Vulnerability of Agricultural: Kent Valley

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Kathryn Gardow

Foodies and agricultural preservationists reminisce the vast acres of lush agricultural soils now covered by asphalt, shopping malls, aerospace giants, and warehouses in western Washington’s Kent Valley.

Historic Kent Valley

For generations, the Kent Valley, with its meandering Green River, was home to a robust agricultural community feeding the burgeoning Seattle metropolitan area. What is less remembered or romanticized are the ferocious floods that used to plague the valley. Dave Sprau historian for the White River Valley Museum, writes that floods were expected to overflow the Green River banks “nearly every winter.” These were not just nuisance floods, but significant floods that left two to three feet of water running through living rooms, while the waterway momentarily considered new paths as rivers are wanton to do.

Old Kent Valley Barn

Today, the answer to these devastating floods would be to elevate or relocate an existing home out of the flood’s fury. Any future development would be restricted by strict building codes requiring flood doors to allow water passage beneath an elevated home or to transfer the legal right to develop flood prone property to land more suitable for higher density development, usually in a neighboring city.

Accommodating inundation waters was not a solution for our predecessors, as farmers and landowners were looking to decrease the annual cleanup process from continued flood devastation. As a result beginning in 1926, a new group the Associated Improvement Club of South King County with its subgroup “The Need for Flood Control in our Valley” began to look for solutions to control the river.

Kent Valley Heritage Farm adjacent to suburban development.

The Great Depression and World War II intervened and delayed significant progress on Green River flood solutions. However, by 1955, a location at the base of Eagle Gorge on the Green River and a congressional appropriation accelerated erection of the earthen dam now known as the Howard A. Hansen Dam, named after the man that worked tirelessly to ensure its completion. As construction commenced, the Green River gave one last punch in 1959 with a flood that cost upwards of $35 million in today’s dollars. By 1962, the Green River was officially tamed and what once was a water-logged, soggy, flood-prone farming valley looked highly desirable for urban/suburban, commercial (Southcenter Mall) and industrial (Boeing) development, since it was flat, dry, and easy to access.

American Farmland Trust in its January 2012 publication entitled, Losing Ground: Farmland Protection in the Puget Sound Region states that King County lost 162 square miles of farmland between 1950 and 2007. The lower Green River basin between Auburn and Tukwila, which corresponds to the acreage of the cities of Kirkland, Bellevue, and Redmond combined, is approximately 1/3 of those lost farmland acres.

Recent Flood Threats in the Kent Valley

During the original dam design in 1949, concern was expressed about a 10,000 year old geologic formation that was created when a mountainside slid into the Green River proposed for the right abutment. At the time, confident with 10,000 years of geological solidification, designers thought the failure risk was minimal and developed a dam design that further decreased any threat.

Temporary levee reinforcement on top of existing levee

Fast forward to 2009, and an inspection of the Howard A. Hansen structure after a significant winter storm revealed seepage through the right river abutment and dam fragility. Local and state governments scrambled to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure, by reducing the water held behind the barrier, developing escape routes and warnings, and temporarily raising levees in the flat former farmlands to mitigate any impacts from a possible deluge. Concurrently, engineers worked fervently developing a solution for dam integrity.

Why was it so compelling that the dam be fixed? What was at risk besides loss of life, limb and property (as if that was not enough), if the structure failed? Why do we work so hard to protect human built features from the potential ravishing destruction that nature or man’s failing could bring? Farm advocates were breathlessly watching to see if this was a rare opportunity to slowly bring the valley back to its agricultural roots.

Kent Valley is Washington’s Economic Engine

What is critical to know is that elected officials, business people, and our state economy could not tolerate a catastrophic dam failure. To evaluate the importance of the Howard A. Hansen Dam, Washington State Department of Commerce in cooperation with King County prepared an April 2010 analysis of the Economic and Revenue Impacts of Potential Flooding in the Green River Valley and found that the Valley’s economic impact on the State’s economy is staggering:

1/8 or 12% of Washington’s Gross State Product equaling $107 million per day resides in the valley;
About 100,000 jobs or approximately 8% of all jobs in King County are found in the inundation area;
$112 million in annual property tax is collected on real estate worth $10 billion in taxable value; and
Approximately $100 million in annual Business and Occupation tax (10% of the current legislative biennium shortfall) is paid by valley businesses to the State’s coffers.

Kent Valley trucking business

Crisis averted. As anticipated, an engineering solution was found and completed by the start of the 2011-2012 winter wet season to stabilize the abutment thereby substantially decreasing the odds of any major flood event in the valley.

Will Kent Valley ever revert to its agricultural roots? Probably not. Will other western Washington valleys be able to maintain their agricultural economies? Maybe or maybe not. Some issues to ensure long-term agricultural production are out of our local control such as national food corporation policies, prices of products from international and domestic markets, and impacts from climate change. These issues we can influence but most likely cannot easily change.

However, there are issues over which we have power to affect our local food economy. To effect that influence, it takes political will and a community dedicated to maintaining a vibrant agriculture economy, by farming food production lands, removing development rights from rural lands, maintaining farm animal veterinarians, feed stores, and other agricultural infrastructure, creating land use regulations kind to growing food, and developing solutions to adapt to climate and market change. We can have western Washington locally grown food provided we continue to work, advocate, and support it.

Kathryn Gardow, P.E., local food advocate, a land use expert and owner of Gardow Consulting, an organization dedicated to providing multidisciplinary solutions to building sustainable communities. Kathryn has expertise in project management, planning, and civil engineering, with an emphasis on creating communities that include food production. Kathryn’s blog will muse on ways to create a more sustainable world.

