Gail Nickel-Kailing, January 24th, 2013 
Getting our food from the farm to the consumer – the “supply chain” – is certainly not as simple as it was the past. Once upon a time, the consumer, his/her family, and the local community WERE the growers and a supply chain didn’t exist. Transportation from the field and barn to the kitchen was a matter of feet or yards, not miles. What once was a simple connection with one or two stops along the way, has become a spaghetti-like tangle of connections, links, and cross-links to get fresh fruits and vegetables to your plate.
Read more: Buy local? Why local? Time for the REAL story!
Gail Nickel-Kailing, November 30th, 2012 
Terry’s Berries is a 25 acre organic farm located on the edge of Tacoma in the Puyallup valley where Terry and Dick Carkner have been farming for over 25 years. The Carkners are committed to growing high quality, fresh food for healthy people and to bridging the gap between the consumer and the farmer.
Read more: Terry Carkner, Terry’s Berries, on Growing Organic Berries
Gail Nickel-Kailing, November 4th, 2012 Making out your Thanksgiving menu? Checking it twice? So what’s the most popular pie for dessert? Yes, Virginia, it’s pumpkin pie… but a close second is apple. Good, old fashioned, homemade apple pie! Meet George and Apple Otte, River Vally Organics, growers of organic apples and pears.
Read more: Apple Pie: #2 and trying harder!
Gail Nickel-Kailing, October 10th, 2012 
What does farmland protection have to do with what’s on your dinner table? Or maybe it should be put this way: What does what’s on your dinner table have to do with farmland protection? Think about it… Today, the typical American prepared meal contains, on average, ingredients from at least five countries outside the US. What if we had to grow our food “back home?”
Read more: Preserving Our Farmland: PCC Farmland Trust and Jubilee Biodynamic Farm
Gail Nickel-Kailing, September 29th, 2012 
Take a drive north on Highway 97 and you will pass along the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers between tiers and tiers of orchards growing all kinds of fruit, from stone fruit – apricots, nectarines, and peaches – to apples, pears, and cherries, and the occasional quince. Just a few miles north of Tonasket WA you’ll find River Valley Organics. What’s is it that makes River Valley Organics so special? A unique combination of karma and heart.
Read more: Good Apple Karma
Gail Nickel-Kailing, September 27th, 2012 
Walk into any supermarket and what do you find? Bins of shiny red, yellow, and green apples. What seems like an abundance of apples is an illusion. Just 11 varieties of apples make up 90% of those grown, sold, and eaten in the US. What’s more, 40-plus percent of apples sold are only one variety: Red Delicious. The apple industry has succumbed to the same consolidation and specialization affecting the rest of the food industry. As a result, the number of apple varieties has plummeted.
Read more: A is for Apple
Gail Nickel-Kailing, August 21st, 2012 
Big agriculture is big business; too big, too distant, too reliant on the latest technology, and too focused on profit over good food. Expecting complex technology and genetic engineering to solve the problems of climate change, extreme weather patterns, water shortages, and dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, is not the answer. It is time to go back to the land, to restore our natural resource base and re-invest in our people.
Read more: Crossing the Chasm with Viva Farms
Your GoodFood World publishers are farmers one afternoon a week at Jubilee Biodynamic Farm in Carnation WA and it has rained every week since the end of April! A little mud never hurt anyone!
Read more: Down on the Farm
Joanne Hedou, November 1st, 2011 
Christina Hahs is a sprite with a direct stare. Even at the age of 27 she is not one of the youngest farmers in the City of Seattle. In the egalitarian context of urban agriculture it would be wrong to describe her with any other superlative or enumerator but she is, on her own, guiding a group known as the Harvest Collective. It has not been an easy year, however.
Read more: Cascading Effects: A Seattle Urban Farmer and the 2011 Season
Stina Booth, orchardist at Booth Canyon Orchard, talks about grafting and growing apples, pears and stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots). Did you know you can graft multiple varieties of apples or pears on one trunk?
Read more: Stina Booth, Booth Canyon Orchard
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The A/V Department Seeds of Humanity: Vandana Shiva
“When seed is in the hands of five companies — 75% of the commercial seed is already in their hands. Ninety percent of the corn. Ninety percent of the soy. Ninety-five percent of the cotton — this is an emergency. It is a seed dictatorship. And when you control seed, you control food.”
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Photo of the Month Pig Mania
Crown S Ranch, Winthrop WA
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