Blessing the Hands that Feed Us

by Vicki Robin

  Georgina Silby sold me two pounds of Tibetan purple barley—hand-packed in recyclable brown paper bags. The price per pound was high, but the integrity in that grain was priceless. Even when I see her in jeans and a threadbare shirt, her long neck, porcelain skin, and beauty make me think of lawns and manors, not fields and manure. Georgina grew up in Wales and landed on Whidbey because her godparents live here. Her commitment to grain farming has many roots, so to speak. She’s steeped in earth-based spirituality. She was a leader in the anti-GMO movement in the UK. She believes—and teaches—that food is medicine, and she has a broad knowledge of herbalism. You can almost taste all this in her barley. A small bowl is filling and delicious and something else intangible: a felt sense of nourishment.

  Lauren Hubbard, who also grows grains on the Prairie, graduated magna cum laude from Washington State University, where she had been an award-winning communications, women’s studies, and soil science major, but instead of making a career in those professional fields, her path led her back to the fields on Ebey’s Prairie with her husband, Clark Bishop. The Bishops are one of the key farming families on Ebey’s Prairie, and by marrying Clark Bishop (the sixth generation on their land), Lauren married into a future of agriculture . . . if they as a couple wanted that life. A stint in the peace corps in Moldova working with farmers in the former breadbasket of the Soviet Union, where the fall of communism fragmented the agricultural system, convinced them that they did. They saw the farming system spin into a nosedive, with too little land and too many regulations wringing the life out of the people. Lauren and Clark realized they were privileged to be able to farm his family’s land and surprised themselves by returning to the prairie—grounded in science and ready to muck in the dirt as farmers. So here they are, bridging from the farming style of Clark’s parents to the consumer preferences for local organic food. I bought ten pounds of her emmer (a precursor of wheat), intending to both grind it for breads (with my Good Cheer thrift-store find, a new-in-the-box, bolted-to-the-counter hand grinder) and eat it in pilafs.

  With just barley, emmer, and beans added to my stores of squash, chicken, beef, potatoes, and onions, I had enough basic food to fulfill my 50 percent commitment.

  I learned some tricks for cooking these grains and beans from scratch. I soak the beans for at least thirty-six hours, changing the water a couple of times (like when I notice). That cuts the cooking time by 60 percent and also sprouts the beans, which increases the nutrition. I then rinse the beans, cover with water in a pressure cooker, bring them to a boil, drain, rinse, and then cover with water again, pressure-cook the beans for five minutes at five pounds of pressure with a piece of kombu seaweed, which takes the toot right out of them. I soak the grains too for a day or two. Sprouted grains are more digestible and nutritious. Same really quick, slick pressure-cooking, though a little longer. They are so nutritious that half a cup fills me up.

  I checked with Tricia about what she could provide in the winter. She really didn’t have eggs to spare, but on a tour of The Goose Community Grocer I found John Whitney stocking local Skymeadow eggs. He gave me an earful about eggs, and by now I was absolutely fascinated by all things edible and local, so we lingered for half an hour between the dairy case and bulk food aisles as I grilled him. To sell at the Goose he had to provide a bottomless supply of eggs a day, washed and packed according to the USDA Egg Products Inspection Act and the Washington Wholesome Eggs and Egg Products Act. His operation must be licensed and insured and records must be kept in detail for two years. I haven’t met a small businessman who really likes regulations and licensing, but John had run the gauntlet and made it work. He and his wife, Else, had ramped up their egg production to be able to meet the standards of quality and quantity that the supermarkets require.

  “Why not organic?” I asked.

  “The annual inspection alone is one thousand dollars. I can’t afford it. And the record keeping is way too much for us. Our eggs are as good as organic, but we just can’t make the certification work.” I heard this story again and again. To the dismay of many of the pioneers whose blood, sweat, and tears enshrined the National Organic Standards in the USDA, small-scale local producers with loyal customers are not investing time and energy to get certified. Local meat and dairy on a rural island like Whidbey may well not be certified organic—and may not even be licensed. Another lesson is the dual system for trusting our food: I need to either look in the eye of the farmer or look at a label that is backed by rigorous requirements, testing, and verifications.

