Farmland is for food

I delivered some of my cookbooks Local Vegetarian Cooking to Nash's Farm Store (http://www.nashsorganicproduce.com/) last Friday. I love to read on the ferry and I look forward to seeing the familiar signboard right before I get to Nash's farm store. This time it welcomed community members to check out the "far out" produce this farm delivers. I smiled thinking of the tye dye shirts that advertise Nash's farm for sale in the rustic store. They're planning on moving the store to an old dairy building on their property not far away, hopefully next spring. The store has a rustic charm. Part of it is under canvas with a dirt floor right now and this time of year Nash's farmers are busy trying to keep up with the harvest.

It's fun to see what's new in the farm store, and this time I spotted figs on the front table. "Does Nash grow these too?" I'd asked. "No," said the young man behind the counter. "A farmer down the road grows them." Four figs for two dollars. I couldn't resist and I got two baskets. I like to look around and see the different things from other local farmers and artisans in their store.

In the outside room was a big sign about protecting local farmland and advertising a local farmland organization, Friends of the Fields (http://www.friendsofthefields.org/). Their goal is "To preserve and protect sustainable agriculture in Clallam County, Washington, ensuring the availability of local food and the quality of life that our rural setting provides." I donated on my way our and you can too even if you don't go to the store. Just go to the website and read about their goals and the farm they're saving. Nash Huber won the prestigeious "Land Steward of the Year," (http://www.farmland.org/programs/award/default.asp by American Farmland Trust, the premeir organization for saving farmland nationwide. Check out his story at their website, then click onto the Friends of the Fields website and help support them. We need to maintain our organic farmland for a stonger deep rooted food based economy.

Before heading home, I stopped at the Dungeness Creamery http://www.dungenessvalleycreamery.com/ just down the road from Nash's. I don't usually drink milk, not the pasturized overprocessed kind in grocrery stores, but I love the raw milk from this local dairy and always carry an ice chest, filled with ice to this farm-food destination so I can safely transport some raw milk home.



"No local chocolates," I said when I walked in the store. "We haven't had those for awhile," said the woman behind the counter. Oh well, I'm happy with the milk to make ice cream this weekend. "Nectarine ice cream," I'd said, thinking about my box of nectarines from my Rama Farm CSA. The woman behind the counter nodded approval. This photo of a cow and her new born calf was one I snapped at a previous visit to this great food destination. This is proof that local sustainable farmland is worth saving.