Author: Brooke Lucy

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Although Marlene Beadle was met with “moans and groans” from her family when she introduced a new, healthier way of eating at home, Marlene was undeterred. “Our family came to realize how fresh and flavorful the meals were that she was making,” says Marlene’s daughter, Lisa Gebhardt, who gives her mother full credit for the food philosophy she developed and still holds to this day.

Marlene’s interest in whole grains, natural sweeteners, and abundant fresh produce soon extended beyond the family dinner table, however, when Marlene purchased a tiny health food store in Federal Way in 1976, later naming it Marlene’s Market & Deli. “She immediately doubled the inventory with foods made from natural and organically grown ingredients,” says Lisa, noting that the founding principles of sourcing organic, sustainably-produced and socially-responsible products were and continue to be the underpinning of Marlene’s Market & Deli (MMD). “Commitment to organically grown, non-GMO, environmentalism, support of the community, and helping people was a complete circle for [Marlene] that all together built health in an individual, a business, a community, and the world,” says Lisa. “This is what we continue to believe at MMD. We work to teach our employees to help us carry on our commitment to Marlene’s founding belief.”

Marlene’s belief in quality natural foods anchored MMD, but it was “her caring for her customers was the basis for a business that continued to grow over 43 years,” says Lisa, who started working with her mother at MMD while she was in college, packaging bulk foods and grains in the back

room, and who is now the business’s general manager. “I discovered I took after her in my enjoyment of helping people and running a business, so I continued to learn every aspect of it. After 43 years, I’ve done every position except making espresso!” Lisa says.

The legacy of enthusiastic customer service and high-quality products was not the only thing Marlene passed down to Lisa, however, “I learned how to make amazingly yummy cookies with natural ingredients,” says Lisa, who carried that tradition on with her daughter, who, according to Lisa, “now has a reputation as making the ‘best’ cookies!”

The steady and thoughtful growth of MMD over the past 40+ years is a testament to the vital role it occupies in the communities it serves. Twenty years after the flagship store opened in Federal Way, Marlene and her crew launched a new market in Tacoma, which proved as successful as the original store. Lisa

attributes the market’s popularity to its commitment to quality. “Our customers appreciate that we buy from local companies committed to exemplary quality,” she says, adding, “Marlene’s has always supported local, small businesses.” She calls this a “win-win-win”: the small businesses win, MMD wins, and the customers, who benefit from the range and quality of products available at MMD, also win.

One example of the 3/win scenario was when MMD came across Bluebird Grain Farms during product research. “Our then Bulk Category Manager, Michelle, happened to be traveling through Winthrop and saw Bluebird Grain Farms products in the community,” Lisa says. “What a great connection to make! We brought Bluebird Grain Farms products in shortly after that – right now, we carry whole grain emmer and whole grain emmer pancake and waffle mix.”

MMD recognizes that newly-harvested and milled grains are best eaten in their most fresh condition, so, Lisa says, “we have a specially built bulk room that maintains the optimal temperature grains, nuts, seeds, and flours, which ensures that Bluebird Grain Farms products are as tasty and fresh as possible.”

With nine departments (grocery, refrigerated, frozen, bulk, mercantile, body care, supplements, produce, beer/wine/spirits), two locations, and 100 employees, MMD has come a long way since its original 1000 sq.ft. storefront in Federal Way. It now hosts classes featuring naturopaths, nutritionists, chefs, authors and other leaders in the natural healing community. MMD offers recipes, catering, a deli, and a bakery that uses organic flours and unrefined sweeteners to create treats like vegan chocolate cake, black bottom cupcakes, lemon sour cream pie, and zucchini bread. And if you seek vegetarian, vegan, wheat-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, and/or raw dishes, you’ll find a delicious variety at MMD; they even bake gluten-free bread to order.

Ultimately, what Marlene’s Market & Deli has supported for two generations is a healthy lifestyle through products that promote positive and beneficial choices for the things we put into and onto our bodies. What began around Marlene’s kitchen table as a sustainable approach to living has blossomed into a community resource that is the foundation of a healthy way of life for thousands of individuals and families in southern Puget Sound.

by Ashley Lodato, Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Arriving at Kirkland’s Cafe Juanita feels a little bit like arriving at the home of a friend. A friend who is an exceptional cook and fantastic hostess, with a fabulous house and enviable yard. Although the mid-century modern house has served as a restaurant for more than 30 years, it was, indeed, once a family home, and it still retains the intimate ambiance of a welcoming, familiar space. Remodels in recent years have opened up several previously private or unused areas within the home, and now, still within its original footprint, the restaurant boasts a patio alongside Juanita Creek, a main level dining area with adjacent private dining room, a revitalized entrance, and enhanced lighting for the entire property. “The house,” says owner and chef Holly Smith, “is a full-fledged member of the team. [It’s] a great space with lovely energy.”

Smith herself seems possessed of lovely energy as well. Since opening Cafe Juanita in 2000, a whirlwind of glowing restaurant reviews, awards, stars, and magazine features thrust Smith into the culinary spotlight, which still illuminates her with great regularity. But Smith has never lost sight of her main focus: the guests’ experience. “Everything matters and everyone is important in helping achieve a happy guest. No one are is more important [than the others].” says Smith. Staff meet and discuss guest hospitality frequently, which “really frees us up to work independently at times to the same end,” Smith says. “Servers don’t need to ask permission to do the right thing, spoil a guest, or fix a problem. Same as for a cook, who knows they use only the best and freshest items and that each plate matters. [It’s more important for it to be as delicious as possible [than for it merely to] ‘get done.'”

Smith’s holistic approach has served Cafe Juanita well, and it’s one that she cultivated during an externship in Ireland after culinary school. “Chef [Peter Timmins] was a master chef so everything was based on Escoffier,” says Smith, referring to George-Auguste Escoffier, a 19th century French culinary artist who was revolutionary in upgrading the culinary arts and fine dining experience, from recipes to service to kitchen environments to sanitation. “Proper technique and history were combined,” says Smith of Chef Timmins’ teaching. “It was great to work with such amazing raw ingredients–the best butter, wild game.” She continues, “The art of hospitality was also important. In Ireland, culinary schools teach front of the house proper service, so it isn’t just the chef’s perspective, but a guest-centric hospitality.”