Food: A Political Act

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Kathryn Gardow

“I didn’t know food was so political,” was my Dad’s comment after reading Michael Pollen’s In Defense of Food. Dad like the vast majority of people, ate when he was hungry. He was eating food long before the calories from fat or grams of sodium were found on food labels. Food for Dad was pure pleasure and of course, a necessity! Like my Dad, I ate what has put in front of me, and my diet included not only the wholesome foods my mother or I cooked, but also calorie-laden sweets and snacks, until my once upon a time skinny person metabolism changed. I now have to be much more mindful of what I put into my body, so I don’t become classified as overweight by today’s U.S. Department of Health Standards.

Unlike my Dad, eaters born since the advent of the television age are more readily trained on what and how to eat by food company advertising, journalism and the government. There are countless commercials on television, the internet, in the movies, on billboards, covering t-shirts, on race cars and buses and everything else you can imagine. There are daily articles in newspapers, blogs, radio broadcasts, and conversations with friends about what to eat or not to eat. Different parts of government, whether it is the US Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the local county government, or a classroom teacher provide information to willing listeners on food policy. No longer are we just eating the wholesome food of earlier generations but instead consuming foods, as Pollan says, our “great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Paying attention to the constant food babble on our meal choices is never-ending.

Typical Food Company Advertising

McDonald’s Bus Advertisement

An unrecognizable concoction in earlier generations now advertised on the sides of buses, are the ubiquitous Chicken McNuggets®–a breaded, processed chicken chunk–created by the giant food company McDonald’s. The chicken chunk does include the well-known fowl as its first ingredient, but also a myriad of other ingredients not found in my kitchen including “hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ” and “dimethylpolysiloxane.”

TBHQ also known as “tertiary butylhydroquinone” is a petroleum based preservative product added to edible vegetable and animal fats, to prevent spoilage. The US Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) has legally limited the quantity of TBHQ to 0.02% of any product’s oil and fat content. According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, as little as a single gram (1/30th of an ounce) of TBHQ consumption, can cause “nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.”

The other mysterious ingredient is dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent similar to silicone products found in cosmetics and the childhood toy, Silly Putty. While no known harmful effects have been found from dimethylpolysiloxane’s use in foods, I’m sure my great grandmother did not add it to her cooking repertoire.

Food Journalism

Journalism has also added immensely to the politics of food. Newspapers have long included recipes and feature articles on food in the Wednesday paper with the inserts of the tantalizing, money saving coupons. Now discussions on food issues are just as likely to show up on the front page of the paper or have dedicated websites such as Food Safety News.

Newspapers chronicled the late 1980′s rise and quick decline of oat bran as a health fad to lower cholesterol levels. In 1993, it was Jack in the Box’s turn where under-cooked, fecal-infested, hamburgers were served with four children’s lives lost. Beginning in 2001, there have been compromised honey imports into the United States from China via other countries. Now in the honey scandal, people have been charged, fines have been paid, and the saga continues to this day. [I know I can trust my local honey producer Snoqualmie Valley Honey Farm.] There is the continued diet craze where recommendations on what to eat and how much to eat are made. There is the Atkins Diet, Weight Watchers, DASH, and numerous other diet programs to consider and evaluate.

Journalism is invested in keeping us well-informed, aware, and perhaps sometimes afraid about what we ingest.

Government’s Food Policies

Our U.S., state, and local governments also dispense a stupendous wealth of food information. The Center for Disease Control, local health departments, and schools are working to implement wellness programs and physical activity guidelines to reign in the obesity epidemic. The Farm Bill authorized by Congress approximately every five years, impacts rural farming communities, international trade, food and nutrition programs (also known as Food Stamps in the old vernacular), conservation programs and a myriad of other food policy and agricultural issues.

1943 USDA –7 Basic Food Groups

Of course, the U.S. Department of Agricultural has a vested interest in food issues, too, and took on a critical role during World War II, when the U.S. last experienced food scarcity. By November 1943, sugar, meat, butter, coffee and a multitude of other food products were rationed, because of shortages and to supply food to the troops. Concurrently, the government created the first food poster with 7 equally important food categories. The 1943 categories, Group One–Green and Yellow Vegetables…, Group Two–Oranges, Tomatoes, Grapefruit…, Group Three–Potatoes and Other Vegetables and Fruits, Group Four–Milk and Milk Products…, Group Five–Meat, Poultry, Fish, or Eggs…, Group Six–Bread, Flour, and Cereals…, Group Seven–Butter and Fortified Margarine, look silly today. Who today would recommend butter or fortified margarine (to which Vitamin A was added), on par with any of the other six food groups?

From 1956 to 1992, my formative years until adulthood, the seven food groups were reduced to the basic big four; meat, dairy, grains and fruits and vegetables, in equal amounts. It seemed simple for my grade-school mind to grasp. Beginning in 1992 until today, recommendations on what we should eat has changed three more times, twice in a triangular form, more commonly known as a food pyramid and now as My Plate, where a dinner plate is divided into four portions with an added dairy product. Most likely, the recommended food offerings will continue to evolve.

Back to the Politics of Food

Dad was flummoxed by the often contradictory noise about what, when and how to eat. He couldn’t be bothered with it. Why would Dad have wanted to pay attention to all this information, when he could just enjoy eating?!

Dad always found my passion for good food and the farms an interesting curiosity. He taught me to pick strawberries, plant a garden, and stop at the roadside stand to purchase fresh tomatoes and corn. But, what was different, was that I spent time making deliberate food choices, eating vitamin-charged kale over an iceberg lettuce salad and serving whole wheat spaghetti. I wouldn’t always eat the ice cream or piece of cake that was served, but was more judicious in my choices.

Yes, Dad, what we eat is a political act, whether we like it or not. Each item we eat is supporting a farmer that grew the food. Purchasing nuts, grass-fed beef or cider at the farmer’s market directly supports the farm operation and local economies and farmland preservation, while eating Chicken McNuggets® does not. Even so, with all the food choice hype, we need to get out of our heads and just enjoy simply eating.

