and I thought it just, you know, again, he came out with a personality that I needed even without eyes.

[mellow music] The faces are the hardest thing I do.

It's little thing of noses, things like hooking eyes.

Those little tiny things are wonderful.

Snaps.

So sewing things.

Yeah, I think that's a pretty decent nose.

Yeah, all sorts of just strange, little hardware that I don't know what they are.

If I give her eyebrows, eyelashes, she'll be girl farmer.

Yeah, when I started putting the faces on, that's when they started taking on that individual personalities.

Oh yes, see that just makes her look cute.

People comment on the expressions.

I use a really soft wire that I twirl around for a mouth because then you can make 'em smirk.

The personality is what's important to me is how they look like fun people.

Oh and I think she's missing is ears.

[mellow music] Well, she's done.

[chuckling] [mellow music] I did think when I retired, I really did think I would just sort of kick it back.

But I found after a week I'm not good at kicking back.

I don't relax well, I have to be busy.

So I decided I would go in, you know, into this full time and I've just enjoyed every minute of it.

And that's been 15, 17 years.

Oh longer.

[chuckling] Then the box would be the next thing to carry.

Creating is, as I have discovered is such an essential part of me and my daily routine.

I'll do this until I can't do it anymore.

When you're required to write down how you want your label to be in such and such, and I always put figurative assemblage because it's figures and assemblage, putting things together.

Oh boy, it's very wiggly.

But once I sort of thought about it, I went, "Oh, this is what I do, is folk art" - All right.

What do you think of that?

- It looks wonderful.

- Oh yeah.

- Sorry.

The very first art I made, I remember it was like, it was yesterday.

My neighbor had the same birthday as me and I was six and he was 60 and he gave me a paint-by-number.

It was just an eye-opener for me.

I'd never seen paint before and since then, I can't remember a time that I didn't create.

I have the piece framed in my kitchen.

It's an old mill, strangely.

[thoughtful music] [upbeat music] - I have always worked kitchen jobs.

I also had always been really fascinated with the meat industry, kind of from a distance.

So when I was sort of looking to stay in food but try to figure out a way to sort of pivot into something else, that's where I sort of got the idea that like maybe getting into butchering would be a cool thing to do.

My name is Anna Gibala.

I am the owner of Moonbelly Meat Company and my home is Durham, North Carolina.

[funky upbeat music] I've got these little petite hams that I netted and tied up and now I'm just throwing 'em onto racks and they're gonna go into the smoker and then they'll become ham.

[laughing] I grew up in North Carolina and my dad was really into hunting and he would do all of the like processing and butchering of venison at home.

I have so many vivid memories growing up.

We had like a little jungle gym in the backyard that had monkey bars on it and so he would use that as like, to do like hanging butchery essentially and do all of the processing there.

In 2015 my partner and I moved to the Bay area and just sort of like the first job that I got when I was there was a whole animal butcher shop and sandwich shop.

So I started there on the line and had sort of expressed like I would love to learn and they were very welcoming and like open to, you know, if you wanna come in on your days off, we'll teach you whatever you wanna learn.

I would go over there like once or twice a week and they would show me how to break pigs down, how to make sausage.

And after about six months of doing that, it ended up that they had a full-time position to open up and then just continued to work on learning and trying to gain more experience within the meat industry.

I think I always sort of had in the back of my mind that it would be really cool to do something similar to that in Durham.

I just felt like networking wise I knew the most people and it didn't seem like there was really something like that happening in Durham.

I also felt like from afar I kept seeing Durham pop up on all of these like foodie town or like lists of places that you didn't know have really great food scenes.

I think with all of those different components combined, it just felt like a good fit to do this here.

There's so many opportunities to get really creative with flavor profiles and just different spices and ingredients that you're using that that was part of wanting to do my own thing.

So I think that's kind of what got the wheels turning of like, but there's so many other cool things that we could be doing and if I really wanna do those, I think I just have to do it on my own.

So yeah, that was sort of like the idea behind the concept.

[upbeat music] The thing that I always find really cool about butchery is that essentially like all of these different animals are the same, just on a different size scale.

So like a lamb chop is a pork chop is a rib eye and that also applies to intestinal lining and now we're just gonna get going with the stuffing.

It's good to always go like a little bit on the looser side too because as we twist this into links, they're ultimately gonna get tighter, but you can't make them looser.

Go on the looser end during this part.

A lot of good noises.

So Moonbelly is very rooted in the concept and practice of whole animal butchery.

I only work with pork right now to make different, uniquely flavored sausages and charcuterie, bacon, hams and to really hone into on the whole animal side of things.

I try to make like dog treats out of the skin.

I'll use the bones for broth.

The belly skin I make pork rinds out of.

Just in terms of efficacy and really trying to focus on environmental sustainability, whole animal is sort of the way to go with that because you're utilizing as much of the animal as possible.

I think that oftentimes, especially with like smaller, specialty butcher shops, it can feel a little bit of like an intimidating space.

