Monty's View

More Mobile Meat News

2008-09-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=44614&SectionID=67&SubSectionID=1261&S=1

Wonderful article in this week's Capital Press. The RFP by the way has been delayed. Proposals will now open on Monday October 20th.

Mobile Meat Processing Goes Forward

2008-09-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a large group of interested parties...

Last month we were graced with a news piece on KUOW regarding the project to bring USDA inspected meat processing to the South Sound area. Here is the link to that story:

http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=15672

The Request for Proposals was issued last week, and bids are due on Monday September 22nd.

You can read a great article in last Friday's Wall Street Journal regarding the Island County van, which is working well. That article is at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122054916174600403.html

If the article goes down I will reprint the text and photos here. Please let me know if you try the link and it fails.

Last week an entourage of us presented the project idea to the Senate Agriculture Committee in Vancouver. The project seems to have been well received, as it should have been, since we were asking for no state funding for a project that will bring real rural economic development. If TVW gets the audio up for that presentation I'll link it here.

More news on this important project as it progresses.

Taking a Moment for Beauty

2008-05-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

This isn't strictly campaign related, but I can't help myself...

This picture is from the Bremerton Ferry at sunrise the other day, leaving Seattle. It was taken by a good camera in RAW format, and it's been adjusted to enhance the colors. It really makes a lovely desktop image.

If you want a full resolution copy for yourself just send me an email; I'll be happy to send it over to you. The file is about 4mb though, so make sure your email server can handle big chunks.

I'm grateful for those who bring beauty into my life by providing images and technical expertise. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I do.

Dogs, Leashes, and Streets

2008-04-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

Thoughts as they occur on dangerous dogs...

I try not to be bigoted or prejudiced against man or dog. I watch how they treat each other, how they treat those I love, and make my judgments on an individual level wherever possible.

In the mid-1990's I was living the pedestrian-commuter dream, walking to work at the Kitsap County Courthouse on days that weren't too wet or stormy. One fine spring day I was attacked without warning by an untethered pit bull. It saw me from a block and a half away, took a dislike to me for some unknown reason and charged me. The encounter ended with the dog getting a one way trip to the Humane Society and euthenasia, and me getting about two weeks of painful healing and lasting memories.

Two years ago my family was threatened by a neighbor's untethered pit bull as we moved into our new house on Hillcrest Avenue. That encounter ended with the pit bull getting a pellet in the face from me after charging without warning or cause, and the owners gettting warned (& possibly later cited) by Animal Control.

Today, as I drove back from a meeting with the Kitsap County Democratic Women I was passing a pedestrian with a nice black lab mix on a leash, walking along the left side of the road. As I drew near him his face darted to the right side of the road and he shouted "HEY" in a loud voice. At that moment a pit bull streaked out of some bushes directly at him and his dog, and directly under my right front tire.

There was, of course, no time to stop, or even hit the brakes. Even though I was only going about 25mph, I knew from the sound of the "thud" that there was no hope for this dog's survival; it was a direct hit.

I walked around the back of the van with the pedestrian and watched the dog's final moments on Earth. We watched a group of young adults, teens and adolescents pile out to the road and grieve for the stricken and dying animal. I turned and looked at the pedestrian.

In a low voice I said to him "those dogs should be leashed at all times."

He gave me a knowing look and said "they bite people."

I said back "I've been bitten."

Enough had been said. I turned to the kids and said "I'm sorry, there was nothing I could do." I'm sure they barely heard me in their shock and grief.

I don't know if the answer is more laws. I do know that I accidentally prevented at least a good scare, and probably an attack by an untethered pit bull. I felt bad for the loss of life, but I also felt that in some sense, the right thing had happened.

Wish I could afford to repair the dent in my front end.

Announcing Kitsap County Ag Summit

2008-04-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

Agriculture Community and Local Food Supporters Invited to June 4th Event at Olympic College

For Immediate Release: Innovative Small Farmer Joel Salatin To Speak At Low Cost Public Event

Puyallup, WA – April 15, 2008 – The Pierce Conservation District announced today that Joel Salatin, one of America’s most dynamic and innovative small farmers, will headline a public event on Wednesday, June 4th at Olympic College in Bremerton from 6:00 - 8:30 pm.

Known as the “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer” and the subject of the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Salatin will share his experience in managing and growing an environmentally sustainable farm – Polyface Farm located in Swoope, VA. Salatin promotes food production that is environmentally, emotionally and economically enhancing for producers and consumers. He compares food produced on factory farms to food grown on pasture-based farms, and advocates responsible consumer choices in food buying.

The June 4th public event will follow three strategic planning sessions Salatin will conduct with Kitsap and Pierce County community, economic and agricultural leaders and planners. The Pierce Conservation District, a local non-regulatory state agency whose directive is to help landowners protect natural resources and support local farming activities, is organizing these events in collaboration with the following co-sponsors: the Kitsap Community & Agricultural Alliance, the Kitsap Conservation District, the WA State Farmers Market Association, the WSU Kitsap Extension, and Olympic College.

“If you wonder where your food comes from, have a back yard flock, maintain a back forty herd, or are just interested in supporting local agriculture, the summit featuring Joel Salatin is geared towards you,” said Monty Mahan, Executive Director of the Pierce Conservation District. “We all have a responsibility to keep local farms productive and prosperous. The public event and strategic planning sessions are designed to rally support around the “locavore” movement and help pave the way for a thriving farm community in the region.”

Area farmers and event sponsors will be on hand at the June 4th public event to respond to questions and distribute information. While this event is open to the public, space is limited and pre-registration is required. Tickets are $5 per person, and are available on a “first come/first served” basis. Contact Monty Mahan at (360) 710-1506 or email to montymahan@gmail.com to register.

PS: Thanks for the notice in the Everett Herald!

Conservation District Elections

2008-04-04T19:01:00.000-07:00

An exercise in democracy? Not on your life...

This is the time of year that Conservation District Managers and Directors shudder over. It's that recurring nightmare called "Annual Supervisor Elections."

In case you'd never heard, Conservation District elections in Washington State are somewhat of a joke. The mighty little District is forced by Washington State law to either hold it's own elections, beg for it's County Auditor's assistance, or pay a consultant to do it for them. None of these three options result in truly democratic, free or fair elections for the District and its constituents.

Districts do their best, and despite the glaring flaws in the system, many good people are advanced to positions of authority via these elections, the position of Board Supervisor. At my own District we follow the "by-mail" guidelines passed down via the Washington State Conservation Commission. In my opinion the "by-mail" guidelines represent a valiant attempt to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, by making it easier for voters to participate.

According to the "by-mail" system voters must request a ballot from the District, which is then mailed to them in standard absentee fashion. Voters are qualified against the County Auditor's registered voter records, and the qualified votes are counted. In our current election cycle we sent out 1,700 ballots to people who requested them, and received nearly 650 back by our voting deadline. About 150 of these are provisional due to problems such as not matching with the Auditors voter database, or residency requirements. I will spend the next two weeks pretending to be an elections official and doing my best to qualify every one of these provisional ballots.

What's wrong with that you ask? Well for starters, I was hired to raise money for our little District, to manage its personnel and projects, and to maintain correct contractual arrangements with our partners. To date this election cycle I've invested approximately 120 hours into this task, with at least that many to go before the paperwork is completed and the new Supervisor is seated. In taxpayer terms that equals about $16,000 worth of funding that is invested in this flawed process right up front.

Let's not talk about the work that didn't get done while I was trying to dress up this incredibly antiquated and (in my mind) indefensible process. I'm pretty steamed about it this time of year, in case you couldn't tell.

Include now our contractual costs for the independant firm who handles our elections, envelopes, paper, printing, postage, and you've added another $5,000 to $6,000 to the total.

If $20,000 seems a high cost for an election process that generates 650 votes in a county where the group of potential voters is over 300,000, you're right. And reader, two intrepid candidates and I worked our tails off to get those 650 votes.

Clearly our elections belong on the general ballot along with all other elections of Washington State officials. There are many excuses as to why they're not there already. These excuses include;

"But the general ballot will cost too much,"

"It will be too much of a burden for candidates for a volunteer position to run countywide,"

"On the general ballot no farmers will run for these offices,"

... and my personal favorite...

"If we go on the general ballot we'll attract people to our board positions who have no knowledge of or love for the District and the people it serves."

None of these excuses survives the light of day when you look at the current system critically. I can solve all of these issues with one plan. For lack of a better name, I'll call it the "Monty Plan for Washington State Conservation District Elections." It's the post directly below this one, read it if you like.

I've spent seven years quietly doing my best to make a failed system work. It's time to bring this issue to the light of day and solve it once and for all. I encourage anyone who reads this and cares about the issue to contact their local legislators and ask "what's up with these Conservation District elections? Why can't we fix that?"

You might even send them a copy of the Monty Plan, or at least the weblink. Here it is for your lobbying convenience:

http://montysview.blogspot.com/2008/04/monty-plan-for-conservation-district.html

Monty's Plan for Conservation District Elections

2008-04-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

Crafted by a man who once won an election as a Washington State Elected Official with 140 votes, total...

I believe that Conservation Districts should have more than five Supervisors. It is an unpaid voluntary position, and getting a quorum to meetings is difficult. Therefore;

There should be a total of 9 Board members on a Conservation District Board of Supervisors.

I believe that elections for Washington State officials should be run on the general ballot. I further belive that political parties have no place on this board. Therefore;

Washington State Conservation District Board positions should be on the November general ballot, and should be non-partisan in nature.

Conservation Districts are special organizations, working on issues and programs that aren't easy for newcomers to understand. In addition, cost of annual elections is prohibitive. Therefore;

District Supervisors should serve 6 year terms, to increase their level of effectiveness. In addition, Supervisors should be elected in cadres of three, every three years, to minimize election costs. There would be therefore an election for three Supervisors every three years, held on the general ballot in November.

