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Buy a Farm?

Buy a Farm?

A friend told me she wants to buy a farm. She is a suburban gal with an undergraduate agricultural degree, so has the passion. Her career wasn't agriculture though, it was high tech. Now retired, she is ready to launch that Third Act, the next adventure, the next...

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Grandpa’s Bees: Growing Seed

Grandpa’s Bees: Growing Seed

Bees, ladybugs, and other pollinators--the perpetuators of life--create the plethora of produce that nourishes, sustains, and makes life taste good! Seventy of the top 100 foods we eat are pollinated by bees. Without pollinators, no stone fruit-peaches, plums, and...

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Eating Locally for Flavor

Eating Locally for Flavor

I was born before trucking in out-of-season foods was the norm. Most of the year our usual nightly dinner veggie was frozen (not canned) beans, peas, or vegetable medley with meat and potatoes and the iceberg lettuce wedge. Mid-winter fresh produce included a plethora...

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Port Gamble–Creating Community with Food

Port Gamble–Creating Community with Food

To eat this autumn season, purchase local fruits, vegetables, and meat and dairy products directly from local farmers at a Farmers Market or through a Community Supported Agriculture ("CSA"). Buying directly from a family farm allows the farmer to earn a far better...

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Corn Comforts and Satiates

Corn Comforts and Satiates

In this time of unending COVID and election stories, I ache for a sense of normalcy and certainty. Turning to comfort food satiates and satisfies. Creating a giant pot of minestrone soup with the last morsels of summer produce blended with the August canned tomato...

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Being Grounded

Being Grounded

We live in uncomfortable, uncertain times. As November 3rd approaches, the stress meter increases daily. With COVID-19, racial injustice tension, economic uncertainty, and the most contested election in my lifetime, the need for calm and centering is so needed. Love...

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Pivoting in the Food System During COVID

Pivoting in the Food System During COVID

Summer is my favorite food season. It's the season of fruits and vegetables I crave. We are at peak season right now. Freshly picked corn, luscious peaches dripping with sweetness, tomatoes-green stripes, dark chocolate, yellow pear and cherry red, and more-all juicy...

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EastWest Food Rescue in the Time of COVID

EastWest Food Rescue in the Time of COVID

Food,  after water, is the key to life. For most of us it's easy to get food by visiting our local grocery store, shopping at the Farmer's Market, perhaps doing an occasional COSTCO run or growing a garden of fresh herbs and tomatoes. We do not know what it is...

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Birthdays and Bread

Birthdays and Bread

June 3rd, the expiration date on the Pepperidge Farm white, rectangular, pre-sliced, loaf of bread on the top shelf at the Washington State University’s (“WSU”) Bread Lab near Mt. Vernon, Washington. It’s my birthday dinner, two days before the bread’s expiration date. I am savoring a 4-course meal with 80 other attendees supporting the Mt. […]

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The Unstable Pyramid of Needs

The Unstable Pyramid of Needs

What are the “must-haves” in life versus the “want-to-haves?” What are the most basic needs? “Must-haves” are something critical for survival. Without them, life would cease. Food and drinking water are “must-haves.” With no food or water, nothing else matters. Life isn’t even possible. Granted there are a few other things such as clothing and […]

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Is a Vibrant Agricultural Community Important?

Is a Vibrant Agricultural Community Important?

“There is a shellfish farmer, sheep farmer and a vegetable farmer in a room of real estate development professionals.” It’s the start of the classic “groan” joke. And, Yes!, it really happened! The sunny last day of February was a great day of learning with ULI- Northwest’s Center for Leadership class. The Salish Sea was […]

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Tanzanian Coffee Experience–Yum!

Tanzanian Coffee Experience–Yum!

Mt. Meru at almost 15,000 feet, the fifth highest mountain in Africa, capped in wispy clouds, towers over the Tanzanian village at the end of the paved road at the entrance to Arusha National Park. Meru’s taller and more well-known “mountain cousin”, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the African continent, bursts from the African […]

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So you wanna be a farmer?

So you wanna be a farmer?

