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Tulalip Resort Casino Visits Biringer Farm, Arlington

Yesterday afternoon, Tulalip Resort Casino‘s Executive Chef Perry Mascetti, Food & Beverage Purchaser Jeff Bray, and Administrative Assistant Wendy Blake took some time on a sunny afternoon to visit and tour Biringer Farm, meet with owners Mike & Dianna Biringer, and NABC’s Karen Mauden.

“It’s all about local” states Executive Chef Perry. Tulalip Resort Casino is passionate about helping local farms.

Biringer Farm and the Biringer family has been a 40-year Marysville/Arlington area farm and community partner. Their premium fruits include several varieties of strawberries, raspberries, tayberries, black raspberries and blackberries. Many locals have taken advantage of Biringer Farm U-Pick opportunities throughout the years.

Biringer Farm also has Berry Barns throughout Snohomish County for those that can’t make the trip to the farm. Additionally, they also sell their berries to other Snohomish County area farms for their fresh produce stands.

But outreach to local suppliers, retailers and restaurants is also an important component of rounding out their business model. We are thankful that the Tulalip Resort and Casino is passionate and interested in partnership!

Posted by Emma Brewster on May 17th, 2012

Cider and Mead Festival Saturday May 12, 2012

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This Saturday, Northwest hard cider and mead producers including Finnriver, Westcott Bay Traditional Cider, Eaglemount Wine & Cicer, Sky River Mead, Alpenfire Cider, Methow Valley Ciderhouse, Tieton Cider Works, Lopez Island Vineyards, Hidden Legends, and more will be gathering together under the tasting tent on the opening day of the Orcas Island Farmers’ Market for the 2012 Cider and Mead Festival!

Last year — the inaugural year of the festival — producers and volunteers poured about 1500 tastes of locally-produced cider, and the festival hopes to double that this year. The cider-filled launch day will offer live music on their outdoor stage, and there will be a contest for Orcas Island home brewers of ciders and meads who will be competing for “Orcas Best of the Fest.”

Check out these pictures from last year’s event:

In 2011 NABC, in partnership with Washington State University and Northwest Cider Association, received a Specialty Crop Block Grant from the USDA, giving a boost to the emerging hard cider industry in the region. The $75,000 grant supports cider research, education and marketing, including WSU trials of cider apple varieties and research on mechanical harvesting and the week-long orchard management and cider production courses NABC offers.

We encourage you to support the Orcas Island Farmers Market, the Cider and Mead Festival, the local producers who will be participating, and the emerging cider industry in Washington by attending this weekend’s event!

Posted by Emma Brewster on May 8th, 2012

NABC Awarded Value-Added Producer Grant Funding from USDA

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Continued from our Spring 2012 newsletter…

A few months ago the USDA announced the 2012 Value Added Producer Grant awards. Several farm businesses and organizations in Washington received funding including the Northwest Agriculture Business Center who received $300,000 for Regional Food System Development.

So what does this mean? It means we remain firmly committed to providing business planning, technical and marketing assistance to producers, regional food hub developments, and producer owned cooperatives in the Puget Sound region.

We’ll also be evolving our wholesale market concept this year to further our impact through marketing, locating distribution, processing and even working with producers and logistical providers to identify efficient decentralized aggregation hubs. Our new partner, Local Orbit, an Ann Arbor, MI based company is developing four (4) “virtual hub” pilots designed to increase sales transactions between farmers and institutional and commercial food service, including universities, hospitals, restaurants and meal-sites that serve low-income seniors and preschool children in South Seattle/King County and beyond. With Local Orbit handling sales management systems and online transactions, our staff is more focused on what we do best: creating and growing business relationships between producers and buyers who have an interest in increasing local food procurement across categories. Our staff is invested in staying abreast of market trends so that producers of all scales can leverage all opportunities for growth and sustainability.

Later this year, NABC will be relaunching the NABC and PSFN websites, migrating off of PSFN’s online marketing tool launched in 2009. NABC will be integrating its marketing strategies for all projects, including PSFN.

