The basic argument is that by definition on the federal level butter is “made from pasteurized cream.” Because I wanted to use raw cream as the primary ingredient, my product did not fit the federal definition. Incensed, I went looking for the definition of butter.
Thankfully the Internet made this task much easier than in earlier years. If I had had to leave the island, go down to the federal building in downtown Seattle and rifle through pages of documents, it would have taken weeks. But with the Internet, sitting at my kitchen table I could easily read what I needed. I went to the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Web sites. I had no idea what the FDA did, but I got a sense of it quickly.
The FDA is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. Its primary function is the regulation of many food and drug products in this country. A chunk of the material that the FDA produces is a mammoth list of definitions. Every possible food item is defined in excruciating detail by the FDA. Once I got this far, I was certain the definition of butter would pop up in a second. Butter is a very basic food that we have consumed for decades if not centuries. I could return to the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and prove that they were incorrect. I would soon be a raw butter seller.
I was grossly mistaken. The definitions don’t define butter, or a banana, or a walnut. This federal compendium addresses issues more along the lines of how you can legally make a product containing no cream whatsoever and call it butter, how many poisons can be left in a food product that is intended as safe for human consumption, etc.
Online I came across great statements like this:
Preservatives including but not limited to the following within these maximum amounts in percent by weight of the finished food: Sorbic acid, benzoic acid and their sodium, potassium, and calcium salts, individually, 0.1 percent, or in combination, 0.2 percent, expressed as the acids; calcium disodium EDTA, 0.0075 percent; propyl, octyl, and dodecyl gallates, BHT, BHA, ascorbyl palmitate, ascorbyl stearate, all individually or in combination, 0.02 percent; stearyl citrate, 0.15 percent; isopropyl citrate mixture, 0.02 percent.
At one point I thought I was in the wrong section and actually made a phone call to check. Surprisingly I quickly got a person on the phone. A very charming woman somewhere in Maryland helped me through it all. She called me “honey” after every sentence and thought it was hysterical that I was looking for the definition of butter. I doubt she had ever gotten such a phone call.
As I read through these definitions I began to get a sense of food in America. As we walk the aisles of the supermarket, we see boxes and cans and bags of “food.” All are regulated, inspected and approved. A major issue for food processors is what they can call the product and what can legally be in the product. Our food language has a few terms that are powerful: butter, cookies, flour, tomato sauce, mustard and so on. We culturally have an idea of what those terms mean. Sadly, the definitions of those items do not correspond with our traditional images. Tomato sauce according to the FDA is wholly different than what my grandmother cooked on Sunday afternoons.
I returned to the letter from the WSDA and concluded the most important part of their letter to me concerning my desire to sell raw butter was the last line, where they stated that they reserved the right to protect the public health in any way that they felt appropriate. I gave in and decided to sell only raw milk and cream and not push the raw butter issue.
After four and a half years of selling raw milk to the public, at times outside of the law, at times following the law, I decided to cease selling raw milk. In the end, I concluded that I would never win the argument about raw milk itself. While selling raw milk, I worried both about getting children sick and about being sued. I never have gotten anyone sick from drinking my raw milk, thankfully, but there was always the chance. I am not sure how I would react. I produce food because I love food, love to have people eat great food. Getting someone sick is simply not part of the vision.
I also had a sense of fatigue from selling raw milk. It wore me out. Not the actual work of milking cows, bottling the milk and selling it, but rather the attention I gave to both the state and to my customers. When the WSDA changed the law to add Q fever as a potential hazard of raw milk and requiring additional testing of my cows, I found myself on the phone with the state veterinarian’s office, screaming expletives at the unimpressed state worker. I was convinced there was a conspiracy in the offices in the state capital, bureaucrats plotting ways to put me out of business. I was of course wrong, but the personal toll it was taking on me was larger than the joy of seeing my cows amble down the north road, coming down from the upper pasture to the barn in the morning, their hips swaying this way and that as they plodded along.
Unexpectedly, I also was worn down by customers: the nice folks who wanted to buy good, clean milk. Many were convinced that raw milk would save them from all the ills of their bodies: asthma, cancer, arthritis. This was too great a burden to place on a simple liquid. My belief was always that raw milk is a great food for healthy adults. When customers informed me that they fed the milk to their weeks-old infants, I would shudder. Their trust in the product, their trust in me, was based on my friendliness toward them, not on the intrinsic quality of my milk.
Many products on the shelves of the supermarket are potentially hazardous: liquor, cigarettes, raw beef, raw chicken. Although there is little doubt that drinking too much alcohol is potentially very dangerous, it is still for sale in every state in the union, albeit with restrictions. Culturally we as a nation have a connection to the dangers of alcohol. Many have direct experience with alcoholism, and the national understanding is that alcohol is dangerous, especially in the case of driving while intoxicated.
I doubt that raw milk elicits those same emotions and connections. I have explained what raw milk is to people on many occasions throughout the past four years. I have yet to encounter a person who has been made ill by raw milk or who knows someone who has.