A career in culinary arts was not always on Smith’s life plan, but with a degree in Political Science and a background in working in restaurants, Smith began to realize the creative outlet cooking provided for her. “I have always been interested in politics and governing,” she says. “To have a business and creative combined was a great thing for my personality.” Smith “governs” Cafe Juanita, but it’s a compassionate rule. The family feel of the home the restaurant occupies is echoed in the familiarity of the staff. Indeed, Smith refers to her team as “family,” calling herself “fortunate to be surrounded by talented and passionate professionals, who strive to create an authentic dinner experience.”

Critical to this authentic dinner experience are “the finest ingredients from local and Italian artisans,” says Smith. A trip to Northern Italy when Smith was in her late teens was “eye-opening,” and provided her with “a foundation of food experiences to draw from” when she first began as a creative professional cook. Smith honed Cafe Juanita’s menu over years of studying regional Italian cooking and traveling to Italy. And of Italian food as Cafe Juanita’s focal point Smith asks rhetorically, “Who doesn’t love Italian food?!”

Good point. If any more people in the western Washington area loved Italian food, you’d never be able to get a table at Cafe Juanita. As it is, business is brisk, and growing. In fact, August 2019 was Cafe Juanita’s busiest month in the 19+ years it has been in operation, due in part to word of mouth recommendations and in part to a continued presence on culinary award lists. But Smith responds to the media attention and public demand differently than she did in the early days, when critical acclaim came at an almost overwhelming speed. In the first few years, Smith says, “It was not very enjoyable for me. As much as I was grateful and happy to be doing well and be appreciated, I found it all a bit too much. The constant feedback on sites like Yelp took me a long while to navigate.”

Smith says she learned to “consume the feedback in a healthier way.” She and her team have focused on the restaurant culture and prioritized improvement on existing things: the space, the menu, the service. “There are plenty of ways to improve and grow in our one spot and I think that has helped sustain growth and maintain quality,” she says. “I want and expect us to be all trying to be better today than we were last week.”

Quality and sustainability are top priorities for Smith when sourcing ingredients. She looks for local and regional organic products that showcase the Pacific Northwest’s bounty, as well as sourcing Italian food and wine. In Cafe Juanita’s kitchen, Bluebird Grain Farms‘ organic emmer farro is featured in a vegetarian/vegan entree with local veggies, house-fermented shio koji, and, seasonally, locally foraged mushrooms, as well as accompanying roast game birds and soups: elements sourced from international flavors, traditional appetites, and adventuresome palates. And these eclectic and harmonious pairings seem so fitting–because this pedigreed grain that originated in the Middle East’s “Fertile Crescent” and is today considered Italy’s premiere rustic staple has been brought to the dinner table of an Italian-inspired Pacific Northwest restaurant by a North Cascades grain farm.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

photos courtesy of Cow & Clementine

Like many people, Cow & Clementine bakery owner Joe Cowan found himself having trouble digesting wheat. But unlike many people, Joe sought and found a solution. After consulting with his father, the renowned holistic physician Dr. Thomas Cowan, Joe began baking bread using the natural fermentation method outlined in the Tartine Bread book. “My dad said ‘if you prepare bread the real way, your problems may be alleviated,'” says Joe. They were. “My dad turned out to be correct.”

A pathway to eating wheat was not the only thing Dr. Cowan gave Joe. He also gave him a grounding in a philosophy of making food. A founding member of the Weston A. Price Foundation–a pioneer organization for information about nutrition and health–Dr. Cowan specializes in helping people heal through natural medicines and, with his sons, started a business to create and market organic, nutrient-dense vegetable powders. Joe manages operations for the family business, Dr. Cowan’s Garden, and through this work continues to support a tradition of nourishing foods.

In the process of learning how to make a nice sourdough loaf, Joe says, he learned a lot. And “over the years playing with recipes, reading more, and figuring out the basics of dough I got good enough at it to start a business.” Fortuitously, Joe and his wife, Emily Clemetson, had just relocated to Morgantown, West Virginia–an excellent place to open a bakery. Emily, a physician, had recently begun her residency in West Virginia University’s internal medicine program, and Joe was still on active duty with the Marine Corps, which he had joined after college. Joe moved into a space previously occupied by a gluten-free bakery, and Cow & Clementine was launched.

“The place was really easy to move into,” Joe says. “The nuts and bolts were already in place; it was already built to fire code, the ovens were there, and it didn’t need anything structurally.” The building’s owner, says Joe, had a great vision for Morgantown and local business. “It was a really good fit.”

Joe’s business model was somewhat unconventional in the bakery world, but has proven to be quite successful. In addition to operating a retail bakery, Joe also runs a brisk mail order business, which means that customers all over the country can enjoy fresh Cow & Clementine sourdough bread any day of the week. “We cater the recipe for shipping,” Joe says, by ordering whole grains and milling them ourselves. We grind it on one of our stone mills and then we let it ferment overnight before baking it. The fresh-milled grain holds up to the shipping process in a way that fluffy processed flour won’t.”

Joe sources nearly all his grains from Bluebird Grain Farms, about whom he learned through his father. “My dad knew about Bluebird years ago,” Joe says. “When I was starting to bake and didn’t want to use an all-purpose grocery store flour, my dad showed me Bluebird Grain Farms and said ‘this is the one you want to use.'” Joe complements the full flavors of Bluebird’s grains with his wild leaven, which provides a rich and earthy taste to his sourdough breads. “When I moved to Morgantown I lost the previous leaven I had been using,” he says, “but I started a new one as soon as I got here, by mixing flour with water and letting it ferment, and that leaven has been going strong for three years now.”

Joe says that he was drawn to Bluebird because of the variety of grains they grow and the superiority of the product, as well as their farming ethics, which he says are the best in the industry. “I really like the varieties,” he says. “The dispersion of heritage varieties, the hybrids. In the summer I like to use the Pasayten Hard White Wheat, in the winter we use the Methow Hard Red Wheat.” The bakery also features an Emmer loaf, an Einkorn bread, and a Heritage Dark Northern Rye. Joe notes that bakery and mail order bread customers tend to fall into two camps. “People want their bread to be dense and sour, or they want it light and fluffy. Cow & Clementine caters to those two camps.”