About half of the VAPG grant funding will be to fund overhead costs for Account Management services for dues-paying members including strategic market consulting, sales representation, promotions, technical assistance and value-added product development services.

Ultimately our work helps “level the playing field” for all scales of producers. If farmers have more opportunities to achieve economic sustainability, then farming remains part of our future…not just our history.

While the grant funds cover 50% of PSFN’s existing costs to carry out our mission, we are aggressively seeking corporate sponsors to partner with NABC and join the Puget Sound Food Network. We will be working to ensure that the Network’s impact will grow rather than retrench and we’re excited to move forward with PLAN A!

In summary, this new USDA funding will be used to:

Support value-added marketing for independent producers by providing timely and appropriate technical support.
Implement a new on-line transaction system called PSFN powered by Local Orbit that will allow independent producers to initiate product sales directly to regional buyers.
Support the creation of new regional food hubs owned and operated by independent producers.
Increase the number of institutional meal sites that source value added products direct from local producers.

To learn more, please read our February press release.

Posted by Emma Brewster on April 25th, 2012

PSFN On Location: Freshwater Creek Farm, Belize

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PSFN Members John and Marijke Postema, owners of Marshland Orchards, Flower World, and Maltby Produce Market in Snohomish, WA, also operate a 700-acre farm in Belize. They bought the property about five years ago as a pre-retirement project, and have been developing the land and the business during Washington’s off-season. While on vacation, PSFN’s Emma Brewster was fortunate to catch up with John and Marijke and tour the gorgeous property. One this was for certain… we weren’t in Washington anymore….

I arrived at Freshwater Creek Farms, just outside of Hopkins Village, Belize, via motorcycle in the golden heat of the late afternoon. The mile-long driveway, flanked by citrus trees and palms, leads to the beautiful, expansive property which rolls from sea level up into the first forested foothills leading to the Belizean highlands.

They let me hop in the bed of their truck and generously toured me around the property:

The oranges grown on the property and in Belize in general are for the European market. While the oranges are green-rinded, they’re ripe, sweet, and juicy on the inside. Europeans don’t mind the green peel, but it doesn’t fly with consumers in the U.S. Because the US juice market is dominated by Florida and California oranges, Freshwater Creek’s oranges are exported to the European grocery and juice market.

Recently, the Asian citrus psyllid has taken a toll on citrus groves all over Mexico, Belize, and parts of the Southern US. Per national mandate, Marijke and John will have to rip out thousands of citrus trees on their property and start anew in an effort to control the outbreak. While this is a huge setback for the farm, they have established one of the first certified nurseries in the country — an entirely enclosed and tightly controlled incubator for new citrus plants. Employees may only enter the nursery in the early morning hours before the psyllids are out so that they don’t introduce any of the pests to the new plants by coming and going. Having this nursery ensures that the setback caused by pests will be as short as possible, especially compared to competitors.

While oranges are off the table for now, Freshwater also grows pineapple onsite. Fresh fruit can’t be exported from Belize to the US, so John and Marijke plan on investing in a wood-burning fruit dryer. This will help them productively use un-marketable scraps of wood from their saw mill on-site, and will enable them to create a value-added product for the U.S. market. Who knows, maybe you’ll see dried pineapple for sale at Maltby Produce Markets soon!

In the meantime, Freshwater is producing ornamental plants for the local and export market. It’s quite and experience to recognize these plants from hotel lobbies and office buildings, then see them in both their natural habitat in the jungles of Belize, and also under cultivation on the farm in preparation for export.

Teak production is a mid-term project of the farm. These sinewy trees grow relatively quickly, shooting up twelve feet in a year! They’ll need to fill out a bit, and will be ready for export in a few years. They can be sold young, as whole trucks to be used for construction posts, or can be milled into lumber for building and furniture at a more developed state. John and Marijke make sure the plants are strong by letting them grow to human height, then cutting the trunks down to about 12-24” and letting the trucks regrow. This strengthens the root system and channels growth into a strong trunk instead of new offshoots and leaves.

