I think I have almost recovered from (and survived) Aug. 14 — a few loose ends to tie up yet — thank you letters, report to the board for its critique and then … start planning for next year?!?!
So, what was so special about Aug. 14? It was an eight-hour day for most of the participants of Lewis County Farm Bureau’s (LCFB) annual Tour of Agriculture. It was about a 15-hour day for me, but that was only a tiny part of it. It was months of planning and pulling things together and several days after cleaning up and taking care of those loose ends. But it is worth it to me. I believe in the Farm Bureau. In my opinion, it is a great organization of farmers and ranchers working together to promote and protect agriculture. The LCFB annual Tour of Agriculture is one of our ways of promoting agriculture, a way to let others get a glimpse of what we do as we produce the food that everyone eats.
The tour was first held in 2017. We drove a 12-passenger van and toured four operations. We have come a long way. We went to a 40-passenger bus, took a couple years off due to COVID and legislators not wanting to get on a bus with a lot of people, and brought it back in 2023 with a 56-passenger tour bus that visited six LCFB members. This year, we again had a nice coach to travel on and made five stops.
Stop 1: Southwest Washington Food Hub, Chehalis. Tina Sharp and crew were packing food boxes for delivery to consumers but shut the operation line down long enough to talk to us about the value the Food Hub provides to farmers and consumers. They are part of infrastructure that allows farmers to keep farming. Thanks to the Food Hub, instead of getting the national average of $.13 out of every dollar a consumer spends on food, Food Hub farmers get $.95 of that dollar. That is a huge benefit to them and allows them to keep their focus on producing food and spend less time and money on marketing and other time and money-gobblers.
Stop 2: Hop Frog Farms, Onalaska. Sarah was busily packaging and preparing to ship microgreens, but Jordan Cohen took time out of their busy schedule to talk about their farm. They are new to farming, and I must say, dove in 100%. They are 100% organic, and in addition to the microgreens, they are currently raising basil while in the process of building more hoop houses for other herbs. Recently they added an organic creamery to their workload producing cultured organic cream cheese. They are working closely with several agencies and hope to acquire additional acreage where they plan to establish a food forest and create working riparian areas, utilizing conservation grazing techniques. All their projects have an eye on salmon and wildlife habitat.
Stop 3: RainTree Nursery, Morton. James and Rye Owen were our next hosts. Their 20-acre business was started in 1973 by Sam Benoitz who had traveled internationally and collected plants not generally propagated in the United States. Buying the operation a few years ago, James and Rye are focusing on providing a wide variety of unique edibles from around the world. As we stood in their orchard, where they encouraged us to pick what we wanted from the trees, they explained they are not in the business of producing fruit/food but really are producing the plants for others to put into their yards/gardens in order to produce their own foods.
Stop 4: Pan American Blueberry Growers, Mossyrock. A company that takes care of its employees and its community, Pan American prides itself on a quality product, relying heavily on labor to handpick berries for fresh sales locally, throughout the United States and internationally. They gave each of the tour participants a nice gift basket, including a clamshell of fresh blueberries, honey straws, blueberry candies and snack foods. I love fresh blueberries, but of the other gifts, my favorite was the Blue Diamond Almonds with a blueberry dusting! I am thinking, for many of the participants, the highlight of the stop was meeting their falconer and his birds. He had four with him for us to see. He talked about training the beautiful birds and the fact that they only scare away, and do not kill, any of the bird pests that want to eat the blueberries, the main culprits being robins, starlings and waxwings.
Stop 5: 3 Dog Cider & Brewstillery, Salkum. Josh Hail is building an amazing facility, having started his business in 2019. He operates on two different locations with over 300 trees in his orchards and plans to plant an additional 700 this coming year. He has 65 different varieties of apples, some of which are extremely rare that he has been able to acquire through the “Lost Apple Project” based in Eastern Washington. We each got a 3 Dog branded glass and were offered samples of two different 3 Dog Ciders.
Final stop: Dinner. We returned to the Veterans Museum to enjoy dinner made from products donated by local farmers. Our chef was Sarah Pannkuk — a wife, mom, full-time employee, volunteer firefighter and member of the Lincoln Creek Grange. Sarah went all out in making the room feel inviting with flowers on every table and “ag décor” items. She prepared lemonade (blueberry and lavender), roasted beef, smoked new potatoes, a garden salad, corn on the cob, dinner rolls (locally ground flour) with whipped honey butter and deviled quail eggs, all followed by lemon-blueberry cupcakes for dessert. Everyone got plenty to eat, and I saw numerous bags of leftovers being toted out the door by tour participants.
Bottom line: The tour was a great day of conversations/networking/learning and sharing amongst elected officials (national, state and county levels), agencies and organizations (national, state and county levels), and farmers/ranchers. Friendships were formed and paths of communication were opened up. It always feels good to see people understanding a bit more about where their food comes from and what it takes to produce and process it in order to get it onto dinner tables across our country.
One last shout-out to sponsors whose support helped make it happen: Northwest Ag Business Center, Southwest Washington Growers Co-op, Port of Chehalis, Economic Alliance of Lewis County, and the Veterans Museum. Thank you to everyone involved in making this event happen.
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Maureen Harkcom is president of the Lewis County Farm Bureau. She can be reached at maureen.harkcom@gmail.com.