For Joe, purchasing whole grains extends the shelf life of his mail-order breads, so they arrive fresh to his customers’ houses. He has a couple of stone mills that he runs continuously for the first hour of each day; milling the grain is not an onerous task. But for most consumers, who can eat or freeze their bread the day they bake it, it makes more sense to purchase Bluebird’s fresh-milled organic flours rather than whole grains.

Cow & Clementine is more than a retail bakery and mail order bread company; it’s also a Morgantown hot spot that hosts art exhibits and occasional events, such as Ikebana classes, tie-dye sessions, and knife skills training. “The space is so large that I am only using 1/4 of it for bread,” Joe says, “so it makes sense to share the space for other purposes. Morgantown is cool and lively. There’s a lot going on here–art walks, farmers’ markets, gallery openings.”

As if a baker’s and a medical resident’s schedules weren’t hectic enough, Joe and Emily added baby George to their family four months ago, prompting Joe to hire another baker to work with him. “We hired and trained Chris while Emily was pregnant,” says Joe, “and it came right down to the wire. He baked his first successful loaf the week before George was born. It takes a long time to understand the nuances of sourdough–there’s barometric pressure that changes bread, and a lot of other variables. You can control the variables, or they can control you and spoil the batch.” With Chris assuming some of the baking duties, Joe can both spend time with George and work on growing Cow & Clementine, as well as continuing his work as board president of the legendary Mountain People’s Co-op.

Long term, Joe would like to decrease his oven-to-doorstep delivery time by opening regional bakery distribution centers. Such centers would also allow him to expand Cow & Clementine’s customer base. He’d also like to start making a sourdough pasta–the way pasta is supposed to be made, he says. “Any grocery store has whole aisles of dry unleavened pasta,” Joe says, “but you’re supposed to ferment it first. It tastes better and keeps longer.” And finally, Joe would like to add even more varieties to Cow & Clementine’s bread repertoire. “That will happen soon,” he says, “it’s just a matter of time.”

For more information, visit Cow & Clementine’s website. And to mail order small-batch artisanal bread, visit Cow & Clementine’s store.

Since this was posted Cow & Clementine closed and Joe and Emily moved to Yarmouth Maine where they hope to set up a bakery someday soon.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Imagine these items on a menu: Asian Beef Rice Bowl with Broccoli Spring Roll, Chicken Cordon Bleu Sandwich, Chicken Yakisoba. Vegan Chickpea Masala. Sounds like the kind of place you’d want to eat, right? Then imagine those menu items created from scratch using locally and regionally sourced ingredients. It sounds like the lofty goal of a trendy bistro but it is instead the vision the Bellingham Public Schools (BPS) has for its food services program. Called the “Bellingham Good Food Promise,” the mandate seeks to “encourage a lifetime of healthy eating by serving students nourishing, delicious, whole foods in a welcoming environment.”

Says BPS Executive Chef and Food Services Director Patrick Durgan, “we want to make sure every kid eats nutritious and tasty foods at school.” And the way to best accomplish this aim, says Durgan, is to change the school food culture from one of processed foods to one where entrees are prepared from scratch–a long-term goal that he and his staff are focused on, even as they go about their daily task of providing breakfast and lunch to 6,000 students in the BPS.

Converting to cooking from scratch is not an overnight process for a kitchen of any size, but it’s particularly challenging for institutions feeding large groups of customers. Add in local, state, and federal guidelines governing school lunch nutritional guidelines and budget constraints, and you’ll find it unsurprising that most public school kitchens rely on processed foods. But about a decade ago the BPS began to closely examine its food program, and with help from a farm-to-school advisory board and numerous conversations with and surveys of stakeholders ranging from students to parents to teachers to community members, the district determined that it needed to prioritize whole foods cooking, and has been moving methodically in that direction ever since. And for the past 3.5 years, Durgan has been at the helm of this movement, doing a job he seems destined for.

Durgan grew up in Mukilteo, in a family that appreciated the social aspect of food. “My family has always been great about entertaining,” Durgan says. “There are a lot of really wonderful cooks in my family.” Although Durgan loved cooking for others and recognized it as a way to make people happy, he says he never thought about cooking as a career potential. “I didn’t want to lose the love I had of cooking by doing it as a career,” he says. So Durgan dipped his toes in the waters of many other professions, thereby learning “exactly what I DIDN’T want to do”: vacuum cleaner sales, retail, cleaning grocery stores, making espresso, food delivery. He never stopped thinking about cooking, though, and one day in 2000 he thought to himself, “let’s just try it out,” and enrolled in the Western Culinary Institute, which was affiliated with Le Cordon Bleu.

Attending the Western Culinary Institute in his birthplace of Portland, Oregon, says Durgan, was deeply satisfying. “I learned a great work ethic,” he says, “and the art and science of food were such amazing things to me. It became clear that I could never learn it all and know it all. There would always be something new.” Cooking, Durgan realized, “would always bring me joy and satisfaction.”

No longer worried that he’d lose his love of cooking by doing it professionally, Durgan threw himself into the food world. “I did my externship at [Oregon’s] Sun River,” he says, “and I worked all the different elements of the business: cafe, fine dining, banquets.” Durgan fell in love with high-volume production at Sun River, and upon his return to Portland got a job at a convention center, where he “got 20 years of experience in five years of employment.” Menu planning, employee management, food science: Durgan learned about it all. Those were busy years, Durgan says. “I missed reunions, weddings, and funerals.” But he was still young and unmarried, and ultimately, he says, “It was a good sacrifice for my career. I gained a lot of confidence, as well as learning that I’d need a better work/life balance for my own longevity in the profession.”

Seeking this balance, Durgan found a job with a food services contractor at Portland State University (PSU), which operated student dining halls, campus catering, and retail outlets. “It was a step in the right direction,” he says. “And I loved the education world. I loved watching kids grow and learn.” Five years later, this contractor bid on and won food services operations at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, WA, and Durgan was offered the opportunity to move.

