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University Foodservice Tour of Whatcom County Producers

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For the past 9 months, NABC has been partnering with the Real Food Challenge, working together to get more locally-produced and community-based products into college and university dining service in WA. The goal of each campus taking on the Real Food Challenge is to shift 20% of their existing dining budget to Real Food. This shift is done incrementally by replacing generic, mass-produced food products often purchased by institutional foodservice with better (local and community-based, more ecologically sound, and more humane) alternatives. NABC’s Emma Brewster has been working with students and dining representatives at UW, WWU, The Evergreen State College, and the University of Puget Sound, among others, to facilitate these types of product switches by drawing on PSFN’s and NABC’s producer base. Up until now it’s been a lot of talking about logistical (price, distribution, packaging…) considerations, and on Saturday we finally got the schools out to the farms!

Destination: Whatcom County. Stops: Belly Timber Bars and Twin Brook Creamery –– two local producers with retail-ready products and a whetted appetite for institutional customers.

Belly Timber

When Mary Goit’s youngest son turned two years old she decided she needed something to do. Something that would keep her busy and maybe even make a little money.  One thing she did really really well was make granola. She and her sisters have used their mom’s secret granola recipe for years. Growing up they thought that they loved granola. As adults they realized that “No –– we don’t like granola.  We like Mom’s granola!” And there was the idea.

So Mary rented* time in a the commercial kitchen of a local cafe owned by a friend and started making granola to share with the masses. (*She earned her keep in the kitchen by scrubbing the cafe’s floors.) But granola can only take you so far — or rather, you can only take granola so far.  Mary needed a way to make granola mobile. But, as a concerned environmentalist and practical family shopper she wanted to avoid lots of throwaway packaging like one-time use bowls. “How can I make granola for the road?” she thought. Then one night it came to her. BARS.

Mary and her husband developed the secret recipe for what are now Belly Timber Everyday Survival Bars based on what she had in her kitchen cabinets when the epiphany struck. Peanut butter. Toasted almonds. Brown rice syrup (“What on earth did we buy that for?”). Honey from her neighbor. Dates.  This is largely the recipe that is still used today, and now there are several flavor varieties including peanut butter, blueberry, dark chocolate, and dark chocolate-espresso (organic and fair trade, of course!).

Mary sources as many ingredients as possible from her neighbors, and the vast majority are organic. Belly Timber bars are a great example of businesses working together to keep small scale food producers in business and in doing so, preserving farmland. Even the label was designed by several of Mary’s friends who were some of of the original 11 employees at Microsoft in Seattle. (Apparently they designed the original blue sky, clouds, and window logo for Windows and therefore have some time to kill and skills to share!) Between Mary and the designers, they personally know every individual adventurer pictured on the labels.

And the name? Allegedly it’s an old sailor (and possibly pirate…?) term for when time was tight and there was work to be done. Sailors needed solid fuel to climb the masts and take care of business, and the quick food they ate on the go when there wasn’t time for a meal was referred to as “Belly Timber.” (Go ahead, say it with a pirate accent… you know you want to). And there you have it: Belly Timber, the Every Day Survival Bar.

Every day, indeed. While the bars are adored by big-time adventurers who have taken them up Denali (finally — an energy bar that doesn’t freeze solid in the cold or melt into a mess in the heat!); bikers who’ve biked solo across the Rockies; and even the US Military, I can speak from experience that the bars are great for everyday snacking, on-the-go purse-stashing, and even stocking stuffing!

The chocolate varity is the favorite of the Cincinnati Bengals – Cincinnati, Ohio's NFL team

In addition to individual adventurers, some big-time customers have recently been hankering for some Belly Timber: the bars recently picked up by REI, and believe it or not, the Cincinnati Bengals (NFL) and now the Reds (MLB), too, are some of her biggest customers! According to the team’s strength and conditioning coach, the team was accustomed to eating Snickers bars before games and practices. As an athletic trainer, he thought that was a nutritional recipe for disaster. He did a simple internet search and came across Belly Timber. He thought they looked simple, healthful, and tasty and ordered a full case for the team. The team still prefers the chocolate and peanut butter varieties over other flavors of Belly Timber, but it’s a big improvement over candy bars! Mary knew her mom’s granola recipe and her product were good, but not THAT good. She says she’s never loved a football team so much!