You know, there's just certain cuts that you're not gonna be familiar with.

If you don't know, it can be really overwhelming.

Like if walking in like well what, where's a flat iron?

What's a velvet steak?

Like, I've never heard of any of these.

Even like the marketing and branding with a lot of places, it's very intimidating with like a cleaver.

Also, like pretty male-dominated as far as like the whole industry goes.

So I really wanted to be very conscious of that.

So hopefully that comes across like with even just like the name of the company and yeah, having it not be in like a black and white, like here's a big cleaver and scary meat stuff.

I am probably gonna run outta bags today.

Oopsie.

Yeah, I'm really curious to see how busy it is today, just since it's supposed to be so nice out.

- [Crew Member] People are waiting.

Have you all been getting meat from her for a while?

- Pork rinds.

- I specifically buy the pork rinds.

They are delicious.

And normally if we go the other route we miss out on the pork rinds.

So this is our first step.

- I currently don't have any kind of like brick and mortar or storefront.

I'm only selling through the Durham Farmer's market.

Interactions with customers at the farmer's market, people are definitely pretty engaging and that's like my favorite part of all of it, is to just really be able to talk through things with people and sort of that's an opportunity to explain like the idea behind whole animal butchery and like why that's so important.

'Cause it all, yeah, still kind of comes back to that idea of sustainability.

Welcome.

I have aprons up here if y'all wanna grab one of those.

I teach classes here at the kitchen where I prep everything.

Right now I just do like a sausage making class.

Basically I'll try and coordinate knowing that I have a class on a week that I'm also getting a pig delivery.

Typically the classes are like six to eight people and I really try to make it like as hands-on as possible.

So we as a class will break down that shoulder pretty much from start to finish.

Like when people come in, it's skin on, bone in, we fabricate it together, cut all of the trim together, grind everything, and then I'll have like a little spice kit mised out that we mix up together and everyone gets a chance to get in on like the stuffing and twisting and they get to take home a couple pounds of like the fresh sausage that we make in the class.

That's part of like what's most gratifying about this work is like receiving that feedback in real time of having people say like, "We made your Korean barbecue sausage last week and it was like my family's favorite thing that we ate all week."

Anything like that is just, all of the positive feedback just feels really good and kind of keeps things going.

I feel like when you get in a rut of like, why am I doing this?

It feels good to hear that people are appreciating the work that you do is really important.

[upbeat music] [person speaking foreign language] - Pizante.

Ba na na na na.

- You'll like it, man.

- Yeah.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music] - Well this is my wife, the love of my life, Eridania Bastardo and I am Yordanys Bastardo, but my southern name, my Greenville name is Jay.

Well, I grew up in a very small town called [speaking foreign language] Dominican Republic, and in a small section of that town called [speaking foreign language] .

- You grew up in the same hometown, in the Dominican Republic, - Correct.

Same hometown.

We actually grew up within two minutes, two to three minutes- - Walking.

- Walking distance.

The story about my aunt, Tia Gladys, and she's always been the tough one in the family, right?

And when I was coming to the United States, I remember her handing me a $5 bill and say, "Here you are, go ahead, go and make it."

You know, America is a place that you come, you grow, you make anything happen.

The food truck started because one night, three o'clock in the morning, I'm, I'm not able to go to sleep because I'm thinking about not wanting to go to work the next day and I'm going through Craig's List and I found a food truck for sale.

Me and my wife, we wrote everything that we had in our savings account.

Put it all into this crazy idea called Villa Verde.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music] Tonight is the opening ceremony of Little League here in Greenville and that's a pretty big deal.

I got chicken or pulled pork nachos that comes with cheese, peppers, onions, it's really good.

Success came fairly quick.

If we can say that.

One pork, one chicken coming right out.

Chicken's up.

I don't think it was something that me and or my wife planned.

That was not never the case.

We wanted a restaurant, we wanted a brick and mortar, but that was probably five years down the line.

The community decided that for us.

We went in, we went in and we went for it.

No money, no, whatever we have saved up from the food truck and we just said, you know what, we're gonna make it work.

- Don't get me wrong, especially the first month, it was tough because it was so busy.

We were not expecting to be that busy.

We thought, you know, it's gonna be okay.

People were gonna come.

We didn't think we were gonna get bombarded.

[Jay speaking foreign language] - The latest thing we added is a yaroa, which is very yes, street food in the Dominican Republic.

So it's a loaded french fries is what it is.

[upbeat music] The Dominican community is a very striving community, very hardworking community, and I think that's the story of many immigrants.

You know, they come here and they want to better themselves and they want to do better and they want to and they work hard.

That's what America is.

You know, America is a country that gives you opportunities that sometimes they're not expected, that anything can happen at a blink of an eye.

You just have to be ready and willing to put in the work.

But if you do those things, trust and believe, you're gonna be successful.

[upbeat music] Yeah.

[upbeat music]