Have you ever thought how a farmer decides what to grow? My guess is probably not. So many of us never think where our food comes from, so why would we spend any time asking this question. Wondering where our food comes from is a long standing blind spot in our United States culture. We […]

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Terroir and the Family Farm

Terroir and the Family Farm

Spring grass was just poking its head through the crusty soil at Pure Eire Dairy when we visited earlier this year. Jill Smith, dairywoman extraordinaire, was expecting our visit at her family farm near Othello, Washington. My fellow adventurer Robbie and I had spent several days in eastern Washington exploring the hidden gems where Seattleites […]

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Why I Support Small Family Farms

Why I Support Small Family Farms

Farming seems so idyllic. Old McDonald, the proverbial song, is my first recollection of the quintessential farming dream. A happy song with joyful animals. Seared in my memory are daytrips to my Grandmother’s house to find the choicest Halloween pumpkin; the tallest, greenest, Christmas tree, or to pick the most succulent, prized bucket of strawberries. […]

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Chestnut Bonanza!

Chestnut Bonanza!

During the early days of autumn, for about three weeks, chestnut trees bear their fruit. Every October walking through Laurelhurst Park, I see about a half-dozen Asian-American elders standing below the majestic chestnut trees–waiting. It never appears to be the same elders, but there are usually about 6 and never more than 10. Some come […]

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Do Organics Get the Respect They Deserve?

Do Organics Get the Respect They Deserve?

“I get no respect!” Are organics the Rodney Dangerfield of food? Organics should be celebrated and touted as the best food for all. Instead organics are like Rodney Dangerfield, the iconic stand-up comedian, who never got the recognition he deserved until he played the self-deprecating respect card.  Do organic foods and growing methods get the […]

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Thoughts on Healthy Communities

Thoughts on Healthy Communities

The inner world is in our mind. Our outer or human experience is where and how we exist, interact and observe others, gather news, spend our time, and be in the world. The mind is the harbinger of mental health. Can the environment we live in impact our mental health? The short answer is, “Yes, […]

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How Does Your Neighborhood Score?

How Does Your Neighborhood Score?

I live in a great city-the Emerald City- Seattle, Washington. Living here 32 years is more than half my life.  I started life as a New Englander, growing up in a Connecticut suburban town with a couple elementary school years in Buffalo, college in Schenectady, New York, and Massachusetts where I started my professional career […]

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Rhubarb-the quintessential spring food

Rhubarb-the quintessential spring food

With anticipation I await rhubarb’s full bouquet–deep green dinner-plate sized leaves atop fibrous stalks ranging in color from bright chartreuse green to brilliant pink–spreading close to a yard across. Its arrival is evidence that spring is here. Even before there are blossoms on my plum tree, rhubarb is ready for its first harvest. My taste buds […]

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Taste Wheat: Cereal Box Bakery

Taste Wheat: Cereal Box Bakery

Imagine every Wednesday, before the sun rises, a bag of baked goods is delivered to your front doorstep. With anticipation you open the front door to retrieve  the large bag with a box and several smaller bags filled with delectable flavors. You first look for the breakfast treat: pastries, muffins, scones, or bagels. Taking your […]

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Elk Run:  Golf Course to Farm

Elk Run: Golf Course to Farm

In the 1990’s the rage in real estate development was both stand alone and master planned community golf course construction. The Golf Club at Newcastle repurposed an old construction landfill with 36 links, a stunning club house, and outstanding views to Puget Sound and beyond. A Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course was built at Snoqualmie […]

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Artisanal Ingenuity–Tieton Farm & Creamery

Artisanal Ingenuity–Tieton Farm & Creamery

Being an infrastructure nerd, I remember public works catastrophes. Ten years ago the City of Tieton, Washington‘s water system failed. Multiple water lines broke throughout the city. The State of Washington funded emergency repairs. The calamity was my first introduction to Tieton. Last summer, University of Washington held an alumni event in Tieton. Despite not […]

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Is Flooding Good for Farmland?

Is Flooding Good for Farmland?

