Good Food is Everybody's Business
The sky is bright blue, the river is smooth as glass, and it’s a beautiful sunny May day. We’re driving north on Highway 97, just east of the North Cascades. There is no doubt that this is the fruit basket of Washington!
Now, I was going to have to learn to do tail docking, and possibly castrating. I had made a prior decision not to use some of the cruder methods of removing these appendages.
Holly Jarvis, General Manager, talks about how Food Front Co-op meets the needs of the two distinctly different neighborhoods where the Co-op is located.
Dairy farming has made a full circle on the land where you’ll find Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy; five generations of Dutch farmers have made their living here, just south of the U.S./Canadian border. Farming methods have changed over the last hundred years, yet Shawn Langley’s great grandfather would surely have been comfortable on the farm today.
River floodplains are some of the world’s most fertile soils and farmers around the world have taken advantage of that fertility since agriculture began in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. At the same time, those lowlands are prone to periodic flooding that is devastating to farmers and others living within the river valleys.
The Future of Food Conference brought together many of the world’s leading experts on food, including Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, a lifelong environmentalist and organic farmer; Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation;” and Wendell Berry, winner of The National Humanities Medal.
Snuggled up against the Canadian border in northern Washington, you’ll find Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy, where Shawn and Clairssa Langley are carrying on the family tradition. Shawn is the fifth generation of his family on the farm.
Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as the flowers in your perennial beds and borders–no annual tilling and planting. They thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season. It sounds too good to be true.