Durgan is a man who takes opportunities seriously, embracing the chance to consider what each might do to his life, his path, his family, and his own personal growth. “I was married and had a two-year-old by then,” Durgan says of the Bellingham offer, “and it was a way to reorganize my life and to come back home to western Washington.” Durgan and his family moved to Bellingham, where he spent the next six years serving 40,000 meals/week on campus. Part of Durgan’s job at WWU was to engage with farmers, producers, and growers in the area and help them understand what was involved in providing products for the institutional world. “It was a phenomenal opportunity for the farmers to bring a lot of products to market,” Durgan says, “as well as for us to be able to serve locally grown products on campus.”

Understanding the farm-to-school supply chain later proved even more useful to Durgan, as did his experience weathering two management transitions, one at PSU and one at WWU. “I learned that these transitions are all about the people,” he says. “When things like this happen, there is a lot of apprehension and unknowns. We need to always be concerned about the people.”

Because of his work with farmers and growers, Durgan was asked to join a farm-to-school advisory board that the Bellingham Public Schools had formed to examine its food services program. “As we went through this process, the district realized they didn’t have the right people in position for the transition. They needed a chef with a particular skillset.” Durgan was, to some degree, uniquely suited for this position: high-volume institutional cooking, educational food services background, management transition experience, and proven ability to bring farm products straight to institutional kitchens. And more importantly, Durgan understood that establishing a new food culture would be challenging for the existing staff, fraught with unknowns, and emotionally charged. “I knew I didn’t have all the answers,” Durgan says, “but I wanted to create this path, where together we could move forward in building a kitchen that would serve us well now and into the future.”

Durgan began work as the BPS’s Executive Chef and Director of Food Services on January 2, 2016, and since that day has never stopped thinking about ways to implement the priorities the district and its stakeholders laid out in their strategic planning sessions. “We realize it’s a long, slow road,” says Durgan of their systematic approach. “To do it in a smart way, we needed to take time, and continue to go back to our foundation. We appreciate the patience our community is showing with our process.”

Progress may take time, but changes are noticed. “We celebrate the little things,” says Durgan. “Parents, teachers, staff, and students all were really happy with one of the first initiatives we implemented to get things going in the right direction: a salad bar.” A salad bar is so simple, says Durgan, but it provides so much. “First of all,” says Durgan, “a salad bar allows you to offer, not just serve food. In a salad bar kids can choose what appeals to them, and they’re likely to eat it. If you just serve them something on a tray, they may eat it, or it may go straight into the waste stream.” Salad bars also provide the opportunity to offer more variety of produce, says Durgan.

Other small but celebrated changes include things like the food services staff creating a recipe for “queso cheese sauce” from whole ingredients to pour on tortilla chips for nachos, rather than using the institutional cheese sauce product. “We put in cauliflower and onions,” says Durgan, and the staff and kids love it. “And, Durgan notes, the food services employees are excited by the positive feedback and proud of what they create. “They love these kids and they are proud to serve them delicious food,” he says.

Fairly recently, Durgan was thrilled to hire Chef Mataio Gillis, who owns Bellingham’s popular Ciao Thyme restaurant. “Mataio embraced everything we have in our Good Food Promise,” says Durgan, who cannot praise Gillis highly enough. “Mataio has helped us get almost a full year ahead in our menu planning,” Durgan says. “We are already well above 50% transitioned toward scratch cooking for Fall 2019, and I only expected to be at 10-15%. It’s so exciting.”

In addition to menu-planning wizardry, Gillis also brought to the BPS a grower that Durgan is excited about: Bluebird Grain Farms. “Mataio already used Bluebird’s grains at Ciao Thyme,” Durgan explains, “and he loved it, said it was so versatile. So we tried it at community events and we worked with the product a bit to see what feedback we’d get from kids and community members.” The response was overwhelmingly positive, says Durgan, especially for Bluebird’s Emmer Farro options. “We’re so ecstatic about these products,” says Durgan, who uses farro in grain salads, as a hot grain pilaf, and as texture in black bean burger patties. “You can abuse it a little, but it always resuscitates itself.” The BPS has to “abuse” products, Durgan adds; it’s the nature of institutional cooking. “This grain stands up,” he says.

Emmer farro is also fairly different than what most kids are used to. It’s a grain with texture and flavor, unlike most pastas and rices. “We like to expose kids and staff to new things,” Durgan says. “Even if something looks unfamiliar or unappealing, we encourage them to ‘take an adventure bite.'” Stepping out of one’s comfort zone appears to be a theme for all involved in the BPS’s Food Services Program, from creators to consumers.

School’s out for the summer now, but Durgan and his staff remain busy, serving roughly 16,000 free meals to kids under 18. “It’s a standard bag lunch now,” says Durgan, “but we are hoping to maybe grow our offerings.” Durgan is always asking, “How can we do more? How can we address a need, while still balancing our capacity and our ability to deliver on core things, and our long-term sustainability?” This desire to feed hungry kids was put to the test over the winter, when the BPS had a week of snow days. “We knew there were kids counting on getting meals at school,” Durgan says. “We figured out a way to serve nearly 800 lunches to kids in need. We made things hamburgers and vegan curry. AmeriCorps helped us deliver the meals. Those kids got fed.”

Unlike restaurants, the BPS is not competing for customers. “Our customers are our students,” says Durgan. This makes the BPS well-positioned to be a leader and a resource in a fairly revolutionary approach to institutional cooking. “We want to share recipes and processes with other school districts,” says Durgan. “We want to be an example. We’ve learned a lot and want to share that knowledge.”

Indeed, as a food service program testing with great success recipes like beet hummus and felafel, the BPS Food Services Program under Durgan and Gillis has much to offer. “We’ve taken all these things that used to be highly-processed, like meatloaf and sauces,” says Durgan, “and transitioned those to scratch. We tested, got feedback, revamped.” The kids are so ready for this kind of change, Durgan adds. “They are far more prepared for it than I had dared hope they’d be.” The staff, too, are embracing the changes. “We have such dedicated staff who bring all this excitement to work every day,” says Durgan. “We all own a piece of this change.”

