After four years in New Hampshire, Beth May, the Tempeh Girl, and her husband were “too wussified” to stay in the cold. They performed a web search on the following terms: university, bike lane, co-op, and farmers market. “Boom. This was the place.” With a masters in Biology and Agricultural Engineering, Beth thought, “I can do this” after reading an article about tempeh, a soy product more digestible than tofu and higher in B12. When Beth started producing tempeh, she used wire racks supported by cans of beans covered with a blanket and heating pad. “Small business owners are problem solvers.” The Tempeh Girl now produces 600 pounds per month of the traditional Indonesian product in Hillsborough at the Piedmont Agricultural Processing Center. The multi-step process involves grinding, pre-fermenting, rinsing, cooking, drying, inoculating, and incubating the soybeans. When she first tried tempeh, she was “not a fan;” now her family eats it three times a week.
