Quillisascut Farm School — Connecting Field and Table

Fortunately, there are ever growing numbers of concerned consumers, as well as food retailers, distributors and chefs, who are working to bring connection between field and table a little closer to home, knowing that if we don’t take a hand in seeing that our own food is wholesomely produced, no one will.

It was this mission that was taken on by Lora Lea Misterly and her husband, Rick, back in the 1990s. Having successfully run their Washington State Quillisascut Farm, providing goat’s milk cheese to numerous restaurants and outlets throughout the state, they found that while European chefs had a great understanding of food production and the importance of the connection between the farm and the table, American chefs did not. “As we grew with our cheese and with the new chefs that were coming on line, we realized that newly trained American chefs were frequently disconnected from the earth,” Lora Lea Misterly told Organic Connections. “We thought it would be great for them if they could have that understanding, and that somebody should come up with a way of teaching them. Well, usually if you come up with the idea of someone doing something, pretty soon you realize that no one else is doing it and maybe that ‘someone’ should be you. And that’s how our idea of starting the school here on our farm began. We wanted to bring chefs out to the farm, have them spend some time here and really get to learn how to grow things, find out what goats are like, learn how to make the cheese and how to incorporate all those things into their menus.”

Thus began the Misterlys’ first farm teaching program, Chefs on the Farm—and the chefs that visited during those initial programs never forgot them. Four years later, Chef David Blaine of Latah Bistro in Spokane, Washington, is still reaping the rewards. “I think the focus for me was that it’s not just about where your food comes from, it’s about how you handle it as well,” Blaine told Organic Connections. “There are many layers to this system, and that sense of interconnectivity was the biggest thing I got from it. I feel a lot less isolated standing in my kitchen right now. I feel those tendrils of connections to all of the other people that make these plates of food possible.”

Since that time, the types of students attending the Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts have broadened considerably. In addition to chefs, the Misterlys now host courses for new farmers, culinary students, nutritionists and nutritional students, youth groups, high school students, high school culinary arts teachers and family and consumer science teachers, and there is even a weekend for parent-and-child teams. With bunkhouse-style lodging, participants spend several days learning to work the farm hands-on and how to prepare food that has just come from the field or the barnyard. They milk goats, make cheese, help care for farm animals, transplant vegetables, and harvest produce from the gardens. Included in the program are visits to neighboring organic farms to hear presentations about honeybees, grassfed meats and composting. Then dinner is a time to feast on the bounty of the farm, as students prepare their evening meal from each day’s labor.

Sustainable Farming

Part of what visitors and students are taught at the farm school is sustainable farming practices. These encompass the raising of healthy crops without poisons, the use of nutritious composts, natural fertilization (in their case, with plentiful goats), and the natural address of weeds.

Lora Lea sums up sustainable farming with an interesting use of modern terminology. “I like trying to work within nature’s operating system. Changing the mindset of the farming that is out there and that has the money and the power is a really big job. So all I can do is my piece to educate people and myself about what is health and what is healthy for the soil, and look for those farmers who are working on that path as well.”

It all begins in the soil, and the area around the Quillisascut Farm has abundant minerals. It still needed more, though. “The soil wasn’t growing a lot of plants when we first moved here because it required food. When we put compost and bedding on it, it ate them up quickly. There were plenty of minerals in the soil, but it needed the other side: it needed the fertility; it needed to be fed. Our main solution to this has been raising goats that increase the fertility of the soil, that regenerate the earth.”

On the point of weeds, Lora Lea made an interesting suggestion. “Some of the weeds in our gardens are very delicious,” she laughed. “Take, for example, dandelions. How many people are out there spraying their yards with herbicides to get rid of dandelions? You could eat all of these plants; then you wouldn’t have the problem, and you’d be savvy. You’d love your neighbor’s dandelion crop that is going over to your yard to reseed it, and you’d have some fresh greens in the spring that are really nutritious and are actually good to eat. Maybe you just need to learn how to cook them, how to prepare them so that they taste delicious.”

Sustainable farming also includes utilizing seeds from crops that have been raised in a healthy manner. “I think we’re in for a change in the whole seed system,” Lora Lea said. “The large corporations are buying up the big distribution companies. So, even if you’re purchasing from a company that sells seeds to home gardeners, the seeds that you are buying are grown by a farmer but the distribution system is run by a big corporation. I believe the next revolution is really learning how to save our own garden seeds and shared seeds, and looking for people that are growing seed and making that connection ourselves instead of through these other systems. I expect we’re going to start seeing more models like Seed Savers Exchange. They have many people growing seeds for them in safe conditions.