The farm, its outbuildings, and ultimately John and Marijke’s on-farm residence (still under construction) is largely hydro- and solar-powered. John demonstrated how the small hydro system operates, spinning small turbines which connect directly to overhead power lines. They’re in the process of building a larger dam and hydro pool which will generate more electricity for the farm, keeping them off the grid.

With all that’s going on at the farm, there’s serious potential for it to become a tourist destination for eco-conscious travelers. With the completion of the fruit dryer, tourists who visit the farm would have a product to take home, while fresh fruits and plants are not transportable internationally. I sure enjoyed visiting! If you ever find yourself in Belize, be sure to check it out!

For more pictures of Emma’s tour of Freshwater Creek Farms, check out our Facebook album

Posted by Emma Brewster on March 29th, 2012

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

Northwest Agriculture Business Center Receives USDA Funding for Regional Food System Development

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NABC and PSFN have received some good news! The PSFN project will be funded for the next two years with new Value Added Producer Grant funding from the USDA.

February 28, 2012 (Mt Vernon, WA) The Northwest Agriculture Business Center (NABC) has been awarded $300,000 in Value Added Producer Grant (VAPG) funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Funding will provide working capital for NABC’s Puget Sound Food Network (PSFN) project for two years.

“This is a strong vote of confidence for NABC and the Puget Sound Food Network project,” says Lucy Norris, Director of Marketing and leader of Puget Sound Food Network. “Since the project launched in 2009, we have worked tirelessly towards building a self-sustaining food system that mobilizes businesses and institutions, aids underserved communities and increases the profitability of farmers in Northwest Washington.”

The USDA announced $40.2 million in grant funds nationwide to support business plans, working capital for marketing value-added agricultural products and for farm-based renewable energy projects. Eligible applicants included independent producers, farmer and rancher cooperatives, agricultural producer groups, and majority-controlled producer-based business ventures. Value-added products are created when a producer increases the consumer value of an agricultural commodity in the production or processing stage. NABC received the top-level grant amount awarded to any one organization or business.

The funding will support services for PSFN members including strategic consulting services, sales representation, wholesale markets, other technical assistance and value-added marketing services for independent producers, aggregators, processors, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, restaurants, hospitals, schools and others. PSFN will also implement an on-line transaction system that provides back-office management and communications infrastructure for independent producers to initiate direct sales. PSFN will continue assisting producer-owned cooperatives and regional food hub developments to increase the direct purchase of local food by institutional meal sites and increase healthy food access to low-income seniors and preschools. “PSFN will continue focusing on building lasting relationships between independent producers and buyers that lead to more profitable businesses, job growth and farmland preservation in the region,” says Norris.

Awards were announced on February 3, by USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan’s office. The full announcement is at http ://usda .gov. Support and matching funds for NABC programs come from the Washington State Department of Commerce, as well as agricultural industry supporters, our communities who share our mission and values.

Contact: Lucy Norris, Director of Marketing, Northwest Agriculture Business Center: 360-336-3666 / lucy @psfn .org

Posted by Emma Brewster on February 29th, 2012

Partnering to Ensure Healthy Meals for Child Care

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The Youth and Family Empowerment (YFE) division of Seattle Human Services and PSFN have partnered once again to help connect healthy foods to our community. Last week we sponsored two training sessions for cooks at child care centers. Once again, Leika Suzumura of Rainier Valley Eats and Community Kitchens NW led wonderful training sessions addressing the advantages of purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables locally, and of cooking and eating as a community. Natalie Thomson of YFE organized the trainings and PSFN’s Karen Mauden coordinated the produce sourcing and distribution for the training with PSFN member farms.

The basic idea for the training programs is that food is picked and packed at a local farm and is delivered fresh from that farm to each childcare meal site. Because the produce is picked at the height of ripeness, and the intervening time between harvest and delivery is so short, Seattle’s children who attend the participating child care programs receive their fresh fruits and veggies when they are most nutritive. Served so close to pick time, the produce is also at the height of its flavor, color, and has maximum freshness and crunch –– all added benefits that keep the kids asking for more. Trying such fresh foods at an early age helps develop a taste for fresh flavors and the natural sweetness of fresh foods among youngsters.