Learn more about the Bellingham Public Schools’ Food Services Program and chefs Patrick Durgan and Mataio Gillis on the district website.

by Ashley Lodato

staff writer, Bluebird Grain Farms

photos courtesy of Sage Mountain Natural Foods

As if farming, running a fermented vegetables business, teaching in Wenatchee Valley College’s sustainable agriculture program, and raising three kids under the age of 12 weren’t enough, Danielle Gibbs had to go and buy herself a natural food store.

Buying Sage Mountain Natural Foods wasn’t, however, a hobbyist move for Gibbs; it was a strategic decision that positions her as a change agent in food systems. “I wanted to be a part of getting more healthy food to people,” says Gibbs. As a farmer for her husband’s family farm (Gibbs Organic Farm in Leavenworth, WA) Gibbs grew healthy, organic food on a small scale. As an instructor for the Wenatchee Valley College (WVC) system, she reached a receptive but small segment of the population. But it is in retail food sales that Gibbs believes she can reach the biggest and broadest audience, reinforcing the importance of making choices at all levels–proverbially, from farm to table–that change our food culture.

Gibbs grew up in suburban North Carolina and later earned a degree in philosophy (“useful for everything and nothing,” she notes). Although her family was not particularly outdoorsy, they were interested in healthy eating. “We shopped at health food stores ever since I was little,” Gibbs says. “All these shops with crystals everywhere in the 1980s, my parents giving us tons of herbs.” After college, Gibbs worked on a farm in Massachusetts before making her way out to Washington to “see the west and learn what it was like to farm in this region.” Gibbs interned on the Gibbs farm in 2001 and soon became the garden manager at Leavenworth’s Tierra Learning Center in 2003 before returning to the Gibbs farm in 2006.

Interspersed with farming, marrying, and bearing three children, Gibbs started fermenting vegetables and producing three flavors of live sauerkraut as a value-added product for the farm, as well as teaching for WVC and managing the campus greenhouse. It was during her tenure at WVC that Gibbs first encountered Bluebird Grain Farms, when she took a class on a farm tour with Brooke and Sam Lucy. “I’d tasted Bluebird’s products before and loved them,” says Gibbs, “but seeing the farm and hearing how passionate the Lucys are about organic, sustainable farming–it really registered for me what quality products they offer.” When Gibbs purchased Leavenworth’s 21-year-old natural food store, Sage Mountain Natural Foods, Bluebird was one of the many local suppliers to whom she turned in her quest to offer her customers the best ingredients at the best prices.

Gibbs was aware that the store was for sale for a number of years before she purchased it, inspired in the end by the thought of creating a place full of healthy food options, grown by local and regional producers, in an environment welcoming to and nurturing of the local community. “As Leavenworth gets more touristy,” Gibbs says, “those of us who live here full-time feel the need for places that are for us, places that have our needs and values in mind. I want Sage Mountain to be one of those places.” Visitor business is seasonal and ephemeral, says Gibbs, “but it’s the locals who sustain us.”

Sage Mountain Natural Foods is a feast for the senses for anyone who visits, from local to tourist, and even those just passing through and unlikely to buy the ingredients to make a meal from scratch can find many delights to take home, from soaps to wildflower mixes to gifts to deli and bakery treats. Local shoppers can stock up on everything from bulk cleaning and beauty products to grains to dairy to produce. And shop for produce they have indeed. Gibbs says “Our produce sales are six times what they were when I first bought the store.”

Produce, it seems, is not just Gibbs’ passion, it’s also her secret superpower. “I was in that world, and I know many of the produce growers,” Gibbs says. “I sold at markets with them. I know who grows what well.” Gibbs calls herself “picky” when it comes to produce selection, and despite the fussy negative connotation of that description, being picky–or discerning–translates into gorgeous produce available to her customers. “I select exactly what I want to buy from each farmer,” she says. “I encourage them to grow the things they grow best and enjoy growing.”

To support the store’s increased emphasis on produce, Gibbs also installed a new cooler and assigned produce to a larger area. She keeps prices low by participating in a natural food cooperative that gives her access to steeper discounts on fruits and vegetables. And, Gibbs says somewhat apologetically, “I do the produce myself. I like to control the display and how it looks.” She is, however, training another store employee to pinch-hit for her on occasion. “We have the best produce in town and people come in for that,” Gibbs says, adding that “Dan’s Food Market [another local grocer] also has a great selection.”

Getting nutritious and delicious foods into the hands and bellies of locals was important to Gibbs, but so too is supporting small-scale farmers in the region. To this end, Sage Mountain Natural Foods supports Regenerative Agriculture, which Gibbs describes as a movement that focuses on farming according to environmental principles of enriching soils, protecting water sources, and regenerating ecosystems (which pretty closely matches the Regenerative Agriculture’s definition of the “system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services”). It’s a holistic approach, Gibbs explains, where farmers put a lot of energy into “nourishing their land, rotating crops, and maintaining buffers.” Instead of focusing on food production first, Gibbs says, you focus on regenerating the land. “When you harvest you remove crops and take away from the land, which takes away nutrients. You need to give back to the earth.”

“We believe that farmers are an essential part of a healthy community,” Gibbs continues, “and we want to keep our farmers viable. We also want to keep the money in our local economy. So we buy from local farmers as our first option, and Charlie’s [an independent regional produce company] next, then other Pacific Northwest growers, then California growers.”

In addition to a robust and appealing produce display, Gibbs worked more fresh fruits and vegetables into Sage Mountain by opening a deli in the store, offering wraps, baked goods, salads, and soups. “It’s all about cooking seasonally and creatively,” she says, “And we have some consistent options and some options that are constantly changing.” The deli has been a big draw to the store, Gibbs is pleased to report. A long-time fan of Seattle’s PCC Community Markets, Gibbs found herself saying “We need something like PCC’s deli.” Once she realized that she had the venue to turn that idle wish into reality, she immediately contacted a deli manager she had in mind, who had managed the deli at The Food Co-op in Port Townsend; that employee now fully manages Sage Mountain’s deli.