“Why is this important? It’s one way to preserve the seeds that we want instead of the seeds that we get. It’s also the diversity. Twenty years ago a lot of different seeds were disappearing and we were just getting those industrialized seeds that were being developed for commercial agriculture, even for home gardens. So, who’s growing the seed for that delicious tomato? Nobody. Seed Savers Exchange did a marvelous job of the renaissance of heirloom tomatoes, with the abundance of colors and varieties that are now available, getting the message out, and organizing them in a cohesive way so that everybody has access to them.”

Lora Lea is also involved with two additional projects to educate others. As part of Slow Food Upper Columbia, she has helped teach people about reconnecting to the land and the delicious rewards that can be had. Periodic potlucks are held, utilizing produce from local gardens, and education is provided at the same time. Contributing to Northwest RAFT (Renewing America’s Food Traditions), she has assisted in bringing back to life local fruits and vegetables that have not been grown since Native American times, forgotten after the advent of commercial food systems. These include huckleberries, choke cherries, elderberries, camus root, Oregon grapes, Inchelium garlic, and the Ozette potato.

From the Farm to the Table

In a sense, Lora Lea wanted to share the fruits of her own upbringing through the Quillisascut Farm School. “I was raised on a farm in Leavenworth, Washington,” she related. “My parents milked cows and sold milk and eggs. My mom made cheese with the summer milk surplus. I remember the taste of fresh curds, real creamed cottage cheese and butter. It is a taste that isn’t duplicated in anything found at the local grocer. I learned my love of country living and homemade cheese and country lifestyle right from them.”

She never lost that love. After she married, Lora Lea and her new husband started working the land he already owned while looking for more. She had begun making cheese and saw that there could be a market for it. “It was all really from the idea that we wanted to be self-sufficient,” she said.

Lora Lea eventually found that she wished to bring to others the same satisfaction that she had experienced—or at least to be able to educate them about what it was like.

“People today are very disconnected from the sources of their food,” she stated. “They’re not even seeing that there are people behind it. Who are they? What are their lives like? If you’ve never been on a farm, if you’ve never participated in any part of growing the food for the table, then everything that’s coming into your kitchen has already been processed by somebody else’s hands. And people just don’t make that connection.”

Neither does society at large realize the damage that’s been done by the loss of that connection. “I think we have this myth that food is cleaner and safer if you get it at the grocery store and it’s wrapped up in plastic,” said Lora Lea. “But science is starting to come through and say, ‘Hey, you know, this is not better. It doesn’t have higher nutrition. Plastic packaging creates its own condition for bacteria to grow in.’”

Mounting concern is also developing over genetically modified crops. While European countries refuse to import them, our regulatory agencies have awarded them “generally recognized as safe” status, so no labeling is required to alert consumers of what they’re buying. “I think genetic modification is scary,” Lora Lea remarked. “I don’t really believe it’s the answer for the future. We already have naturally genetically modified crops out there that we’ve ignored—crops that nature and generations of people who have worked with them have created—which achieve these changes in the safe system that we have. Maybe we need to look in a different direction. We’re looking to science and universities for those answers, and we have corporations trying to find the answers so that we can have a ‘marketable product.’ Instead we should look to some of the peasant farmers around the world who have been growing wheat and grain and corn for centuries and have plants that are drought tolerant.”

The news, of course, isn’t all bad. Farmers’ markets are becoming increasingly popular and individuals on their own are starting to realize that there is a correlation to be made. “I think people are beginning to make that connection between the farm and the table with the farmers’ market movement. The people that are growing their food—the farmers—are ecstatic to have these relationships with those who are buying their food and watching their families grow. It’s really about learning each other’s stories and reconnecting on a human level.”

Chefs on the Farm—the Book

After they had been running their school for a time, Rick and Lora Lea found that many who attended wished they could in some way take a bit of the experience home with them. As well, the Misterlys wanted a method by which they could export the experience and interest others in it. These factors resulted in the creation of the book Chefs on the Farm: Recipes and Inspiration from the Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts. The book describes the seasonal workings of the farm and the experiences of chefs who have attended, and also contains 65 farm-fresh recipes.

Back to the Land

In addition to teaching people from all walks of life about the relationship of the farm to the table, Lora Lea is hoping to help others start their own farms. “There are a large number of young people who would like to be involved in farming and are so disconnected that they don’t know how to go about it. How do they get land? How do they gain the skills for farming on a diversified farm when even the universities are teaching agribusiness? “You can take a broader look and ask, what would be needed for small farms to feed us? Actually, it would require recolonizing the countryside with small farmers. So, some of our work is offering introductory farming classes to help people do that.

“Our society has industrialized,” Lora Lea concluded. “We’re about industry. We create machines to do our jobs. How do we go back to being human when we’re constantly being pushed to be more machine-like? Creating relationships with people, creating relationships with the earth—those are ways that we can practice being more humane. We really need to get back to more basic kinds of eating, closer to the earth.”