Jill applies a label to a Belly TImber bar by hand

And still, even with all these big name customers, Mary still manages to keep a reasonable schedule that works for her and her few employees. On Sundays they make the granola, and on Mondays they make the granola into bars. They’re usually done cleaning up the kitchen by 3:30 so everyone can go pick up their kids from school. (In fact, she almost didn’t let us come out and visit on a Saturday because that’s a day reserved for her and her employees to spend time with kids and family).  The rest of the week is spent packaging, labeling, packing, and assessing inventory. A great deal of care is given to the product. Each and every bar is packed, sealed, labeled, and packed into boxes by hand.  Mary still does all her own product demos, and is happy to answer calls from customers directly. She even puts her personal cell phone number on the label of every bar.

Check out these pictures of our visit to Belly Timber:

Students and dining reps from UW and WWU listen as Mary explains the packaging process for Belly Timber Bars

Luke, Marketing Manager for WWU Dining, tries a sample of the granola which is the base of the bars.

Belly Timber Bars are available at the PCC Natural Markets, Metropolitan Markets, the Community Food Co-op in Bellingham, smaller local retailers in WA, and REI stores across the nation.

Twin Brook Creamery
Next, it was off to Lynden (5 miles from the Canadian border!) to visit Larry Stap, owner and operator of Twin Brook Creamery!

Larry, the oldest of four Stap brothers, is the 4th generation of Stap dairymen to farm on the same property that his great grandfather bought and built in 1910.  In 2006 Larry’s daughter, Michelle, and her husband, Mark, asked Larry and his wife, Debbie, to be partners in the dairy business. Larry was hesitant at first. “I don’t want to get bigger and bigger. I don’t want to milk more cows and build more barns.  So I said, ‘let’s think outside the box and find ourselves a niche’.” And that’s just what they did. Twin Brook milk is delicious and distinctive, and unlike any “competitor” in the area.

What makes it so great? The milk is gently pasteurized at low temperature for longer time than milk commonly found on grocery shelves. The hotter the pasteurization temperature, the more the milk gets cooked, which jeopardizes the authentic farm-fresh flavor. Some milk in grocery stores that has been pasteurized at high heat has a use-by date of up to 90 days after it was produced! In some grocery stores you can even find unrefrigerated milk on the shelves of center aisles. This is shelf-stable milk that has been heated at such high temperatures (upwards of 245º!)  that merchandisers colloquially call it “dead milk” because there’s very little flavor or even much biological material left in it that would indicate that it was ever an animal product.  This is isn’t the future of food Larry dreams of, and he’s sticking to his low heat methods. “We take our time and create a quality, authentic, good-tasting product. Now that’s ‘slow food’!” says Larry.

Larry explains the (non)homogenization process to WWU students, Nicole and Austin

The low-temp pasteurization is just one aspect of production that differentiates Twin Brook’s milk from other products in the area. The second is that it’s not homogenized. Homogenization is the process of distributing the fat (cream) particles evenly throughout the milk so that the milk doesn’t separate, creating a cream top in the bottle. This is usually done by forcing a stream of milk through a tiny pipe or hole at incredibly fast speeds and under high pressure. This blasts apart the natural fat globules, dispersing their parts throughout the milk. This is no big deal for most of us, but from some consumers digesting milk in this altered state can wreak havoc on their digestive systems. In fact, Larry has gotten calls from several customers saying that they thought they were lactose-intolerant, but for some reason they have no problem drinking the milk from Twin Brook. Larry attributes this to the non-homogenization of his product.