  I was grateful that John and Else had jumped through all the hoops necessary to get local eggs into my local market. I’d have eggs in February! It’s not easy for small farmers to provide sufficiently plentiful and reliable products to merit shelf or bin space in the supermarkets.

  Several weeks later, after the 10-mile pressure had simmered down, I met John and Else at the farmers’ market. They’d been there all along, but my need for eggs hadn’t been great enough for their presence to make much of a difference. Else and I chatted egg business knowledgeably, me drawing on that detailed conversation at the Goose, and by the end she shared a little secret. The bigger eggs wouldn’t fit in the egg cartons without cracking, so she sold them from a little fridge on her porch for a tad less. More for less. That sounded like just my cup of tea. Once I had her address, I had my egg supply for the winter and beyond sewn up.

  There would be no cheese from Nina, though, and Vicky Brown’s girls would be nursing their kids in the late winter, but I could get Mt. Townsend Creamery cheese across the water on the Kitsap Peninsula, or default to anywhere cheese and count it in my 50 percent nonlocal. Likewise other essential exotics, like nuts and nut butters.

  There! I was prepared for a fairly peasant-y February. Then, as D-Day (diet day) approached, I met Jess Dowdell.

  Jess is a wiry, redheaded chef who worked at the time at Ca’buni, a café in the large foyer of a warehouse that is primarily a coffee roaster and occasionally a performance space for live jazz, blues, and comedy. It’s in the woods, down a bumpy, only partially paved road, but that doesn’t stop a loyal following from eating, drinking, and being entertained there. Ca’buni means casa (home) in the boonies.

  Jess is committed to serving a local menu. She is our local version of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Judy Wicks of the White Dog Café in Philadelphia, women chefs who have pioneered the growing trend of restaurateurs’ becoming agents of change in local food systems. Many chefs, responding to a demand for local food on the menu, will buy whatever is fresh from farmers through the back kitchen door, but these women also drive the market. They are quantity buyers, and when they add a dish to their menu they become volume buyers.

  Jess explained this over Numi tea one day at Ca’buni. After a rapid-fire critique of the industrial food system using a tone reserved for really rotten movies, she revealed her suppliers and strategies for serving a local menu every day to a steady stream of customers.

  She gets her pork from the original heritage breed pig at Chia, a small family-owned and -operated farm in Clinton, the first unincorporated town on the island, right off the ferry. Her beef comes from 3 Sisters Cattle Company at the north end. The three sisters are the daughters of Ron and Shelly Muzzall, fourth-generation farmers on Whidbey Island, who built the business of supplying quality USDA-approved beef—grass-fed grain-finished steers that pasture in the summer and eat grain grown right on the farm over the winter.

  Jess gets her chickens from Skagit Valley just north and east over the Deception Pass Bridge.

  Her vegetables come from Quail’s Run Farm in Clinton, where Loren and Patty Imes custom-grow for Jess’s annual menu. She gives them a list of seeds they need to buy, pays them as if they were a CSA (which they are, but for a restaurant, not a family), and gets a steady supply of vegetables from spring through fall.

  This is a boon to Loren and Patti, but still does not cover expense
s for a family of four. Like most small farmers, they need a second income to make ends meet. Loren does Web design to support the family, just like Britt and Eric need her income from nonprofit work to survive. Tricia’s farm income is only one small part of her and Kent’s household income, with his job as a teacher being the main source of green stuff.

  Sprouts come from Ferry View Farms in Clinton. Chanterelles come from the forests and the oysters from beds right in Holmes Harbor.

  Jess gets her heirloom pumpkins from another grower and her eggs from my very own supplier, Skymeadow.

  What tomatoes Loren and Patty can’t provide year-round Jess gets from small organic family farms in Mexico.