Skagit County: Creating New Food Production Models

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Kathryn Gardow

What’s happening just north of Seattle in agriculture? Who is bucking the trend of urbanization in the Interstate 5 corridor in the Puget Sound region? What new agricultural innovations are being created?

Skagit County, Washington, located one hour north of Seattle along the burgeoning Interstate 5 corridor is fighting the nationwide trend of converting prime farmland into stripmalls and subdivisions, more commonly known in traditional appraiser’s parlance as the “highest and best use”. From 1950 to 2007, Skagit County lost more than 52,000 acres of prime farmland, but looking at the numbers more carefully, during the boom real estate years from 1997 to 2007 the County actually had a net increase of 6.6% or almost 6,800 farmable acres. In the same boom years all of Washington State lost just over 800,000 acres of farmland about three-quarters the size of Skagit County.

Skagit Farmland

Granted Skagit County has its Walmart, outlet mall, freeway businesses, and housing developments, but Skagit County Commissioners had the foresight 17 years ago to enact the Farmland Legacy Program to protect valuable farmland resources as its “highest and best (agricultural) use.” Skagit County now boasts agriculture as its number one industry according to Washington State University (WSU)-Extension despite being on the forefront of counties threatened by intense urban/suburban development.

Skagit County farmers currently cultivate 108,500 acres generating more than $300 million in sales of produce, horticulture, livestock and dairy according to WSU. The County is widely known for its potato production generating 95% of all the red potatoes grown in the state and is the largest tulip and daffodil bulb grower of any county in the country. As with any business, after 100 years in the County, 2010 saw the demise of green pea cultivation and processing. Despite this loss, growers are eagerly looking for new opportunities and methods to maintain the rural agricultural economy.

Viva Farms

In 2009, Viva Farms put their first spade in the ground. Viva Farms, a local non-profit started by Sarita and Ethan Schaffer, a husband-wife duo started revolutionizing the possibilities in local food production, attacking the local foods challenge with a vengeance, creating partnerships and leveraging opportunities.

Viva Farms located on Highway 20 at the entrance to the Port of Skagit County

Early on, Viva Farms secured 33 acres of prime farmland owned by the Port of Skagit County to create their sustainable agricultural vision. Why would a Port District intent on creating economic growth and strengthening local economics lease property to farmers? As the Port’s Executive Director, Patsy Martin said, “Leasing property to an up and coming farmer just made sense. The Port Commissioners wanted to make a difference in the community. With the Viva Farms model, which trains new farmers, creates value-added products, and distributes products to the community through box deliveries, it had the potential to contribute immensely to the community.” Patsy saw not only the possibility of growing food, but a drive to generate value-added food products and distribution systems that could expand into new markets and opportunities. The Port of Skagit County facilities would be there to support these endeavors.

With the Viva Farms model, a minimum one acre and up to 5 acres of farm ground is leased to a new or burgeoning farmer, (often with Latino heritage,) with the ability to use shared equipment, on-site infrastructure such as irrigation water, and acquire low-interest loans. Courses are offered in tandem with WSU-Extension in Sustainable Small Farming and Ranching and Agricultural Entrepreneurship and Farm Business Planning. Farmers are encouraged to find their own markets for product sales, and some farmers have even created closed loop businesses, growing food and preparing and selling their finished products from their own mobile food truck. Surplus produce can also be sold through Viva Farms’ association with Growing Washington, a company offering boxed delivery service along the I-5 corridor from Seattle northward. Once farmers are confident in their agricultural skills and implementation of their marketing plan, they often look for larger parcels in the Skagit flatlands to expand their business.

In another step towards strengthening the local food economy, Viva Farms recently leased available warehouse space in the Port’s industrial complex to build a processing, cleaning, aggregation, and distribution warehouse for the growing box delivery service confirming Patsy Martin’s intuition. Farm goods from Viva Farms as well as from other farms in the region, will have a central, easy access location to quickly distribute the freshest products to the discerning palettes throughout Puget Sound.

Sustainable agriculture is also getting recognition from Washington’s newest congressional representative, Suzan DelBene. Washington with a statewide $6.7 billion agricultural economy according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, now has representation in the House Committee on Agriculture, which is critical to fostering the economic importance of food production in our state. In recognition of the possibilities available in the Viva Farms model, Representative DelBene visited the farm in January 2013 to expand her understanding of the County’s innovative agriculture economy.

Skagit Farmland Legacy Program

As Viva Farms is expanding its presence, so is the County’s Farmland Legacy Program. Established in 1996 by the Skagit County Commissioners, the Farmland Legacy Program assesses a 6-1/4% per $1,000 of property valuation Conservation Futures tax on all properties in the County. Conservation Futures monies are leveraged with Federal, State, and private donor funds and distributed via a rigorous evaluation process to worthy farmland preservation projects in the County. Farmers are compensated for the removal of the right to develop their farm and to maintain its “highest and best (agricultural) use”.

Raspberry plants getting prepared for summer production

Since 1996, the Farmland Legacy Program has year by year removed development pressure on valuable fertile ground and now protects 7,000 acres or 6% of the County’s farming land base in perpetuity. This was accomplished by engaging the farming community, neighboring cities, non-profits and citizens to form and advocate for the program, by collaborating with the government and private donors for financing, and developing a viable, strong farming community vision.

As the program has progressed, once skeptical farmers see the benefit of a thriving agricultural community, of being paid for their development rights and now want to participate, too. With ever increasing community support and enthusiasm for protecting Skagit’s agricultural economy, the Legacy Program submitted half of all farmland protection projects to the Washington State’s WWRP-Farmland Preservation Program (Page 2 of the document) for funding in fiscal year 2014. Skagit projects are in the top two-thirds of all projects as ranked by a farmland advisory board comprised of farmers and agricultural experts, but are only asking for 10% of the total WWRP-Farmland Preservation Program’s request. Funding for these Skagit parcels are dependent on constituents asking their senators and legislators to grant support the WWRP-Farmland Preservation Fund.

