Couple followed smoke signals from Montana back to hometown Duvall

Originally published Saturday, September 26, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Me and the chicken crossed the main road out in Duvall to see what was on the other side.

The chicken lost. She became two absolutely delicious smoked garlic and basil chicken breasts at Trim's smoked meat and cheese shop in the heart of downtown Duvall.

I won. I ate the chicken breasts on a sandwich. And then I ate some smoked pepper bacon. And some smoked pepper elk. And some Snoqualmie Valley Gold smoked hot pepper jack cheese.

You might already be familiar with Trim's mellow-gold cheese and smoked meats sold through Larry's Markets, Costco, Puget Consumers Co-op and other retail outlets. Or you might've beat me right to the source in the colonial blue with white-trim frame house a few steps above the sidewalk at 15728 Main St. N.E..

I spent part of a recent weekend afternoon on the front porch of the sausage and cheese shop -- a former mayor's house -- listening to Terry Trim talk about growing up in Duvall and spending more than 20 years learning how to cut and smoke meat in western Montana.

For me, doing interviews in a sausage and cheese shop is sort of like the fox collecting eggs and doing performance evaluations in the hen house. High journalistic standards demand that I leave no smoked Gouda unturned in seeking the truth.

Terry and wife Audrey are sort of prodigal children, returning about five years ago, to live and work in the Snoqualmie Valley town where they grew up and went to school. "We both wanted to be close to our families back here again," said Audrey, who was a florist before she married this "sorta bashful guy I remembered from when we both went to Tolt High in Carnation."

Terry was born and raised in the house his grandfather built at Lake Margaret, north and east of town. "They rented out boats on the lake and I sold fishing worms as a kid there," he said.

He was a Navy air-traffic controller in the Vietnam era before returning to Duvall, enrolling in Shoreline Community College and marrying Audrey -- in that order. "We lived across the valley where I was caretaker at a farm. And I worked about 35 hours a week as a groundskeeper at Snoqualmie Falls, in addition to driving to and from college every weekday," Terry recalled.

A G.I. Bill-financed program to learn meat-cutting lured Terry to Montana State University in Bozeman. "I came home from looking it over and told Audrey that we were moving."

When they got there, Audrey recalled, "I begged him on my hands and knees to take us back home." Something about those 20-below winter days. But Terry did his three-year butcher apprenticeship at a meat plant and then worked his way up the meat-cutting ranks with Safeway in Montana. He quit to go into business selling Montana-made food products, then decided to open his own food business.

"We moved to a little place called Willow Creek, about seven miles from the headwaters of the Missouri River," he said. "And I bought a fellow's mobile butchering truck and we started butchering farm stock and wild game in addition to running a small shop in Willow Creek." That's also where he learned how to smoke cheeses.

"Everyone told us we'd starve to death on our own," said Audrey. "But we loved it there, and we figured if we were going to starve to death, we were going to do it all on our own.

"There I was, a florist . . . learning how to cut meat!" said Audrey. "It got to be sorta boring, so I'd put little notes in the packages of meat I wrapped, like 'Have A Good Morning!' in the bacon, or a little plastic-wrapped sucker with the other meat . . . anything to break the boredom."

They brought their smoker when they returned to Duvall, then added and remodeled kitchen and smoking facilities in the old house on Main Street . . . to where they now alder- or hickory-smoke about 500 pounds at a time. And each load takes 14 to 18 hours, which translates to a lot of work hours. "We have to clean it completely between loads of meat and cheese," he said.

Wrist injuries forced Audrey to cut back her butchering, but Sarah Halverson hired on as a shop helper and Terry expects to hire more seasonal help for special gift-pack production for fall harvest, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Holiday production includes double-smoked hams, smoked turkey, game hens and cheese loaves. The Trims also make and smoke luncheon and dinner sausages and sell several types of fresh sausage, including potato or cranberry or maple syrup links.

The various cheeses -- several Cheddars, pepper jack, mozzarella, provolone, havarti, brie and Gouda -- are purchased from various Washington state, Midwest and Canadian producers, smoked in bulk wheels or bricks, and then wrapped in smaller portions or sold bulk size back to local retailers.

See what I told you about this journalistic research! It's gonna take me till the millennium to eat my way through all these and also to try their smoked buffalo. Trim's also carries other Northwest specialty foods from Puget Sound, Eastern Washington and Idaho.Trim's Smoked Meats & Cheeses, 15728 Main St. N.E., Duvall, is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and closed most holidays. Phone: 425-788-8273.