The third factor is that Larry milks only Jersey breed cows (not typical Holsteins). Jersey milk has a higher butter fat content, making the milk rich and flavorful, as well as a higher solids content. Solids are the non-fat protein particles in milk — the same protein material used to make cheese. This means that even the skim milk from Twin Brook is thicker, whiter, and more flavorful than other varieties, and doesn’t look like “blue-water” as Larry calls it.  Not only is the milk for flavorful, but Jersey heffers are a smaller animal than typical dairy cows, meaning they eat less, produce less waste, and are less likely to get sick or injured. In fact, cows at Twin Brook live twice as long as the average milking cow. The cows are largely grass-fed with grass and hay produced on the farm, and are free to roam around outside in good weather. All the waste generated by the cows is applied to the pastures to fertilize the fields for more production. “Too many people consider manure a waste product to be gotten rid of,” Larry says, “…not an asset to completing the cycle.” These are all factors in running a fiscally and environmentally sustainable businesses.

The final factor is the glass bottles that Twin Brook Milk is bottled in.  Not only are the glass bottles returnable and re-usable, but they also don’t leech any chemicals into the milk and don’t affect the flavor of the milk at all.  Like many health-conscious parents of that era and in the small New England town I grew up in, mine raised me and my sister on rBST-free skim milk produced in-state. It came in a white cardboard carton, which my parents loved because it wasn’t unnecessarily made of plastic and the carton was recyclable. Unfortunately, the taste of the paper infiltrated the milk, and to this day I associate the flimsy flavor of skim milk with bleached cardboard. Nothing to fear at Twin Brook, though. Between the glass packaging and the heightened flavor of the skim milk, I found it to be quite tasty with my chocolate chip cookies!

We were lucky to get a full tour of the bottling process from washing the returns (only soap and hot water –– no noxious rinsing chemicals –– are used) to filling the bottles. Larry says he gets roughly 75% of his bottles back. He attributes the lost bottles to the fact that “they’re just so darn cute, people want to keep em!” Cute they are, and they also happen to make great little water bottles. Not that I would know….

Check out these pictures of the full tour of Twin Brook!

Beautiful young Jersey heffers

Larry show us how each bottle is hand-filled.

Ready to go!

Time for milk and cookies! Larry made the cookies himself!

Marketing and Retail representatives from WWU and UW try Twin Brook's irresistible chocolate milk.

There used to be nearly innumerable dairy farms in Whatcom County, and now there are only 125. Less than ten of these are independent producers. Larry says he’s intent on getting the business set up for the next generation, and leaving a legacy for generations to come. Mark and Michelle’s children –– Larry’s grandkids –– will be 6th generation dairy farmers, and the Stap family will possibly be the only dairy family in the region to operate on the same piece of property through the decades.