It is commonly recognized that there needs to be provision for continuity on District Boards, as well as some surety that issues of statewide importance are being addressed. Therefore;

The Washington State Conservation Commission should appoint three Supervisors to six year terms, one every other year.

Conservation District boundaries are countywide, and it is a hardship to ask candidates to run in countywide elections for unpaid positions. In addition, in some Districts the issues are diverse, and the Board should be representative of the Disrict as a whole. Therefore;

Conservation Districts should "district" their supervisor positions so that positions represent geographical units that are roughly equivilant in number of citizens represented.

This plan would make elections affordable for Conservation Districts and would remove the main cloud over these fine organizations; that the District is governed by Supervisors who are selected by a flawed, undemocratic process.

I am prepared to present my ideas and this plan to any group or individual requesting my time. Contact me at your convenience to discuss this.

Monty Mahan
360-710-1506
"montymahan@gmail.com"

Jess and the Egg

2008-03-31T08:57:00.000-07:00

What passes for entertainment in our home

I may not have mentioned this, but I love my family. I treasure my wife and children. I'd better, because we can afford precious little in outside entertainment.

So we make our own.

Yesterday I was reflecting upon the growing piles of fresh eggs that our grass-fed chickens are providing to us. For your information, our refrigerator is filling fast with these little brown-shelled beauties, and here's the significant point. It takes at least two dozen scrambled to fill up our kids, usually more. That's for one meal.

So, putting together the need for post-church entertainment, a group of wacky and overly courageous kids, and way too many eggs, I came upon a plan. I won't call it half-baked, more like a raw plan.

I mentioned to our oldest, the lovely and ever-surprising JJ that I'd once watched my father drink a raw egg. Sandy (always quick on the uptake) backed me up without hesitation, estolling the virtues of the high protein in a raw egg, and added that boxers are well-known to drink these to gain nutrition when in training. I then mentioned in passing that I'd done it too, that it was possible if a bit odd feeling, and that I was sure that she didn't possess the stamina to do it herself.

She knew exactly what I was doing. It was the same approach that I'd used a summer or two ago holding a live grasshopper and daring her. Yet she was either provoked, anxious to prove her courage, or simply bored. She assured me that she could do it.

So in all it's glory, here's a window into what passes for entertainment in our house. Please be assured that the eggs are clean and fresh. That particular egg had come into the house not one hour earlier, had it's shell carefully washed, and would be more free from salmonella due to the nearly free range nature of the chicken tractors than any store-bought product. We may be starving for entertainment in our house but we're not stupid or careless parents, after all.

I might mention that Jess is usually the leader in our group of kids. It's spring vacation this week and we have a ton of eggs in the refrigerator. No telling how many will go the route that this one went yesterday as the week progresses...

Health Equity Summit Falls Short

2008-03-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

If you were one of the organizers, forgive me for saying this

You know you've been putting together public events for a while when you begin to see just how badly opportunities are missed when you attend functions. It's like knowing how to cook a meal, then eating at a restaurant and saying to yourself "for heaven's sake they left out the most important ingredient..."

I attended yesteday's Tacoma Health Department Health Equity Summit with high hopes. I'd read all the pre-conference materials, done some research on the net, and even watched the video "Unnatural Causes" on my own time so that I'd be ready to be an effective participant.

We filed into one of the theaters at the ever more beautiful University of Washington Tacoma campus, and I was pleased to see myself and JJ in a crowd of about 200 people, most of whom I'd never met before. Nothing against the old usual crowd, but it's nice to enter a group of people anxious for positive change who you've never met before.

We chatted in the theater, and I know that I wasn't the only person who'd done some preparatory reading and who was excited about the possibility of being on the ground floor of a movement that will resolve some of the inequities that have no place in our great country. We watched the first installment of the video, and I recommend this movie to anyone and everyone interested in race, health, economics and inequality. The next segment will air on KCTS-9 on Wednesday the 2nd at 11pm.

The Summit was to proceed according to the standard format from this point on. Two speakers would gear us up, we'd move to breakout groups for a working lunch and small group discussions, then come back together for post-workgroup summaries. This was when the Summit began to fail.

The first speaker was a wonderful woman, whose name I won't report. She is a breast cancer survivor and has a message of inspiration. It was a message that had absolutely no relevance to the video we had just watched however, and marginally little to do with the topic of the day's summit. I'm not sure that she had even watched the preview or the trailer for the movie. 200 people lost thirty minutes that could have been used to make us passionate about the topic. The potential for focus for the workgroups was squandered.

State Senator Rosa Franklin then got up to talk about her past, and recent state efforts to address health inequities. Senator Franklin is a woman of accomplishment, a woman to be respected. Senator Franklin, if you read this, please forgive me for what I'm about to say.

It was the wrong message. She should have gotten in front of the crowd and said the following, in her own words of course;

"I care about this issue a great deal. I'm a woman and African-American, so I am doubly affected by the issues raised in the video. We need to do something about this inequity; it has no place in the America that we call home. I commit myself to helping this group make change for the better. Please, go to your workgroups confident in the knowledge that I will help carry this issue forward. Do good work, give me good ammunition for the fight that will result from our efforts here. And please stand with me as we fight for what's right."

Instead we got thirty minutes of "I've done this" and "We've done that," and that's all well and good, but this wasn't the place for that message, if I may be forgiven for saying so. One minute of motivation (and her presence in the workgroups) would have been much much better.

The workgroups went fine, but clearly there was no plan for turning this group of 200 or so interested actors into agents for postive change. Instead I gather that we are to take the message home and think about it, and there is no indication that the group who set this Summit up will attempt to turn it into a movement any time soon.

Sigh.

Well, live and learn. I see myself sending out a "post-summit" email to the potential agents of change inviting them to take part in our planned Pierce County Food Policy Council. We'll try to make our part of the movement take life at least.

PS: Think that I'll spend the next few days picking out individual messages from the video that really resonated for me...

Movements Emerge

2008-03-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

The power of connected community

I've posted before about the emerging networks around local foods and food equity issues. Yesterday I received the regular "Growing Conversation" email from Alicia Lawver. In case you're not in that loop it contains all sorts of information about events in the Tacoma area. Alicia and the organizations who support this effort (notably the Tacoma Gardens group) are to be commended for providing such a great service to their community.

One of the things that I love about the Growing Conversations email is the way that it serves to spark some interesting conversations in my office. Several District employees are involved in various movements around the city that get mentioned, and I see them sharing their experiences when the post goes around.

After reading the first post (Green Partnership Fund) and glowing over the opportunity for funding local activist groups that I've had the privilege to help create, I scrolled down to the "Growing Conversation III" post, and a conversation with Sarah (with whom I share a cubicle) started up. She let me know that she plans to show a video at that group meeting, and sent me the URL to the site where I could preview that video. Here's the link (it's number 3 in the grid):

Health Justice Video

I found it to be an interesting video, only about seven minutes long, and very pertinent to the Health Department Forum that will happen on Friday. Issues revolving around nutrition, local foods and health equity are very meaningful to me these days, as anyone who reads this blog will already know.

If there are newsgroups similar to the Growing Conversations group here in Kitsap I'm not aware of them. I'd be grateful if someone would connect me with them if so. If not (and I expect this is the case), then there should be. Let me know who you think might help me get such a thing going.

Here, in all it's glory is the Growing Conversations message that I received:

Growing Conversation
Cultivate Your Community / March 25, 2008 / Grow Local Tacoma-Pierce County
Spread the word, share information, keep the conversation growing ...Click here to learn more about Tacoma community gardens

[Grant opportunity]

Green Partnership Fund has money to spend in support of local food ...
Funding from the Green Partnership Fund is available from the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation to further the goal of implementing natural resource, agricultural and local food supply conservation. For this funding round, all projects must be shown to connect urban and rural communities through agricultural conservation, support local food supply or directly benefit natural resources for the citizens of Fircrest, Lakewood, Milton, Puyallup, Steilacoom, Sumner, University Place, Tacoma and Unincorporated Pierce County. Projects with broader scope which include benefits to the natural resources, agricultural conservation, local food supply or citizens will be considered as well. At least $100,000 will be reserved to benefit the City of Tacoma. A letter of intent is due March 31, 2008.

[Tonight!]

'Go Local or Die' livin' it up ... tonight!
Tonight's "Go Local or Die" charrette (6 p.m. 3/25 at Veritas Mortgage, downtown next to the Tully's on 9th & Commerce) focuses on the topic of innovative co-working with arts, business, education and urban living in downtown Tacoma. The host is Jim Diers, former head of the Department of Neighborhoods in Seattle and author of "Neighbor Power." This week's panelists include: Derek Young (Exit133/Suite133); Roxanne Murphy (City of Tacoma, Community & Economic Development); Amy McBride (City of Tacoma, Arts Administrator); and Justin Mayfield (Broadway Farmers Market/New Tacoma Neighborhood Council). Other folks involved in the conversation represent a wide array of the community, including local businesses, neighborhood councils, civic organizations, arts organizations, and many others ...
Info: locallifetacoma@aol.com

[Mark your calendar]

Growing Conversation III: Why Eat Local?
Join us from 6-7 p.m. Thursday, April 17, at King's Books to talk about why it's important to eat local when possible, discover resources on how to eat local and share strategies and resources with one another. This topic touches on growing your own food, sustainable and organic gardening, community gardens, the importance of supporting local farms and dairies, the health and environmental impacts of increasing the local food in your diet, and so much more. An extra treat: this event is taking place during Tacoma's Third Thursday downtown Artwalk ... so come early and explore the local museums (for free from 5-8; TAM is free all day) and galleries, or stay late, grab a bite and continue exploring the the galleries and shops.

