Good Food is Everybody's Business
Farming north of the 48th parallel means short growing seasons and long winters. Raising meat animals rather than produce in the North means having products available for delivery almost year round. Yet when your nearest big market is 250 miles away, making winter deliveries can be hazardous.
How does one farm feed nearly a 1000 people? No, it’s not the miracle of the loaves and fishes; it’s the miracle of good soil, organic cropping, rotational grazing, and a community of busy hands. Jubilee Biodynamic Farm, Carnation WA, supplies 400 families with fruit, vegetables, and meat through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program – all from just 40 intensively-farmed acres.
The sky is bright blue, the river is smooth as glass, and it’s a beautiful sunny May day. We’re driving north on Highway 97, just east of the North Cascades. There is no doubt that this is the fruit basket of Washington!
Skeptics have often misrepresented a biologically-based agriculture as if it is nothing but the substitution of purchased organic inputs for purchased chemical inputs. Despite the popular assumption that it sprang full born from the delusions of 60s hippies, it has a more extensive, and scientifically respectable, provenance.
When you were 5, what did you want to be when you grew up? A fireman, a ballet dancer, a doctor? Maybe even a farmer? Over the last several generations, somewhere between the ages 5 and 15, farmer fell off the list of careers for most Americans.
Small farmers in the West who are raising meat and poultry need affordable – and legal – slaughterhouses. Nearly all the meat and poultry consumed in the US today comes from just four companies that operate their own USDA-inspected processing plants. Most of the remaining meat processors – beef, pork, lamb – do not process poultry.
An old-fashioned county fair gathered farmers, their families, and hundreds of “city folk” to meet and connect over good food. Barns full of prize-winning livestock; exhibits of garden produce, baked goods and preserves; and lots of music and excitement helped build a sense of community. Seattle Tilth’s annual Harvest Fair is an urban version, but all of the components are there!
All turkeys – wild turkeys and the broad-breasted white or the dozen or so “heritage” breeds grown domestically today – are the same species (Meleagris gallopavo). Consumers who want pasture-raised heritage breed turkeys are looking for birds that are well cared for, grow slowly, and have flavorful meat. Unfortunately they are expensive to produce.