For a full list of places where you can buy Twin Brook products, visit their Facebook page.

~~~

*** (4/20/12) The UW Real Food Challenge student group, in partnership with UW Housing and Food Services, successfully hosted an Earth Day tasting of both Twin Brook Creamery Chocolate Milk and Belly Timber Bars in the primary residential dining hall. They collected nearly 200 student petitions to stock the products on campus. UW plans to do a Real Food Challenge assessment of food on campus this summer, through which product shifts such as these are recorded, and earn the school credit, incentivizing the shift.***

For more pictures of our weekend tour, check out our Facebook album.

Check out our blog post about the first ever national Food Day, for which Belly Timber and Twin Brook both donated products to UW’s Real Food Challenge food/sustainability event.

You can follow our work with universities in the PNW region via the Real Food Challenge NW Facebook Page

Posted by Emma Brewster on March 11th, 2012

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Strength Through Diversity: People, Products, Markets

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By PSFN’s Communications and Outreach Coordinator, Emma Brewster

On Thursday, Cascade Harvest Coalition hosted the Olympic Peninsula Farm to Table Trade Meeting in Port Townsend. The overwhelming theme of the day was the importance of diversity: diversity of knowledge, experience, markets, and products.

To kick off the event, Dr. Laura Lewis, the new Director of WSU extension services for Jefferson County, delivered a refreshingly scientific keynote address. Dr. Lewis spoke about “agrobiodiversity” and economic development opportunities therein for farmers and members of the local food economy on the Olympic Peninsula.

Much of Dr. Lewis’s presentation drew on the concept of Edge Theory, commonly used in permaculture design, among other applications. Edge Theory asserts that the edges of areas (of biomes, of neighborhoods, of garden plots…) harbor a tremendous amount of diversity, and discusses the desirable resiliency and stability found through such eclecticism. Dr. Lewis offered the example of ecotones: the areas between biomes or environmental regions such as the salty march which separates the grassy dunes from the sea, or the Serengeti savannah which joins the Sahara desert to the central rainforest in Africa. These inter-regions are areas of great biodiversity, abundance, and environmental dynamism, and are less affected by changes which might devastate the environ on either side.  Ecotones both result from and indicate a gradient of conditions between zones, such as changing precipitation levels, shifting temperature, or differential access to sunlight.

Dr. Lewis reminded us that realms between more distinct areas are not just an environmental or biological phenomenon, but that the local food economy on the Olympic Peninsula (and in other regions) is a sort of ecotone itself. Dr. Lewis pointed out that our agricultural system is not simply a linear chain from seed to spoon, but rather there is in fact a large amount of dynamism and potential where players in the food system interact and overlap.

In these overlapping areas of knowledge and practice, we can choose to ignore or capitalize on our interconnectedness by choosing to either share or withhold knowledge from one another. For instance, a chef who discontinues his order from a local farm, but does not tell the farm what it was that made the chef switch to a different source – quality, price, delivery hiccups – foregoes the opportunity to improve the relationship and the system as a whole because the farm has not learned or grown from the experience. Relationships among different players in the system and the system entirely are strengthened and both see more stability in the long term when knowledge and experience are shared.

The space in the center of the diagram here is the “area of vital connection” across systems.  It is this area of diversity and interconnectedness in our own agricultural system that we need to sustain together, and which should be more highly valued and utilized in an effort to strengthen our local agricultural economy.

With this in mind, as players in the regional food system we can decide to capitalize on the edges that exist within our own systems to identify barriers and weaknesses and to strengthen bonds and systematic resiliency. Interaction between producers and consumers can point out the weaknesses in processing capacity, storage facilities, marketing assistance, and distribution capabilities available. We can then work together to develop milling, meat processing, and distilling facilities; wholesale, direct, collective, and cooperative distribution options; and other infrastructural helps. The more successful we are at preserving interconnectedness, the more stable we’ll all be in the long term.  PSFN is proud to be a group that represents each sector in this vital center (consumers, producers, processors, distributors and other service providers). We aim to help share knowledge and information across perceived barriers in an effort to support the regional food economy in the Puget Sound.

Photo courtesy of Nash's Organic Produce