Skagit County is a happening place where political leaders, entrepreneurs, farmers, and citizens are ensuring the strength and well-being of the rural agricultural economy and bucking the trend of losing agricultural land. The benefit is fresh, locally grown food for now and in perpetuity.

Ensuring Food Security: Wade’s Vision

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

Food and water are necessities. If we don’t have food to eat, we go hungry. Hungry people are bad for society. We take food for granted.

Setting the Stage: Puget Sound

In Seattle we often live up to our reputation and it rains. This December, it’s been cold enough that the precipitation in the mountains is snow. Too much or too little rain has huge impacts on food availability. Even when there is heavy rain, the grocery store is open and there is plenty of food to buy; except when there isn’t.

Asian Pears at Rockridge Orchards

Four years ago getting produce to Seattle was practically impossible. January 7, 2009, Seattle was isolated by Mother Nature with a warm tropical rainstorm from Hawaii, also known as a pineapple express. Gallons upon gallons of water fell on saturated lowlands and melted fresh snow in the mountains causing hillsides to collapse, rivers to overtop their banks, and levees to break.

Storm statistics recorded seven inches of rain falling in Olympia in a 72-hour period and up to 20 inches of rain pummeling the Cascade Mountains. Interstate 5 was closed for a 20-mile stretch between Olympia and Portland due to flooding. All the major mountain passes were closed, blocked by avalanches and mudslides. The outcome of the storm; no truck deliveries could be made from the east or south. Seattle was virtually isolated. Grocery stores had signs posted apologizing for produce shortages and anticipating their next shipments, held hostage by the reverberations of the storm.

It took three days for the storm obstructions to be cleared. The three day inconvenience does not make it into the record books as a notable Western Washington storm, but the significance of such an event could be prescient for the future.

Setting the Stage: Michigan

Another blip in disaster records happened in Michigan in March 2012. Winter 2011-2012 had been unseasonably warm with average temperatures 4 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. But even without the typical lower winter temperatures, the trees had met their seasonal chilling requirements, preventing early spring growth and priming the tree to begin blossoming with any indication of spring-like weather. Trees begin their yearly fruit cycle when temperatures reach 45 degrees Fahrenheit and growth rates double with every 18 degrees Fahrenheit increase. Continued cool days and frosty nights typically moderate blossoming rates.

Beginning March 11, 2012 and continuing for 12 days, Michigan experienced unseasonably warm temperatures teasing fruit trees and accelerating the blossoming schedule. Night time temperatures did not suspend fruit development, as they were 10 degrees above normal. The 2012 Michigan heat wave reported new climatological records with daytime temperatures up to 40 degrees above normal, dramatically increasing growth rates.

Fruit trees when dormant can withstand significant freezes, but once blossoms appear temperatures below 28 degrees damage yields and below 24 degrees can obliterate the harvest. March 24^th the warm weather pattern broke and Canadian cold returned. Across Michigan there were subsequently at least 15 freezes below 28 degrees and 5 events below 24 degrees, savaging blossoms and reducing the summer fruit harvest to 20% of normal.

Rockridge Orchards—Enumclaw, Washington

Wade Bennett, owner of Rockridge Orchards located just outside of Enumclaw, Washington, is a regular vendor at the University District–Saturday farmers market, always found in the southeast corner. As a regular customer, I purchase honey crisp apple cider, raspberry apple cider vinegar, and seasonal specialties such as Asian pears, Macoun apples, and Japanese cucumbers.

Rockridge Orchards farmer Wade Bennett

Wade started farming after receiving a severance package from Universal Studios, purchasing his first farm at $1,500 per acre, and only anticipating taking a short break from the corporate world. He planted juicy, sweet Asian pears, because it was his wife’s favorite and he was unwilling to spend $3/pound for the orbs. Some local Korean women happened to see his crop and purchased it all. He was hooked and planted more.

Now 20 years on the farm, additional acreage most recently purchased in the mid-2000s at $40,000 per acre, and in his late 50′s (the average age of a U.S. farmer), Wade has the opportunity to ponder on the future of farms, food, and local agriculture. He operates a year-around farmstand outside of Enumclaw, sells at multiple farmers markets, and engages in the future of western Washington food production as a King-Pierce Farm Bureau and a Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance board member. (Even with this level of commitment to farming, he readily admits if someone offered him $100,000 per acre, he would take it in a heartbeat.)

So, Why Retain the Local Farm?

Rural estate adjacent to Rockridge Orchards

Wade acknowledges that the I-5 corridor will continue to attract business investment and accordingly people, pressuring currently vacant land (also known as farmland and forest land) to be converted to its “highest and best use.” In appraisal parlance, raw land as it is converted to housing, commercial, or industrial use, creates higher economic value. The act of development generates jobs, increases taxes paid, producing economic growth, thereby creating wealth. Food lands do not generate these significant increases in wealth, as food is a commodity. But, without food, we have nothing, as it is the sustenance of life.

Wade’s vision is to create permanent agricultural corridors west of the Cascade Mountains sandwiching the cities from the Canadian to the Oregonian border. Each urban area would be confined with the specific intention of protecting our long-term food security. This is a bold idea beyond the simple economics of real estate, as the agricultural value of the dirt would be considered rather than just its “highest and best use.”

Wade’s vision is relevant to the floods in Washington and freezes in Michigan. During different weather calamities, we can be dependent either on a local or a distant farmer for our sustenance. Having local farmers is critical to feeding ourselves when disaster strikes, Seattle is isolated and food cannot be trucked in. Alternatively, when Mother Nature devastates our local foods, having distant suppliers is important. With the damage of the Michigan 2012 fruit crop, wholesalers trolled the west coast markets for fresh, available fruit to feed the mid-west populace. Wade enjoyed a stellar year selling fruit to mid-west distributors and prices even higher than direct marketing in Seattle.