Nutritious food isn’t nutritious until it’s eaten, though, and the first step to getting yummy, fresh foods into children’s bellies is getting the cooks at childcare sites involved, and that’s what these training sessions are all about. To set the program up for success, we help train the site cooks to make tasty meals the children will want to try and will enjoy.

The Community Day School Association’s nine child care sites, and Seattle Community Centers’ fifteen sites were all able to attend training sessions tailored to their unique needs. Some of these sites have been serving local produce since October 2011 as part of the Farm to Table (F2T) Project. Others are brand new to F2T and purchasing directly from local farms. Most sites participating in the F2T project at this point receive their produce in the form of a CSA box from a local farm. While the CSA model offers the benefit of being organic, grown & sourced locally, it also presents the challenge of using some vegetables that will be new foods to the children –– foods we call “stretch” foods (“stretch” meaning that we are encouraging and challenging the children and cooks to taste and experiment with some foods that are unfamiliar to them). Developing recipes that artfully incorporate these new products is a key step in encouraging children to try new things.

After Leika’s presentation and some discussion it was time to get our hands dirty! It was off to the kitchen to create “Hero Salad” (purple cabbage, green kale, orange carrots); English Muffin Pizzas (kale, carrots, pizza sauce & mozzarella); roasted root vegetables (celeriac, sunchokes, sweet potatoes & parsnips dusted with rosemary, thyme & parsley); and PCC’s “Health Secret Cookies” (pumpkin seeds and oatmeal help create a better-for-you chocolate chip cookie). What a menu! Everyone shared ideas about how to adapt existing recipes to use more fresh local produce featuring the flavors of the season.

Just as it’s considered best practices for child care providers to include children in the food prep and cooking process, and to sit down and share meals with them, the result of these training sessions was a community coming together and sharing the experience of cooking and eating together. At the end of the day, there were many happy faces knowing why serving local, seasonal produce is a best practice for child care, and also that it’s totally doable!

For more pictures of the day’s training sessions, check out the album on our Facebook page

Posted by Emma Brewster on February 26th, 2012

PSFN and Whole Foods Hit the Road in Whatcom County!

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Last week, PSFN Account Manager, Karen Mauden, and Denise Breyley of Whole Foods Market took a day-long trip to do some “local foraging” in Bellingham and Ferndale. Not only did they find great products, but great people and good times, as well!

Karen (a Skagit County native) recommends driving up to Whatcom via Chuckanut Drive – it’s always scenic and peaceful along the still water. Karen and Denise made their first stops at The Bread Farm and Slough Food just to see what’s cookin’ on the local scene in Bow and Edison, just south of Chuckanut Drive.

The owners of both establishments took time for a sit and a chat, and offered wonderful samples. Of course Karen and Denise purchased “to go” goodies as well. What’s a road trip without snacks? After stopping off at the Bread Farm and Slough Foods, it was off to two more wonderful and dynamic family-run local businesses: Scratch & Peck Feeds and Barlean’s Fishery.

Scratch & Peck

Now here’s a local success story if we’ve ever heard one… When she couldn’t find a suitable product at the feed store to meet her standards for her own urban flock, Diana Ambaum-Meade created her own whole grain feed formula. Impressed by the virtue and quality, fellow chicken owners requested she make feed for them as well. Voila! The business took off!

Denise and Karen took a tour of the production facility at Scratch and Peck, and discussed how Scratch & Peck has grown into a niche product in the non-GMO, and soy-free natural chicken feed market. They even have corn-free feeds and produce feeds for turkeys, pigs, goats, rabbits and sheep. You can see a full product listing for Scratch and Peck here. The rule of thumb is: if it is nourished and nurtured in your back yard or on your small farm, Scratch & Peck can provide feed for it! In here “spare” time Diana has also created Hoopla Garden Center which provides hoops, covers & clamps for 4 X 8 raised garden beds. What a go-getter!

Barlean’s Fishery

Did you ever think about where those great Barlean’s fish oils in the supplement section come from? Well, they’re local –– as in, Ferndale local! Imagine Denise’s surprise when she saw that the same products which are stocked at Whole Foods in Seattle and distributed globally are made in Ferndale! …And to think we were there to learn about their smoked salmon!