A panel discussion also spoke to the idea of diversity and to the benefit to diversifying both products and markets. PSFN Member Kia Armstrong spoke about all the different outlets for Nash’s Organic Produce, and about the pros and cons of each. Nash’s is currently wholesaling about 50% of their products through three or four major wholesalers throughout the Northwest and Canada. Nash’s recently opened its own small grocery store where you can buy all your favorite Nash’s produce and everything else “from olive oil to toilet paper!” as Kia says. In addition to the store, the farm is now more active than ever before at farmers’ markets, and is looking to expand its partnerships with regional institutions. Nash’s currently holds an on-site farmers market at the Olympic Medical Center on Tuesdays. Hospital staff are able to swipe their payroll deduct cards at the market (as opposed to needing cash), which is convenient for shoppers and reliable income for the farm. In its efforts to expand its institutional relationships, Nash’s is also in the process of getting into local schools through the Jefferson and Clallum county Farm to Cafeteria programs, as both schools are working under new local buying initiatives.  Kia and Nash’s Organic Produce has partnered with PSFN in the past in marketing their produce to child care centers and to senior meal programs through our Farm to Table Project.

It is institutional markets like these that excite Kathy Pryor of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) and Heathcare Without Harm (HWH), who also participated in the panel. Kathy is working to gain signatories to the Healthy Food in Healthcare pledge, which commits healthcare institutions to use their enormous purchasing power to improve the health of the food system while also modeling healthy behavior for patients, visitors, and staff.

The healthcare industry is the third largest institutional purchaser of food (after colleges and universities, and elementary schools), and mostly purchases through the same mainline distributors as other, smaller institutional buyers like preschools and senior meal programs. The Healthy food in Healthcare commitment asks hospitals to use their “moral authority” as healthcare providers to support local producers who healthfully and ethically produce their products. By harnessing the purchasing power of the hospitals, WPSR and HWH is able to pave the way for smaller institutions and other local buyers to source their food carefully and locally.

Some local success stories of hospitals partnering with farms include:

  • The Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles was the first hospital in the state to set up an onsite farm stand, and to use produce purchased from that stand in kitchen at least once a week.
  • Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton is now directly purchasing whole carcass beef over the winter months, something that Kathy hasn’t seen yet elsewhere.
  • United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley just won second place in the nation for its sustainable food purchasing. Head Chef Chris Johnson made lots of local purchasing relationships with PSFN member farms at our Skagit and Seattle summer Wholesale Markets, and has been able to sustain them, leading to his award.

United General Hospital is currently purchasing 15% of its food for cafeteria and in-patient dining from local producers. The hospital that placed first in the competition (Fletcher Allen Healthcare in Burlington, VT – not far from where I grew up) is at an astounding 40%! So… it can be done!

In contrast to these inspiring local purchasing percentages of 15 and 40%, panel moderator, Katherine Barill of EDC Team Jefferson, reminded us that across the country, only one half of 1% of consumer food is purchased direct from the farmer by the end user. In Jefferson County, that proportion is a relatively impressive 4%. Ms. Barill challenged the audience to envision what might be possible economically for the county and the region if we could raise that number to 20% by 2020?  The goal of 20% by 2020 is also the goal set out by the Real Food Challenge, a key partner of PSFN this year, for colleges and universities in the Northwest. The Real Food Challenge also has a food commitment to be signed by college and university presidents and chancellors to similarly harness the purchasing power of colleges and universities.

Kathy sees this region of Washington as a prime candidate for this type of innovative food purchasing at healthcare and other institutions because of the high diversity of farms, as well as the somewhat limited geographic layout: Kathy markets the idea of local food purchasing to hospitals as an essential part of the facilities’ emergency preparedness plan, which all hospital are required to have. It’s an incredible resource to have food at their fingertips (and have the necessary relationships in tact) to feed patients in case of any major disaster which might result in limited transportation or other infrastructural losses.

This panel also discussed the importance of diversifying local products manufactured and sold in our region. Panelist Laura Lawless of the Port Townsend Food Co-op harped on value-added products as one of the most effective ways of ensuring income over the winter months for regional farms. She suggested the alternative value-added markets of health and beauty products, the herb and spice market, and medicinals as the next frontier for local producers. (PSFN is so excited for our soon-to-be-former Operations Manager, Ann Leason, for soon devoting the majority of her time to her own herb farm for health and beauty products, as well as medicinal herbs. Go Ann!)

Laura also gave some great suggestions of value-added products needed in the area:

  • Processed meats like salami and sausage
  • Frozen convenience foods for busy families – at the Port Townsend co-op they have a frozen Tamale that they can’t keep on the shelves!
  • Kale and produce chips
  • Salad Dressing
  • Pet food

For advice on, and assistance in, entering the value-added marketplace, PSFN and NABC are offering a Transition to Value Added Business Course this winter. The introductory courses in market assessment and business plan development have already passed, but product development classes in a variety of categories remain:

  • Value-added Dairy Workshop – Friday, January 27, 2012
