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Every year the Snoqualmie Valley Preservation Alliance throws a party – food, drink, dancing, music, and auctions – to raise money to be able to evaluate, monitor, and mitigate the effects of too much (and too little) water in the valley. Erick and Wendy Haakenson, Jubilee Biodynamic Farm, were this year’s hosts. 
With the beginning of the 2014 Summer CSA session, Jubilee Farm unveiled its new kitchen space including triple wash sinks, stainless steel counter tops, and tools like food processors and knives for shredding and cutting. Members can now get hands-on coaching and food preparation advice on pick-up days from Terrie, Jubilee’s resident food guru. No more wondering, “What do I do with THAT?” 
Erick and Wendy Haakenson, and their son David and his wife Kristin, are farming in a floodplain skirted by the Snoqualmie River. An active farm nearly for 25 years, Jubilee Biodynamic Farm is home to one of the largest and oldest Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in the state. Jubilee is an intensively managed, diversified farm comprised of 14 acres of fruits, vegetables, and grains and around 35 acres devoted to beef cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks. 
In a region that once supported 480 dairy farms and a rural agricultural landscape, now fragmented by 40 years of residential development, Nash Huber has pieced together 450 acres of rich farmland, almost all of it leased. Through the use of land trusts, restrictive zoning, conservation easements, and leasehold agreements, it has been protected from future development. 
The Snoqualmie Valley Farmers Cooperative, this week made their first delivery of organic produce to 21 Acres Food Hub to be distributed to 100 low-income, home-bound seniors in Seattle. 
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. 
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. 
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?” 
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. |
 
Book of the MonthBig Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups
 Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. But there is reason for hope that we can end hunger, not just manage it. Read on... LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR FOOD GETS TO YOUR PLATE
Select any collection from above; each contains multiple articles on a single topic. Videos You Don't Want to Miss!Lis Carlisle: Interview with Tim Danahey
Listen to author Liz Carlisle talk about her new book Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America. Click here to see more videos. |
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