[More ways to feed your head]

Green Youth, 4-5:30 p.m.
Green Drinks, 5:30-8 p.m.
Thursday, April 3 at Harmon Brewery & Restaurant, 1938 S. Pacific Ave.
If you're interested in sustainability, conservation and the environment, then come hang out at Tacoma Green Drinks, a monthly networking and social gathering. The Puget Creek Restoration Society, April's event sponsor, will provide many opportunities for hands-on learning and service for citizens of all ages and abilities. Scott Hansen, founder and PCRS Treasurer, will offer ways to get involved, including Earth Day events that will be taking place April 22.
Click here for details.

Health Department offers free Natural Yard Care workshop series
Learn about environmentally friendly yard and garden maintenance this spring during a series of fun, informative and free natural yard care workshops by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. Workshops are from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium:
Wednesday, April 16: Natural Lawn Care & Sustainable Garden Design
Wednesday, April 30: Soil Basics & Backyard Composting
Wednesday, May 14: Garden Pest Management & Smart Watering
The workshops are free, but space is limited. To register, or for more information contact Environmental Health Specialist Geoff Rinehart at (253) 798-4587 or grinehart@tpchd.org. Click here for more.

James Howard Kunstler coming to Tacoma on April 23
April 23 at Theater on the Square
Exit 133 and Local Life Tacoma have partnered to bring author and speaker James Howard Kunstler to Tacoma. Kunstler is very well known in the circles of folks that care about urban planning and livable cities. His books include "Geography of Nowhere" and "The Long Emergency."
Click here to hear Kunstler's speech at the TED Conference.

Grow Local 2008 calendar*
UPDATED! April 17: Growing Conversation III: Why Eat Local? (And how to do it ...) 6 p.m. King's Books
June 6-8: We'll be at the Point Defiance Flower & Garden Show
August 23: Community Garden Tour II (details TBA)
October: Growing Conversation IV (details TBA)
Plus, we're planning regular workshops! Keep an eye out for dates and details!
* Dates and events subject to change.

[Work party!]

Blueberry Park spring work parties
Blueberry Park Volunteers hold monthly work parties every third Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Volunteers can prune, rake, load, haul, remove invasive materials, mow and spread bark, while getting to know their fellow volunteers. Refreshments, coffee, work gloves and tools are provided. Click here for details and upcoming work party dates.

[Conversation starters]

UC DAVIS: Assessing Energy Use & Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Food System
The goal of this initiative is to study energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the food system, from "farm to fork" in order to identify technologies, methods and consumer food choices that can reduce energy and carbon emissions of the food system.
Click here for details.

KUOW (3/19/08): Brave New Leaf (archive from 12/5/07)
Bellevue resident Mackenzie Steele used to be kind of lazy about recycling. She would even throw an aluminum can in the trash just to see her friends squirm. But in late 2006, the impact of global warming hit home. Listen as Mackenzie tells what happened to inspire her new project, Brave New Leaf.
Click here for this episode, the Brave New Leaf segment is the last 10 minutes of the segment.
Click here for the Natural Conservancy's Carbon Footprint Calculator.

[Still on the radar ....]

Kids get chance to share their enviro-wisdom with EnviroKids poster contest
The City of Tacoma's EnviroChallenger and EnviroKids programs are running an art contest for all students in Tacoma in grades K-8. You can download an entry form at www.cityoftacoma.org/envirokids. Entries must be postmarked by April 2. For details or to have an entry form mailed to you, e-mail envirokids@cityoftacoma.org or call 253-591-5066.

New UW-Tacoma Spring Course: Food System Planning (TURB 340)
Thursdays 1-4 p.m. (Class starts April 3; registration open until the class is filled)
A small but growing number of local governments are doing food-related planning to provide access to healthy foods for low-income neighborhoods, maintain local farms and reduce the environmental effects of food and agriculture systems. Click here for more information, or e-mail geografood@yahoo.com.

[The Conversation]

It's still growing ...
Please send events, articles, conversation starters, opportunities, etc. to alicia.lawver@gmail.com.

The Growing Conversation newsletter is part of a collaboration between the City of Tacoma, TAGRO, the Pierce Conservation District, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, the University of Washington, Exit133 and a growing number of other individuals and community groups who are exploring issues of sustainability in a hands-on fashion. Efforts include the Growing Conversation events and newsletter, TacomaGardens.com, the Building Urban Gardens Sustainably group, and much more.

** If you would like to unsubscribe to this list, this is not an automated listserv, so just e-mail me at alicia.lawver@gmail.com and I'll delete you. If you know folks who might be interested in subscribing to this occasional newsletter, e-mail me at alicia.lawver@gmail.com and I'll add them. It's just that easy. We won't sell your e-mail, we'll try not to nag you too much, and please know that we're just working hard for a sustainable tomorrow. **

Cultivate Your Community: Grow Local Tacoma-Pierce County
www.tacomagardens.com

Easter Tidings from the Mahans

2008-03-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

A family weekend...

I hope that your spring is going well, and I hope that you’re having a nice Easter weekend. For our part it’s been quite nice. We just got home from Easter morning service, a ham and potatoes are baking in the oven, and the kids are beginning to plot how they will work their way through all the candy they got yesterday at the egg hunt events we attended.

First on our itinerary was the traditional Easter egg hunt for the blind that is sponsored by the Qwest Telecom Pioneers, a wonderful group of retired telephone company employees.

This event, held in Renton, gathers families from around the state with blind and low vision children.

Pradeep, our legally blind son, begins asking after the event the moment he hears that Easter is coming up, usually in February.

You can see by the pictures that I’ve posted below that he and the other children had a great time. Particularly meaningful are the ‘beeping’ eggs that are put out for the fully blind children.

It’s quite heartwarming to watch them zero in on the sounds that those eggs are making and pick them up. They are exchanged by volunteers for candy, which blind kids love as much as anyone.

After the Renton event we went to Nikki Johanson’s Pheasant Run farm on Clear Creek Road, like several hundred other local folks.

I think that Nikki was rather overwhelmed by the turnout, and although I saw some long faces over not finding eggs, I saw many other happy children and parents dropping off food donations, collecting candy filled plastic eggs, and touring the farm to get in touch with a local agricultural treasure.

And now it’s time to take the ham out of the oven and do our best to consume it. With a family our size that shouldn’t be too much of a task. Tomorrow work and the campaign resume, but for today we rest, worship and enjoy family.

Happy Easter!

Five Years After

2008-03-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

The war grinds on

I was moved to write a post about Iraq a month or so ago, but I've done a fair amount of thinking about the five year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq over the past few days, and feel moved to do so again. I wasn't sure that I wanted to post or not, basically because it's such a complicated situation in my mind, but I guess that writing it out helps organize my thoughts, so here goes.

The Sun reported that local troops could be heading out later this year. I'm not happy about the prospect of Army National Guard troops goig to provide security in another country. Although it will help train them in the case they are ever needed to help and protect us here, their mission is to be available to help and protect us here, not to shore up a government in another country that doesn't seem to have the support of its people.

When we were getting ready to invade Iraq I had several thoughts about the situation. I've tried to remember these thoughts as faithfully as I can, and I know that one can always be accused of perfect hindsight in such a situation, but at least I'll report where I was wrong, for what it's worth.

Removing Saddam

I remember telling people that I would cry no tears for Saddam. I've read a fair bit about the Iran-Iraq war, the Human Rights Watch reports on his mistreatments of various indigenous populations, and a couple of great books by insiders to his regime. He was a monster, and it's a good thing that he's gone

Weapons of Mass Destruction

The intelligence community was correct in guessing that he might have various forms of nerve gas stockpiled. Not because he did (altough there may be a wealth of secrets buried in the vastness of western Iraq), but because he had used it before. I was worried that our troops would get a taste of the deadly gas, and that no matter how well trained they were, there might be some terrible damage done to some of our kids. I've worn MOPP gear (U.S. Army anti-chemical stuff) and it's bad enough on a cold day. In 100 degree plus heat it would be crippling.

I'm glad that I was wrong and that he either didn't have it or he didn't use it. I was sure that he did and would.

As far as nuclear weapons go that was clearly a ruse by someone (it was clear then and it's clear now), and SCUD missiles with conventional warheads or gas were our chief concern.

The war itself

As a former tank commander I had absolutely no doubt how this would turn out. We would slice through his armies like the proverbial hot knife through butter. In some ways that turned out to be not such a good thing, for reasons that I'll mention below.

Our army and air force are first rate; the best in the world. We were facing a large but barely trained gang of thugs and unwilling men pressed into service by threats to their families. It was clear before we started that it would crumble quickly.

Aftermath/Insurgency & Infrastructure

Here was my main worry. I knew that the U.S. Military wasn't prepared to be a police force. It's not a role that our army thrives in. I also knew that in the absence of a victory that crushed the spirit of the occupied people, such as happened to Japan and Germany in 1945, the underground movement would rise up to continue the fight.

Here's the thing. We would fight on exactly like the Iraqi insurgents do if we felt that our sovereignty was being tossed aside in favor of a puppet government. Whether this is actually happening isn't the point, its perceived to be happening to many Iraqis, and they're fighting back just as we would in similar circumstances. When an underground movement can't form an army and face you in traditional battle lines they'll go shadow as the insurgency has and fight you that way.

So, I was worried that a long standing insurgency would spring up to trouble us as long as we chose to stay in country. I'm not happy that this became reality.

The troop surge seems to be suppressing some of the violence, but I have little doubt that the minute our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters in the National Guard return, the violence will resume. Iraq is a land of very intelligent and friendly people, but it's also a land of violence. Has been for quite some time, according to the history that I've read.