  • Value-add Floral and Nursery Workshop – Thursday, February 2, 2012
  • Value-added Meat Workshop – Monday, February 6, 2012
  • Valued Added Prepared Foods – Thursday, February 16, 2012

For more information about these classes, contact Jeff Voltz: jeff@agbizcenter.org / (360) 593-4744

As a final word of advice, Laura said the most important thing you can do as a producer is to take the time to come to the store, demo your product, and tell your story your way to your customers.  We at PSFN agree. Telling your story through your brand, your label, and in person is essential.

So in summary, diversity is the key! We should all work to diversify relationships and enhance interconnectedness among different players in the regional food system; producers should diversify their markets (and focus on institutional partnerships) and their products.  Diversification of activities across the agricultural continuum will enable all stakeholders to manage risk, which will promote economic development.  Diversity is the key to regional economic stability and resilience. So… let’s get talking!

Posted by Emma Brewster on December 12th, 2011

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PSFN Participates in 1st Ever National Food Day!

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Monday was the first time the nation celebrated Food Day, and PSFN was not to be left out! We collaborated with Public Health – Seattle & King County, The Real Food Challenge Northwest, and students at The University of Washington to spread the gospel of local food for institutional food service!

Food Day, sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and “backed by an impressive advisory board that includes anti-hunger advocates, physicians, authors, politicians, and leaders of groups focused on everything from farmers markets to animal welfare to public health, seeks to bring together Americans from all walks of life—parents, teachers, and students; health professionals, community organizers, and local officials; chefs, school lunch providers, and eaters of all stripes—to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way.”  Food Day 2011 paraded six tenets linking the importance of food’s connection to community and global health and wellness. The priorities of National Food Day 2011 were to:

  • Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
  • Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness
  • Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
  • Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms
  • Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
  • Support fair conditions for food and farm workers

In an effort to address these priorities on a local and, ultimately, global scale PSFN partnered with students involved in the Real Food Challenge at the University of Washington to help muster student and campus support for more Real Food on campus, that is, food that is locally produced and community based, and verifiably produced in ways that are fair to humans, humane to animals, and ecologically sound. PSFN has been partnering with the Real Food Challenge since June in an effort to connect more food producers in Northwest Washington with college and university food service in our region.  The University of Washington has been a leader in this effort so far, and we were ecstatic to partner with UW students for Food Day!

Student leaders hosted two Food Day events on Monday, first tabling for Real Food Challenge outside the library. Of course the best way to attract college students to a tabling event on campus is to offer FREE FOOD, and PSFN did just that! PSFN members and NABC-affiliated producers graciously donated wonderful, ‘real’ product samples for the event. Students devoured 3 Sisters’ uncured pepperoni, Twin Brook Creamery‘s delicious chocolate milk, Skagit Fresh’s wonderful seasonal apple cider, and Belly Timber’s easy-to-pack “survival bars”, recently picked up by REI to be sold in major stores across the country! Students loved having the opportunity to sample these high quality, locally produced, and community based foods that one day (with enough student support) could end up in retail and dining facilities on the UW campus!

Photo Courtesy of Real Food UMD

Students in the Real Food Challenge student organization engaged their passerby peers in conversation about the possibilities of getting more Real Food on campus, offering each student the opportunity to participate in a “photo-petition” wherein each student could express their specific, individual want for food on campus. Students said they wanted to see, “FRESH greens!” “More local options on campus,” “HAPPY BACON!” and “…for the food I HAVE to buy on campus to better reflect what I would choose to buy as an individual consumer off campus,” among other requests. Throughout the year, student leaders at UW and PSFN’s Emma Brewster, who’s serving as a Regional Field Organizer for the Real Food Challenge as part of her AmeriCorps term of service with NABC, will work with these students to voice their demands to university Housing and Food Services, and work with HFS to move UW forward in the quest for Real Food on campus.

Interested students were also asked to sign an endorsement of the Real Food Challenge Campus Commitment, hot off the presses and officially released nationally on Food Day itself! The Campus Commitment, when signed by a university president (as has been done by St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota already!) affirms a school’s commitment to Real Food through the creation of campus food systems working group, the drafting of a campus food policy, and a pledge to purchase 20% Real Food annually for campus eateries by 2020. If all target school achieve this goal, the Real Food Challenge will move 1 Billion dollars of campus food expenditure to food produced locally and in ecologically sound, fair and just, and humane ways by 2020. On Monday, dozens of students signed their support for this commitment to be adopted at UW.

