Category: Farm

Here, on Whidbey Island, people who buy real estate are given a piece of paper that warns them of the noise zones from Navy Air Station practice flying patterns. Our farm is between two major flight circles, so they don’t fly over our place too much. Oak Harbor is home to the Navy community which adds quite a different feel to that community compared to the rest of the island. For half of Whidbey Island the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station is a big part of daily life, for the other half they hardly know there is a base on the island.

I went to high school in Falmouth on Cape Cod (in Massachusetts). Some of the kids from nearby Otis Air Force Base came to our school. I had a couple of good friends for a year or two, until they left with their parents to other postings. A close family friend had been in the Navy during WWII and had then pursued a career in the marine industry making ocean research equipment. I never had been on a base, nor gone to any base exchange in my life until getting to Whidbey Island.

Imagine my delight when the Navy Exchange here on Whidbey contacted the farm to see if we’d sell our products there. “Sure” I wrote back, and “no, we don’t have minimums, but we also might not be able to completly fill orders, either, if they are too big.” After sending in reams of paperwork, the local buyer forwarded it on to the national office, and they asked if we’d be willing to sell to other bases. “Sure” I wrote back….

That started a stream of weekly orders that have taken over our staff. We make a lot of different products right here on the farm. This new, huge, customer wanted as much in a month as we sell in a year of some of the items. Happily, we all pitched in and filled the orders and shipped them off, learning how to work with the system on the way. Our friends here on the island are glad to hear that they will be able to get our products when they relocate to Sigonella or other bases that we sell to.

As you can see, we collapsed after getting the boxes ready for one week’s orders (you can’t see all of them in this picture, but you get the idea).

I am also one of the Waste Wise Volunteers. That means we help folks on the island with recycling and composting information. WI-NAS (Whidbey Island Naval Air Station) has the premier recycling center in the nation. The program has grown over the years I’ve been on Whidbey to include food waste recycling. That task is significant because of the health and pest concerns in managing it, as well as the large volume of material that is now kept out of the landfill. We, in the recycling community, are very proud of the Navy’s efforts.

One part of farming I never thought about when I used to think about what farmers do is the workshop where machines are fixed, invented & built, or other structures and or equipment are made. It is amazing how important handyman skills are in the farming life. We have to fix our tillers, tractors, and mowers. We have to build boxes, screens, sorters, strippers, storage boxes, and market containers. It’s a large part of farm work.

My father died in January and I’ve spend about two months sitting with him and then planning his Memorial Service for all the people who loved him. This has been a very sad time, and yet joyous due to celebrating his life, learning more about it, and getting closer to my brother and sister. Dad was an excellent scientist and administrator, and he was an excellent craftsman and had a huge workshop that he used constantly. He was very creative and developed all these really cool things to use at his place and his lab. He was known in his field for building a box that helped model a molecule in which he used wood and glass to do what fancy modeling computers do now. He built a catamaran barge to use in the little harbor he lived on. He made me a cheese press when I had goats and was making cheese.

So, now we are trying to figure out what to do with his shop. Surprisingly, each one of us three has a degree of handyman abilities. My brother is building his son a treehouse, my sister rebuilds pianos as well as does things for her farm, and I build what I can for our lavender farm. I think Dad would be proud of us, and pleased that we value what contains so much of his sweat worked into every tool handle and piece of equipment. Each of us would like to have bits and pieces of the shop, so we’ll divide it up and give family friends the rest. It’s like little bits of Dad will be dispersed throughout the country to continue his good work.

Thanks, Dad.

Today I spent the day in our State Capital, Olympia, with a group of farmers from my area. The one thing we all agreed upon is that it is refreshing and unfortunately rare to have farmers share the details of their farming with others. There is a fear that by sharing information we will be copied or beat to the market. While a little of that fear might be true, I would like to propose that it can’t be really true. And that is because it’s not the idea, it’s what you DO with the idea that makes a project or product truly your own or unique.

Ben Lillie explains it much better than I, in his Physics blog on Coincidence and Creativity

Bailey, the Lavender Wind Spa Dog is communing with one of our decoys. We are harvesting in the background. Bailey was a delight this summer, she greeted our customers – sometimes with barks, other times with a wagging tail.

WIND – it’s in our name and this weekend we saw why. All of the Puget Sound region had wind from a fierce storm that barreled in from the Pacific. Our farm saw winds that reached 70 mph at 7:30 on Monday morning. That’s high, but we can expect to see that probably three or four more times this winter. It’s scary here when that happens, the windows bend in, the gutters rattle, and the exhaust fan from the stove makes the most horrible clattering noise. The nursery pots get overturned, and two lavender plants got blown out of their pots completely.

I like to think our plants are very strong by the time they are purchased for people’s gardens! They’ve had to go through a lot to survive, no pampered greenhouse plants here, that’s for sure.

In addition to the fabulous changes in our landscape we also are working on our essential oils.

Right now we are now bottling up our own essential oil that was distilled last year. We take truck loads of flowers over to a neighbor’s still and I work like a mad-scientist to get it distilled. It’s fun, smells wonderful, and then we bottle it up and store it for a year to age – like fine wine. Now it’s ready to bottle and we have a limited amount (remember we are a very small lavender farm). We have it in 10 ml. bottles for $6.75. If you want it in bigger bottles, watch our site for availability.

To let you know what’s coming soon: This year we got our own fairly small Alembric Hand Hammered Copper Still and have been practicing on some left over dried lavender. Oh, my gosh! This is wonderful oil and fresh hydrosol that is really different than any oil distilled in bigger, non-copper stills. We are not yet bottling it up, it doesn’t have to age as much, but we want to be sure of what we’re doing with this new version our our oil

SIGNS! On Monday the Island County Commissioners voted to approve a signage program much needed in our area. In Washington we have a state Highway Motorists Information Signage Program wherein businesses and recreation/tourist places can apply for signs to be placed on those signboard that have “Gas” or “Food” or “Tourist” kinds of things. It’s not easy to qualify, but once a business does a sign gets put up. Well, it does IF the business is right on the road that is off the highway. Any more turns and “follow through signage” is needed.

In Island County we now have a provision to apply for that follow through signage. Yahoo! That means that Agritourism oriented farms can now be found. That means that other small home-based businesses that qualify for the state sign system can be found. In a rural area, where even knowing an address doesn’t mean that a place can be found because the roads wind around and are sometimes not well marked.

Over the last two years we’ve been putting up sandwich board signs at the intersections and they do make a difference – the only trouble is that they are illegal. So, we don’t do that anymore. If counties want to help small farms survive and if we realize that part of small farms (that are near urban areas) need to rely on agritourism signage is a key component.