Greenbank Farm

Engaged in Democracy!

Judy Executive Director — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:54:50 +0000

Did you know that the Port of Coupeville pays the mortgage for the Greenbank Farm? If that doesn’t make everything we do here an act of civic engagement, I don’t know what does.

And that’s a good thing!

It was the community that wanted to “save” the Farm from becoming just another housing development, and it was the Port of Coupeville that stepped up and said to the community, “let us help you do that.”

Jim Patton, Executive Director for the Port of Coupeville, listens to Steve Stansberry describe a Master Gardener proposal for a project at the edge of the pond

Elected officials come and go in their roles as Port Commissioners. The community that rallied so hard back in 1997 has seen some changes too. And certainly, the volunteers and staff who served with the Board of the Greenbank Management Group have changed multiple times over the 15 years.

But the constant through it all has been a persistent sense of caring for this special place, and a consistent desire to protect it for future generations. The original community members hoped that there would be a permanent conservation easement put in place to make sure no one could ever develop the Farm into housing or large commercial endeavors. We haven’t quite accomplished that yet, but the process is in place and the Port is working through it with the County.

While we wait, because of input from our community, we at the Greenbank Farm Management Group focus on strengthening programming here…connecting more and more folks to what makes the place special, and simply doing our best to create opportunities for a diversity of interests to show up and work collaboratively to better the Farm.

It only happens through continued citizen engagement. So, join us? Come to a Port Meeting (there’s one today at 3:30 at the Coupeville Library)!

Birds, Birds, Everywhere Birds!

Judy Executive Director — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:43:53 +0000

If you love birds, or springtime, we think you’d have a great time here at the Farm right now. There are goslings out near the pond, carefully guarded by their Canada Goose parents. There are baby starlings that have just hatched in one of the wine barrels in the entry way. Ducks are laying eggs everywhere! There is a large and active contingent of rufous hummuningbirds that zip in and out of the area by the wine shop door. And the chicks that were so tiny and yellow just a week ago down in the Ag Training Center are now morphing into dark colored broilers that will soon be moved out into the chicken tractors. Bring your curiosity and your camera.

Supporting our Food Banks

Judy Executive Director — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:42:32 +0000

We are so proud of what our students learn here at the Training Center!

Certainly, through the classroom curriculum (authored at UC Santa Cruz), they learn about soil science, plant physiology, nutrient and pest management, crop rotation, and business planning.

Along the way, they learn how to diversify a farm’s revenue streams, so that even on small acreage a family can generate a good livelihood. This means that they learn how to manage a Community Supported Agriculture share program, how to establish direct-to-retail relationships with grocers, how to harvest for and staff a farmers market booth, and how to grow field trials and seed crops for additional sources of revenue.

But what we’re also proud of is that they learn how to share their food with the entire community. They learn about food banks and work-trade programs. They learn about offering gleaning opportunities to local service clubs, where volunteers come in to harvest food that is still nutritious, but not of sufficient quantity or market quality to make it worth the farmer’s time to deal with it. And they learn that sharing in this way does not diminish their economic bottom line – but beautifully strengthens the health of their community and their sense of belonging in it.

At the beginning of each season, crops are planted – all paid for by private funding. As each season progresses, the ATC works with both Gifts From The Heart and Good Cheer – both of which serve the voting district of the Port of Coupeville. After each week’s Coupeville Farmers Market, unsold produce is given to Gifts From The Heart. After harvesting for the CSA, excess is donated to both Gifts From The Heart and Good Cheer. We plant extra rows for both food banks, encouraging volunteers to help tend them so that a steadier supply of fresh, locally grown food it available for those who are in need of a safety net for a while. Good Cheer has now begun to contract with our incubator project, a winter CSA, to specifically grow cold hardy vegetables for them. The money goes to the students developing the incubator project, to help defray the costs they incur for use of the land and equipment made available through the incubator.

Because the ATC contributes to the food banks, we are able to grow larger amounts of food, offering a more real life farming experience for students. They learn that making a living by growing food is hard work with an uncertain return. They learn how to work in concert with their farming peers, not in harsh competition with them. They learn about our local food system and food access issues. They learn about poverty, food insecurity, and hunger, along with issues regarding public funding, and the need to make sure that their gifts are paid for out of privately supported supplies, not by tax dollars. And they learn about the importance of keeping good records and communicating clearly with their peers and customers.

Can it get complex and a bit controversial? You bet! Mind-bendingly so at times. Yet it is through the complexity that our students grow to better understand the nature of community relationships, and their role as a grower in community.