On Monday evening, in concert with a campus-wide sustainability summit, Real Food Challenge students co-hosted a Food Day film screening of the Seattle-based films Carbon Nation and Unwasted and through an intersession discussion tied the issues of climate change and environmental degradation depicted in the films to direct remedial Real Food action on campus. PSFN also provided samples of local, ‘real’ snacks from PSFN members for this movie event. More films will be shown throughout this week for the campus sustainability summit, and Real Food Challenge UW intends to attend those events and introduce Real Food campus sustainability priorities to Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn who will attend a film screening on Thursday.

What a week! We’re so glad to be connected with such passionate students who won’t rest (literally – they got 3 hours of sleep Sunday night preparing for these events!) until their campus purchases and serves food responsibly grown in Northwest Washington. Check out Real Food Challenge Northwest on Facebook for updates about ongoing Food Day events at Western Washington University, The Evergreen State College, Washington State University, Everett Community College, Gonzaga University, Whitman College, and Eastern Washington University. All these schools have committed students working for Real Food on their campus.

Not bad for a first go, Food Day! We’re already looking forward to the 2nd annual National Food Day in 2012!

Posted by Emma Brewster on October 26th, 2011

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PSFN Welcomes Back AmeriCorps Member in New Role

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PSFN is pleased to announce the return of Emma Brewster for a second AmeriCorps term. Emma has been serving as PSFN’s Farm to Community Coordinator, focusing primarily on the CPPW Farm to Table Project with Seattle and King County.  This project aims to connect locally-produced fresh fruits and vegetables from PSFN member producers to typically underserved consumers through institutional markets, including free or subsidized child care and senior meal programs. The F2T project is a 20-month project, and PSFN has been happy to have Emma on board for the first ten and a half months of the project, helping to get the purchasing model and infrastructure up and running.  Now that the F2T project is half finished and there’s less foundational work to be done with meal partners, Emma is transitioning roles within PSFN as she begins a second AmeriCorps term of service. As PSFN’s Communications & Outreach Coordinator this year, Emma will continue to work part time on the Farm to Table project, seeing it through to its completion in June 2012, and will take on a broader outreach role with PSFN.

As PSFN’s Communications & Outreach Coordinator, Emma will lead PSFN’s external communications including PSFN’s weekly Live Market Fresh Sheet, quarterly newsletters, this blog, and social media outlets including Facebook and Twitter. Emma will help coordinate press and media relations and manage publicity about PSFN and our parent organization, the Northwest Agriculture Business Center (NABC).  If you are a PSFN member with an event to promote or have other news or resources to share, send them Emma’s way!

Within her duties of Communications & Outreach Coordinator, Emma will also be serving as a Regional Field Organizer with The Real Food Challenge, a national program of The Food Project.  The Real Food Challenge works to support the purchase, distribution, and consumption of “Real Food” – food that is locally produced and community based, and produced in ways that are fair to humans, humane to animals, and ecologically sound – on college an university campuses nation-wide. Emma will be working with campuses all over Washington to develop strong student leaders who will work with their college or university dining services to help increase the purchase of Real Food.

While PSFN’s mission focuses on increasing the production, distribution and consumption of regionally produced food in NW Washington, specifically, PSFN sees this partnership with the Real Food Challenge as an opportunity to build on our foundation of working with institutional and larger commercial buyers to connect producers with additional viable institutional customers in our region.  Additionally, the Real Food Challenge has a broader aim of helping to tackle rising obesity rates in the U.S. by both changing the food served in dining halls on campuses, and by using the purchasing shift and regional infrastructure development inherent to local and alternative sourcing to support the regional distribution of, and market for, fresh, healthful, locally-produced products to all communities. This commitment partners well with the work Emma and PSFN have been doing with Public Health – Seattle & King County through the Farm to Table project under the Communities Putting Prevention to Work grant program. Because of its innovative approach to public health solutions, The Real Food Challenge was recently nominated for a Vh1 Do Something award. Check out this video from the awards ceremony to see the role Real Food Challenge plays in public heath enhancement in our communities.

We’re happy to have Emma on board for another term of service, and are eager to explore market opportunities for PSFN members through her expanded outreach work.  Welcome back, Emma!

Emma is a member of the SCORE AmeriCorps team, housed by the Skagit County Community Action Agency.

Posted by Emma Brewster on September 6th, 2011

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