Through her work at Sage Mountain, Gibbs has learned how many people really do cook from scratch, despite popular impressions that Americans are all about quick and easy these days. “We’ve offered quick meal packages,” Gibbs says, “but we don’t sell a lot of them. People are buying really basic ingredients from us.” Some of those basic ingredients are somewhat surprising, like Bluebird’s wheat berries or rye berries, for example. As delicious and nutrition-packed as they are, organic Methow Hard Red Wheat Berries are not exactly an impulse buy. Less surprising are the Bluebird Grain Farms Organic Einkorn Flour and Organic Emmer Farro Flour, which Sage Mountain customers scoop up with gusto, indicating widespread baking projects at home.

Cooking from scratch may seem a small gesture, but it’s an important one, giving people like Gibbs hope for a growing population of citizens who value fresh, natural foods grown in a sustainable, regenerative manner. An indication, perhaps, that bigger changes in food systems are afoot. Sage Mountain Natural Foods may be small, but this treasured and vital piece of Leavenworth’s healthy economy and healthy community is making its mark.

Visit Sage Mountain Natural Foods on Facebook, or stop by the store at 11734 Hwy 2 in Leavenworth.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Perhaps more so than any other cuisine, Italian cooking is imbued with the rich and comforting flavors of love, and the pizza and other dishes that come out of the Nonavo Pizza kitchen are a vibrant example of food steeped in this tradition. For chef Joey Chmiko and his partner and wife, Alder Suttles, Nonavo Pizza has been a true labor of love, from its original vision to every last Neapolitan-style pie that comes out of its wood-fired oven.

Located in downtown Vancouver, WA, Nonavo Pizza opened in 2016 but was a potent idea percolating in Chmiko’s and Suttles’s heads for five years before that. Shortly after the couple began dating, Suttles, a visual artist, gave Chmiko a watermelon smencil (a scented pencil) and asked him to draw a picture of the restaurant he would one day love to own and operate. Chmiko drew what would eventually become Nonavo Pizza; that original drawing now hangs on the wall of the restaurant.

Being a pizza chef was not new to Chmiko. His first pizza gig was working with Ria Ramsey at Pizzetta 211 in San Francisco, which he says changed the way he cooked. “Farm direct, best products you can afford, care and love of the food,” he says, “Seeing that in a restaurant setting was the pivot point for me.” Pizzetta, says Chmiko, “was a pizza restaurant, yes, but much more also.” His experience there shaped his philosophy at Nonavo Pizza.

Born in Trenton and raised in Florence (New Jersey, that is), Chmiko grew up with celebrations filled with food. “All the holidays were feasts with food and family,” he says. “Even when someone died, there was a tremendous amount of food. Eat your feelings kind of thing, I suppose.  We were never shooed from the kitchen. More like, ‘come help me stretch this strudel dough until we can see the tablecloth through it.'”

Meanwhile, Suttles’s first job was in a burrito shop, and contrary to the cheese-and-sour-cream-laden cholesterol bombs ubiquitous in that genre, these burritos were made with an intentional focus on nutrition and quality. “The food and how it was cooked was very important to the owner,” says Suttles. “It was about transparency and believing that knowledge about where one’s food is from makes for conscious consumers. I respected that.” Suttles prepped and cooked all the food, and had to know about every ingredient. She emerged from that experience a vegan and fought against genetically modified foods. “For me,” she says, “food was political. I felt responsible to make a positive change in the food system of the 1990s.”

Food was and continues to be, social for Suttles as well. “I became an adventuresome home cook, hosting giant dinner parties and feeding all my punk friends. I loved serving people, sharing food, and exploring ideas.”

Quality ingredients cost more, Chmiko concedes, but “we don’t want to eat that stuff–or give it to our family, or customers. From a business angle, it was never really a decision. It’s not a money-making decision. But we’re not going to change.”

Nonavo’s pizzas have artistry to them that belie their unpretentious titles: sausage, anchovy, hazelnut. The creativity and aesthetic visual presentation of the pies are no accident, given Suttles’ artistic influence. Suttles paints shows her work and teaches art full-time at a public alternative school. She is in charge of all the art things associated with Nonavo Pizza: label making, sign painting, T-shirt design, and one-off projects like a toy vending machine that dispenses one-liner jokes and oddities. “The artist part of me is always there, there’s no switch for it,” Suttles says, “It’s a way of seeing.” Being a mom is a similar experience, Suttles adds. “It’s the same sort of constant, a way of being.” Still, she doesn’t feel like she’s juggling too many roles: “They’re always there grounding me.”

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

photos by Aubrie Pick

With a resume that includes culinary leadership at restaurants named for the Pacific Northwest’s most renowned explorers, Executive Chef Dolan Lane might be mistaken for a man who favors hardtack and pemmican. After all, the namesakes of Portland restaurants Clarklewis and Meriwether’s survived quite happily on such fare for more than two grueling years, making their way across plains and over mountain ranges in the quest for western expansion. But although Lane’s menus feature more carefully curated and varied cuisine, there’s one thing Chef Lane has in common with the crews of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark, whose parties hunted and foraged their way across the western territories from 1804-1806: he’s partial to locally-sourced, seasonally-available ingredients.

Chef Lane’s culinary roots lie in the adage that necessity is the mother of invention. A south Seattle suburb latchkey kid in the 1970s and 1980s, Lane learned to fend for himself early, coming home after school and making omelets for himself and, often, a few friends, to tide over the hunger pangs until dinner. “I still have a thing for omelets,” he says.

Although Lane’s parents worked full time, his mother always cooked and the family ate at 5pm without fail, winter or summer. “My mom had a great repertoire,” Lane says. “It was always very straightforward and consistent: pork chops, pot roast, a green salad with every dinner. Once a week we’d go out for dinner.”

Before his mother got home from work, Lane would experiment in the kitchen. “My mom would come home and there would be spaghetti noodles stuck to the wall,” he says, “because I’d read that that was the way to test if they were cooked.” (It’s not, and Lane now knows that.)

Lane took his first cooking job at a mom and pop Italian restaurant when he was 17, making pizzas. “Even at that age,” he says, “I loved it. I knew I wanted to be involved in restaurants.”

