Just want to let people know that Kinston's Chef & the Farmer is open again.
Chef Vivian Howard called me Wednesday with the news. They had to shut down after a fire in January. This is good news for folks who love Howard's cooking.
To read Greg Cox's 4-1/2 star review and my earlier post about the fire, go HERE.
4-AA
Garner 41, Leesville Road 21 (FINAL): Garner's Juwan Moye and Leesville Road's Braxton Berrios both top 200 yards rushing.
Fayetteville Britt 28, Middle Creek 14 (FINAL): Britt wears down the Mustangs
Greensboro Page 40, Charlotte Butler 26 (FINAL): Two-time defending champs ousted.
Charlotte Mallard Creek 42, Charlotte Myers Park 10 (FINAL)
4A
Scotland 35, Durham Hillside 7 (FINAL): Scotland handles Hornets
New Bern 31, New Hanover 20 (FINAL): New Bern pulls away in the fourth
Mooresville 42, Sun Valley 21 (FINAL)
3AA
Wilson Hunt 31, Cardinal Gibbons 17 (FINAL): Unbeaten Hunt handles Crusaders
Northern Guilford 35, Fayetteville Byrd 6 (FINAL)
Charlotte Catholic 45, Kannapolis Brown 7 (FINAL)
3A
Cleveland 42, Burlington Williams 28 (FINAL): First-year team with no seniors reaches the semifinals
Havelock 62, Currituck 36 (FINAL)
2AA
Kinston 47, Bunn 46 (FINAL, OT): Kinston stops two-point conversion try
2A
Tarboro 28, Edenton Holmes 26 (FINAL)
South Columbus 10, East Bladen 0 (FINAL)
Lincolnton 34, Maiden 21 (FINAL)
Thomasville 27, Salisbury 16 (FINAL)
1AA
Ayden-Grifton 35, Southwest Onslow 14 (FINAL)
1A
Manteo 40, Plymouth 12 (FINAL)
Jones 22, North Edgecombe 12 (FINAL)
Albemarle 45, Lakewood 14 (FINAL)
A subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, already one of the state’s largest employers, is expanding its facility in Kinston and adding 330 jobs over the next three years.
Smithfield Packing Company announced today that it will spend $85.5 million to add a new packaging line for hot dogs and lunch meats at the plant. That packaging is currently done at a facility in Portsmouth, Va.
Smithfield Packing plans to close the Portsmouth facility, which employs 425 people, in 2013 after the Kinston expansion is complete.
The Portsmouth facility is not big enough to handle the new packaging equipment and couldn’t be expanded, said Jeff Gough, a Smithfield Packing executive vice president.
Gough said the company considered a number of locations for the expansion but ultimately chose Kinston because it owns the land and because of the management team in place there.
“This was the best fit,” he said.
Sanderson Farms search for a site for its next poultry-processing plant continues even as local opposition to the project goes to court to try to stop it.
The Mississippi company has not purchased any property and is still in discussions with the state Department of Commerce, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and local officials in Nash and Wayne counties, said Mike Cockrell, Sanderson's chief financial officer.
"We are still doing our due diligence," he said this week. "We haven't purchased any property yet."
The Nash County Board of Commissioners recently rezoned a site in southern Nash County that it hopes Sanderson will select.
Sanderson needs about 1,000 acres where it can build a processing plant and a spray field for the plant's treated wastewater.
The city of Wilson and more than 30 nearby property owners have filed a lawsuit against Nash County alleging that the rezoning violated state laws.
Sanderson had originally focused its search on Wayne County but later expanded it farther north into Nash County.
BUNN - Bunn coach Chris Miller was a little disappointed his team led by just seven at halftime, but the way the Wildcats defense was playing that was a huge lead as the Wildcats advanced to the third round of the NCHSAA 2-AA football playoffs with a 27-7 win over Kinston.
Bunn (11-2) will travel to Northeastern next week.
The GlaxoSmithKline Invitational announced its 16-team boys basketball field today.
The 16 teams will be divided into two eight-team brackets.
The N.C. Global TransPark in Kinston announced today the name of a Spirit AreoSystems supplier that has located in the park.
DB Schenker, a New York company that provides logistics support for Spirit's raw materials needs, has been operating out of a Global TransPark warehouse since April.
The company is leasing 19,000 square feet and expects to eventually provide 40 full-time jobs.
DB Schenker signed a 5-year lease to provide logistics support for Spirit, which is making fuselage sections and other components for a new Airbus plane scheduled to hit the market in 2013. 
Earlier this month Spirit officially opened its 500,000-square-foot plant in the Global TransPark.
"DB Schenker's arrival at the GTP signals the continuing impact of Spirit's opening, as well as the GTP's potential to expand as an aerospace center," said Darlene Waddell, the park's executive director, in a statement.
Chemical conglomerate DuPont agreed to pay a $59,000 fine related to mercury discharges at the company's Kinston manufacturing facility.
The factory, about 90 miles southeast of Raleigh, makes polymer fibers used in clothing, carpeting and other products. It employs about 60 people.
The Environmental Protection Agency said that discharges at the plant exceeded permitted levels of mercury for eight months between September 2008 and March 2009. In April 2009, the EPA ordered DuPont to submit a plan to prevent more violations.
The mercury discharge happened because a concrete pipe had separated, allowing water with low levels of mercury to enter the storm water piping system, DuPont wrote in a prepared statement. The company completed work to fix the problem in August 2009.
"We take our responsibility to protect the environment very seriously," DuPont wrote.
The EPA enforces federal laws aimed at preventing mercury from entering the water supply, where it can get into fish and shellfish and cause a variety of health problems in humans.
Sanderson Farms, the Mississippi company planning to build two chicken processing plants in Eastern North Carolina, reported quarterly results that beat Wall Street expectations.
The company's processing complex in Kinston is expected to open in January with about 500 employees. Eventually, the complex is expected to employ 1,500.
Meanwhile, company officials continue to negotiate over state and local incentives for a proposed facility in Goldsboro that Sanderson announced in March. That deboning factory is expected to employ up to 1,100 people.
Senior golfers in the Triangle have several choices for tournament competition.
Among the options is the Down East Senior Amateur Tour, which finally
had some good weather Monday to get its season going with a tournament
at Southern Wayne Country Club in Goldsboro, tour organizer Bill Stone
reported. (Top finishers are below.)
