A hug is nice, especially after two-plus years of social distancing during a pandemic. But it’s open to interpretation. Is it a sign of real affection, or is someone just going through the motions?
A bear hug also feels good, especially when it comes from a dear friend. If it comes from an actual bear, say, in Cades Cove – not so good.
Ah, but when Sheryl Stratman gives you a “bread hug,” you can be sure she cares about you.
Sheryl Stratman in her kitchen
Stratman, who lives in the Sevier County portion of Seymour (which also includes slices of Blount and Knox counties), gives gifts of homemade sourdough bread to people who need comfort in the face of loss or other hard times. Friends and neighbors would mention someone in crisis, or she’d hear about a tragedy in the news, and Stratman would head to her kitchen and start baking.
She’s been doing it under the radar, but her secret is getting out.
Stratman doesn’t want accolades for her benevolence, but, she says, “I’d like to inspire people to do their own thing, their own passion.”
Stratman grew up an Army brat and lived all over, but mainly in California. She spent her high school years in Northern California, in the San Francisco area, where “they make the best sourdough in the world,” she says.
She checked out the local sourdough providers immediately after moving to Seymour Sept. 1, 2020, and was disappointed.
“The bread was OK, but it wasn’t what I was used to,” she says.
For her Sept. 25, 2020, birthday, a friend in California sent a “beautiful insulated box” filled with “probably 10 loaves of sourdough bread that she baked personally.”
“It must have cost her a fortune to ship it,” Stratman says.
“It was the best gift I’d ever received … her gift, like, of love to me. It just really touched me. That was in the vault of my mind; I just knew how much I appreciated that. She inspired me. I thought, ‘Well, I’d better start baking my own bread. This is good. I can do this myself.’ So I started baking sourdough (about) three months after I got here. … I was shocked at how good it was. I started just baking in my home and giving it away to some people in my neighborhood. I guess they shared it. Word started getting out that I had this little sourdough thing going on in my kitchen.”
One of her new friends asked if he could buy bread from her. She checked out state regulations to make sure, and then she launched Seymour Sourdough from her home. This summer, she created Loaves of Love as an offshoot for her benevolence mission. She uses all her profits from Seymour Sourdough to pay for the bread she gives away through Loaves of Love. She expects to organize the operation as a nonprofit at some point, but she held a fundraiser for her birthday this past weekend and raised almost $700 to help cover her Loaves of Love costs.
Oddly, Stratman did not bake bread in California.
“I could not make bread to save my life. It was only when I got here, all of a sudden I realized I had this crazy ability to bake sourdough bread. … I almost felt like it was a miracle; it was meant.”
Stratman has resisted the temptation to grow her business into something too demanding.
“I didn’t ever want to start a bakery,” she says. “I just didn’t want to hate sourdough. I didn’t want it to stop my love of baking by becoming a business and getting stressed.
Stratman has been able to continue her California job as a school fundraiser part-time thanks to Zoom. Husband Hugh is a tennis pro who gives tennis lessons and volunteers as the coach for the team at The King’s Academy.
Daughter Lauren, 28, uses her parents’ house as home base but is frequently on the road as a professional pickleball player. Daughter Kate, 26, is living in South Knoxville and works freelance doing marketing and websites.
The Stratmans left California “because we just didn’t know what to expect with the whole pandemic and how it would pan out,” she recalls.
“We looked things up and did some research. A lot of people said, ‘Go to Nashville.’ And then I looked at the map and I saw how beautifully green it was on this side of the state. Then we saw Knoxville nestled into the mountains, and I said, ‘That looks good!’”
Instead of a royal circus – “Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were moving into Santa Barbara while we were leaving” – they found themselves in the beauty of Tennessee, where people are “nice and kind.”
She is amused by the attitude some locals have about the influx of new homeowners from California and elsewhere.
“A lot of people are very skeptical of people moving to Tennessee,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Go home. Why are you here? Don’t bring that here. Don’t try to turn us into California.’ So that was one of the things I was aware of: What can I bring to the table? What can I bring to my community? What can I contribute?’ So I’m a moving part in our community, not, like, a taker.”
Betsy Pickle is a freelance writer and editor who particularly enjoys spotlighting South Knoxville.