But instead of following work he found fulfilling, Lane went to photography school. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t stick with it. “I just wasn’t feeling it,” he says. Instead, he spent a summer working at a friend’s resort and subsequently was accepted at the California Culinary Academy. When he graduated, Lane says, “I was young, I was just out of school, and I hadn’t traveled much.” So he got a job cooking on cruise ships, sailing around the Caribbean and Mediterranean working with a crew of 11 in the kitchen to provide meals for nearly 200 guests on the ship. “I had a great time,” Lane says, “and we did a pretty good job with the food, cooking in that environment for so many people.”

After a stint on a local cruise line running trips from Portland, OR to Lewiston, ID in 1998, Lane spent some time in Portland and has been there ever since, working as chef de cuisine and later executive chef at Bluehour, in addition to Clarklewis and Meriwether’s.

Cooking at Clarklewis was instrumental in Lane’s development of a reputation as a chef with strong ties to farm-to-table philosophy. “Clarklewis really came with a big history,” he says. “That’s when I really started meeting farmers and foragers. We were going to farmers markets three days a week, hand selecting produce, and writing menus on that.”

At Meriwether’s, says Lane, he would walk around the restaurant’s Skyline Farm with farm manager Caitlin Blood and talk about what she would like to grow and what he would do with the products. On days when Lane couldn’t visit the farm Blood sent him pictures of products like carrots, held in her hand for scale. “Pick them today,” he’d tell her, or “Wait until tomorrow.”

“I developed a deep connection to the farm products,” Lane says. “The farm grew such quality produce. I was able to pass that information on to the restaurant’s guests. It wasn’t just a marketing tool. I was really able to talk about the farm and what we were trying to do with all the amazing different varietals we were able to grow and how we were able to get the absolute freshest ingredients onto the table the same day they were harvested.”

The flip side of farming, however, is that sometimes crops don’t well as hoped, and sometimes they exceed expectations. “And then we ask, ‘What are we going to do with all this basil?’” Lane says. “You can only do so much pesto.”

Lane has long been inspired by other farm-to-table pioneers, mentioning Dan Barber of Blue Hill Farm north of Manhattan, who runs a restaurant, working farm, and consulting company supporting sustainable agriculture and world food systems. Barber’s work motivated Lane to make his own polenta, which involves growing the corn, threshing it, milling it, and making it into a smooth boiled cornmeal porridge. The result is heavenly, quite unlike the commercial ready-made versions available in supermarkets.

Lane was hired as the Executive Chef at Portland’s Red Star Tavern in 2016 with the promise of bringing “lighter and brighter” food to the menus. Red Star Tavern is what Lane calls a “modern tavern,” with modern tavern fare. “Tavern fare” is traditionally comfort food and meats and the “modern” twist to that, says Lane, is “providing balance to heavier dishes.” He continues, “It’s really easy to use butter and rich sauces, but you also need acid, seasoning, and freshness.” For example, the Red Star Tavern lunch menu features a perennially popular mac-n-cheese dish, to which Lane adds pickled peppers. “The pickling juice cuts through the richness,” he says. “It’s nuances like that that tweak the traditional pub food and lighten it up.”

Lane’s wife is influential in his focus on healthier habits at home as well. “My wife keeps us on the straight and narrow,” he says, referring to the couple’s three children ages 14, 8, and 5. “Food is a big thing in our house,” he continues, “but I can’t do the kind of food I do at the tavern at home.” Instead, Lane and his wife focus on a diet low in gluten and dairy, using their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares from Gathering Together Farm, and making soups for the week ahead. And although it’s difficult with his schedule, Lane also commits to a signature ritual from his childhood: sitting down together for dinner every night.

Lane addresses Portland’s solid foothold in the farm-to-table movement. “In the beginning,” he says, “farmers didn’t know how to connect direct and we [chefs] didn’t know how to find farmers. Now it’s easy, it’s all set up by these great chefs who made it all happen. When I got into this business I never thought we’d see what’s happening now, with chefs interacting directly with farmers and foragers.”

The role of the forager, while limited, provides an opportunity to create menus with unique intrigue. “The foragers bring us berries, mushrooms, wild plums, sour plums, watercress, and sorrel,” Lane says.  “The products are short-lived, but we use them whenever we can get them. A bright lemony wood sorrel or the pungent flavor of wild watercress—they’re just so unique.” The products are available unpredictably, based on seasons and weather, and thus provide an unusual challenge to chefs, but the results are worth the extra inventiveness required.

Lane became acquainted with Bluebird Grain Farms products in 2008, through Provista Specialty Foods. “I started using the organic whole grain emmer farro,” he says, because of its versatility. “At first I was just connecting it with lamb, because it’s such a natural fit with lamb.” But then, Lane says, “You can do so many other things with it. I started studding it with dried fruit or nuts, or arugula and roasted beets. It’s a warm salad or a cold salad. You can marinate it and it absorbs the flavor. In the summer you add tomatoes, or you add steak and kale for bolster. There’s just so much you can do with it.” The Red Star Tavern dinner menu currently features a lamb meatball, with ground lamb and smoked farro.

“We’re lucky to have smart diners,” says Lane of his Portland and visiting clientele. “We get people looking for nuances and twists. We want to highlight for them the best of what we offer in the Northwest.” To this end, Lane works closely with Red Star Tavern’s head bartender, Brandon Lockman, to connect the dots between food and drink, so whether clients are ordering a local craft beer or a high-end Japanese whiskey, their drinks and food work well together. “People can come in and get some of the best beers, wines, and craft cocktails available, paired with seasonal menus,” Lane says. “We’ve got a great team working hard to provide that experience.”

Red Star Tavern, Lane continues, “has remained relevant. We provide a quintessential modern Pacific Northwest tavern experience.”

To learn more about Red Star Tavern, visit their website.  (Sadly they closed since this post was written).

by Ashley Lodato  / Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

In these times of corporate conglomerates, independently-owned businesses are a welcome prospect and employee-owned co-ops are downright refreshing. Sno-Isle Food Co-op (Sno-Isle) located in North Everett, WA, is one such breath of fresh air. The 21-year-old non-profit retail food source is democratically governed by a board of elected trustees representing the more than 5,000 families who belong to the co-op and is dedicated to offering high-quality local and sustainable products.

