Buy Local Food In Kitsap

The Ananda Hills Farm is located at:

553 Embody Rd.
Port Ludlow, WA 98365

360 732 0111

jewatkins@olypen.com

Farmer Jennie Watkins sells grass fed lamb, wool, eggs from pastured laying hens, vegetables and fruit from her market garden. You can buy off the farm or at the Port Ludlow Farmers Market for the 2008 season.

The Wool Story: Interview With Jennie Watkins

Last modified on 2008-07-22 23:49:19 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

Jennie Watkins is a former Bainbridge Islander who emigrated from BI to Port Ludlow to find more affordable land to begin her transformation from registered nurse to a future full time farmer. In this audio interview with Jennie we learn a little bit about the difficulties that any beginning farmer has in acquiring a farm and developing it to the point of a more or less comfortable flow….which it never is.

But that is the thing with organisms and a farm is an organism, what some might call a super organism. In other words, the various organisms from soil microbes (or even the minerals in the soil) up through the plants, the animals and up to the farmer act a bit like a new organism comprised of all the formerly independent organisms. The farm organism goes through stages of growth and development much like other organisms and changes over time. The farmer…and the community surrounding the farmer… travel together from infancy through childhood, adolescence, etc. requiring a very long time commitment and resolve to overcome obstacles placed in the farm’s life of development and even to its survival. A farm abandonment can be compared with a death in that sense.

I think this need for long term care and support by the farmer and the usual short term involvement by the consumers of the farm’s products is one of the sources of why all farmers find the business of farming so complicated and difficult. In the financial world we would call this dis-intermediation. Nash Huber of the Delta farm has commented on that topic on one of the posts on this site. Uncertainty breeds risk and volatility.

What makes this an exciting opportunity is that people who are interested in improving the lot of our local farmers can help by working together to reduce “volatility” for farmers, volatility in product demand, prices, land costs, etc. The Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance represents one attempt to do this.

Have a listen to a recent phone interview I had with Jennie where she generously shares some very personal details of her journey as a farmer. Her story could spur some ideas for other aspiring farmers so its worth listening to the entire 50 minutes when you have a break in your day. We can all get to meet the producers, learn about them, become their friends…and answers will come if we ask the right questions. And, in spite of some bumps in the road Jennie appears to be headed toward making enough from her farming efforts to become a full time farmer.