Karen and Denise were greeted and hosted by Ronan Smith, the owner of Barlean’s; Dave Wallace, resident chef and sales manager; and Wes Barker, the fishery’s production manager. There’s a lot going on at Barleans. Several varieties of seafood and shellfish are available at Barlean’s year-round for the truly local crowd. You can come by and pick what you want from the fresh tank. All fish are caught in the morning and sold by the afternoon.

As good as the fresh stuff is, Barlean’s is known for their smoked salmon. Varieties from Barlean’s include Keta, Coho and King in various portions and sides –– traditional or flavored. A morning in the smoker followed by an afternoon at appropriate heat sure yields a beautiful and tasty product!

All in all it was a great day! We love getting out and about and meeting the producers of great local products, and we always have a great time with Denise! (That reminds us, have you seen her blog post about Skagit Fresh Cider? An oldie but a goodie, for sure!)

Posted by Emma Brewster on February 14th, 2012

PSFN Member Highlight: David Pearlstein – Link Lab Artisan Meats

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All photos by Matt Wright

PSFN member David Pearlstein has followed a nontraditional path to enter Seattle’s food world. As the owner of Link Lab Artisan Meats, a one year old USDA-inspected boutique sausage operation, David is on a mission to help responsible carnivores support Northwest local farmers through great handmade sausage. Here is a conversation we had with the guy who successfully navigated the jungle of USDA regulations and then turned his longtime-hobby into a healthy business…in his garage.

Q: I know you have a pretty interesting story of how you came to be a sausage maker – tell me about that.

In 1994 I moved to Seattle and became overly interested in food and ingredients, and the source of my foods. I couldn’t get over the abundance of amazing local ingredients that I hadn’t ever been around before. And behind every one of these local ingredients was a farmer, rancher, fisherman, or some person who was excited to share their hard work and their passion for their trade. This was not something I’d ever experienced or spent much time thinking about until I moved out to this part of the country. I spent several years learning to cook and learning to use local flavors as they became available throughout the year. In 1998, I watched Chef Bruce Naftaly make fresh garlic sausage for a cassoulet, and I fell in love with the idea that sausage should be made out of outstanding ingredients. Not just the scary and mysterious leftover bits that many people associate with sausage-making. Similar to cooking, good meat, good herbs, and good booze lead to great results.…in this case sausage. I spent the next 10 years experimenting with sausage recipes, different meats, spice quantities, meat-to-fat ratios, grinds/textures, mixing techniques, and just about anything that seemed to affect the final product. In January 2011, I launched Link Lab Artisan Meats LLC and began production and sale of great sausage. The transition from hobby to business was a reality, and I’ve now been in business for a full year.

Before starting Link Lab Artisan Meats, I worked as a reference librarian for a number of years, and after that I spent nine years working at Microsoft as a usability engineer. In 2007, I left Microsoft to be a full time stay-at-home Dad for my daughter who was two at the time. Three years at home with a young child resulted in a series of epic food-projects that we did together, including making lots of sausage, curing lots of meat, and even hanging a 25 pound pig leg in the basement and watching it cure for two years into an amazing prosciutto. During this post-Microsoft time, I also began exploring what might be involved in transitioning my 10 year old sausage-making hobby into a proper business. I quickly discovered that there are a LOT of regulations and rules to be aware of and to follow, and that the USDA was going to be hugely involved in my work. None of these rules seemed particularly burdensome or expensive, but there were a lot of rules and formal procedures to follow for anyone intending to work with meat under inspection of the USDA.

That’s when I was grateful to have some research background. My library and project management background set me up really well to do the necessary research and to patiently work through an awful lot of rules. I started meeting with butchers, restaurant owners, and sausage merchandisers from all around the country, asking a lot of questions, and trying to figure out how I could fit into this seemingly complicated fine-food ecosystem. I quickly learning that there was (still is) a lot of misinformation and confusion out there regarding what’s allowed, who regulates different types of food production, and what path you need to follow to connect the dots and get a legal sausage business running.