Connecting individuals with the local food system are paramount for Sno-Isle, says Retail Manager Stephanie Davis. “We can help people understand the importance of and value in sourcing food directly and regionally. Sno-Isle offers a sensory experience that other grocery stores lack. We want people to feel connected to their foods and their communities.”

Davis grew up in the kitchen with her grandmother and says that her grandfather always had an impressive tomato garden, giving her an early taste for the perfection of a home-grown, sun-ripened tomato: a product rarely found in large mainstream grocery stores but readily available in season in co-ops like Sno-Isle. Although her immediate family was not focused on local or organic foods, says Davis, “they did put a lot of energy into preparing whole foods for the family to enjoy together. Those hours spent in the kitchen as a young person undoubtedly shaped my love for food and my desire to improve our food system.”

Sno-Isle’s retail department‘s practices reflect this desire. The buyers’ top priority is in “sourcing local and sustainable products.” With the goal of ensuring the ongoing preservation and betterment of the Earth, buyers consider “biodiversity in farming, products packed in compostable materials, and companies that recycle limited resources” when making their sourcing decisions. Sno-Isle is also committed to organic and non-GMO foods, even going so far as to require all products that are found on the Top Ten GMO crops list be certified Non-GMO or be in the process of gaining said certification.

Sno-Isle is invested not just in the health and longevity of individuals, but also that of communities. To that end, Sno-Isle offers classes & events, recipes, tips for healthier living, and it supports and sustains local non-profits through efforts like its Register Roundup program (members can round their purchase totals up and Sno-Isle puts the difference into member-selected non-profits) and its grants program, to which local community organizations apply for funding. It also promotes local growers and artisans by selling and displaying their work, and features an Artist of the Month. Says Davis about this community focus, “A strong commitment to community is a base value of any true co-op. Co-ops are formed when community members come around an idea and work together to create a viable solution that serves the identified need. It’s about the WHOLE serving the individual and that individual supporting the whole.” Sno-Isle takes this very seriously, says Davis. “We work to provide high-quality food and education for our owners, their families, the community at large, food producers, farmers AND our staff.”

Sno-Isle works collaboratively with its members to best serve their needs. “We’re always learning from our customers,” says Davis. In fact, Sno-Isle started carrying Bluebird Grain Farms products when a customer introduced co-op staff to their grains. “A few years ago a customer came in raving about Bluebird Grain Farms,” Davis recalls, “and the rest is history. We presently carry a variety of whole grain products in bags and in bulk, as well as some of the fabulous mixes and flours that Bluebird offers.” The products introduced by the customer proved popular and, says Davis, other customers who try the products “keep coming back!”

This is just one example of the autonomy that Davis and her colleagues have at Sno-Isle: the ability to respond quickly to a customer suggestion and better serve all customers. The co-op structure makes this possible. “We aren’t tied down by off-site corporate rules,” says Davis. “Instead, we are able to work in a way that allows us to truly reflect the needs, desires and assets of the community we are serving.” In fact, one of the line items in Sno-Isle’s mission is to “encourage members to contribute and participate.” The Bluebird connection shows that members are indeed active in the co-op.

As for those who harbor the notion that food co-ops are exclusive and expensive, Davis dispels the myth. “Our knowledgeable staff can show you how to shop the store economically. There is something for everyone here. We are family friendly [and every child who visits the co-op gets a free banana!].” Davis urges customers who care about their food’s quality and sourcing to visit Sno-Isle. “Come in!,” she says. You can be a part of making a difference.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Some 1960s-era newlyweds took up golf together or joined bridge circles, but for Gail (some call him Pete) and Judy Prichard the mutual hobby was baking bread. “When Gail and I got married we just started baking bread,” says Judy. “We were baking long before we had kids.”

Judy explains that baking bread using organic ingredients sourced as locally as possible was part of the ethic she and Gail shared early on in their marriage. “We planted a garden and grew as much food as we could,” she says. “It was all part of our intention to eat as well as we could.”

Although Judy grew up with a mother who baked bread regularly, Judy didn’t really learn to bake until college. “In my early college years, both of my parents were very ill. I had to cook for them one summer. My mother kind of walked me through it.” Taking up bread baking with her new husband, then, was a perfectly logical next step. “Now it feels like something I’ve always done,” Judy says.

Through her middle child, Susan, who lives in the Methow Valley where Bluebird Grain Farms is located, Judy learned about Bluebird Grain Farms. “It was so wonderful to learn about their family farm and to be able to buy grains from a family that is doing a really good thing,” says Judy of Brooke and Sam Lucy. “We just really wanted to support them in what they do.”

“And their products are just so good,” Judy continues. “We love the taste of their fresh-milled flours and cereals, as well as the whole grain emmer farro.”

These days, Judy mainly bakes whole wheat bread for hers and Gail’s consumption. “Unless it’s Christmas or the grandkids are coming,” she says. “I don’t bake a lot with just 2 of us now, but when I do bake I always use Bluebird Grain Farms products.” For her signature whole wheat bread, Judy uses Bluebird’s Methow Hard Red Wheat flour. For pie crusts, biscuits, muffins, scones, buttermilk hotcakes, and banana bread, Judy likes the Pasayten Hard White Wheat flour, although she is quick to acknowledge that the Organic Emmer Farro flour and Organic Einkorn flour add a nutty flavor and chewy texture to quick bread like banana bread. “We really like the Einka flour,” she says.

Judy notes that she and Gail routinely substitute Organic Whole Grain Emmer Farro for rice, finding it a far more nutritious carbohydrate than rice, as well as one with a hearty flavor and robust texture.

Judy didn’t deliberately train her own 3 children in the art of baking, but threads of her passion for good grains were passed on to her kids in different forms. Her daughter Susan bakes stacks of cinnamon whole wheat sweet bread to give away at Christmas. Her youngest, Karin, orders Bluebird’s Organic Old World Cereal blend to be shipped to her home in California.

And with a nod to the single degree of separation that seems to be the norm of social relationships in tiny communities like the Methow Valley Judy notes, “It’s neat to be able to buy your organic flour from a farmer whose daughters are in piano recitals with your own grandkids.”