Published: Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Camano Island farmers stay close to nature
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Kristi O'Harran / The Herald
Jon and Elaine Stevens own The Open Gate Farm on Camano Island where they sell produce and flowers at a roadside stand.
Jon Stevens harvested about 250 heads of garlic Monday at The Open Gate Farm on Camano Island.
"It's drying on the deck and smells like a cheap trip to Italy," Stevens said. "Just close your eyes, breath deeply and you're there."
If he wasn't such a productive farmer, Stevens could do stand-up comedy or write a sassy book. Here he describes sparrows that moved into what was the ancestral home for a bunch of swallows: "This year the sparrows returned early again. And this time they really got control of the block. They moved back into the nice house, got their friends to move into another one, and then stuffed the third one so full of grass and chicken feathers no one could enter. It's going to take a jackhammer to clean it out in the fall. They used so many feathers we expect to see a bald chicken out in the yard."
His words and images are as splendid as his impeccably tended two-acre farm at 269 Russell Road. He grows produce to sell at a roadside stand with his wife, Elaine, who nurtures and sells flowers as colorful as a print by Georgia O'Keeffe.
Shoppers might find Elaine Stevens, who was raised in the Sierra Nevada in northern California, offering flowering currant, Oregon grape, crocosmia, double purple lilacs, rhubarb and shasta daisies.
Her husband, 60, was born in Ohio to third generation farmers. Jon Stevens said he was raised in his grandfather's truck garden in Saginaw, Mich.
He speaks to groups about "Creating Soil on Camano" and "The Happy Locovore" and designed and teaches a class called "The Honorable Farmer." He's developed, with other businesses in Stanwood, a film series, "Food for Thought," showing movies about agriculture.
Their farm stand is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Sustainablilty is the farm's theme. They offer lettuce, rhubarb, beets, onions, carrots and beans, all grown to adhere to strict, certified naturally grown standards.
"These are even more rigorous than certified organic so you are assured of GMO-free, healthy food," Stevens said. "We provide healthy food for happy families."
They bought their property in 2000 and opened the stand in 2004. The demonstration farm offers alternatives to factory farmed food from faraway fields, he said.
Raised a Quaker, Stevens attends Everett Bible Church with his wife. He said they are blessed to be living on their land.
"There is a humility we can learn from farming which can be learned no other way," Stevens said. "We see ourselves on a mission here."
He mentioned another farm stand on the Island that features beans and corn.
"So we go easy on the beans and corn," Stevens said. "We leave room for each other."
On a property tour, Stevens told me more about cow manure than I wanted to know. We chatted near bee hives where he harvests blackberry honey.
The couple adore creating memories for their two grandchildren. Visitors can mingle with Snickers the happy farm dog; a farm cat; ducks including Parson Dudley Brown, DD, Quackers and Cheese, and chickens, all named of course, including pompous Grandma Betty.
When hens get too old to lay eggs, they work on, eating bugs and pests to protect crops.
The farmer said he is in the process of migrating to permaculture, a model of farming that mimics how nature grows things. He is working on Stanwood's Sept. 25 Harvest Jubilee, as is Jubilee founder Vivian Henderson of Stanwood.
She's visited The Open Gate Farm where she said the couple offer delicious cinnamon rolls.
"He's a hoot," Henderson said. "Jon has a funny imagination."
Together they are helping create a slow food chapter, which is a way of living and eating.
"I can see it now," Stevens said about a potential chapter soiree. "A long table set with colorful tablecloths stretched out across our shaded lawn. Forty chairs filled with laughing, chatting, amiable men and women all chewing slowly and tasting, really tasting, the food they are sharing. And the chickens and ducks running around under the table, looking for dropped morsels and pecking kneecaps to signal they are ready for another hunk of bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar."
He especially loves to chat with folks who stop at the stand, and gaze at a potential lifestyle.
"People seem to take encouragement from seeing someone actually living the small farm dream, someone who has walked away from the 8 to 5, the mind numbing commute, the never ending noise, the smelly gas stations, and who are actually living on what a small piece of land can produce."
Their ducks and chickens waddle up to visitors and give out autographs, Stevens said. The animals talk to folks who are half drunk with hope about the good life they could lead.
"Ducks give good advice, generally," Stevens said.
Kristi O'Harran: 425-339-3451; oharran@heraldnet.com.