As with most any topic, the best answer is, “It depends.” Flooding can be beneficial and also devastating. Throughout history and up to today, food is often grown on lands adjacent to the mightiest rivers, think the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Ganges, and Mississippi Rivers and on floodplains of the smallest creeks. Why grow food […]

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My Backyard Harvest

My Backyard Harvest

My yard is brimming with food now always arriving in the hot, sultry, dog days of summer. I plant only what I can grow, nurture and produce successfully. I don’t want failure. Gardening takes a lot of persistent, dedicated, focused work. Preparing the soil, pulling weeds, watering regularly and picking the produce. But, it’s worth […]

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Savoring Summer Produce

Savoring Summer Produce

I am a “fruit-aholic”. I love fruit. Even as a kid, I craved fruit– especially the summer fruits–strawberries, blueberries, peaches, plums. The juiciness, the flavors, the short summer season so taste boredom never arrived–all reasons summer fruits satisfied immensely. As an adult, I still love fruit, but now I find sweetness in vegetables–carrots, Brussels sprouts, […]

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We All Eat: ULI Food Forum

We All Eat: ULI Food Forum

From the Greatest Generation to Generation Z and the Baby Boomers and Millenials in between, we are all connected by one simple necessity–We All Eat! Some of us are Feeders–just putting food in our mouths to combat hunger, some of us are Eaters–being deliberate about what we eat, perhaps watching calories and sugar and fat […]

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Food Dollar Math: Who Benefits from Your Food Dollars

Food Dollar Math: Who Benefits from Your Food Dollars

Western Washington along the Interstate 5 corridor are some of the world’s most prolific farmlands. Puget Sound is blessed with a maritime climate with warm summers, cool winters, and mountain snowpacks that provide ample irrigation water  through most of the growing season thus generating hefty harvests. Despite an optimal growing climate farmers gross revenues are […]

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Zanzibar–The Spice Island

Zanzibar–The Spice Island

In the middle of Zanzibar are the spice farms, far from the bustle of coastal resorts and Stonetown, the island’s main commerce and tourist city. Departing Stonetown, we passed miles of roadside commerce tucked into open-air storefronts adjacent to the macadam road. Young and old alike walked from shop to shop picking up their daily […]

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Our Vulnerable Food System

Our Vulnerable Food System

Our food system–the system of growing, harvesting, distributing, and selling food–is fragile! To most, it looks in good health. Stop in any grocery store, stroll through Pike Place Market, visit your local farmers market or drive through a McDonald’s and there is plenty of food! From an eater’s perspective, there is no problem. There seems […]

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Serenbe:  An Innovative Community

Serenbe: An Innovative Community

Fulton County, Georgia is best known as the home of Atlanta, the 9th most populous U.S. metropolian area and Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the most traveled U.S. airport. North of downtown Atlanta is continuous suburbs, countless dead-ends and endless strip malls. At the south end of Fulton County, no more than a 30-minute drive from […]

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The New Agri-hood

The New Agri-hood

“I live next to a farm!” This can be said with enthusiasm and excitement or disappointment  and disgust. Living next to a farm can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. City folks want to move to the country, as they see it as idyllic and bucolic. Farmers worry […]

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Another Look at Food & Bridges

Another Look at Food & Bridges

Just after the I-5 Skagit River bridge collapsed 2-1/2 years ago, I wrote a blog entitled Food & Bridges on how food and bridges are vital to a highly functioning society and neither gets the respect they deserve. We take the basic necessities of daily living, food, water and infrastructure for granted. Consequently, we are […]

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Reconnecting with Fresh Food

Reconnecting with Fresh Food

Summer brings my favorite foods. Succulent corn on the cob, pints upon pints of Hayton Farms strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, flame-roasted Hatch peppers, and lettuces all bigger than my head. My 5,000 square foot city lot just isn’t big enough to grow many foods, so I count on my local farmers markets for most everything […]

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Creating Connections–Neighbor’s Night Out

Creating Connections–Neighbor’s Night Out

“I only talk to my uphill neighbor at the 4th of July parade. I wave to my neighbor across the street and the downhill lot is vacant,” divulged my work colleague. “My wife had a problem with the neighbors when she was growing up so says, ‘don’t talk to them’.” Hearing this, I was overcome […]

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Embrace Change–It is Inevitable–Eat Good Food