All of my previous jobs had to do with helping people manage too much data, by trying to organize it, make it discoverable, and make sense out of mountains of information. That experience lent itself really nicely to the very large project of navigating all of the regulatory agencies involved opening a business that sells meat: The City of Seattle, the King County Department of Health, the Washington Department of Agriculture and, ultimately, the USDA all had a part to play in building Link Lab. .

After gaining a pretty solid understanding of the rules I was up against, I figured out exactly what I intended to produce with this new business, where I wanted my work to be sold, and came up with a set of plans to be as creative, as clean, as safe , and as legal as possible. And that’s where I am now– selling wholesale to restaurants and retailers which means that I’m making great, creative, artisan food, AND I’m part of the national food system.

So, yes, I had a very different life and totally different career before cutting and grinding all this meat.

Q: Which farms are you working with currently?

I work with several farmers from around the Northwest, and I’m always looking to expand my bench of farms and sources of great local meat. Several of my current farm-partners are active PSFN members, including Heritage Lane Farm in Lynden, WA. I met Creviston Valley Farms in Longbranch, WA through PSFN’s summer Wholesale Market. The partnership I have with Farmer Craig Mayberry of Heritage Lane Farms has been really fun. We have figured out a lot of unique ways to work together. In addition to buying his great pork and making sausage to sell to my customers, he hires me to make sausage for him to take north, and sell to his retail customers. So up north by Bellingham, we have Link Lab Sausage with a Heritage Lane Farm label on it. Heritage Lane has built up a nice sized community of people who want his product, which means they want my sausage. We both like the results, and customers do, too!

Also, Chef Chris Johnson from United General Hospital in Sedro Woolley, WA has been a consistent advocate and customer of Link Lab since we were introduced to each other by PSFN’s Karen Mauden at the 2011 Farmer Fisher-Chef Connection. It’s kind of a long delivery drive up to Sedro Woolley, but Craig Mayberry and I have worked out a meat-carpool/ride-share program for my sausage. After Craig and I do business in Seattle, his next pork delivery is frequently a stop at United General. I give him a box of sausage to be delivered to Chris on the way north. So we do a bit of … meat carpooling! It has been a nice way to start distributing Link Lab sausage to different parts of the sate that aren’t currently part of my delivery route. My operation is very small, and delivery is a pretty time consuming story that I’m still trying to figure out, so it’s fun to get creative with Craig.

Q: You’re in an interesting position as both a buyer of locally produced food, and as a producer of it yourself.

That’s why I came up with the name “Link Lab”. That link is not just the shape of the sausage; it’s the connection between people who want to do the right thing and farmers who are already doing the right thing.

Q: In your experience, what has been the best part about working with small, local farms? What’s the best thing about that relationship?

So many of our small local farms are run by good people! And they’re working really hard to do the right thing.. It seems that most of the folks I’ve met are the type of people I want to support. They tend to be honest and transparent about their operations. They’re happy to share what their farm is like: the animal breed, the food, the whole farming system. The farmers I’ve enjoyed working with the most are all open and honest with me and enthusiastic about what I’m doing at Link Lab.

All photos by Matt Wright

I attended a number of cooking classes at Le Gourmand Restaurant, and there was always an effort to share lots of details about the source of their ingredients. It was during these classes that I learned about butter churned on Sally Jackson’s farm, fresh bug-eating eggs sold at the church parking lot behind Dick’s, hand-collected stinging nettles pulled from the woods at from Discovery Park, and amazing meat being raised by great local farmers.

I didn’t go to culinary school, and I don’t come from a food science background, and haven’t spent a thousand hours working in the back of a kitchen (though, I suppose, now I have!) but everyone has to eat. And I figured, if I’m going to spend time cooking well, I owe it to myself to really understand something about the ingredients and food we put in our sauté pans and in our bodies.