  She visits as many of her farmers as she can at least twice a year. She wants to see the cows and visit the chickens and know the families and be sure everything—from land to animals to vegetables to children—is well loved.

  “It’s not just where your food comes from. It’s who grows it, and how sustainable their lives are.”

  The coffee, of course, is Mukilteo, roasted right in the warehouse. Owner Gary’s ethic mirrors Jess’s. He buys direct from farmers around the world and likes to go to the farms and meet the growers.

  For tea Jess picked Numi, a fair trade company, which we were drinking as we chatted.

  And some of what doesn’t grow on the island grows in our fifty-mile food shed. She loves shopping at the Ballard farmers’ market in Seattle and clubbing afterward—and it helps that provisioning for Ca’buni requires trips to the mainland.

  “Come with me,” she offered.

  “For sure,” I said, very keen to expand my repertoire for February.

  Ballard is the old Scandihoovian (“Scandinavian” in Ballardese) fishing neighborhood of Seattle, now filling with standard jeans-and-fleece young families types, topped with ever more hip coffee shops and bars. This farmers’ market, like many other flourishing ones, is a feast for the senses. There are ethnic-food stalls, baked goods, foraged fungi from the forests, music, and handcrafted gifts. Jess directed me to her favorite, Nash’s from Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. They had a large stand with tables heaped high with greens, cabbages and Brussels sprouts, roots, grains, squash, and potatoes. Not everyone pounces on parsnip, but I have relished them roasted and mashed ever since discovering them wild in cow pastures in Rhinelander—and stocked up. I got some greens, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts (another delicacy when roasted), all the while chatting with the young woman farmer in a watch cap and frayed hoodie about my 10-mile diet and upcoming 50-mile experiment. She liked my story and threw in a free bag of rye berries with my order. From another stand I bought two more five-dollars-a-pound chickens for the freezer.

  When I was a global eater, ten miles was a struggle. Compared to that, fifty miles—with roots and squash and flour and barley and beans and winter greens—was heaven.

  I was stocked and stoked, ready for February 1. I could have as many exotics as I wanted as long as 50 percent of my nourishment stayed within a few hours’ drive. Ready. Set. Eat.

  WHY I FARM

  I asked my farmers these questions—and below are their answers.

  • Why do you farm?

  • What makes it rewarding despite all the difficulties?

  • What makes it tough?

  • Do you have a philosophy of farming?

  • What do you want eaters to know that they might not?

  GEORGIE SMITH, A WRITER HERSELF, HAD A LOT TO SAY. HERE ARE EXCERPTS:

  “[I farm] because I can’t not farm. Farmers don’t become farmers to make a million dollars. They do it because that is who they are. Then the struggle is how to match up who you are with how to make it financially viable.”

  “The reward is seeing a crop brought to harvest at the end of the day, when you are body-tired but mind-satisfied by the tasks accomplished. [And it is] not nebulous in its importance (how important TRULY is that new Gap shirt? or the latest iPhone?). It is food. It sustains and nourishes and provides life.”

  “[It’s hard because] food has been taken for granted for a long time in this country. Often when I deliver my weekly orders I stop by to buy office supplies. It is not common for me to spend easily the same amount in buying a bit of paper, ink, a few pens, maybe some staples, as I have just made in one or two of my deliveries. That always seems skewed to me. We have devalued the price of the things we need most to survive on a daily basis yet overvalued many of the things we can live without.”

  “[Not only that but] farmers are the ultimate gamblers. Sure, there are crop insurance plans you can sign up for, but for farmers like me, working on a smaller, very diversified level with many crops, I don’t quality for insurance. So every year I take a risk that the garlic won’t rot due to an unseasonably wet spring, the potatoes won’t succumb to blight due to a warm and wet summer, the dry beans will get enough heat to grow and mature before the fall rains hit.”

  “[My] philosophy is ‘sustainability.’ And by that I mean not only farming using sustainable practices to nurture the land but the financial sustainability of what I do, and the emotional and physical sustainability of what I do. If I cannot find a way to farm that provides enough financial reward while allowing me enough time to relax and recover and enjoy my family, then it doesn’t matter how great of an ‘environmentally sustainable’ farmer I am, I can’t financially and emotionally/physically sustain it.”