Juggling While Surfing

Judy Executive Director — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:32:10 +0000

This photo is only marginally related to this post...I just liked it.

I’m sitting in my office above the Pie Shop, watching a starling dive into an empty wine cask down below. From the droppings on the top, and the size of the space into which the bird dives, it looks like it could be an avian community center!

Members of the Greenbank Garden Club are setting up for their plant sale (remember, this blog is dated). Students in the Ag Training Center are receiving their first order of chicks.

I can hear the Café getting ready for a busy day, and looking at the running stream of meetings on my schedule, I’d best be doing the same myself. But first, I’m taking a moment to consider the whole of the Farm.

It’s easy to take each conversation I encounter as if it’s a free-standing element of management. Resolve a conflict here, schedule a repair there, put off event planning for that, embrace the photo op there, etc. Not only easy, really pretty much necessary. Prioritize, then focus, be in the moment…I coach myself in this way constantly.

This approach keeps me sane, and helps me listen more fully to those who need to communicate with me.

But left to run in perpetual fashion, the larger vision of what the Greenbank Farm Management Group is trying to do gets lost in the jumble of individual discussions. So occasionally I stop to look at the whole. The whole Farm.

We manage 151 acres of historic farmland for the Port of Coupeville. We balance care for their needs as a public agency, with care for the needs of our own community and non-profit. We have a small staff that does big work. We make decisions collaboratively, often with input from the public, staff, board, and Port Commissioners (you can imagine how this influences the pace of decision making).

We can’t be everything to everyone, but our mission is broad because it describes a system, not just an activity.

We create opportunities for visitors to walk trails and eat good food because we believe such activities draw customers for all of the small businesses at the Farm. And we believe that strong local businesses contribute more to our local economy than large non-local businesses.

We invite community partners to bring their ideas and projects to us for consideration because we know that the Farm really belongs to everyone, and that only through a diversity of activities and learning opportunities can we hope to achieve the potential of this very special place. And we recognize that in a world full of problems, it’s important to leave room for everyone to be a part of solutions.

Most of the Farm is “certified organic” because we believe that we are in a unique position to model the opportunities and challenges of that status for the folks who come to visit. We also believe the certification sets a foundation that focuses our overall resource management on long-term sustainability.

We grow food and farmers because farming as been the primary activity here for over 100 years, and because we believe that sustainable agriculture is a key component of a sustainable economy.

We encourage people to bring their dogs here for a walk because moving bodies are healthier bodies, and because sharing the trails provides for a special form of community.

We share with the public how we are caring for our water because water issues show up in so many different ways here. Aquifer recharge, potential sea water intrusion, non-point pollution, surface water erosion, and more…each one of them a reminder of our responsibilities as stewards.

And we do all of this knowing that cultivating balance between commerce, agriculture, recreation, and natural resource stewardship is important and possible, yet somehow akin to juggling while surfing.

So here’s to living in the moment, so long as we remember that each fits into a much longer view of time and purpose.

As our surfer friend, Drew, would say, B+(get it?).

Something Special Going On

Judy Executive Director — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 02:54:35 +0000

The Ag Training Center is a vital part of Greenbank Farm, and I spend a lot of time working with the people in the program. But the pace and diversity of my days doesn’t let me spend concentrated time with them. A few minutes here and there, repeated as often as possible, is all I can hope for.

But sometimes, those few minutes tell me so much about how special the program is.

For instance, yesterday, I needed to find out the dimensions of our existing hoop houses for some paperwork. So I grabbed my camera (there’s ALWAYS a photo opp waiting somewhere as I walk between points on the Farm!) and headed to the ATC fields.

Sebastian was surveying the ground inside a hoop house, using a shovel to determine where the paths had been during the last season. Sensing where the soil had been worked, as compared to where the soil had been repeatedly walked on, he said, “While you did a great job making beds, these paths are much too wide and people-friendly. Space is limited, expensive, and precious in a hoop house. We want this to be more plant friendly. The path should be just barely wide enough for me to walk and slowly turn around.”

The students laughed, recognizing that one of them had worked up the planting beds and walking paths — and that they had just learned those beds were incorrectly placed. A small lesson that could mean a difference of hundreds of dollars in produce by the end of the season.