Three Thanksgivings ago, I had a chance to visit Dog Mountain Farm and process my Thanksgiving turkey. People have obviously been killing and eating animals for a long time, but I hadn’t done it. It was one of those milestones where everything clicked, and I quickly got a fresh and important appreciation for the amount of resources that go into raising the animals that end up on our plates. It is not just the food required to nourish the animals, but the farm, and the farmers, and all the people who work there, and all the packaging and physical labor that goes into it… meat takes a lot of resources, and carnivores should be aware of this.

Q: You balance being a business owner, sausage maker, and someone helping with childcare at home. How do you balance all the different things you’re doing on a day to day basis?

Well… I stay up late! I mean… It’s really hard. My family and I do an awful lot of scheduling to make sure we don’t overlook the important things. I still do kindergarten drop off in the morning, and pickup most afternoons, and one thing that’s kind of nice is that working with the USDA means that I work on their schedule. My Federal Grant of Inspection allows me to work with meat between the hours of 6am and 2:30pm only. Who would have guessed that the USDA’s workday requirements would end up helping me maintain a healthy work-life balance? If I was permitted to cut and grind meat 24 hours each day, I might find myself doing that. And that would not be a good move toward strengthening the family. In reality, with a business there’s plenty of stuff not involving meat that just takes time and keeps me plenty busy.

All photos by Matt Wright

Q: So do you start making sausage at 6 AM?

Ha – No, I don’t. I have done that once or twice, but I typically start after dropping my daughter off at school. I do receive meat deliveries very early in the morning each week. My neighbors are amused and their dogs are envious.

Q: At this point your neighbors must know what you’re up to, but at first they must have had some suspicions…

Thankfully, they’re on board with Link Lab. From the very beginning I told them what I was up to, and that I would be obeying all of the relevant city zoning rules. Early on in talking to the City of Seattle I learned what types of business activity you are and are not allowed to do in each neighborhood. That was something I had to understand very clearly to make sure I wasn’t building a business where I wasn’t going to be able to work each day. I found out what the city would and wouldn’t allow, explained it to the neighbors and got their blessing. I keep the Link Lab kitchen and surrounding area very clean, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think my garage was filled with bikes and ladders….just like it used to be. Also, sausage makes a good gift for supportive neighbors!

Q: Of the varieties that you make, do you have a personal favorite?

I honestly do like all of them – a lot! I can’t say I have a favorite. It’s been interesting to see that the Fremont Beer Bratwurst, the Jalapeño sausage, and the chorizo have had the strongest reception. People like them, order them all the time, and want them on their menus pretty consistently. The beer brat, outside of being just delicious, also uses beer produced by one of my neighbors – the Fremont Brewing Company. It uses their Universal Pale Ale. I love what they’re doing down there at the brewery and I like Matt, the owner. It’s really nice to be able to get other ingredients and local resources from other neighbors that are also as obsessive about doing the right thing with their product.

Q: Are there any varieties you’d love to make but haven’t yet?

As a hobbyist (not through Link Lab) I’ve made a lot of salami and cured meats and, like I mentioned,have even hung a pig leg and made prosciutto. I would love to do a lot more curing, but that’s not realistic with my small workspace. But my facility is setup to efficiently make fresh ground sausage, and I have a lot more recipes that I’d love to produce and share with everyone. There are a lot of hot peppers from around the world that I love cooking with, and I expect to offer new sausages with many of these flavors soon.

Q: Any new products coming up? Something new on the fresh list for this next year?

I’m hoping that during this year I’ll get all my paperwork finalized and I’ll be able to offer bacon to everybody. I’ve been making it for a while, and I do it really well, but it’s a different thing than raw, ground sausage. So therefore I have to write up a whole separate production plan for a different product. It is not all that difficult to do, but it takes time – and I seem to be really busy making sausage, so to come up with another USDA approved program takes some uninterrupted desk-time. I’m pretty committed to making sure that happens within this year.

Q: With the varieties you have now and the poundage you’re able to create, are you looking for more buyers or are you at saturation?

Yes! I’m always looking for more buyers. My capacity is limited due to the size of my facility, but I am very careful to only promise what I can deliver. If we have to schedule farther out on the calendar to make everyone’s orders work out, that’s what I’ll do. Over promising and under-delivering is not something I’m willing to get into a habit of doing.