It's time for us to get serious about bringing our troops home. The vaccuum that will result is troubling given Iran's interest in the shattered country, but all we're doing is prolonging the inevitable and losing alot of our own lives in the mix. It might not hurt to send the message to those considering taking the country by violence that they can expect us to return in that instance, but it's up to the Iraqis to solve their own problems.

PS: I just watched one of my kids pray for the soldiers safety in Iraq. It's kind of heartbreaking really.

Creating Communities Online

2008-03-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

Department of Services for the Blind Conference

Sandy and I spent the day at a conference yesterday for parents of children who are blind or have low vision. The Washington State DSB is to be commended for coordinating this effort.

Our son Pradeep lost most of his vision at infancy due to vitamin A deficiencies and infections soon after birth. When he came to us at age four Dr. Paul Kremer of Silverdale performed a cornea transplant that restored some vision, but at age 13 he still suffers from what they call 'cortical blindness,' or the lack of brain connections to utilize the images that the structurally functional eye delivers.

An interesting aside was that four of us were fathers of children who were (or will soon be) adopted blind. I was literally floored to find out that we weren't the only family in Washington State who had done this.

These annual conferences have always offered a great resource to us, that of networking with other parents in similar circumstances. We meet many other parents who face similar situations with child care, schooling, and community life. Pediatric blindness is ironically a very 'visible' disease or disorder, but it's also a fairly rare one. Any community will only have a very limited number of blind children, so we have trouble maintaining connections with each other.

When you show up at one of these gatherings you get immersed in an ocean of medical jargon that only this group and a collection of opthalomologists and opticians would understand. In this group we've all dealt with IEP teams that are bigger than your high school graduating class, we've all dealt with people who try to be helpful by babying our children, and we understand each other without having to explain.

One of the agenda items at the conference was a partnership between the National Association of Parents of the Visually Impaired and the American Foundation for the Blind. They are working together on a web community for parents of the visually impaired. We got a preview, and as near as I could tell, the attendees were excited about the possibilities.

Their research showed that 96% of parents of the visually impaired use the internet to find information about their children's disabilities and support services. They also found that most of these parents feel disconnected from needful information and community sharing. The strength of the internet to provide this sense of connection, and to create and sustain these kinds of movements is being discovered by more and more.

The idea was to create a resource for parents in this situation to share questions and information, so a web forum is being developed. Parents will create accounts and be able to watch the discussions. I believe that many 'crosslinks' with other regional and local groups will be created, and people will feel more of a sense of belonging to a movement.

I'm really thrilled about this and some other local movements that are being enhanced by these crosslinks between groups and organizations.

I'll post here about the networking website when it gets its formal grand opening, and I can't wait to take part in that site's beta testing and formal opening. I can feel movements emerging, and I love being part of that excitement.

Health and Inequality

2008-03-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

Health Equity Summit on March 28th

I was pleased to be invited to be a panelist at the upcoming Pierce County Health Equity Summit on March 28th at University of Washington Tacoma. The framework for the discussion will be the documentary "Unnatural Causes," which is a cooperative work of the National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO). It is billed as a health equity campaign, titled "A Dialogue to Action a national effort to stimulate debate and bring about a change to eliminate health inequities."

For our part I will talk about the Conservation District's efforts to provide high quality local food to low income seniors and disabled residents. This program, which I've posted about before, has the District working as a partnership with the Pierce County Aging & Long Term Care Division and a coalition of local row crop farmers.

I'm pleased to see that my panel workgroup will be led by Dr. Dorothy Anderson of the Tacoma Urban League. Dr. Anderson and I are working together on several programs to educate and uplift inner city youth and introduce them to opportunities in natural resource careers. I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Anderson and what she's trying to accomplish at the League, and I'm happy to say that the League and the District are good working partners.

The main speakers include Senator Rosa Franklin of Tacoma and (hopefully) Governor Gregoire herself.

I'll be over at the Health Department today getting a pre-screening of the documentary, and after watching the trailer on the Unnatural Causes website, I can say that I'm intrigued in the topic. Public conversations like this one can often bring to light gaps and solutions that no one of us would be able to identify on our own.

You can find the registration form for the summit on the TPCHD website. The Pierce Conservation District participates in many cooperative projects with the Health Department, not just the traditional agriculture impacting water quality issues, but health, disease control, and nutrition issues as well.

Hope to see you there!

Another View of the Legislature

2008-03-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, I like this guy, one can't help it...

Peter Callaghan, in case you didn't know it, is a political columnist with the News Tribune. He's made me laugh many a time, but even better, he has a pretty good handle on goings-on at the State Legislature. I thought that I was being a little hard on certain legislators in earlier posts till I read this column of Peter's, published a few weeks ago.

- - - - - - - - -

State Democrats break legislation into baby steps

PETER CALLAGHAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE

Published: February 24th, 2008 01:00 AM

Incrementalism

It must be hard to get the troops to rally around a goal of taking steps, no matter how small, as long as they are forward.

But that’s where the Legislature’s Democrats find themselves. Despite having the largest majorities since the late 1970s and a healthy budget surplus, most big ideas get broken down into the smallest possible increments and adopted one or two chunks at a time.

Meanwhile, constituent groups are asked to be patient.

A family leave program that would pay up to $250 a week while new parents stay home with new children? It was created last session with funding to come this year, so far without success.

Civil unions for same-gender couples? Ten of the estimated 485 rights and responsibilities that come with legal marriage, such as hospital visits and inheritance, were granted last year. More are being added this year. Still, Democrats argue that this isn’t gay marriage.

Democrats were proud last session of the first funding of all-day kindergarten. But only 10 percent of the poorest districts got money, with a promise of more to come. Now there’s talk of putting it on hold.

Transportation improvements have moved from statewide gas tax increases to regional funding plans and tolling. Yet, this year’s tolling bill doesn’t set any tolls; it only creates a method for setting tolls at some future time.

Health care? Steps are hard to see unless you’re in the industry.

But the issue of health care reform might explain why Democrats are so cautious. Democrats’ sweeping program in 1993 was used by Republicans to win back control of the state House in 1994. Pragmatists like House Speaker Frank Chopp, unrivaled in his skills at building legislative majorities, does not want to give the GOP powerful issues like that again.

So he moves slowly and deliberately. Democratic majorities move just fast enough to let liberal and labor groups see movement but not so fast to draw heat or trigger big debates about big issues. Republicans, desperate for campaign issues to reduce the large Democratic majorities, are left to point out huge spending increases in the current budget and to worry about future deficits.

Ironically, that new spending – what Democrats always call “investments” – is what the majority proudly uses to refute claims that the party isn’t moving fast enough with this once-in-a-generation numerical advantage.

Gay marriage – I mean, civil unions – is a case study of how the strategy works. Legislative leaders would never have allowed a full debate on marriage. Instead, the bills that reach the floor take smaller steps. Last year’s version wasn’t even enough to motivate opponents to collect signatures on a referendum.

Family leave is another case in point. The legislation that passed last year to much acclaim set up the idea of paying for leave, but not the means. A task force (an increasingly common tool of the incrementalist) met for months to figure out how to pay for it, but even it punted on the toughest decision.

Rather than impose a payroll tax, the family leave task force suggested taking the cost for the first few years out of the state’s surplus of tax revenue. Gov. Chris Gregoire said no to that and then declared that any tax must go to a vote of the people.

But a penny-an-hour payroll tax is still a tax. No wonder no funding plan has emerged from Olympia so far. Maybe next year.

Incrementalist philosophy states that sometimes the wisest step is to wait until the political footing is more secure. A lack of movement can sometimes pass for progress.

Sorry to sound like an old “Kung Fu” rerun, but throw in the fact that this is a 60-day session in an election year and the Washington Legislature sometimes resembles political tai chi.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics

Consensus at the Kitsap Cooperative

2008-03-11T08:20:00.001-07:00

Take your time, take your time, take your time...

I spent the evening with the steering committee for the newly forming Kitsap Cooperative, a movement that I posted earlier on here.

It was an interesting group of dedicated people, and I was pleased to see the diversity of backgrounds and thinking styles represented at the table. Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was the dedication to consensus decision-making as the process that will rule the steering committee as it goes forward.

Now, if you didn't already know it, there are seven principles that most co-ops follow in providing their services to members. They can be found in many places, including from the website for the guiding body to cooperatives, the International Cooperative Alliance. A more comprehensive listing of the ICA guiding principles is found there.

These principles are;

1. Voluntary and open membership
2. Democratic Member Control
3. Member Economic Participation
4. Autonomy and Independence
5. Education, Training and Information
6. Cooperation Among Cooperatives
7. Concern for Community

As we worked though the decision making process that the steering committee would follow I was reminded of business management courses at University of Washington. We studied leadership and decision making in depth, and spent a good deal of time on the various styles that were used to guide groups of many different kinds. We also learned that there's a time and a place for every style of decision making.

The two greatest features of consensus decision making, at least to me, are that;

* Those involved in the process are more likely to take ownership of group decisions if they were active participants in them. I can't tell you how many times I have been near the bottom of a decision chain and seen how the desired action wasn't acheived because line workers had little or no ownership of the idea. On the other hand, I've seen fully participatory processes that the group took to heart because they'd had a hand in crafting the results.

* And, that there's a magic to group brainstorming that happens when an idea goes out on the table and gets molded and shaped by the group. The only way that it can really work is if every member participates from a perspective of diversity valued, commitment to the group and the dream, and open honest critique of their own and others' ideas. An idea or proposal no longer becomes 'yours' or 'mine,' it becomes 'ours.'