Conserving western Washington’s agricultural corridors are vital to our region’s long-term economic and food security. By guaranteeing continued Puget Sound farming, we are more secure against the vagaries of nature that could impede our ability to eat. It takes a bold, forward-thinking populace demanding and financing protection of our sustenance lands to never lack food.

Kathryn Gardow, P.E., is a local food advocate, land use expert and principal of Gardow Consulting, an organization dedicated to providing multidisciplinary solutions to building sustainable communities. Kathryn has expertise in project management, planning, and civil engineering, with an emphasis on creating communities that include local food production.

Nash’s Real Food from the Ground Up

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

I spoke to soil recently, receiving wisdom from the earth. Nash Huber–iconic organic farmer–was speaking from depth of his soul on soil and our human connection to it through the food we eat. My psyche was mesmerized by his words.

Nash’s Journey

I consider myself beyond fortunate to know Nash. Nash is of sauerkraut heritage, as am I. He grew up on a family farm in Illinois, but left the homestead to be schooled in organic chemistry, analyzing corn and soybeans, the antecedent of our industrialized food system. In 1969, he traveled to the Olympic Peninsula to get back to the land, to reconnect with his farming roots. It wasn’t until 1979 that he founded Nash’s Organic Produce first renting or borrowing garden-sized plots.

Now with 400-acres farmed in the fertile Dungeness River Delta, nine landlords, and 40-years of growing food for the burgeoning organic market, he focuses on infusing us with his passion for the land. The land is the root for all Nash does.

“We have a microclimate here in the lower Dungeness Peninsula that is so unique. It is one of the two best places in the world for growing brassica seeds,” enthuses Nash. I remember the first time I heard this as if it were yesterday: the Dungeness Peninsula and northern Europe are the best places to grow these specific seeds.

Nash’s Best Carrots

The Dungeness climate, soils, and an abundance of irrigation water fosters a year around agriculture production system with spinach, basil, and cauliflower in the summer and brussels sprouts, cabbage, and the legendary Nash’s Best carrots in the winter. (If you have never experienced one of Nash’s Best, then you must. I recommend a blind taste test with Nash’s Best and the ‘other carrot.’)

Nash’s infusion of soil soul guided me on my procurement mission for our Thanksgiving Feast ingredients. Full integration of the best of the maritime Northwest’s November produce ladened our table. Roasted brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage is the ultimate brassica mélange. Mashed potatoes from spuds grown in flat bottom-land soils, roasted winter squash, and cranberry-ginger preserves fresh from locally harvested bogs filled the table.

I also challenged myself for the first time to make kimchee, Korea’s national pickle dish. I couldn’t resist the Napa cabbage, leeks, and radishes at Nash’s University District Saturday market stand and I wanted to honor my children’s heritage on Thanksgiving. Kimchee requires planning ahead. The cabbage and other vegetables are salted overnight to soften them, and then fermented with garlic, chilies, and gingerroot for up to a week, to create the Korean spicy pickled concoction, favored by the discerning palette.

Savoring Thanksgiving, I thanked Nash for giving me that sense of knowing that, “We must get back to the land.” As with every conversation with Nash, I leave settled, whole, and complete. It is a breath of fresh air to be back in the soul of the earth, breathing, centering, being enveloped in what is most important in our lives–food and the land that grows it.

Farming Land You Don’t Own: The ‘Urban Fringe’ Farm

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

When you farm land you don’t own, you must do your homework prior to getting on the land to ensure your business interests are protected. Spend the time needed to thoroughly understand the land. The landowner is not looking out for your interests. Ask good questions. All agreements must be in writing. Trust your gut.

Farming leased land is the least expensive way for new farmers to start doing what they love best: farming. It’s also the best way for existing farmers to expand their operation. Western Washington lease rates range from as low as $200/acre to more than $1,000/acre. More expensive land has easier access to Seattle markets, reliable irrigation water, and housing. Less pricey land is prone to significant flooding or has contract clauses to quickly evict the farmer. This is the story of two farmers, Jake Sterino and Nicole Capizzi producing food on leased land in the urban fringe.

Leasing in the path of future development

Often landowners lease land in the queue for future development. Throughout most of the 20th century, the Puyallup Valley was home to large-scale farm businesses producing oodles of food. But cities grow, farmers age, and what was once rural land is threatened by encroaching cities. Farmland which is flat, cheap and easy to develop are targets for constructing urbanizing infrastructure.

Classic is the future 6-mile extension of Highway 167 slicing through the lower fertile Puyallup River valley which has been slated for construction for 20 years, and the Port of Tacoma has it on its “must-do” list. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) leases the agricultural land to a long-time Puyallup Valley farmer, Jake Sterino. Jake is uncertain when WSDOT will invoke its 90-day vacation clause, but with a $1.5 billion shortfall and no foreseeable construction funding, food production keeps on.

Sterino Farms advertising display at QFC

Jake, as the fourth generation farmer continues his family’s almost 100-year old business farming the fertile soils bringing berries, lettuce, cabbage, celery and sweet corn to Puget Sound markets. Jake completes his yearly harvest season with the ubiquitous Halloween orb.

QFC, Fred Meyer, and Town & Country Markets feature Sterino Farms in store promotions, as a local Puyallup farmer. Do these retailers know the threats to this farmland? In the near term, highway construction in the Puyallup is stalled, but Jake has hedged his bets. He’s farming 100 acres in eastern Washington, too.

Leasing under-used land in the urban setting

Nicole Capizzi of Amaranth Urban Farm has created a smaller scale farm business on two tracts of urban land. She begins each season by renting early-season greenhouse space at Rainier Beach Urban Farms & Wetlands, a project of Seattle Parks & Recreation and Seattle Tilth.

