SEQUIM — It’s about pleasure — for the mouth, the eyes, the whole body, whatever its age.
Eating locally is the rage right now across the country. In the wake of books such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, that celebrate living on local produce, people from the Appalachians to the Olympics are discovering that by choosing food grown nearby, they can preserve farmland, conserve fossil fuels and feed sustenance back into the regional economy.
Yes, being a locavore — one who lives on a diet of ingredients grown inside a 100-mile radius — is the politically correct thing these days.
It’s also a sweet thing, an ingredient in la dolce vita, said Patty McManus-Huber, an organizer of this Sunday’s 100-mile Harvest Dinner to benefit Friends of the Fields, Clallam County’s farmland preservation group.
The dinner at Fairview Grange on Lake Farm Road will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a social hour. Dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m.
The dinner will follow today’s Clallam County Farm Tours, when the public can visit eight farms from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for $10 per carload.
Along with food from Field to Fork, Bella Italia, Vita’s Taco Shop and Danny’s, demonstrations of bareback horse rise, wagon rides and “Pirate Vegetable Theatre” are planned on the tour.
Sunday’s dinner will be your basic pleasure feast, according to McManus and Friends founder Bob Caldwell. On the menu: local lamb, wild salmon, Nash’s carrot soup, Mount Townsend Creamery artisan cheeses, Pane D’Amore breads from Port Townsend, apple crisp with local fruit.
For the dessert pastry flour, Friends even found local wheat in Gene Adolphsen’s fields west of Sequim.
Tickets to the ninth annual dinner are $60, and “they flew out the window like blackbirds,” said Caldwell.
They were nearly sold out by Thursday.
No matter, added McManus-Huber. She encourages North Olympic Peninsula residents to experiment on their own dinner tables.
“Our county has this local bounty,” she said.
McManus-Huber should know: Her husband Nash Huber runs Nash’s Organic Produce, one of eight stops on today’s Farm Tour.
Also on the tour is another Sequim-area stalwart: Graysmarsh Farm, where strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and lavender draw waves of pickers from around the North Olympic Peninsula and beyond.
Graysmarsh jams are well-loved in these parts — but manager Arturo Flores said that 60 percent of his produce is shipped to markets off of the Peninsula.
The same is true of Nash’s Organic Produce, McManus-Huber said.
Buy, sell locally
Local farmers markets sell some of their fruits and vegetables, but both farms must send the majority away by the truckload.
Peninsula farmers want to see that change, of course.
And as the eat-local movement runs neck and neck with the popular craving for organic produce, Flores, who has farmed Graysmarsh fields conventionally for decades, is venturing into organic territory.
“We’re trying. We have a field where we haven’t been applying conventional fertilizers or pesticides,” he said. But “the government is punishing you with fees,” for organic certification.
“You have to battle weeds all the time by hand,” he added, “and organic fertilizer is a lot more expensive,” hence the higher prices for organic produce.
“A lot of people call and ask us, ‘Are you organic?’” Flores said.
Some say they’re willing to pay more for fruit that is free of pesticides and herbicides.
Taken together, the farms on today’s tour make a multi-course meal.
There are potatoes, pork and other produce from Nash’s, raspberries from Graysmarsh, raw milk from the Dungeness Valley Creamery, herbs from the Cutting Garden and pears, garlic and apple cider from the Lazy J Farm.
“It’s not hard to have a hundred-mile meal,” a dinner of dishes containing close-in ingredients, said McManus-Huber.
But even she and Friends of the Fields aren’t uptight about eating locally.
At the Sunday Harvest Dinner, Friends will serve coffee roasted by Princess Valiant in Port Angeles, but not grown here and wine from Eastern Washington grapes.
That’s because 100-mile dieters needn’t be rigid purists, McManus-Huber said.
Just adding one locally grown food to your routine — and perhaps bringing one or two local foods onto your Thanksgiving table — adds to the impact on the local economy.
Friends of the Fields is seeking to stop, if not turn, the tide of housing and commercial development on Clallam County farmland.
Along with the North Olympic Land Trust, Friends has raised local funds and received state grants to establish conservation easements on a few Dungeness Valley farms, and is gathering money for another property in Agnew.
Clallam County had 75,000 acres of farmland in 1950, Caldwell said. Today, 16,000 acres are left.
Simply choosing local produce will help farmers stay in business, he added.
And if Sequim can retain its rural character, it’ll continue to attract tourists while keeping quality of life high for those who live here.
Caldwell admitted that his family has done its share of shopping at Costco Wholesale, where the produce comes from California, Mexico, even Australia.
But in recent years, he’s shifted his gaze away from the cheapest food to the local-farm fresh goods.
You could say he votes with knife and fork — and enjoys a flavorful result.
“I look for the whole package of what these foods do for our community,” he said.
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THE CLALLAM COUNTY Farm Tour will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.
Admission will be $10 per carload. Visitors can start at any farm.
Eight farms will be on the tour:
ä Lazy J Farm, 225 Gehrke Road, east of Port Angeles.
ä Dungeness Valley Creamery, 1915 Towne Road, north of Sequim.
ä The Cutting Garden on Dahlia Llama Lane off Woodcock Road.
ä Nash’s Organic Produce, 1865 E. Anderson Road.
ä Graysmarsh Farm, 6187 Woodcock Road, northeast of Sequim.
ä Straitside Ranch, 394 Olstead Road, northwest of Sequim.
ä Freedom Farm and horsemanship center, 493 Spring Road, Port Angeles.
ä Bekkevar Family Farms, 273054 U.S. Highway 101, east of Sequim.
The tour is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Fields and the Washington State University Clallam County Extension Office.
For more information, phone 360-681-7458, or click on www.clallamgrown.org.
Tonight, Junkyard Jane will rock Nash’s Packing Shed during the annual Farm Day potluck and barn dance.
Tickets will be $10 to benefit the Tilth Producers of Washington, a sustainable farming organization.
The potluck, a celebration of locally grown ingredients, will start at 6 p.m.
The band will help diners work off their dinner starting at 7 p.m. in the shed next door to the Farm Store, 1873 E. Anderson Road, north of Sequim.
For information, phone the store at 360-683-4642 .
By Thursday, tickets to Sunday’s Harvest Dinner, beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Fariview Grange on Lake Farm Road, were almost sold out. For information, which are $60 per person, phone 360-683-5931.
