SEQUIM — We’ve got the goods. The goat cheese, the garlic, Gravenstein apples, blackberries, carrots and of course lavender.
But local farmers — and eaters — need something else, says Jim Williams of Clallam netWorks’ agriculture cluster.
“If you want to last on the Peninsula, you can’t sell just commodities,” said Williams.
“You’ve got to add value to your products.”
That means preserving the produce, freezing apple pies, canning strawberry jams, bottling lavender lotion.
Enter the Olympic Peninsula Food Enterprise Center, an idea whose time, Williams said, has come.
He and a group of growers are forming a limited liability corporation and looking for a 1,000- to 1,500-square-foot building where farmers could share space, knowledge, a freezer and at least one big kettle.
The Dungeness Valley is a salad bowl in summer, of course. You-pick berries proliferate. Nash’s Farm Store is a popular meeting spot.
But North Olympic Peninsula residents can love their local produce year-round, said Williams, when the Food Enterprise Center is up and running.
Sustain small businesses
Instead of shipping goods off the Peninsula, growers could freeze, can, distill and dry their goods close to home.
The point of the center is to sustain small businesses “as an alternative to globalization.”
And farmers would save money on fuel and shipping, while providing homegrown food to their neighbors.