With pallets of starts, she begins her season in south Seattle, in a working class neighborhood beneath the flight path. Nicole farms a one acre irrigated property, in the midst of an in-city riding facility. The farmground sits uphill from the horse compound. She is fortunate to have covered barn space to store equipment and an open air gazebo to wash and sort produce. Delivery bins, abundantly filled with tender greens, heirloom tomatoes, winter squashes, and bouquets of color, are delivered three times a week to her CSA, co-op, and restaurant customers.

Late season cover cropping on Amaranth Urban Farm in Kent

Nicole tills another one acre parcel incorporated into Heritage Farm Thoroughbred Training Center in Kent. King County had the foresight in 1984 to preserve Heritage Farm as agricultural open space, in what is now surrounded by a burgeoning suburbanizing community. To the south, suburban Kent neighborhoods abut the farm. In 2009 Tukwila annexed the last undeveloped 500 acres in the northern Kent Valley anticipating construction of neighborhoods and businesses creating 25,000 jobs over the next 25 years. This leaves the 30-acre Heritage Farm property a future rural oasis in the middle of these two growing cities. In the meantime, the area around the farm is still pastoral.

Surrounded by youngsters learning horsemanship on the riding ring, Nicole cultivates crops in this small section of what was once an immense agricultural valley. With less than 10 miles from farm to table, produce is super fresh ensuring full nutritional benefits to the eater. Harvested food from this farm is brought back to the Seattle farm for washing, sorting, and processing.

I was fortunate to meet Nicole when she was searching for the piece of land to create her dream as an urban farmer. To see her accomplishments is gratifying, but I know there were many hours of effort behind her success. Likely, the small scale urban farm is replicable, but, as Nicole says, “If we are really going to create this robust local, just, secure food system everyone is talking about, some of us are going to have to be the professionals (farmers) who actually do the work.”

Jake and Nicole are compelled to labor in the eternal enterprise of growing food, ensuring our plates are filled with plentiful produce. Despite being on leased land, we are blessed with their bounty and perseverance.

Kathryn Gardow, P.E., is a local food advocate, land use expert and owner of Gardow Consulting, an organization dedicated to providing multidisciplinary solutions to building sustainable communities. Kathryn has expertise in project management, planning, and civil engineering, with an emphasis on creating communities that include food production. Kathryn will be giving a workshop at the Tilth Producers of Washington conference at Fort Worden on Saturday, November 10th on Growing Food on Land You Don’t Own. Kathryn’s blog muses on ways to create a more sustainable world.

Healthy Food Heals Patients

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

Christi was in a terrible bike accident in July. She was biking in Montana, in rangeland in the middle of a bike posse drafting — the art of the first person in the posse breaking the wind for those cyclists behind — a tried and true method of going longer distances faster without getting tired. With drafting, once the lead cyclist is tired, he moves to the back of the pack. Christi hit a piece of mid-road shrapnel and somersaulted into a gravel/grass ditch, hitting face first and continuing to tumble, badly injuring her spine. After time in the ICU and then a rehab center, she is scheduled to go home one month after the accident. Whether she will regain full mobility is unknown.

Getting Well With Food

But how does this story relate to food and land? Hospital patients are sick and need to be made whole again, often eating a specific diet to help them become healthy again. Christi knew that good, wholesome healthy food is what she needed to repair her badly torn body. The hospital provided a menu from which she could select her meal. She asked for a salad, expecting dark leafy greens, providing vitamins A, C, K, calcium, iron and folate and was instead served iceberg lettuce, which pales in vitamin content. Her dessert selection was a fruit cup. Rather than enjoying the bounty of the Northwest’s fresh seasonal fruit, it was canned fruit.

Tomatoes grown on the vine contain more vitamin C and taste better.

Her hospital purchased food through a General Purchasing Organization (“GPO”) contract and had no commitment to fresh local foods, which provide more nutritional content, according to the Harvard Medical School, Center for Health and the Global Environment. One example of healthy food are locally grown tomatoes that are allowed to ripen on the vine and have a higher Vitamin C content than those that are chosen for durability and travel.

Generally speaking, hospital food is notoriously bad, but in Washington State, 21% of the hospitals have signed the Health Care Without Harm Pledge, which is a framework to guide the health care industry to improve the food in their hospitals. Hospitals that are implementing the pledge are offering more fruits, vegetables, and nutritionally dense food and working with local farmers, distributors, and food experts to incorporate fresh, locally grown food in their patient and cafeteria meals.

Practice Greenhealth Webinar

On Thursday, August 30, 2012, at 11 a.m., PDT, (2 p.m., EDT), Practice Greenhealth, a non-profit specializing in environmental solutions for the healthcare sector, will offer a webinar on Preserving Farm and Farmland: The Power of Health Care’s Institutional Markets with three Seattle area food and farmland experts. Kathryn Gardow of Gardow Consulting will demonstrate how easily farmland is lost to other uses and how hospitals can strengthen their ties to local food sources. Lucy Norris of Northwest Business Agricultural Center will show how her organization is connecting farmers with hospital food providers. Pam Thiemann of Multicare Health System, Tacoma General Hospital will explain how her hospital began with a local egg producer, has meatless Mondays, is scheduled to eliminate their cafeteria fryer on August 30, and is ready to launch a brand new patient meal program, too!

Fresh fruit available in a hospital cafeteria

Fresh apples and pears available at the hospital cafeteria

Hospitals can purchase directly from local farmers, developing relationships with the local agricultural community. By providing the best food available to serve their patients and guests, hospitals can strengthen the rural farm community, too. Christi continues to make progress and is home now, eating good, healthy, locally grown food.

Kathryn Gardow, P.E., is a local food advocate, a land use expert and owner of Gardow Consulting, an organization dedicated to providing multidisciplinary solutions to building sustainable communities. Kathryn has expertise in project management, planning, and civil engineering, with an emphasis on creating communities that include food production. Kathryn’s blog will muse on ways to create a more sustainable world.