Embrace Change–It is Inevitable–Eat Good Food

Summer is here. Saturday, May 23rd, I bought my first flat of Skagit Valley’s fresh Hayton Farms organic strawberries. I can’t remember ever buying local strawberries this early. Some seasons, I’ve had to wait until the first week of July! Symphonic Spring Typically, April and May were months where Seattleites would be tantalized by our symphonic spring. […]

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The Elusive Tomato

The Elusive Tomato

Growing up in Connecticut, tomatoes were “to die for.” From the end of April to the beginning of June, nature’s winter cloaks were summarily discarded and summer’s heat quickly arrived. May was a time of massive seasonal transition. The last vestiges of cold nights ended, trees seemed to go from bud to full leaf in […]

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Cultivating a Thriving Agricultural Economy: Skagit Valley

Cultivating a Thriving Agricultural Economy: Skagit Valley

Bucolic fields of tulips wave in the breeze. Tilled fields are ready for spring planting. Raspberry brambles are tamed, trimmed, and prepped for summer production. Netting is checked, secured, and standing by to be stretched over blueberry acreage.  Strawberries are poised for blooming and fertilization when bees buzz by. Potato barns are emptying getting ready […]

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Baldor: Making Food Special

Baldor: Making Food Special

Food is special, as it fuels us to accomplish the mundane to the extraordinary. Without food, we are lackluster, lethargic, and lazy. But, eating just any old food calorie can starve us and even kill us, rather than nourish the body. Healthy food topics energize me in part because I have lost family members needlessly […]

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Brooklyn Grange’s Edible Green Roof

Brooklyn Grange’s Edible Green Roof

Take the M train to the 36th Street station. Climb the stairs and exit the station and greeted by the six- story edifice built by Standard Motor Company in 1919. Enter the building. Push the elevator button and be whisked to the roof. Leave the city behind and enter a robust urban farm with views […]

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Where Sustainability Reigns and Community Flourishes

Where Sustainability Reigns and Community Flourishes

My yard peaked in abundance in September. The last tomatoes were picked before the fall rains came. At the same time, ideas percolate about creating community where families thrive because children play, elders impart wisdom, Millenials connect and food is grown. Sustainable living at its best is where the most important aspects of life, nourishment in […]

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Incredible: Brooklyn Whole Foods

Incredible: Brooklyn Whole Foods

I was wowed when visiting the newly opened Whole Foods store located on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York! The high-end, natural and organic foods market is strategically located in an up’n coming area of Brooklyn, despite the fact that the Gowanus Canal is a Superfund site and one of the nation’s most “extensively […]

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Stokesberry Sustainable Farms:  Feeding the Seahawks

Stokesberry Sustainable Farms: Feeding the Seahawks

“The Seahawks are fueled by the Stokesberry’s eggs and chickens!” Piquing my 16-year old daughter’s interest in organic, sustainable farming was impossible until the 2014 Super Bowl champs were involved. Jerry and Janelle Stokesberry are an unassuming farming couple providing superb meat and egg products for the Seattle Seahawks, and for discerning palettes at restaurants […]

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An Agricultural-Residential Development Solution

An Agricultural-Residential Development Solution

Local produce heaven is now… asparagus, strawberries, cherries, snap peas; followed by string beans, cucumbers, basil, tomatoes, peaches; culminating with apples, corn, winter squash. What would make every food summer more perfect? Living in a community that grows, savors, entertains, and surrounds itself with good food. A weekly trip to a local farmers’ market or […]

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Know Where Your Food Comes From

Know Where Your Food Comes From

I was born before trucking in out-of-season foods was the norm and consequently grew up eating local foods. Granted we could get iceberg lettuce and citrus shipped in mid-winter from California or Florida, but our usual nightly dinner fare was frozen beans, peas, or vegetable medley with meat and potatoes. When summer abundance arrived our […]

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What is Sustainable Agriculture?

