PARIS, Ky. — You may have heard of freeze dried fruit but what about freeze dried skittles or ice cream sandwiches? 

What You Need To Know

  • McAlmond Preservation Co. is a local business in Paris Kentucky with freeze dried items

  • The McAlmonds started freeze drying items as a way to preserve Madison’s milk

  • McAlmond Preservation Co. freeze dried items like skittles, strawberries, ice cream sandwiches

  • McAlmond sells its items at the Paris farmers market

 

A year ago Madison McAlmond and her husband Clayton never thought having a baby would lead to a small business. 

“Last year I had a baby and Clayton, my husband, knew there would be a better way to store my milk and so he looked into freeze drying and that's kind of how we ended up with our freeze dryers,” Madison McAlmond said.

From freeze drying her milk, Madison decided she wanted to expand into different food items like strawberries, apples and even skittles. 

“It takes all the moisture out of whatever you freeze drying and versus dehydrating it doesn't shrink like you would imagine. So you're pretty much just left with the solids that would be in the fruit or whatever, so it takes all the moisture out of it, and it's preserved for 25 years in some cases, depending on what your freezer runs,” Clayton McAlmond said.

The McAlmonds have created a local business during the pandemic called McAlmond preservation, selling items at their local farmers market. 

Madison says it’s extremely important for her to be Kentucky proud and support others in her community. They have even driven more than four hours to pick up blueberries from a Kentucky Proud Farmer.

“I think it's important to be Kentucky Proud because we want to support our local farmers. And there's also a lot of grant funding that people don't know about or aren't aware of through the Department of Ag (agriculture) and your local extension offices, and they want you, you know, to support local to spend their money locally. And so we want to spend our money locally,” Madison McAlmond said.

Becoming Kentucky Proud has helped them purchase additional freeze dryers, and purchase items from Kentucky farmers to expand their business.

“Oh, you know, what is this? How do you do that? And people were like, do you do all of this yourself? You know? And I'm like, Yeah, we buy it, cut it up, freeze it, put it on the tray, put it in the dryers. We don't send it anywhere. It doesn't come from anywhere else. So we do it all,” Madison McAlmond said.

The McAlmonds are preserving skittles, ice cream sandwiches, milk and more, all while supporting local Kentuckians. McAlmond and her husband are working to grow their own food items for next year, over the last few months they have planted over three thousand strawberry plants for next season. 

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