Next, Sebastian wielded a garden rake. “This isn’t the one I’d choose…it’s too heavy. Raking is an aerobic activity and a light rake makes it much easier for me.” As I stood with my camera, he put the rake to work, “you never want to let the rake stop moving, keep going from left to right, then right to left, at a slight diagonal, so you’re pulling any rocks up to the top and along with you as you work the row. When you have a collection, pull them off the row and into the path between rows.”

It made so much sense that the thought bubble in my head started to form, “you have to teach this stuff? Really?” But then I considered that on a small farm, there would be thousands of row feet to prepare, often without sophisticated machines, and knowing how to use tools & your body efficiently could make all the difference. Then I noticed the faces of the students. They were paying rapt attention. Yes, it made sense, but it was new to them. And they were soaking it up. Could they learn the technique from reading a book? Maybe. But by watching someone demonstrate it, and then trying their own hand at it under supervision, they were all accomplished (and tired) by the end of the afternoon.

While I had to leave in the middle of the activities, the students went on to build the beds in the new locations, and plant the seeds that will eventually produce a crop of seeds for High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont. Learning about how to build a planting bed quickly morphed into how to grow a farm revenue stream.

What is special, SO SPECIAL, about the Greenbank Farm Ag Training Center, is that students get to learn both the “basic basics” that are at risk of being lost forever as the current generation of farmers ages without successors in place – AND the deeper elements of sustainable farming methods, like seed development, intensive cover cropping, production planning, marketing, and more. They learn hand cultivation and mechanical cultivation methods. They learn from cutting edge research papers, and from oral histories. They learn by pushing their intellectual envelopes and getting dirt under their fingernails. They learn from seasoned farmers, and from each other.

The bottom line is they learn. Every day, in multiple ways, from multiple people, all based in experience and curiosity.

I may only see a few moments at a time, but I recognize a successful model when it crosses my path. Yes, I’m biased, but biased because of what I see happening. Greenbank Farm’s Ag Training Center is special. Seriously special. Pay attention. It’s going to make a difference and you’re going to want to be a part of it.

Multisensory Experience of Balance

Judy Executive Director — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:44:23 +0000

Spring is making itself known around here, and we’re lovin’ it! Maybe it’s short-term memory at work and all seasons do this…but it just seems like Spring wakes up the senses in ways that Summer, Fall and Winter don’t.

This morning, for instance, as I walked the short distance from my truck to the upstairs office, I heard over 30 great blue herons fly over on their way to the wetland from the rookery. I smelled pie crust baking in the Whidbey Pies kitchen, with the scent of freshly mowed grass dancing along the edges.

I felt the cool breezes blowing across from Holmes Harbor onto my cheeks. Brightly colored primroses and daffodils dared my eyes to feel sleepy, and as I chewed on one of the chive stems I snagged in the Training Center fields yesterday, I could taste the promise of my CSA share.

But I could also hear traffic along the highway at our western edge. I could hear the cacophony stirred up by the temporary refrigeration unit in our back driveway. Curbs, cars and signage blocked my view of what this site looked like a century ago, and a plastic bag blown about by the wind reminded me of our current responsibility to watch what we leave behind.

Yesterday, walking out to check the alpacas in the pasture, I could hear water running loudly underground in a drainage pipe, and the shrill beep-beep-beep of a garbage truck made it clear that we don’t live “out in the middle of no where.”

In a culture where 5 and 10 acre lots support what many believe to be “rural lifestyles,” 151 acres sound can like a huge preserve. But actually, it’s more like a living classroom that highlights how our human endeavors interact with the natural world. What interrupts one or the other? Are those interruptions necessarily bad? How can one function at the Farm support a very different one?

Good thing we have five senses. We’re gonna need them all to learn all the lessons this place wants to teach!

Diversity of Events

Judy Executive Director — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:35:51 +0000

If you’re new to Greenbank Farm, heck, even if you live just down the road from the Farm, you might wonder about the diversity of events we host. For instance, this past weekend, we had the Whidbey Island Conservation District and their annual native plant sale in the barn. Last month, we had the Sweetheart Market paired up with the Red Wine and Chocolate wine tour. Not long ago, we sponsored a Seed Swap in the loft. In June, the Whidbey Audubon Society will host it’s Bird In the Hand workshop for the public with us. And during the summer you’ll see the Highland Games, Loganberry Festival and the Wag and Walk. It can appear as if we’re trying to be everything to everyone – and we do struggle with this.

But here’s the thing. Greenbank Farm was saved from residential development by the community (can you even imagine over 400 houses plopped down on this beautiful site?). And the community spent a lot of time distilling an outline of the kind of programming they wanted to see developed here.