Global Gastronomy: Traveling the World with My Taste Buds

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

I like to eat. I have to eat, as we all do. I want to know where my food comes from. I want my food to be whole good food, not highly processed food. It’s easy to find good food, but I have to be willing to spend a bit more and look a little further than the local mini-mart or mainstream grocery store.

In the past 4 months, I have had the joy to taste real food in South Korea, Germany, Greece and Italy with my 14-year-old daughter, Pearl. Why I ended up in these parts of the world is another story, but to explore global food selections is a gastronomic experience.

Sharing Food with Friends in Korea

Eating food in Korea is a communal experience. Pearl and I had multiple meals of bibimpap — a mixed rice dish with vegetables — served with an assortment of sides such as kimchee, Korean potato salad, marinated bean sprouts, and spicy cucumbers. We shared meals with our Korean friends, who know how much I love good, fresh food.

Pearl & SoYoon ready to start our Shabu-Shabu meal

My favorite dish was shabu shabu, because it was a brand new taste experience for me. Shabu shabu is a Japanese dish that has developed a strong following in Korea. Multiple plates of fresh greens, cabbages, mushrooms, ultra-thin sliced meat, and noodles were brought to our table to cook in our shared hotpot filled with meat broth. Our friend SoYoon knew the exact order to place the food in the pot — vegetables first, followed by the meat and lastly the fresh noodles. As each item cooked, we ladled food into our bowls savoring the flavors. Little did I know that the last step in the shabu shabu experience is cooking an egg in the remaining broth. Pearl and I were full but knew that we had experienced a definitive Korean dining experience.

Strawberry Picking in Munich

On every trip to Munich to visit my Dad’s cousins (my first time as a 12-year-old), I have picked strawberries. Strawberries are the quintessential summer fruit, and Munich is dotted with multiple strawberry fields just outside the urban boundary. In June, I picked strawberries two different times, with two different cousins, on two different fields within a 10-minute drive of their urban homes. This time we didn’t ride bikes to the fields, so our berries did not become juice!

Loading bicycles and paying for strawberries near Forstenried, Munich, Germany

My Dad’s only memory as a 5-year-old on his first trip to Germany in 1939 was picking strawberries. His Mom and cousin rode the streetcar to the strawberry fields. On the way home, Dad spilled his pail of strawberries. Maybe that is why he remembered it — the disappointment of seeing his berries scattered across the streetcar floor.

There must be something in my heritage to lead me back to the strawberry field. It’s that burst of sweetness, as I pop a strawberry into my mouth. It’s the warmth on my back as I stoop over the plants to find the largest, reddest, hidden berries. It’s my Dad and his family taking me strawberry picking. It’s making jam with my cousin or adding my own homegrown rhubarb to strawberries at home. Strawberries are my perfect summer fruit, garnering memories of family and flavor.

Savoring Greek Delicacies

Greece, the ultimate food country. With all the political tension in the news about Greece this spring, about one-third of the international tourists have avoided this center of early civilization. Culminating two years of fundraising Greece provided the best food opportunity for our cash-strapped Girl Scout troop to indulge, because the Greeks were ready to sell to visitors.

Greek salad with luscious summer produce

Just west of Delphi, we were offered the pre-eminent Greek meal at a small restaurant perched adjacent to the Korinthiakos Kolpos, an arm of the Ionian Sea. The Greek salad, with cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, olives, red onions, and two wedges of feta cheese and just the right amount of olive oil, vinegar, and oregano, tasted like a summer day. The dolmades (rice-and- meat-stuffed grape leaves), the tzatziki (greek yogurt mixed with cucumbers, garlic and dill), and the tiropites (cheese pies) were taste sensations that I had not experienced. I brought home vacuum-packed Kalamata olives, five packets of Greek spices, locally produced olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a Greek cookbook, to test my ability at this new-found cuisine in my own kitchen. If we would only get a little sun this Seattle summer, I would have my own cucumbers to make tzatziki!

Italian Agriculture

Italian hill town surrounded by agriculture

Italy knows agriculture. Riding the train through the countryside, fields cover the terrain to the base of the towns located on the hillsides. In a conversation I had with Patty McManus-Huber of Nash’s Organic Produce, she suggested that perhaps one of the differences between European and American agriculture is that Europeans built their cities on the hillsides to see advancing armies coming across the fields, thereby leaving the flatlands for agriculture. Americans founded their cities first as agricultural communities and then expanded our cities onto those same farmlands.

Even to this day, according to the American Farmland Trust, the United States continues to lose an acre of farmland a minute to other uses. We need to shift our paradigm and realize the importance of food growing lands, to support our eating habit!

In June, Italy is hot and a perfect climate for growing the wonderful summer fruits and vegetables that I thirst for — tomatoes, oranges, peaches, and cucumbers. Each meal is a potpourri of colors — the eggplant antipasti, the roasted red peppers on pizzas, and myriad of greens in the salad.

Rather than purchasing a stack of Pringles at the highway rest stop, as many of the Girl Scouts on our trip did, I purchased the ultimate snack pack — a bag of freshly picked oranges — which I ate for the duration of the trip. My oranges were laden with juice and sweet with Italian summer sun.

The world knows how to eat! We can get out of the fast food enterprises, the gas station mini-marts, and the center aisles of the grocery store and find a plethora of delectable delights!

Old-Fashioned New England Farming: Young Farms

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

Two different farmers and two different perspectives. Dale Young of Young Farms, Stanley Hayes of Hayes Dairy and Sweet Pea Cheese, and I grew up together going to church in Granby, Connecticut, a farm and Hartford bedroom community. As a kid, I didn’t know the significance of growing up with farmers, but now realize that I knew a vanishing breed–the small town New England farmer. I visited each of their Connecticut farms in mid-May.