The main drawback of course is the time that it takes a group fully committed to a consensus decision making process to get to the end point. Marines, charging up a beach for instance, probably shouldn't sit down to chart out "what are the principles that are most important to us as we consider how to knock out that machine gun nest. That's a moment for complete autocracy.

I know, without question, that I was not the only person at the table last night who occasionally got the urge to just stand up and say "will you, or you , or you just tell us all what to do?"

Thankfully no one screamed, and everyone remained committed to the process. I have little doubt that this group will succeed, and I hope to make a contribution to the effort myself.

Stories from the Subcontinent

2008-03-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

Putting negotiation skills to the test...

This will be the first of a series of (hopefully)entertaining reminisces from my trips to India to collect some of my children. Sit back, imagine that I've just poured you a hot cup of chai or coffee, and (hopefully)enjoy.

On my first trip to India my father and I were in Bangalore, where my son William (Indian name "Madhu") was awaiting his family at the Ashaya Children's Home. We were there for about ten days while William bonded with us (a difficult process for him and I at best), and we waited for exit visas to be processed.

One day Dad and I decided to travel the countryside to see some sights, and arranged a tour to take us to the various temples of Mysore, a region famed for its forests of sandalwood and teak, and filled with tropical visions that are quite impossible to describe.

At each stop we would invariably be approached by vendors trying to sell us trinkets that were, in most cases, pretty and cheap. They would size us up, the only tall whites on the bus as Americans and therefore (to them anyway) rich. Prices were automatically adjusted upwards by about 5,000%, as near as I could calculate.

Now, I'm not a very competitive person most of the time. My father, on the other hand, delights in wagers and competitions. I had been telling him about the great classes in negotiations that I was being sent to as an employee of Kitsap County, so he made a bet that he could get better prices on the tourist trinkets than I could. I got tired of listening to his boasts of prowess, so I took him on.

At the first and second stops we bought similar items from different vendors, and I got them for about half the price he did. He got determined and started telling me that he would get the better of me by day's end. I let him talk, but planned no change in my strategy.

At the third stop the same thing happened. I watched him haggling with the vendor he'd approached (who was getting frustrated with Dad's hardball) but putting up a good fight all the same. We got back in the bus and compared purchases. We'd bought the same soapstone carved elephant, his for about $2.50, and mine for about 75 cents. He showed me that at least his was black and mine was plain gray. I showed him how the cheap blacking could be easily rubbed off, and showed him the black all over his fingers from handling it.

Now he was mad.

At the next (and final) stop, he was a man possessed. Heaven help the vendor who approached him. I was tired of the game and pretty sure that I wasn't going to buy anything at all. I got off the bus and a man approaced me wearing a long coat(making me gape in amazement since the weather was about 90 degrees in the tropical winter).

The man offered me a wide variety of goods, none of which was interesting to me. I tried to wave him off as I headed to the temple that we were about to tour, but the man stuck to me like an unwanted fly. He sized me up as we walked and said "you are American?"

I said yes, and he gave me a sly look. "Perhaps you would be interested in this then?" He showed me a copy of the Kama Sutra, luridly colored and lettered in English. The pictures were mostly from temple carvings, carvings which must be seen to be believed. All that I can say is that the folks who made these carvings 8-10 centuries ago had a lot of time on their hands, access to very flexible young women, and vivid imaginations. 'Nuff said?

I hesitated, and he sensed his moment. He went into a long description of the text and photos, all of which were embarrassing at the least. I wouldn't have had any interest at all (honestly now) but I'd promised a fellow Kitsap County employee (who will remain nameless, but HE knows who HE is) that I would look for just such a product during the trip on HIS behalf. Truly...

The man boasted of the quality. He displayed (for all passersby to see) the lovely full color photos. He described the enduring timeless wisdom of the "exercises" that one could learn and practice from the text, and the wonderful improvements these "exercises" would bring to me and all women who loved me. He was really annoying me now, and I walked away as he orated to the gathering crowd.

When he noticed that his mark was leaving he caught up quickly and told me that a product of this obvious quality couldn't leave his hands for less than the equivilant of about $50 in Indian Rupees. I stopped, stared at him for a moment, then turned and started to walk again.

He caught up again and said "I have offended you? Perhaps I misspoke..." Then he dropped his price to about $30.

I said "I'm not interested in your book" and continued walking. He trotted alongside me lowering his price in increments as the door to the temple got closer and closer. By the time we reached the temple, where he was not allowed to go, he was down to $15. I told him "go away" and breezed past the guard to look the place over.

The temple was lovely, with a large carved bull in the center of a tropical glade, and many of the same carvings that were displayed so luridly in the book the vendor was trying to sell. The Indians that I watched at worship were quiet and reverent. I enjoyed the tour very much.

When we'd done with the tour I headed back to the gate. My friend the vendor waited with an eager look. I sighed and walked right past him without another glance, but he followed me like an eager puppy.

Suffice it to say that the next five minutes on the way back to the bus were unbearable. He whined that he and his family would starve. He begged for some small notice, even if I wouldn't buy his pornography, at least I could deign to tell him that it was a high quality product. He moaned that it was Americans like me who gave our nation a bad name in the world.

I was his Moby Dick, the great white whale that he craved to bring into the boat. He would die if he didn't land this sale, at whatever cost to him.

He dropped his prices in increments till, at the door to the bus, he quoted me a price of about 30 cents worth of rupees.

I stopped, one foot on the stair, and looked back at him. His face was locked in a rapt plea for help, or at least some sign that I cared about his product. I said, in no uncertain terms, "no." I went in and sat down, and he came along the side of the bus to my window begging and haranguing me till we finally pulled out of there. He actually ran alongside the bus as we pulled away, begging us to stop so that he could amend his offer.

I regretted not buying the book for my friend later. After all, it was only 30 cents. But I'd said no and by the time we left I really did mean no. I returned to Port Orchard and told my friend the story and asked forgiveness, and although I don't think that I really got forgiveness from him, at least he enjoyed the story.

Dad never challenged me again in a contest of bartering, but hey, I'm not the best negotiator in the world. The best negotiator would have bought out all the illustrated Kama Sutras this man was selling at 30 cents and then sold them at the next stop to other vendors at a markup. I could have done that, I'm sure.

More "Stories from the Subcontinent" another time...

Local Meat Locally Inspected

2008-03-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Mobilizing the slaughterhouse

C.R. ROBERTS
Published: March 9th, 2008

Sublime is the life of the livestock at The Pig Lady’s Summit farm. Chickens freely peck, ducks waddle, lambs gambol, piglets doze and the cows placidly graze.

E-I, E-I, Oops.

The difficulty for the farmer comes with what happens next. There is no single, local facility where animals can meet their USDA-inspected destiny.

For Cheryl Ouellette – known to her customers as The Pig Lady – it’s a growing problem.

Her cows go to a processor in Benton City in Benton County.

Her other animals go elsewhere.

She thinks she has the answer.

A portable abattoir. A slaughterhouse on wheels.

It’s not as bad as it probably sounds, and it could lead to a revolution that provides customers with healthful, locally grown meat while reducing the carnivore’s carbon footprint and saving family farms.

THE PROBLEM

“It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy,” Ouellette says. “It’s like a constantly moving target.”

She’s talking about processing. The cows go east. The sheep take a different route. Nobody does ducks. A slaughterhouse in Chehalis has closed. Same with Sumner. There is no one facility where Ouellette can process her livestock into individual cuts of meat.

“I have the whole system held together by baling wire,” she says.

Now she’s out to invent another system altogether.

It’s not like she’s new to the game. She’s president of the King-Pierce Farm Bureau, and she sits on various farm-related committees.

She’s been working on the idea for perhaps three years. She first heard about the concept of a portable slaughterhouse – or mobile abattoir – six years ago at a food security conference in Seattle. Someone in Island County was killing livestock on the farm, with a difference.

The difference was the presence of a federal inspector on-site – and federally inspected meat can be sold locally by the cut.

The beef at a supermarket is federally inspected, but it may have been raised in Kansas and processed in Nebraska.

Someone in Island County was raising, processing and selling meat in Island County. Ouellette wondered if that same could happen in Pierce County.

Today, she believes it can.

“This may be one of the things that saves the small farm in America,” she says.

THE SOLUTION

Last November Ouellette attended the Enumclaw Agricultural Summit. She sat at a table of 25, and recalls, “Everybody looked around. There’s a problem, but who’s going to fix it?”

Last month, Ouellette called a meeting of South Sound farmers, ranchers and others who have made livestock their livelihood. Nearly a hundred people came.

“This is the kind of idea we’d like to reward,” says Monty Mahan, director of the Pierce County Conservation District.

He attended the meeting.

“We’ve had a lot of people doing their own little thing,” he says. “Then when you get together, and there’s an energy level that high – the next day I went to some butcher shops. They were buzzing. People were serious about this.”

The process goes like this: Ouellette, as head of what’s tentatively called the “Meat Project,” has formed a steering committee with representatives from Pierce, King, Thurston, Lewis, Kitsap and Mason counties. She and the committee are preparing a business plan which will be presented to the Mahan and his board of directors.

If the board members approve the plan – and Mahan says they are so far positively inclined – they will commission a portable abattoir costing perhaps $250,000. The abattoir will then be leased to whatever entity Ouellette’s group forms, whether it becomes a co-op, limited liability company or some other form of partnership.

At the meeting, Ouellette raised $30,000 toward a projected $150,000 annual operating cost.

BRING HOME THE BACON

“I go through probably 60-to-70 head a year, and most of that is sold by the cut,” says Lee Markholt, for 35 years the owner of The Meat Shop on Vickery Avenue East in Summit. He prides himself on selling organic beef.

