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By Richard Hines, WSU Small Farms Program
Farmers and chefs share much in common. Yes, they both work with their hands, and they both play a role in putting food on the table. But they also tend to share another common trait: the frenzied schedule. Chefs’ lack of availability was a major obstacle faced by one farm couple as they looked to diversify their farm business by creating an on-farm cooking school.
Farmer Lora Lea Misterly and husband Rick operate Quillisascut Farm, a producer of specialty cheese in rural Stevens County. The Misterlys’ goats and cows have them milking twice a day, seven days a week. And though they’ve been selling their cheese for 16 years, they are not getting rich. That means the couple also raises a garden, in part to help keep expenses down.
It’s a level of activity that chefs can appreciate, Misterly says. Up-before-dawn mornings, regular feedings, the feeling of being tied to the business all the time. It’s no wonder, she says, it was so difficult to get chefs to their farm for a week of learning about how food is raised. When chefs get a week off each year, Misterly says, “They want to go to Hawaii. They don’t want to come here and work.”
The idea for a farm culinary school was first planted in 1990, when a group of food professionals from two urban restaurants came to Quillisascut, which traces its name to an American Indian word meaning “place of the scattered bushes.” The visitors spent several days following the couple around, doing some farm work, and literally bringing food from field to table. “We ate a whole lamb and twelve ducks,” Misterly says. “We went through the food.”
In the first “farm school,” participants gained a new perspective on the relationship between growing, cooking and eating. The Misterlys, too, had a lot of fun. Although Lora Lea believed such an experience was valuable for culinary professionals, she also knew they couldn’t provide the service for free. It was too much work for that. She also wanted to expand the curriculum, perhaps make it a little more formal, and add more speakers–other farmers from around the community who have expertise in fruits and vegetables.
But there was this problem. They could build a farm school, but would the chefs come?
For years, it looked like the answer was no. There were professional chefs who had heard of the first farm school and expressed interest in spending a week in northeast Washington at Quillisascut. But by now, that’s become something of a joke. Year after year, the chefs said they would come, but at the last minute ended up being too busy to get away. Some of these chefs still say they’re planning to come, and it’s been more than ten years, Misterly says with a laugh.
Not sure where to go next with the idea, Lora Lea took a class on farm entrepreneurship offered through Washington State University Extension in Stevens County. Based on the award-winning curriculum, “Tilling the Soil of Opportunity,” the course gave Misterly a chance to take stock of her resources, to brainstorm about new directions for the farm, and to get her ideas down on paper.
She and Rick had been making and selling handcrafted cheese from their farm since 1987, so Misterly knew the value of directly engaging with the public. Working with instructor Al Kowitz, WSU Extension chair for Stevens County, she began fleshing out a business plan for the culinary school idea, but with a new twist.
Professional chefs are tied down, she reasoned, but what if the Misterlys could catch them before they went pro–when they were still students in culinary school? Maybe chefs-in-training would have time to get away for a week before all of their obligations set in. Based on this hunch, she sent letters to culinary schools around the Northwest, then she hit the road to pitch her idea directly in Portland and Seattle.
It has taken some effort, but Misterly was right on. Last year, a dozen students came for the first weeklong sessions, living out of tents in the yard. Comparatively speaking, participants this summer will spend their time in style. Rick is now hard at work on a new building to house Quillisascut’s “Farm School of the Domestic Arts.” The facility includes a commercial kitchen and central eating area on the main floor and four bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. Future plans include a bakery, butchery and walk-in cooler.
The farm school has already reached its limit of 48 registered students in four sessions this summer. Participants will learn how to milk goats, make fresh batches of cheese, and find the ripest peaches in the orchard. They’ll learn to recognize and draw out the nuances of timing and terrain when harvesting and preparing vegetables. They’ll taste the difference inherent in grass-fed meats, and bake a pizza in the new wood-fired brick oven. And they’ll work firsthand with a variety of instructors who have spent decades honing their crafts of cooking and farming.
Participants are not only introduced to how food grows, but also “many of the difficulties and issues that affect the quality and sustainability of farm products,” Misterly says. The cost per student is $600, which covers meals and lodging for the week. The tuition also pays the salary for a professional chef who works with the students, and helps support neighboring farmers. “We pay the farms we visit,” she says. “ I think that’s important. They’re taking time away from their harvest and their farms.”
Students who participated in the 2002 farm school report that it was a life-changing experience.
“I thought I had strong convictions before going to the farm about the importance of buying locally and seasonally,” says Joanna Moogk, a student at the Seattle Culinary Academy, a program of Seattle Central Community College. “I didn’t even know the half of it. Now I need to understand my ingredients, where they come from, what they taste like at their peak, how they are grown, and the controversies and politics that determine their availability and quality.”
Another Seattle Culinary student, Jenny Bright, says: “I learned a lot using the herb garden, trying new herbs, experimenting with familiar ones. Cooking from the garden raised the bar in my mind of what good food should taste like. Words like ‘fresh,’ ‘local,’ and ‘organic’ have new and much more personal meaning for me. This was an experience that I will carry with me throughout my career.”
The value of the program is echoed by WSU’s Kowitz. “You talk about a success story,” he says. “Last year’s students went back to their schools committed to local products. There is nothing like this farm culinary program in the U.S.”
Misterly says she is grateful to WSU Extension for the support she has gotten over the years. Through WSU programs, she has learned web page design, direct marketing and even grant writing, a field she has become familiar with now that she’s raising money to operate the farm school. She recommends the farm entrepreneurship course for beginning farmers and anyone who wants to take their farm in a new direction.
“It’s really great for getting people to think through every step of having a business,” she says. “It helped to see that it’s more than just ‘I like to farm.’ Marketing is the key. Who are you going to market to? How?”
Adding a new line to their farm business has had challenges beyond scheduling problems. But, says Misterly, “we never really viewed the things we did as mistakes. It was an opportunity to learn what didn’t work.”
And now, working with culinary students gives Misterly a chance to see her own farm through new eyes, and that’s one of the benefits that keeps her going.
“It’s not the Waltons. We are contemporary,” she said. “But we get to hear the birds sing everyday, and the crickets at night, to have a relationship with nature on a day-to-day basis, the nature that feeds us. One of the students last year said, ‘This is so real.’ That’s the part I like.”
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