SEQUIM — It’s time to put yourself out to pasture, with a side trip to the parlor.
That’s the milking parlor at the Dungeness Valley Creamery, one of nine farms that are part of the play-outside day formally known as Clallam County Harvest Celebration tour.
“It’s like another world out here,” said Debbie Brown, who with her family owns the creamery where 63 Jerseys step into the parlor for milking each morning.
On farm-tour day, she meets people from Port Angeles to Seattle who weren’t aware of this valley’s agricultural abundance.
At the creamery, Brown’s cows produce an average 45 pounds of milk daily — some 14,500 pounds per cow per year.
But then there’s Betsy, who recently peaked at 100 pounds in a day.
“She’s some cow,” Brown said of the 9-year-old.
The Dungeness Valley Creamery also beckons farm-tour participants with hayrides across the pasture, a cheese-making demonstration, sweeping views of the Olympic Mountains and doe-eyed Jersey calves.
People who see them, Brown said, “always ask us if we have a license to keep deer here.”
The Browns’ dairy and the other farms on the tour are abloom with fresh produce, animals and music to loosen the muscles.
Juanamarimba of Sequim will play at the creamery, and at the Lazy J Tree Farm in Agnew, three acts will perform, from the Jimmy Hoffman Band in the morning to “rock ‘n’ roll gypsy” Lee Tyler Post and troubadour Tom Schindler in the afternoon.
New to the tour are the Dungeness Bay Vineyard, where Tom and Isobel Miller will show visitors their thriving wine-grape vines, and the Sunshine Herb & Lavender Farm, where Carmen and Steve Ragsdale grow Sequim’s signature plant and turn it into a panoply of products.
Community garden
Inside the city, curious participants can see how much food and beauty can fill a 10-by-10-foot plot. The Community Organic Garden of Sequim, an urban farm, is loaded now with ripe tomatoes and blossoming flowers, said coordinator Liz Harper.
“We’ve had such a good summer,” she said, adding, “people who come to the garden will see what can happen when a fifth of an acre is divided up, and how much can be produced in a small space.”
Friends of the Fields, Clallam County’s farmland advocacy coalition, established the community garden in 2007.
Sequim-area residents rent plots, and local businesses and groups such as the Rotary Club and First Federal have provided amenities including a picnic table and wheelchair-accessible paths.
A second community garden will become available next spring, thanks to the city of Sequim, on Spruce Street at Sunnyside Avenue. Information is available on the city’s Web site, www.ci.Sequim.wa.us.
The original community garden behind St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue has grown into a place people come to be refreshed.
“People who don’t have plots just come and walk, or eat their lunch,” Harper said. “It’s like a little oasis: very peaceful and sweet.”
Saturday’s farm tour is designed to provide many types of nourishment.
Farming families
One type is face-to-face interaction with farming families and others on the North Olympic Peninsula who are interested in locally grown food.
Participants have the chance to meet men such as Steve Johnson, who was 16 when he took over the Lazy J Tree Farm in Agnew after his father, George Johnson, died.
Steve has built the farm into a diversified 85-acre operation, growing Christmas trees, organic apples, Asian pears and numerous other crops.
Another farm-tour attraction: plain old play outdoors, from hay-bale mazes to pony rides.
And of course there will be abundant food and drink, much of it straight from the farms just beyond the city limits of Sequim and Port Angeles.
Mary Gallagher, co-owner of the Freedom Farm, said the first Saturday in October is a kind of dream day, of frolicking with her horses and the children who love them.
The Freedom Farm, a dairy-turned beef cattle-operation with an equestrian center, will host an array of horse-oriented events during this year’s tour.
“For us, the best thing is getting the families out to do a cool activity together,” Gallagher said.
Saturday night, singles, couples and families will have an opportunity to work off whatever they sampled and supped on the tour.
Nash’s Organic Produce, after a day of pumpkin-decorating, face-painting, hay-riding and stir-frying at its packing shed and front yard in Dungeness, will hold a barn dance with the local band Deadwood Revival at 7:30 p.m.
Admission is $8 for adults while children 12 and under dance free.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