He takes his cattle to Oregon for slaughter. That’s the closest plant with federal inspectors.

“That’s 326 miles round-trip,” he says. “That’s a pretty big carbon footprint. People wonder why organic is more expensive. That’s a pretty good reason right here.”

The plant in Lewis County closed. Same with Sumner. It doesn’t work to go to Woodland.

“I used to complain about having to go 13 miles,” he says. “I thought it was a bad deal to go 50 miles. I didn’t know how well off I was.”

If he had access to a mobile abattoir, he says, “Chances are, I would be able to sell my product cheaper because I wouldn’t have that diesel and all the wear and tear. It would definitely help the customer, too.”

Markholt attended the so-called “meat meeting” in Fife, and he’s in favor of Ouellette’s idea.

“People are excited about it,” he says. “There sure is a need.”

“I think demand will exceed supply,” says Carrie Sikorski, county farm specialist for Pierce County. Sikorski works out of the Washington State University Extension office in Tacoma.

“The profit will be there like it’s never been before. There won’t be all the middlemen.”

She calls the mobile abattoir “a much-needed project. It wold make a world of difference for farmers and people who want to eat local and know the source of their food.”

She also says, “It’s a great way to keep small farms alive. It can save open space and feed the region. The huge corporate farms are growing, the midsized farms are being subdivided.”

But with access to a mobile abattoir and local markets, a Pierce County farmer with 10 acres, for example, could harvest his or her herd without worrying about transportation. Because it was federally inspected, the meat could be sold by the cut.

“I think the potential is huge,” Sikorski says. “We are in the midst of a large back-to-the-land agricultural revolution. Preserving farmland started out as a nostalgic, environmental project. Now, people are learning more and more about the political aspects of the way food is made. This is going to be one of those issues that is going to bring everybody together – people who care about what kids eat in school, care about land conservation, health, obesity, nutrition, who care about the economics of food. This will get high-quality protein into food banks and WIC programs.”

She foresees farmers with a few acres on the Key Peninsula – farmers who can’t grow row crops because of the soil – turning to sheep, beef or chickens and having that livestock slaughtered and inspected on the property where it was raised.

She likes the idea and says federal inspectors will be readily available when needed.

“It’s a perfect solution,” she says.

HERE’S THE BEEF

The enthusiasm extends beyond Pierce County.

“I’ve had a feeling for years that we had to do a better job of reconnecting agriculture,” says John Wise, mayor of Enumclaw. Wise called the meeting last fall.

“If you have a farm and you want to be able to sell your product to a local butcher, it has to be inspected. We don’t have that piece.”

With the coming of a federal inspector overseeing a mobile unit, Wise foresees more farmers who make more profit. He thinks about the consumers who will buy “Enumclaw Grass-Fed Beef.” He expects benefits for the city’s economy with economically healthy feed stores, tack suppliers and a perhaps even a “year-around farmers’ market” at the local fairgrounds.

For Greg Lynn, project manager at the Puget Sound Food Project in Auburn, the benefits extend even further. “The assumption is that a lot of the local meat products will be produced more humanely and organically and not be fed the steroids and antibiotics that the corporate farms use,” he says. “There will be a higher quality meat product. As other abattoirs are created using Cheryl as a model, the size of local herds will grow, farmland will be saved and maybe profitability will be regained.”

And that profit will not sluice its way toward Kansas anymore.

“If the food is produced locally, the return to the local community is much greater than the return from corporately produced food. That dollar stays in the community and circulates,” Lynn says.

He knows of “quite a few groups collaborating with the Pierce Conservation District to make this project happen.”

He knows of no one against Ouellette’s idea.

“I don’t anticipate Cheryl running into any opposition. I really don’t see where anyone from consumers to industry to government, anywhere along the line, would have a problem.”

IT’S ALREADY REAL

“It does work. You bet it does,” says Joel Huesby, who owns a Walla Walla farm called Thundering Hooves.

Huesby also designed, and operates, one of the state’s three mobile abattoirs. Over the last 12 months, he has dispatched 1,011 head inside the unit – one-third each of cattle, sheep and pigs.

“It’s the largest federally inspected mobile kill floor in the United States,” he says. Along with running his farm, he is in the early stages of manufacturing the abattoirs for sale worldwide. He has begun conversations with companies that could build the units – which resemble a tractor-trailer rig – and he has also been speaking with attorneys who could help him protect the solutions he’s developed.

“I have had interest from all over,” he says. “I’ve been remiss in getting back to them all because I’ve been so busy.”

He attended the meeting in Fife, and he finds Ouellette “on fire about this.”

Bruce Dunlop of Lopez Island has been operating a mobile abattoir for six years, and the unit currently serves farmers in Island, Skagit, San Juan and north Snohomish counties. Along with the unit, Dunlop’s partners in the cooperative operate a cutting and holding facility where the meat is prepared for sale.

“There’s been a fair amount of skepticism on the part of a lot of people, including USDA officials, but after they’ve had the opportunity to see the unit in action, they have uniformly left with the understanding that we can do a good job of processing the carcasses.”

In six years, he says, no animal has been questioned for health concerns.

Like Huesby, he has assisted farmers outside Island County. One of his units is in operation in Stevens County, and one abattoir recently went to Hawaii. Another went to Alberta and one to South Dakota. Add New Mexico and California.

“There’s a phenomenal amount of interest. We get people contacting us every week for information,” he says.

People either hear about the about the abattoirs from word-of-mouth, or they have read about the units in niche publications. “The story has been in the farm press, but there really hasn’t been a lot of interest in the general press,” he says.

“Washington is really in the forefront,” he continues. “The demand is clearly there. There are virtually no other slaughter facilities available to the producers of beef and lamb. The way the system is set up with feedlots and really big abattoirs, the whole emphasis has been on the lowest cost meat in the grocery store. There’s a growing consumer population that doesn’t want that.”

He said he believes the concept – healthful food, locally and humanely produced – “has the potential to grow significantly from where it is today.”

“What we’ve done,” he says, “is to figure out a way to start small.”

ONE WISH

Cheryl Ouellette will soon chair a meeting of the Meat Project’s steering committee. She says she expects to form a legal entity and begin writing grants and applications later this month. She’d like the design of the abattoir ready by the end of April so she can submit a business plan to the conservation board by May. She could order the unit to be built beginning in June, which means it could well be operational and on the road by December.

And then she knows what she wants for herself and her family.

“We want a USDA-certified prime rib for Christmas.”

Breathing Life Into a Pierce County TDR Program

2008-03-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

Or, "How can we raise enough money to make this thing work?"

Yesterday I was part of a working group meeting with Pierce County ExecutiveJohn Ladenburg to discuss his idea for a ballot issue for open space funding. The idea is to raise money to begin work on the Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program that was passed by the Pierce County Council last fall.

He began the meeting by briefly mentioning the amount of funding that he thought should be generated, a cool $125,000,000. He talked about his proposed split of $75 million to the rural areas and $50 million to the urban areas, and how the proposal might go back to the County Council for assignment to the general ballot.

His suggested plan is to create a revolving fund which could be used to purchase development rights from areas targeted for preservation, or "sending areas.". These rights, or credits, would be held in trust by the County. The credits, could then be marketed to developers wanting density bonuses for building within specified "receiving areas," in all cases well within urban growth boundaries. As the developers buy the rights they would pay money back into the bank, which could then be used for further purchases of rights to keep the revolving fund going, potentially into perpetuity.

Several people got excited and started to rave about all the good work that could be done. It was then that I raised my biggest concern.

When I arrived at the Conservation District in 2001 and began to push for better funding to help out farmers and to preserve farmland I was told "we tried that in the 1980's and the voter bonds failed, people said then that they didn't want it, so why should we believe that things have changed."

The problem is this. If you try to do something big and controversial and fail, your proposal is at risk for long-term stagnation. Unless you have the stamina to come right back the next year the idea is often dead for a long time. In the case of voter approved bonds and taxes, a good rule of thumb is "dead for a decade" at best, unless you have the strong desire and commitment from top elected officials to keep trying till you acheive your goal.

Mr. Ladenburg responded that the bonds that the County attempted in the 1980's were one shot deals, not like this revolving fund idea. He thought that the dynamics of this coming "interesting" election could spell success for the idea, even though the timeline was short. He may be right; there will be many new voters in this fall's election, and they may have a pro-environment bent. Problem is that this is his last year in office, and there is no guarantee that his successor will care to revive the issue if we try for a vote this early and fail.

Bryan Flint and Kirk Kirkland of Audubon counseled caution, since virtually no work has been done to educate voters and 'push' the issue in public. Ryan Mello of Cascade Land Conservancy recommended a quick turn around study group. In the end it seemed that Mr. Ladenburg was taking our advice to heart, and looking at the possibility of beginning a push for a public vote on a levy lid lift (which could back bonds) that might not happen till next year. That's significantly less attractive for him, since he leaves office at the end of this year, and wouldn't be around to influence the ballot measure.

It's a tough one; move now and have a strong advocate as County Executive and the very same County Council who passed the TDR/PDR ordinance and presumably would like to see it funded, or wait to have time to develop a public support campaign. We are scheduled to continue the meetings later in March. I'll keep you posted.

This Tractor Ain't No John Deere

2008-03-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

Gotta love spring...

Well, with stroganoff made from some of Joy Garitone's grass fed beef baking in the oven, I took a rare Sunday afternoon off from campaigning to assemble another of the tractors that will serve as home for some of our new "this year's" hens. What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Some of the kids were in the front yard screaming and playing, Sandy, Jessica and William were playing board games in the house, and the dogs were watching me work. Now, as you can see from these pictures, I'm no master carpenter. In a way that's the point. You don't need to be a master carpenter to put together a chicken tractor and enjoy the benefits of home-fresh organic eggs.