Visit the farm
Jon and Elaine Stevens' produce stand is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 269 Russell Road on Camano Island.
For more information about The Open Gate Farm, call 360-387-4449 or go to www.theopengatefarm.com.
"It's drying on the deck and smells like a cheap trip to Italy," Stevens said. "Just close your eyes, breath deeply and you're there."
If he wasn't such a productive farmer, Stevens could do stand-up comedy or write a sassy book. Here he describes sparrows that moved into what was the ancestral home for a bunch of swallows: "This year the sparrows returned early again. And this time they really got control of the block. They moved back into the nice house, got their friends to move into another one, and then stuffed the third one so full of grass and chicken feathers no one could enter. It's going to take a jackhammer to clean it out in the fall. They used so many feathers we expect to see a bald chicken out in the yard."
His words and images are as splendid as his impeccably tended two-acre farm at 269 Russell Road. He grows produce to sell at a roadside stand with his wife, Elaine, who nurtures and sells flowers as colorful as a print by Georgia O'Keeffe.
Shoppers might find Elaine Stevens, who was raised in the Sierra Nevada in northern California, offering flowering currant, Oregon grape, crocosmia, double purple lilacs, rhubarb and shasta daisies.
Her husband, 60, was born in Ohio to third generation farmers. Jon Stevens said he was raised in his grandfather's truck garden in Saginaw, Mich.
He speaks to groups about "Creating Soil on Camano" and "The Happy Locovore" and designed and teaches a class called "The Honorable Farmer." He's developed, with other businesses in Stanwood, a film series, "Food for Thought," showing movies about agriculture.
Their farm stand is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Sustainablilty is the farm's theme. They offer lettuce, rhubarb, beets, onions, carrots and beans, all grown to adhere to strict, certified naturally grown standards.
"These are even more rigorous than certified organic so you are assured of GMO-free, healthy food," Stevens said. "We provide healthy food for happy families."
They bought their property in 2000 and opened the stand in 2004. The demonstration farm offers alternatives to factory farmed food from faraway fields, he said.
Raised a Quaker, Stevens attends Everett Bible Church with his wife. He said they are blessed to be living on their land.
"There is a humility we can learn from farming which can be learned no other way," Stevens said. "We see ourselves on a mission here."
He mentioned another farm stand on the Island that features beans and corn.
"So we go easy on the beans and corn," Stevens said. "We leave room for each other."
On a property tour, Stevens told me more about cow manure than I wanted to know. We chatted near bee hives where he harvests blackberry honey.
The couple adore creating memories for their two grandchildren. Visitors can mingle with Snickers the happy farm dog; a farm cat; ducks including Parson Dudley Brown, DD, Quackers and Cheese, and chickens, all named of course, including pompous Grandma Betty.
When hens get too old to lay eggs, they work on, eating bugs and pests to protect crops.
The farmer said he is in the process of migrating to permaculture, a model of farming that mimics how nature grows things. He is working on Stanwood's Sept. 25 Harvest Jubilee, as is Jubilee founder Vivian Henderson of Stanwood.
She's visited The Open Gate Farm where she said the couple offer delicious cinnamon rolls.
"He's a hoot," Henderson said. "Jon has a funny imagination."
Together they are helping create a slow food chapter, which is a way of living and eating.
"I can see it now," Stevens said about a potential chapter soiree. "A long table set with colorful tablecloths stretched out across our shaded lawn. Forty chairs filled with laughing, chatting, amiable men and women all chewing slowly and tasting, really tasting, the food they are sharing. And the chickens and ducks running around under the table, looking for dropped morsels and pecking kneecaps to signal they are ready for another hunk of bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar."
He especially loves to chat with folks who stop at the stand, and gaze at a potential lifestyle.
"People seem to take encouragement from seeing someone actually living the small farm dream, someone who has walked away from the 8 to 5, the mind numbing commute, the never ending noise, the smelly gas stations, and who are actually living on what a small piece of land can produce."
Their ducks and chickens waddle up to visitors and give out autographs, Stevens said. The animals talk to folks who are half drunk with hope about the good life they could lead.
"Ducks give good advice, generally," Stevens said.
Kristi O'Harran: 425-339-3451; oharran@heraldnet.com.
Visit the farm
Jon and Elaine Stevens' produce stand is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 269 Russell Road on Camano Island.
For more information about The Open Gate Farm, call 360-387-4449 or go to www.theopengatefarm.com.
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