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

I am not a farmer, but care where my food comes from. I read labels to avoid unknown, unintelligible ingredients. I cannot feed myself with my gardening skills. Farmers grow my food and I have the utmost respect for the work the work they do. Each season farmers start anew deciding what and how much […]

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Organic Farms Matter: Uncle Matt’s Organics

Organic Farms Matter: Uncle Matt’s Organics

Located a half- hour west of Florida’s Magic Kingdome is Uncle Matt’s Organics, a 14-year old family business supplying discerning consumers with organic citrus and juice products. Spending a day with the business’ patriarch and story teller, Benny McLean was the highlight of my Floridian vacation. While my family enjoyed the thrill of Space Mountain® […]

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Sustainable Development:  Incorporating Agriculture

Sustainable Development: Incorporating Agriculture

What is a sustainable community? Currently, in real estate development lexicon, it is a transit-oriented project with sidewalks, bike paths, served by public transit with green/energy efficient buildings, and perhaps limited parking. But, there is a new aspect of sustainable development which integrates: Growing FOOD!  Without food (and water), humans cannot survive, which is why […]

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Celebrate with Food: Eat from Local & Afar

Celebrate with Food: Eat from Local & Afar

What is on your Thanksgiving table? Where did your food come from? For a dozen people my table is laden with parsley from my yard, oodles of vegetables and fruit from the farmer’s market, a pre-cooked naturally raised turkey from my neighborhood grocery store, and specialty treats and additions from miles and seas away. To provide […]

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A 10-Year Old Boy’s Travel Snack

A 10-Year Old Boy’s Travel Snack

I sat next to Gabe on an Embraer on a two-hour late afternoon flight out of Raleigh, North Carolina. Gabe had the tell-tale wristband on. He was flying alone, leaving his Dad to go home to Mom. Gabe had tears in his eyes as he sat down. Immediately, my Mom instincts kicked in. I didn’t […]

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Nourishing the Body

Nourishing the Body

Gather, forage, pick, harvest, collect, reap, dig, scoop, fish, and hunt are methods animals, whether mammal, bird, reptile, or other non-plant being use to accumulate food.  Watching animals acquire food can be great entertainment, a lesson in perseverance, and a joy to watch. Grizzlies Dining Lake Clark National Park situated on the western shores of […]

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Food & Bridges

Food & Bridges

C-  is the report card grade for Washington State bridges given by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Seattle Section in the 2013 Report Card for Washington’s Infrastructure. Bridge vulnerability was confirmed on May 23, 2013 with Interstate 5 collapsing into the Skagit River in the 8th largest agricultural county by revenue in Washington. […]

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Bread:  The Ubiquitous Food

Bread: The Ubiquitous Food

Bread eaten as a sandwich, croutons in a salad, crumbs encasing a chicken leg, or slathered with pizza sauce. Bread is ubiquitous. Most Americans just eat bread with no thought of how it got to their plate. Someone has to grow, pick, clean, process, package, ship, and display each slice of bread we eat. Coming […]

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Oysters:  The Indicator Species

Oysters: The Indicator Species

Oysters on the half shell, the willingness to savor this gastronomic treat that I inherited from my parents.  The slippery, mildly briny, sometimes sweet oyster, swallowed with a squeeze of lemon or a dollop of pungent, fresh horseradish is something I relish at the local shellfish bar. I have never eaten raw oysters with my […]

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Vulnerability of Agricultural: Kent Valley

Vulnerability of Agricultural: Kent Valley

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 […]

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Food:  A Political Act

Food: A Political Act

“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 […]

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Skagit County:  Creating New Food Production Models

Skagit County: Creating New Food Production Models

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 […]

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Ensuring Food Security:  Wade’s Vision

Ensuring Food Security: Wade’s Vision

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 […]

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Nash’s Real Food from the Ground Up

Nash’s Real Food from the Ground Up

“I spoke to the 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 […]

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Healthy Food Heals Patients

Healthy Food Heals Patients

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. […]

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Old-Fashioned New England Farming:  Young Farms

Old-Fashioned New England Farming: Young Farms

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 […]

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Ancient Wisdom:  Aging Farmers

Ancient Wisdom: Aging Farmers

The plight of the farmer 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 […]

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Local food systems require broad policy support

Local food systems require broad policy support

By Kathryn Gardow and Joanne Hedou Previously published in the Capital Press Washington state is losing farmland at a rate of about 21,600 acres per year. That’s the equivalent of 1.7 million bushels of Palouse wheat. One hundred thousand people are moving to Washington annually. Changing weather patterns have modified the seasonal distribution of water […]

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