They came up with four areas of focus, urging that they be kept in balance by community engagement (gathering) and education, all to celebrate the special sense of place found here:

Agriculture
Recreation
Local Commerce
Natural Resource Stewardship

That’s why you’ll see families gathering here for festivals, weddings and memorial services; people and dogs walking our vista-filled trails; a vibrant Agricultural Training Center with regular workshops and field days; locally owned retail shops and small businesses; and signage/Community School classes about wetlands, water, bird habitat, and more.

Is it a challenge to maintain a sense of balance? You bet! And yet that’s the beauty of what Greenbank Farm offers us as a community and culture. We get to witness how these activities can work together to create a deeper understanding of our natural world, and our impacts on it.

We have a part-time facilities rental coordinator who helps us find a sense of balance between community gathering events, fundraisers for other non-profits, private gatherings, and market activities – but everything that happens here addresses our mission statement, and thus the interests of our community, in one way or another.

We’re always learning here at the Farm and we’re so glad you are learning right along with us!

Living Into The New Year

Judy Executive Director — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:30:18 +0000

This is the time of year when farmers plan their crops, make lists of what work needs to be done before planting can begin, and set their goals for the coming season. As you can guess, Sebastian is doing just such things as he looks ahead to the 2012 session of the Ag Training Center (ATC).

But those kinds of activities aren’t limited to the management of the ATC – we’re doing similar things across all of the programs at Greenbank Farm!

Just this past week, we sat down at our monthly “merchant meeting” to plan our advertising and marketing work for the year. Hank and I considered how we’re going to approach weed and pasture management as 2012 rolls forward. Staff and Board members prepared for our annual strategic planning retreat. We welcomed a new Port Commissioner, bid farewell to a 2011 ATC graduate who will be applying his new ag skills to a CSA Farm in Snohomish, and began the first round of classes in our new Greenbank Farm Community School.

We’re evaluating how we care for and manage our wetlands and walking trails. We’re designing new programming around birding as well as water issues and our local food system. And we’re engaging community in every step along the way.

Just like farmers planning their production for the year, we’re planning ours too! And we’d love to hear from you. Wander around this new website, check out our programs and events, and let us know what you think.

Judy

New Website!

Judy Executive Director — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:16:19 +0000

After months of work, it’s finally up…our new website!

Greenbank Farm is indeed home to a working farm and Ag Training Center, but it’s also a community gathering place, a commercial village, a wedding venue, a dog park, a natural ecosystem, and a publicly owned, organically certified, 151-acre open-space site.

It took us a while to establish a framework that allows us to share information about all of the dynamic elements that we try to balance here.

We know the website is not perfect (nor will it ever be!), and that there are still bugs in the navigation tools, still typos and incomplete sentences lurking about, and still gaps in the information that need to be filled in.

So we need your help. Take a look around the site and let us know what you find. Here in the 21st century, so many people rely on the ability to find information on the internet…and we really want to know how to make this site work as well as possible for you.

Really.

Judy

(in addition to things that need fixing, please let us know if you learn something about the Farm that you didn’t know before…)

Magic In Motion

Judy Executive Director — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:00:23 +0000

Magic in motion.

The Farm is always a busy place. Sometimes because of human activity and events, sometimes because of wind, weather, and wildlife, and often because of a raucous combination of all the above. Even on days when it seems quiet, you have only to be still and open your eyes and ears to recognize that there is always something in motion at Greenbank Farm.

But this weekend, it felt even more magical than normal around here.

There was the spectacularly sunny Friday that had all of our merchants washing their windows to let every bit of light fill their galleries.

There was the grey but glorious Saturday, highlighted by the lively bachelorette party that visited the shops and Holiday Market as part of their festivities…the couple that came to check out the barn in hopes of renting it for June wedding…the young families that came with professional photographers for shots of baby’s first Christmas…and the kennel club that came with dressed up hounds for pictures with Santa.

And then there is this, bright blue sky Sunday. Hawks above, wigeons on the pond and great blue herons in the wetland. People arriving, first for lunch in the Café, then for a stroll through the market and galleries. Others piling out of cars with dogs in tow, heading up to the ridge for a clear view of both the Cascades and Olympics. Shy little ones gathering their courage to have that chat with the jolly man in red. People happy to support the local economy by buying art, photography, honey, herbs, chocolates, garlic, unique driftwood and gourd art and more.

Throughout the weekend, everyone smiling at the sound of Santas bells.

Yes, there is magic in motion here at the Farm.