Dale Young of Young Farms–E. Granby, Connecticut

My early connection to Young Farms was when I got to kill, pluck, and eat my first and only super fresh chicken in high school when I was visiting Dale’s sister, Janice. I remember having dreams in the middle of the night, still plucking the chicken. I don’t think it was a nightmare, but more an experience that was definitely living inside me. While Dale’s Mom and Dad worked off farm as teachers, Dale was infused with farm gene and has since made his career in farming.

Connecticut’s Mainstay Crop: Tobacco

Dale and his wife Torrie farm 75 acres of flat bottom land adjacent to Salmon Brook in East Granby, Connecticut. As a young man, he tried his hand at dairying in New York State, but he was fortunate to inherit his uncle’s farm when the bottom fell out of the dairy business. He now farms mostly vegetables, but his main money maker is tobacco with revenue at $15,000/acre. Tobacco farming is subject to the vagaries of weather, diseases, market, and popularity.

One major disease threat is blue mold, which can destroy the whole crop practically overnight. The Connecticut government agency that monitors agricultural threats indicates that blue mold has been sighted in Pennsylvania. Whether the 2012 warm winter and prevailing winds portends a blue mold invasion this summer is a wait and see game.

New England Diversified Family Farm Operation

The season’s first crop–asparagus!

It was still early in Dale’s season when I visited, but he was excited about his earliest crop–asparagus! He’s only been growing asparagus for several seasons but knows that it will sell out at $3.50/pound at the farmer’s market. Restaurants will also purchase it at a lower rate, which is not as profitable, but there is joy in featuring locally grown produce at neighborhood eateries. I rode out in the bucket of the front loader to harvest asparagus with Torrie and the dog and was mesmerized by the breadth of his operation.

Dale grows three different kinds of potatoes, multiple kinds of peppers, sweet corn, tomatoes, hard and soft wheat, and buckwheat along with many other products to round out his offerings. His Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, where his neighbors invest in the upcoming season’s harvest, is a model I had not seen. For a set pre-season investment in the farm, the CSA subscriber purchases whatever products he wants at the farmstand throughout the season and benefits with a 15% discount on the list price.

Dent corn on the left and heirloom flint corn on the right

Flint corn, an heirloom corn variety that traces itself back to the New England Native Americans, is another of Dale’s prized crops. He grows it to grind for cornmeal. Flint corn is a specialty crop that is substantially better than the mass-marketed cornmeal that is produced from dent corn, which is also grown for cow feed!

Dale and Torrie are content generally sticking to what they know in farming, while Stanley is exploring new opportunities in farming. But, more about Stanley next time. Check out the amazing produce at Young Farms on Route 189 in East Granby, Connecticut next time you are in the Hartford area.

Ancient Wisdom: Aging Farmers

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Kathryn Gardow

The plight of the farmer

Farmer Cho with Mr. Hong discussing the state of farming in Korea

In Korea, as in the United States, the story is the same: aging farmers, expensive land, and not enough respect for the sustenance they provide. In April, I had the pleasure to meet with Farmer Cho, a 60-year-old strawberry, rice, and beef cattle farmer living about one-hour east of Seoul in the Yang-pyeong valley. Farmer Cho, who is the average age of a farmer in Korea, was just starting to make money with his strawberry crop and getting ready for his rice season. I spoke with Farmer Cho through our guide, Mr. Hong, who had no farming knowledge and had never even been on a farm. My daughter and I each picked an $18 quart of strawberries as an agri-tourist activity. Our guide didn’t pick strawberries, but he sure enjoyed the basket of fruit I gave him as his tip!

Farmer Cho’s farm operation

Farmer Cho manages 2.5 acres in the 37-acre farm valley, where 30 different farmers till the land. The valley is filled with rice paddies, peppers, onions, garlic, cherry trees, and more. So few acres with so many farmers surprised me, but the smallest farm is only 0.25 acres. With such small amounts of acreage, Korean farmers would never be able emulate the American food production system with our large acreage farms, since the whole country is only the size of Indiana with 40 million people!

Farmer Cho has 63 head of cattle that have limited real estate in the barns and are fed a purchased grain product and leftover rice grass from previous seasons. His operation is certified organic by the Korean government, and he uses the cattle-generated manure to fertilize the rest of his operation.

Organic certification has been a benefit to Farmer Cho as the Korean government purchases his products to serve in the Korean public school system. If he grew non-organic cattle, he would earn $2,600 per animal, but with the organic cattle he is able to earn $7,000 per animal. Even with the premiums paid by the government, the cost of land is prohibitive to any new farmer at $260/square meter or about $1.1 million per acre.

A typical Korean rice paddy

To assist with training a new generation of farmers, each of the eight Korean provinces has an agricultural college, and each farmer is given a $170,000 loan towards training new farmers. Further, when the land changes ownership, 30% of the new farmer’s profit is paid to the old farmer to cover the costs of the loan and land transfer, while the remaining 70% of the profit is directed to the new farm owner. These are significant incentives, but it is unclear whether they are adequate to continue the long history of Korean food production, as evidenced by the population of Korean farmers dropping from 25% to 7% over Farmer Cho’s lifetime.

I asked our guide to ask Farmer Cho whether farming is a respected occupation in Korea. Mr. Hong did not translate my question and only shook his head, “no.”

Washington Farmers

In my home state of Washington, there is a resurgence in small farm creation and expansion. Boistfort Valley Farm and Viva Farms are hiring upwards of 40 people between their two farms in positions varying from farm manager, market manager, production crew, and grants manager. According to the USDA’s Farmland Information Center website, Washington state saw an increase in number of farms and farmers from 2002 to 2007, despite a decrease in acreage farmed and a 7% increase in the number of farmers over age 55. Whether the positive trends continue and the negative trends slow their rate of growth in the next agricultural census, remains to be seen.

We must continue to work as a community to save farmland and support local foods, so our farmers here and abroad can profitably farm and create the best, most nutritious, local food.

Gardow Consulting

because land & food matter

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