Bali Wood

as featured in the New York Times Magazine, November 18th, 2011

by Gisela Williams

The sun was about to set on the Indonesian island of Bali when Ben Ripple and Frederick Schilling, owners of the artisanal food company Big Tree Farms, led me through their new chocolate factory near Ubud. It was still under construction as we stepped into a titanic inner chamber with a high pitched roof, the last light of the day streaming dramatically through a long, narrow skylight at the peak, allowing the 30 or so builders to keep working. Several of them cheerfully called down to us from their tinkertoy-like scaffolding as we picked our way through the piles of construction materials. “We’re building the Big Tree cathedral,” Ripple said. 

Click here to read the rest of the article:  http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/bali-wood/

Photograph by Martin Westlake
Stalk talk Big Tree Farms’ new factory near Ubud, Bali, will produce chocolate sweetened with coconut-palm sugar.