  “I don’t think that eaters/consumers know how much work goes into almost every crop, not to mention how often crops fail. People will often say to me, ‘Wow, Georgie . . . you have a really green thumb.’ My response is, Not really, I just plant A LOT.”

  PAM MITCHELL IS QUITE THE OPPOSITE— A WOMAN OF FEW WORDS. SHE SAID:

  “Mother Earth is the greatest partner I’ve ever had. She provides me an excellent education in mutually supportive collaboration. I’m astonished by Her generosity, grateful for Her wisdom, and humbled by Her patience. She is truly the love of my life.”

  GEORGINA SILBY, WHO GROWS BIODYNAMIC GRAINS, BROUGHT HER SPIRITUAL VALUES TO HER ANSWERS

  “I farm primarily to be intimately connected with the dance of life, to build soil, and to produce high-quality food for the well-being of humans. As an aspiring biodynamic farmer, I am learning how to mediate the forces above and below. Plants are some of my greatest teachers, and so to work with them is very satisfying. I also love to be outside and engaged in creative production.”

  “Being connected to the alchemy of farming is deeply nourishing, and learning about how life really works is humbling. Observing the soil’s transformation is very inspiring, especially when it is increasing in its biological activity and tilth. It’s also very rewarding to eat good food that I was personally involved in creating.”

  “My economic challenges are similar to other start-up businesses. There is no living wage for me at this time. I am still marketing and getting established as a local producer. In addition to the weather factor, I am dependent on other farmers for their equipment, and that can be very hard, like the time my crops were perfectly ripe and ready for harvest but it was Labor Day weekend and I could not get anyone to bring their combine over to my fields. Then it rained and the crops were compromised.”

  “My farming philosophy is quite influenced by old earth-based traditions of various agrarian societies. . . . I look at the land as a living organism, and consider how to keep it in a regenerative state. I choose not to plow, and prioritize building the soil. This is like the immune system; if the soil is balanced and healthy, the crops will generally respond accordingly. I pay attention to cosmic influences also; the sun is not the only heavenly body that determines outcomes in the field. Observation and listening are perhaps the most important practices for me; paying careful attention to as much as possible, and then being appropriately guided. Feedback from the plants is crucial, and not just the ones I intentionally planted; the weeds are great indicators a
lso. And then there are other farmers; their observations and shared insights are priceless, and help me tremendously.”

  “[I want eaters to know] that farm food is stardust transformed by the elementals. That the intention of the farmer deeply affects the quality of the food. Some people know why local honey is important, but that principle applies to eating any local food. It is healthier since the plants and animals from your area are better adapted to your local conditions (same air, same rain . . .) and so offer humans specific support in subtle but significant ways.”

  FINALLY, ANNIE JESPERSON:

  I met Annie when she was a student at the Greenbank Farm Training Center. She is now, with her partner, Nathaniel, farming on Molly and John Peterson’s land. She says:

  “I farm because farming allows me to use my entire being—my body, mind, and soul—to work toward the health of my community. Through this beautiful, challenging work I get to be a philosopher and a scientist, an educator and an activist, a dreamer and a doer—employing all my faculties to nurture crops, build soil, and promote well-being for the people within my reach. My heroes are small-scale farmers, whose lives are guided not by the allure of immense profits but by love of hard work, of people, and of land. I want to someday emanate the wisdom and love that they’ve acquired through years of embracing this tough, dirty, and all-important work. Through farming, I have the chance to use my creativity, my strength, and my heart every day to do something that I find incredibly rewarding. This is why I farm.”

  Now It’s Your Turn

  If you live with others but don’t eat together, establish a once-a-day or twice-a-week or even just once-a-week ritual of dining together. Say grace. Have a conversation where everyone has a chance to speak. Enjoy the stories of each person’s day or week.