The point of a chicken tractor is this. You make a covered frame with no bottom, and let the chickens weed, remove the bugs, and turn the soil at the same time they fertilize it by their very presence. You move the box day by day and let them do the work of clearing, weeding and fertilizing. As if this weren't enough, they contribute eggs for your kitchen.

I learned about chicken tractors at the Conservation District, and read a few books like Storey's Guide to Poultry and Chicken Tractor for more information. Finally, my family visited some nice folks in Long Branch who were using tractors to great advantage, and I was ready to make my own.

I cut and put together the frames last fall, and William (12 year old son) painted them gold. Why gold? Well, pretending to be a farmer, I used whatever I had at hand. The best exterior paint sitting in the utility closet out back was gold. It makes for a nice contrast with the black and red hens that we got from McMurrey's last October.

I attached the metal roof panels and the chicken wire sides. The other tractors that I've seen used heavier gauge wire with smaller holes. That's a good way to prevent predation from racoons and dogs. We don't have that problem here, for reasons that I'll present later in this post.

After putting the tops and sides on I assembled the frame with long screws. Carrying the frame (not that heavy, to allow for easy movement around the garden) I placed it in the center row and began to transfer chickens from the overcrowded old tractor. I segregated the blacks from the reds (sorry, I try not to be racist, but it was easiest that way) and watched them happily begin to eat new spring blades of grass and scratch for bugs.

I pity any bugs unlucky enough to be in the path of the tractors. Watching the chickens do their scratch dance makes it clear just how hopeless a bug's life will be if it gets covered by the tractor's daily move.

We surround the garden with an electric wire fence. The wire isn't there to keep deer out like many of our neighbors' properties, it's to keep the guards out. One of the guards is Sheba, a Great Pyrennies sheep dog who came to live with us last year when her owners moved to Seattle. Sheba looks pretty lazy in this shot, but when she senses a threat she moves her huge, lanky frame at a high rate of speed with a bark that sounds industrial in strength. I wouldn't want to be a stranger or a racoon climbing the fence that surrounds our backyard.

Dolly, our other backyard guardian is a German Short Hair Pointer. She's a dog that belongs in a circus. She has the ability to jump about five feet in the air from a standing position, acts as if she's just consumed three or four espressos in a row, and despite that is a very tender, loving dog. I just love her.

Today after moving the tractors I collected seven eggs, to add to the nine that I collected yesterday. We're averaging nine per day, and well on our way to the two dozen that we'll collect daily from about mid-April to October. The ground is getting well-prepared for the seedlings that we'll soon start in the greenhouse, probably greens, peas and cabbage for the early starters in the garden.

I can't wait.

Oh, and the stroganoff? Tender juicy beef chunks bathed in a tangy sour cream/mushroom sauce, served over noodles with peas on the side. Not uptown cuisine, just wholesome and very very good.

Why Encourage Farming in Kitsap?

2008-03-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

It's not just the food...

Careful study has shown that multiple benefits accrue to local communities that encourage a vibrant agricultural economic base. Of course there's the benefit of a plentiful local food source. Anyone who's enjoyed a subscription from a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farmer knows how good that can be.

But there are other benefits that a community with active agriculture enjoys as well. First off, well managed farmland is a net receiver of surface water runoff, not a sender. Farmland acts as a sink to replenish groundwater supplies which we all later enjoy as the water that flows from our taps.

Farmland provides wonderful viewscapes and wildlife habitat. And before you say that only pristine old growth forest can offer the native wildlife habitat that existed pre-European settlement, be aware that throughout the Puget Sound the local natives burned forest for meadow, prairie and open woodland habitat so that they could hunt more effectively, and harvest such wild crops as camas and many varieties of local medicinal herbs. Plenty of local native wildlife enjoys open land, including actively worked farmland.

Another benefit is the fact that working farmland is a net sender of tax revenue, as compared to most other types of development. Residential subdivisions, the usual alternative to farmland, are net receivers of tax revenue in the form of increased services required to sustain concentrations of human population.

Well managed farmland provides runoff 'cleansing' through filtration. It provides lands which can receive water during high flows, thereby reducing flood damage. And again, don't forget the food.

Don't think for a minute, gentle reader, that I'm making this up. Numerous studies nationwide support these assertions. I point you to this study published on the American Farmland Trust website as a beginning for your research, but the more you dig the more you'll find.

Yes, it makes sense to encourage a vibrant local foods economy. I hope you'll consider how you might join in the growing local food movement and help make this a reality for our future. Contact me at "montymahan@gmail.com" to find out more.

Tremendous Trees

2008-03-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

Kitsap Community & Agricultural Alliance
Promoting bonds between agriculture and the community

Please attend the KCAA's monthly public information program on Tuesday, March 4, 2008.

Speaker: Jim Trainer, Community Forester and Arborist
Subject: TREEMENDUOUS TREES: Life-saving, Money-saving, Nature-saving Tips!

Community Forester and Arborist, Jim Trainer, will be sharing tree-care and tree-safety essentials for anyone who has, works with, cares about, or ever walks under trees. The same trees, that can be neglected and blown over on houses and the people in them, provide the oxygen factory that processes the excess human-generated carbon dioxide that endangers nature and us. Homeowners and agencies could save loads of trouble and money by learning from this dedicated professional who knows how to prevent and take care of tree diseases, tree removal, and other related services. Under-estimating the value of a downed tree can be an expensive mistake. Sometimes they are quite valuable. It is wise to consult a certified arborist before a tree is hauled away at a high cost or designated for firewood.

"Forest Trails & Critter Tales", a locally made DVD, will be viewed and it will delight all ages. Trainer's eyes have seen many animals that populate our surrounding forest, and they shine with fire as he tells exciting face-to-face contacts with the bears, cougars, and other critters that depend upon our care of trees.

Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Location: Norm Dicks Government Center Auditorium, 345 6th Street, Bremerton, WA, 360-779-6523
Cost: Free of charge

For more information on KCAA, visit: http://kitsapag.org/

Puget Sound Partnership Comes to Town

2008-02-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

Planning for the restoration of environmental health

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening at the Bremerton Conference center with about one hundred other interested citizens and agency officials talking about the Puget Sound Partnership. The point was to learn about their organization, the problems that Puget Sound faces, and identify the actions that we could and should take to solve these problems.

I was certainly pleased to see that most of the citizens present weren’t the typical special interest crowd. There were folks who are citizen watershed stewards, fishermen and women, and some of the agency professionals were from agencies that I haven’t seen at Partnership meetings before.

In the evening session we were handed the microphone and encouraged to answer the following questions;

• What do you love about Puget Sound?
• What threats of problems most concern you?
• What criteria do you think should be considered when setting priorities?
• Other comments?

Here’s how I answered when it was my turn. Well, it’s how I answered plus a few things that you never seem to remember to say when you have a microphone in your hand and everyone is staring at you.

It’s hard to pick out one single aspect of Puget Sound to say that I love most. The sights, sounds and smells are woven into my being like the faces of my family and the memories of school from the earliest years. In my mind I have always smelled and felt the saltwater breeze, no matter where I lived or how far it was from home.

I am most concerned about loss of wildlife. When I was a child there were far more seabirds, they were varied and not just seagulls. You could see puffins and odd varieties of ducks. We caught rock cod and occasionally ling cod and yes, we ate them with great pleasure. The day before yesterday my kids and I saw a sea otter in the sound near Waterman. That was the first otter I’d seen in the Sound for many many years.

As far as criteria for consideration when setting priorities, I believe that we must fund projects and programs that most touch ordinary people in their daily lives. So much of the damage that is being done to the Sound is done by everyday people doing everyday things, like driving their cars, running their dishwashers and mowing their lawns. Until ordinary people consider the cumulative actions of ordinary activities the Sound doesn’t have a chance, no matter how much money we throw at the problem.

Several years ago I had the great pleasure to sit with Billy Frank Jr. in his house near Olympia. We spent several hours talking about the problems of the Sound and the salmon. I asked him what it would take for government to clean up the Sound and save the salmon. I’ll never forget his answer.

He said that government would never solve the problem. He said that it would take ordinary people working in their own communities and in their own homes. He said that the only thing governments could do would be to encourage people to act in their own communities, and to get out of the way when they’re doing good work. He praised Conservation Districts and the Regional Fisheries Groups for their work at the grassroots level.

Lastly, I told the Partnership representatives that several years ago my Conservation District and the other eleven Districts around the Puget Sound submitted an action list at the Partnership’s request. This list included the projects that we as a group considered necessary to stop the damage to Puget Sound and clean it up.

About eighteen months ago my Conservation District and the same eleven Conservation Districts put together plans for the local agencies to restore salmon runs in the Puget Sound. These were also submitted to the Puget Sound Partnership and the Shared Salmon Strategy.

Now we are being asked to submit yet another list of priority actions to the Partnership. At some time the lists and plans have to stop and the actions have to start. I urged the Partnership to get down to business and get the work going.

It's time to get the job going, get people engaged, and stop making lists.

How You Can Save Local Agriculture, Part 1

2008-02-27T07:12:00.001-08:00

Mobile meat processing steps closer to reality

Ever since this article in the Capital Press on February 15th I've been getting a large number of questions and comments about the movement to restore USDA inspected meat processing to the South-Central Puget Sound. This is a good time to post on this movement and state very clearly the role that the Pierce Conservation District is likely to play in mobile meat processing.

Also, I will state how you can help make this project thrive at the same time that you help save local farms from obvlivion.

Last Tuesday night at the Fife Community Center a large group of interested people gathered to hear presentations about what the lack of local USDA inspection for meat processing means to local producers, how such service can be restored, and what each person present needed to do to breathe life into the movement.