I’m not at a saturation point. The busiest week I’ve had so far is just over 300lbs. And, I’m confident that I can produce about twice that – perhaps 600-700lbs in a week – but I have to get a little bit smarter and more efficient about how I work. I expect the pounds per week to increase steadily. Also, I do not intend to work forever and retire in my garage. When demand is strong enough that I can justify moving out, I will be thrilled.

Q: What type of buyers are you looking for?

For now, I intend to keep Link Lab focus on wholesale to restaurants and retailers. Selling sausage directly to individuals is fun, but that’s not a sustainable business model for me. Full Circle, Spud.com, and a couple of other online grocery stores have been fantastic. They buy sausage from me, and their customers buy it from them through their website. That’s a perfect scenario for me and my very-limited refrigeration space. I love working with chefs and with restaurants. A great partnership I’ve created is Chef Thomas Horner of Hook & Plow Restaurant down at the Waterfront Marriott. He’s pretty much my ideal customer. He told me, “Bring me something delicious, and I will challenge my kitchen staff to make something great on our menu each week!” I can’t get a better request than that. I bring him different sausage varieties each week, and sure enough, he is really creative, producing some wonderful dishes. We all start with great ingredients! That’s why we get along so well.

Q: Where can the rest of us – individual consumers – buy your products?

My website keeps a current list of the retail shops and restaurants who sell our sausage.

Currently, A few places to easily get Link Lab Sausage include:

Sunset Hill Green Market in Ballard – they are wonderful, early adopters of all of my things and I love to support them.
Full Circle
Spud.com
Chimacum Farm Stand near Pt Townsend
Bellingham Co-op
Sno Isle Co-op

Restaurants and other retailers are listed on our website: Linklabartisanmeats.com.

Q: Hopefully helping you find more retail outlets is something PSFN can help you with.

Some of the best connections I’ve established in this first year of business have been initiated through the help of PSFN. Chef Christopher Linamen (Overlake Medical Center), Chef Chris Johnson (United General), Craig Mayberry (Heritage Lane), and Full Circle are all examples of great producers, consumers, and distributors who all love great sausage and who are great to work with. All the people that I’ve met through PSFN, and community of industry professionals who embrace what I’m doing at Link Lab are consistently fun, interesting people that keep doing the right thing regarding food and our food-system. I see PSFN as a partner, a great resource, and a bunch of great people to work with.

Posted by Emma Brewster on January 31st, 2012

North Cascade Meats, A Farmers Cooperative

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By NABC Project Manager, Jeff Voltz

With funding support from the USDA Rural Cooperative Development Grant program NABC was able to provide technical assistance to the North Cascades Meat Producers Cooperative, which legally formed as a Washington State cooperative corporation in July 2011. This growing group of Whatcom and Skagit meat producers (now with 12 family farm members) has agreed upon common production standards and to market a co-op branded label. The co-op’s new brand is North Cascades Meats, A Farmers Cooperative.

This hard working group of farmers is passionate about providing sound and caring animal husbandry and progressive environmental stewardship. This passion and care is well represented in the cooperative’s standards.

The co-op members worked with the skilled marketing and design firm Studiothink to develop a presentation and scheduled meetings to share the co-ops marketing plan with three potential market partners in mid-December. The primary focus on these presentations was on pastured raised and finished beef. These market partners included Community Food Co-op and Fiamma Burger, two Bellingham-based businesses with a strong history of supporting local food producers, and Western Washington University Dining Services-Aramark.

Since these meetings Community Food Co-op has provided product movement and is working closely with NABC to help further refine sales and volume projections for the co-op’s marketing plan. And three of the producers are working with Fiamma Burger to test different cuts of products for meet its formulas and quality requirements. The co-op is in the process of scheduling more presentations with local restaurants and institutions.

Based on achieving a viable level of commitment from market partners the co-op will complete its marketing and business plans, seek more members and begin a capital drive, engage with the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative to lease its USDA mobile slaughter unit and bring it to Whatcom County six days per month, and build a processing facility to process beef, pork, and lamb.

Posted by Emma Brewster on January 31st, 2012