On Being Grown Out of Place
Stephen Jones

It’s a rare April day.  No rain, no fog, some sun and a breeze.  You and thirty-five thousand others from Seattle have the same idea.  Tulips.  A bit more than an hour’s drive north and you can start the slow crawl along two-lane country roads to hundreds of acres of tulips in full bloom.  The fields are split into ten- to forty-acre parcels within eighty thousand acres of highly diverse farmland in the stunning Skagit Valley.  Hit the day right and you’ll also get a 360-degree view of the San Juan Island, Mount Baker, the west slopes of the Cascade Range, a view south and west to the Olympic Mountains, and far to the south, Mount Rainier.  This is the only remaining western Washington agricultural valley.  Like Santa Clara Valley in California, which became Silicon Valley; the Kent, Puyallup, and other agricultural valleys to the south were swallowed whole or cheesed in random bits until gone, victims of development – homes or warehouses near Interestate 5 and all the trappings of the big three: Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com.  These once verdant valleys were comprised of farms raising cows, berries, hops, cabbage, lettuce, poultry, and everything else on would expect to see in a storybook farm.  Skagit Valley is not a firewall to development; it is simply the last one left.

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Rebeka Denn, Sunset Magazine, October, 2012

In a low-slung research building in the heart of Washington’s Skagit Valley, professor Stephen Jones stands next to his random scribbles on a chalkboard. They read: “Grassy. Spice. Hay. Fresh-bright.”

These notes from a recent tasting look a lot like a critic’s assessment of wine or possibly coffee. But Jones, a plant geneticist, is judging breads. The loaves were baked using the wheat grown in the ripe amber fields outside his new Bread Lab, just south of Bellingham, at the Washington State University Research Center, where he is the director.

The lab, stocked with sacks of flour and stacks of baking trays, is focused on small-scale wheat grown regionally. That’s a sea change from just a few years ago. Then, the first “100-mile dieters” searched futilely for local wheat to grind into flour. Although the crop was common in many Western fields in the 19th century, local wheat became scarce when food production became industrialized and centralized.

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Skagit Valley grains are better than grains from other states. Why don’t we start acting like it?

By: Cody Bay  |   November 2012   |  FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Third-generation Skagit Valley farmer David Hedlin is ramping up his grain operation in hopes of increased local demand PHOTO CREDIT: MARIANA KAJLICH

When you’re in the Skagit Valley, it feels like you’ve gone to the very source of what it means to “eat local.” Many of the goods we buy at Seattle farmers markets comes from this valley—from producers such as Skagit River Ranch and Samish Bay Cheese—and its towns are dotted with quirky bakeries selling freshly baked loaves, and brewpubs pulling tap handles bearing cheekily named beers from a dozen breweries within county lines.

But beneath the feel-good fresh surface is a paradox that many of the local producers would like to change: Those golden boules are made from wheat shipped in from Canada. That local beer you’re drinking likely relies on malted barley from Europe. All those fields of grain? They’re being shipped overseas. Despite the local glow, farmers here are ultimately beholden to a national commodities market that dictates what their crops—and the land they’re grown on—are worth.

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Last week I attended

I had a great time there, not least because it was located at theWSU Mt Vernon Research Center, home of the Fruit Tree Research facility and a beautiful orchard of heirloom fruit trees. It was very inspiring and I expect I will soon need to start soliciting neighbors to take some of the bread that I plan to bake.

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I’m just back from the Kneading Conference West

The Kneading Conference’s misson is to “inspire and educate novice and professional bakers, grain growers, millers, wheat breeders, wood-fired oven enthusiasts, food entrepreneurs, food writers, and anyone who loves to eat hand-crafted breads.  The purpose is to bring together people who, by exchanging skills, experiences, and ideas, will invigorate the rebuilding of regional grain systems.”  That’s truly what it was: the people who love to make, sell, and eat good bread getting together with the folks from the region who raise and process the grains, trying to figure out how best to work together.

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 2nd annual Kneading Conference West, which happened to be right here in Mount Vernon at the WSU Research and Extension Center. I was thrilled to get a press pass for it, as the conference sold out some time ago. This is an amazing event! The remarkable thing about this conference was how happy everyone was. It was more like a music festival than a professional conference. Everyone there was equally obsessed with bread and grains and ready to talk with everyone else about it.

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I’d been looking forward to the second offering of the Kneading Conference West, held in the idyllic gardens and fruit orchard of the Mount Vernon Research Station, where grains are being grown, tested and much discussed. Over this past September weekend they were also being ground, mixed, cooked and tasted to delicious ends.

There was enough variety to keep the 200 or so various types of grain geeks amused, from tasting sessions – grains baked into crackers or breads, or liquified into beer – to talks on the science of baking (complete with easy-to-grasp 3D models) to demos on how pizza can turn into pita.

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If our head bakers look perky, it’s because they spent three days at Kneading Conference West, exploring the world of regionally grown grains. Think summer camp for bread and wheat geeks, with lectures, kitchen and lab sessions, plus lots of noshing on all kinds of yeasted things pulled from the wood-fired ovens set up on the grounds. Yes, it was that grueling.

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