Cheryl Ouellette, a Pierce County pig producer and president of the King/Pierce Farm Bureau coordinated the meeting. She is serving as the focal point in creating the organization that will hopefully make this project take off. There were presentations from other parts of the state where this idea is thriving and presentations from farmers and distributors. Charlie McManus, chef at Tacoma's Primo Grill presented a local restauranteur's need for quality local meat to serve to a discerning clientele'.

In case you didn't know this, the only way that you can buy meat that is recognizable as being local, is to work directly with the person who has grown the animal. They sell you the animal and you work directly with a butcher to purchase a portion, usually at least 1/4 of the animal.

This works fine if you're stocking up your freezer, but if you simply want a couple of great grass-fed local steaks or a free range chicken from down the road for a Friday night dinner, you're out of luck. You're going to have to go to the market and buy whatever they stock, which could have been produced and processed anywhere. And when I say "anywhere," I really do mean "anywhere." Unless you're tenacious and go to a very special market you will be unsuccessful if you try to find out where or how that meat was produced.

And don't get me started about the "how" involved in the meat's processing. You're not going to get to know that either. And that may be just as well.

A mobile meat processing unit would be a large truck that would be able to arrange a visit to the farm where the animals were raised, or a convenient gathering place if several farmers are working together that day. The animals go in the back of the truck and under the watchful eye of a USDA inspector they are slaughtered. The meat is delivered to a storage and curing facility and the waste is delivered to an authorized waste disposal facility.

This is a particularly attractive idea for several reasons, but one of the most striking is that with a mobile unit there is no need to start up a slaughterhouse anywhere. This reduces the anxiety level for neighbors, as you might imagine.

Mrs. Ouellette is coordinating the work to organize the interested parties, of which there were clearly many after last Tuesday's meeting. It is my understanding that a collaborative group is forming around her, and that at least $35,000 in pledges were received that night and the following day. This is significant, because in order to gain the USDA grant that will help make this idea a reality, a private venture with private capital has to form up.

The energy level at that meeting was high, and I talked to people the next day who had been there. Everyone agreed that this was a great idea and that they would do their part to make it happen.

If we manage to make this project work we can make it our own. We can add value to local meat by 'branding' the product so that consumers know exactly how and where their meat was raised. We can work with the local Humane Society and others to certify that the animals were raised and slaughtered in a humane manner. We as consumers and producers can control virtually every aspect of the meat that enters our childrens' bodies.

The Conservation District's logical role will be to help facilitate the process and to invest in the organization. The grants that Mrs. Ouellette will go after can only pay for fixed assets and labor. The project will still require a mobile meat processing unit. The District can purchase that unit (likely cost > $200,000) and lease it to the cooperative that runs it. The District can help sell the idea at the political and community level through it's ongoing work to provide market assistance to local farmers.

We at the District have made it clear that there are some conditions to gaining our assistance for this project. First, it must be a private venture with legal standing to go after the grants. The Distict will be a partner, not the primary organization behind the movement. Sometimes government needs to learn to step back and help the private market thrive rather than trying to own it.

The people who work for the organization will not be District or government employees; they will be employees or volunteers from the private venture.

The service provided must extend to neighboring counties. This must be a regional effort that includes King, Kitsap, Mason and Thurston County producers and distributors. And the District will not help purchase any fixed assets such as land or buildings.

What can you do? Well, there are some people who don't see the value of small farm producers and don't consider them to be "real" agriculture. We've been working closely with local legislators to reverse this mistaken impression, and no one is more important in changing this than State Senator Marilyn Rasmussen of the 2nd District. If she gets behind this idea and the Pierce Conservation District, she can pass legislation that will gain us the resources to get the job done.

Now, what I'm talking about here, so that we're clear, is a bill (SB6834) to increase the assessment authority of the Pierce Conservation District from $5 per parcel to $10 per parcel. And before you scream "tax increase" be aware that if the bill passes it will still be up to the Pierce County Council to actually implement the increase. When the Council enacted the first $5 they actually reduced other fees so that it wasn't an increase at all. They might take that approach again.

So here's what you do. After you're done reading this contact State Senator Marilyn Rasmussen by phone, email or mail. Tell her the following, in your own words;

* Local small acreage farmers *are* farmers
* We need this help for our farmers
* You support this project, the funding idea, and the Pierce Conservation District
* She should get this bill passed as one of her top priorities next legislative session

For your convenience here is her contact info;

State Senator Marilyn Rasmussen
409 Legislative Building
PO Box 40402
Olympia, WA 98504-0402
(360) 786-7602
Fax: (360) 786-1999
rasmussen.marilyn@leg.wa.gov

Call or write her now, don't let it go till later. We'll need to get a clear message to her and sustain it over the next ten months to make this a reality.

I promise more posts on this idea as it develops, and it's my understanding that the Tribune will soon write about it. Stay tuned and ready for action. It will take us all working together to make this happen.

Saving Faith Dairy

2008-02-26T04:57:00.000-08:00

Or, "Keeping Faith Alive"

I was amazed last year when I first heard about the closing of Faith Dairy in a Tribune article last summer. Not amazed that yet another Pierce County dairy was closing. Since I came to the District in 2001 the dairy count has gone from 14 to 6 that we know about. And usually we know about them all since the District has to offer each one planning services for their manure management.

No, what amazed me was the volume of calls that I received after my name and phone number were posted in a Tribune column written by Kathleen Merryman. Most of these said "please don't let them close down" and "we need to do whatever it takes to save milk in glass" and even "how dare you close down Faith Dairy." Believe it or not I even got a death threat for my role in shutting them down. I hoped that the anonymous threat maker would actually read the article and see that I was trying to save the property before making good on his promise to come to my office and start shooting.

The Tribune has taken down the Merryman post on their website, but you can at least read a reference to it on one of my favorites, the local blog "thriceallamerican" here. Also, you can see a YouTube video posted by the Tribune about Faith's last day here.

Now, I didn't start working on the "save Faith Dairy" campaign because I was afraid of misguided death threats. I did it because of the passion that people obviously felt about the loss of a quality local food producer, and because of my organization's mission to save natural resources. Like the neighbors of other shut down dairies, we at the District know all too well the fate of dairy land after the business ends. Can you say "housing development?"

And in this case there's a spectacular property facing 72nd Street where the drive through retail operation stands closed. It would be a shame to watch that turn into yet another mobile home park, housing development or strip mall.

Working closely with the County Council and County Executive's office we formulated a plan to try to save the land. I sat with the Mensonides family several times to go over purchase details and offers, and strategized with the local representatives of Cascade Land Conservancy.

At the same time I made it clear that the District's dream option would be that a private venture comes forward to purchase all the properties and run it as a working farm. To us at the District that would be the ultimate win, and one that we would try to support technically and perhaps even financially.

So I was happy to have the "Save Faith Dairy" group come to last night's FARM Board meeting to talk about their vision to buy all the properties and return the farm to production. The group included Lynn Brewer (who has worked on raising venture capital), Andrew Bacon (an erstwhile blogger and community activist) and Rob Mensonides (who grew up on the property and presumably knows a thing or two about running a dairy).

They're long on inspiration and dedication to the cause, and time will tell if their plan is a good one. It takes more than desire to run a dairy in today's Western Washington milk scene, just ask the folks at Wilcox, who recently shut down as well. But there seems to be an evergrowing group of locals who are willing to put their money where their mouth is and buy fresh, local farm products. A peek at just a few of the blogs and websites that are hot with Faith and Wilcox Dairy talk shows that a number of people care about the subject.

Thrice All American

Exit 133

Tacoma Gas Prices

Why did Faith Dairy close? Well, I've spent some time with Sid Mensonides, majority owner, and he's given me some insight. Unfortunately it's a story that I'm all too familiar with, since I've also sat with most of the other dairy owners that have closed during my last seven years with the District. It's usually a combination of rising expenses (mainly related to the rising cost of oil and feed in one way or another) and relatively stable milk prices.

Increasing costs of dealing with government regulation isn't a primary factor but contributes to the problem, and usually there are issues with the basic business model and its distance from the consumer. That of course isn't the case with Faith, since they had a substantial amount of their sales direct to customers who would drive to the facility on 72nd. Still, Sid did say that it was very difficult to grow that market, and if expenses are rising and revenue is remaining stagnant, you're in for trouble sooner or later.

I have high hopes for the "Save Faith Dairy" group. They're going to need a lot of help to sustain a dairy in Western Washington, no matter how inspired and energetic they may be. The District will be part of their partnership no matter what, if they manage to buy the property and start their operation. They will need to plan their manure management, and that requires a certified nutrient management plan, something that only the District can do for them under Washington State Law.

We may be able to offer some marketing assistance as well, though not as much as I'd like due to the obstacles to better funding we've faced in the last four sessions in Olympia, talked about here. More on how you can help fix this problem soon, I promise.

The District is an integral partner to this effort, and we're working very closely with Cascade Land Conservancy and the Pierce County Council. Offers are being formulated and a plan for the properties to back up the private venture is in formation. Many many people want to have at least a memory of Faith Dairy on 72nd and at the farm in Roy, if not the milk itself, and would support ongoing agricultural uses for the property.

How to keep the Faith alive? Keep the discussion going, both on the web and in public. Send letters, phone calls and emails to the Pierce County Council and State Senator Marilyn Rasmussen indicating your support for local government intervention to keep this property whole and in agricultural use. You can count upon us to do our part as well. I'll be talking to anybody who will listen about the tragedy of farmland loss to development in general and the shame that would accrue to the community if these properties are converted, burying a traditional agricultural past under lawns and asphalt concrete for the rest of human history.

More to come, including other ways you can help out, I promise...