STANWOOD — When Rick Williams’ family first started tilling Stanwood soil four generations ago, almost everyone in the community understood and appreciated farmers work.
Regular families depended on neighboring farms for food. After each harvest, everyone celebrated.
Today, most people get their food from grocery stores. They eat asparagus grown by strangers in Peru and raspberries from Chile. Drivers occasionally honk when they get stuck behind tractors on Highway 532. Many people don’t know when harvest season is, or what crops are grown in their own communities.
“Stanwood was founded with agriculture as its mainstay,” Williams said, standing in his pumpkin patch just east of Camano Island. “And now with the way property is sold on Camano Island, we’re just a stepping stone. A lot of people don’t even realize agriculture exists.”
Williams and other Stanwood and Camano Island farmers want to change that.
So they’re resurrecting the Harvest Jubilee, a Stanwood farming celebration that ended in the early ’40s.
On Saturday, more than a dozen farmers and agricultural-based businesses are inviting the public to their land to see what they do and to get a taste of life on the farm. Participants are invited to race chickens, watch nuns make beeswax candles, ride in a horse-drawn-wagon and tour an orchid farm.
Organizers hope the jubilee will help people connect with local farmers and take more of an interest in where their food comes from.
“If we can’t afford to pay our own farmers to produce our safe farm products, people will have to take a chance with things that are imported,” said Vivian Henderson, who grows specialty produce in Stanwood for restaurants. “We want our farms and farmers to be here for the next generation and it has to be economically viable for our young people to want to do it. You can’t have farms without farmers.”
Competition from both foreign competitors and U.S.-based “mega farms” is affecting the way small farmers and agricultural businesses operate. Rather than try to compete against cheap, imported candles or industry giants like Yankee Candles, the four Orthodox Christian nuns who operate Quiet Light Candles in Stanwood have created a niche: votives and tea light candles handmade from beeswax. Dressed in loose-fitting black cassocks and head wraps, the nuns melt beeswax from Stanwood and around the world into a sweet-smelling liquid wax. Using standard kitchen measuring cups, they pour the wax into metal molds. Then they drop wicks they’ve cut into the candles. They use hair dryers to melt plastic wrap over packages of 100 percent pure beeswax candles, which they say are much healthier for people than the standard paraffin wax candles.
“I don’t even think we try to compete with big businesses,” said Mother Thecla, 44, as she arranged tea light candles on a baker’s tray. Like other Orthodox Christian nuns, she does not use a last name. “I think we’re trying to put out a good product and, little by little, word gets around. If we set out with our goal to compete with them, we couldn’t. We just want to make a living doing something that’s helpful to people and centers around our life of prayer.”
Back at the farm, Rick Williams was busy preparing for the harvest. He stood in one of his many fields and examined a tangled brown mat of beet seeds for moisture. More than five months after immigrant laborers planted red beet bulbs in the soil, the seeds were ready for harvest.
However, even after the seeds are picked and sent to a seed company, Williams will have to wait three or four months for payment.
Unlike Stanwood’s pioneer farmers, his ability to make a profit depends on government regulations, immigration laws and competition from overseas.
He fears future generations won’t want to put up with it all and will choose computers and suits over tractors and jeans.
“The average age of farmers is getting older,” he said. “My other farmer friends, their kids don’t want to work as hard as their parents did. A 40-hour week looks pretty promising.”
But like his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, Rick Williams is a farmer. He knows his job is important.
He hopes the Harvest Jubilee will help more people see that.
Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