And yet, I can walk into a restaurant a few blocks from my farm, sidle up to the bar and order a shot of whiskey. I can order a second shot, a third shot and most likely a fourth. I drink little, so I am guessing that after that I would fall off of my barstool, but I know people in this small town and I doubt they would cut me off. The bottle of whiskey would bear a warning label, which I might have noticed had I purchased it in a store. If I were drinking whiskey by the shot, however, no such warning would come near me. The state trusts me to make my own decisions as an adult.
Now, if I were to ask that barkeep for a glass of raw milk, I would be immediately turned down. The state, at least this state, restricts the sale of raw milk to the consumer, and requires that the milk be sold only in a container sealed at the dairy. A warning label is affixed to that jug of milk, much like the alcohol. The state, as reflected in its regulations, believes that adults are not capable of judging the dangers of raw milk without seeing that label. Only the purchaser of the raw milk can open and drink that milk, from the original container with the warning label on it. A restaurant cannot serve a single glass of raw milk to an adult customer.
Raw milk strikes a nerve with the public health community. There are two distinct sides in the debate: those in public health who are adamant that raw milk is intrinsically dangerous and has no business being in the food supply; and raw milk advocates who are adamant that raw milk is intrinsically good and pure and it is their right to drink it. I have always fallen in the middle, believing that raw milk is a fine product, but with tremendous limitations.
Ultimately, my decision to stop selling raw milk was not simply based on my beliefs about food, but on the harsh realities of liability. I value this farm tremendously. I have worked on it for the past twenty years and have no interest in losing it in a lawsuit over bad milk. Even if I were to win a lawsuit, the stress and toil wouldn’t be worth it.
After choosing to pull the plug on my raw milk operation, I had cows, a barn, a dairy and open pasture. I had everything
I needed to produce outstanding raw milk, but I had become soured on the process of actually selling said raw milk. My restaurant sale payments were dwindling, and soon the buyer defaulted on the loan. I cashed the last check and estimated that I could operate the farm for six months with what I had left. My back was against the wall, but I was no longer scared. I had become used to rolling with the punches—it’s an essential skill for a small farmer.
I didn’t want to give up my cows, but I couldn’t go on milking them every day if I wasn’t going to use the milk for something. If I was going to use the milk for something, it had to be something I could sell at a profit. So I decided to press on with my dairy adventure and become a cheese maker. Although raw milk is tasty and healthy, it is also essentially limited in its depth. Great cows’ milk is sweet, grassy and thick, no question, but an aged cheese from excellent milk has many layers of flavors and tastes.
Alas, the milk produced here for cheese making is now pasteurized. Presently a combination pasteurizer/cheese vat fabricated in the Netherlands sits in the dairy building. The milk is heated to 145 degrees to kill any potential pathogens in the milk before the milk is made into lovely fresh cheeses. I believe people should have the option to purchase the food that they would like. I find it unfortunate that people have a desire to drink raw milk and yet are not allowed to in many parts of the nation. I can thank the critics of raw milk, however, since the legal challenges sent me on a course toward cheese making, a vocation I find highly enjoyable, and one which I believe will eventually bring this farm a significant income. I’ve only been making and selling cheese for a short time, so it’s too soon to evaluate my progress from a perspective of financial viability, but I can say without reservation that I believe in this endeavor. I believe I will succeed in cheese making, and make money doing so.
And so this farm evolves, changes and carries on. I enjoy the ride. If I had originally intended Kurtwood Farms to be a producer of farmstead cheeses, I would have had no idea of its enormity. It would have been an overwhelming process—finding the land, clearing the land, planting pastures, establishing a herd of cows, learning to raise cows and milk them, building a dairy and then learning to make cheese. But when I only have the next phase in front of me I can tackle it. In another few years I expect this business to be more refined, to have evolved further. I do not know the direction the changes will take, but I look forward to them.
Nine
Vegetables
Growing vegetables has taught me a lot about farming. And a lot about myself. When I brought Matt on, the farm was a simple hobby farm, though I was loath to admit it. I grew some tasty food, but it wasn’t a business. With Matt’s help I pushed this farm from a hobby to a business. A failing business, but a business nonetheless. That first season quickly turned me against growing vegetables under plastic. I didn’t want to join the race to grow the earliest tomato for the farmers’ market. In my view, rushing to market came at a great expense, both financially and also to my sense of what was right. I just didn’t like all the plastic.
I enjoyed the simple act of putting a seed in the ground and watching it germinate and grow until it could be harvested. It was pure and good, and the end result was an exceptional vegetable. I couldn’t give that up.
As I had boxes of seeds left over from the vegetable enterprise, and had gained a decent amount of knowledge, plus the fields were set up—tilled, amended and fenced—I continued to grow vegetables, but on a smaller scale. I wish that I could say that this was a sudden epiphany, that one day I woke up and reduced the scale of this vegetable farm. Rather, I slowly came to my senses. The year after Matt left, I still grew vegetables for the farmers’ market, but stopped running a CSA. I still grew tomato starts, more than I needed for my farm, but I only sold them to the local hardware store, no longer to the chain of grocery stores in Seattle.
I still thought I could make it as a vegetable grower, even though I really didn’t enjoy working on a large scale. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t rewarding, it was a slog at times. And then, a few years ago, I came up with a solution. By this point, I had met many people who cared about good food: customers on the island and in the city and many cooks and restaurant owners I had sold food to in the city. They wanted to come to the farm, to see how food was made and to be a part of a local farm. I decided that rather than just give them a quick Saturday afternoon tour, I would capitalize on their interest. I would prepare a full dinner for them and charge them for it. I’d serve dinner in the main kitchen building of the farm, prepared with the vegetables, the meats, the cheeses, the honey, the herbs and the fruits from this small plot of land, paired with great wines. My many food-yielding “hobby projects” finally had a purpose: to stock the kitchen for simple but delicious weekly meals. And I would get a hundred bucks or so per head, which I could funnel into producing more high-quality food.
Hosting dinners is something that I would have loved whether I was charging admission or not; it brought me back to my early days at the bakery. There is an honesty and integrity in cooking food and serving it directly. That this endeavor could support my farm was icing on the cake. Weekly dinners combined with my fledgling cheese business are what support this farm today. Almost all of the food I produce—as detailed in the following chapters on vegetables, fowl and pigs, as well as the previous chapters on honey, fruit and dairy—goes into the seasonal dishes I serve every Sunday. Throwing the dinners has given me a reason to produce all the wonderful food that, to be fair, I wanted to produce anyway. Everyone wins, especially me.
Once I had decided to throw dinners, I knew I needed a name. When the windows of the kitchen building needed a fresh coat of paint, I hired Bill, a former hippie who had moved to the island in 1974. He often told me stories of life here on the island in that era, as he methodically painted. After painting, he left me a small can of remaining white paint, labeled in deliberate script Cookhouse to denote what building that paint was for. I knew immediately that I had a name—Sunday dinners at Kurtwood Farms would be called Cookhouse. I imagined an old cattle ranch, with a long wooden table, cowboys lined up eating full plates of hearty food grown on the ranch. The dinners have been a hit, and I have no intention of stopping them, at least until my cheese-making business takes off to a point where it demands my full attention and brings in a commensurate income.
The menus of the Cookhouse dinners only serve to reinforce the distinct qualities of the individual seasons on Vashon. It is autumn as I write this, mid-October. Summer has been long and fruitful. I am excited to see the sun setting earlier, the rains wetting the pastures after months of dry weather and a chill in the morning air. Of course, in another three weeks I will give anything to get summer back, to feel the warmth of the sun on my face as I walk the pastures. But today I welcome the rains and cool weather.
It was a great summer: the pastures grew well, the gardens filled with produce, the fruit trees burdened themselves with heavy fruit. These past two weeks large quantities of food have come into the kitchen: a wheelbarrow filled with potatoes, crates and crates of apples, trays filled with pears. At this time of year, I sit back and grin. A big silly grin. All this stuff came from the earth? After all these seasons, it’s all still a wondrous mystery to me.
My greatest joy at this time of year comes from pumpkins. The pumpkins I grow are actually a variety of winter squashes, but pumpkin sounds more fun than the dull and descriptive winter squash. Every May, I walk out to the garden bed and plant squash seeds. The little paper envelopes that the seeds come in have photos of the eventual squash and five or six packets of different varietals fit nicely in my jacket pocket. I love to rip open the top of a new seed packet, see the seeds sitting in the bottom. All is possible at this point; all is good.
Into the freshly tilled earth the seeds are poked down a few inches, a bit of water goes over them if I have time and then they are left alone. They pop out in a few days if the weather is good, a couple weeks later if spring is tardy. Then through June
and early July they press on until they hit their stride and go all-out. By August, vines cover an entire end of the garden plot. When the second or third week of October comes along, I drive the John Deere tractor out to the garden, open the gates and drive back to the pumpkin patch. I always think there will be just one or two pumpkins. I try not to look for them ahead of time, but occasionally I sneak a peek.
And then I lower the bucket on the front of the tractor, turn off the motor and wade into the plants, my heavy cowboy boots pushing aside the tangle of vines, looking for a place for my feet to land. The large verdant leaves cover the hidden pumpkins, only visible by the bright orange colors that explode as fall advances. I cut the stem and free the pumpkin, walk it to the tractor and stack it in the bucket. In a few minutes the bucket is full. On a good year I will fill the bucket five times. One year I drove the large Ford pickup to the garden and filled the truck bed high with pumpkins, but that was an exceptional year.
The big black steel bucket on the front of the tractor, held up by the hydraulics, is full of pumpkins. Even though I don’t need to, I raise the bucket high above the tractor and make a triumphant march back to the kitchen, smiling through the whole drive.
I can never get over this. I walked out with seed packets in my pocket in May and in October I need the hydraulic arm of the tractor to haul the finished bounty back to the kitchen. How does this happen? I do water them a lot over the course of the season, of course. Many gallons of water head out to the pumpkin patch, but I always think that most of it rolls off the soil, soaks in or evaporates. How much of that water could really end up in the roots?
Growing a Farmer Page 16