Farming in San Juan County takes dedication as the challenges are unique – costs are higher, land prices are rising, and net income is often low to negative. Yet dozens of San Juan County farmers show up year after year to feed our communities, to provide an alternative from big ag, and because they can’t help but love the work. To highlight their dedication, the San Juan Islands Agricultural Guild produced a series of short films with Orcas-based filmmaker Alex Fleming-McNeil.
In the four films, local farmers Rob Waldron of Talking Horse Ranch on San Juan, Hailey Averna of West Beach Farm on Orcas Island, and Abe Gates and Derek Eisel of Watmough Bay Farm on Lopez shares their passion for good food, the importance of local farms, and the reality of what it takes to farm here. Each film then highlights different ways to find locally grown food – at the local Farmer’s Markets, via direct farm sales and CSAs, and for accessible options, through local food banks like the Lopez Island Family Resource Center Food Share program.
Each farmer is truly dedicated to bringing local food to the community. For many, like Rob Waldron at Talking Horse Ranch on San Juan island, it is a way of life: “I’m turning 80 in another week. They ask me when will you retire? My thought process is, well I love doing it, it keeps me going. If I’ve got something to do, I’ve got to get out of bed and go do it. Then what would I do? Get an easy chair and watch TV? I’m not into that.”
Hailey Averna of West Beach Farm on Orcas wanted to grow safe food for herself, her family and eventually friends. In the films, she differentiates the work taking place at her small scale farm from conventional agriculture. “The food system that we have is a broken, extraction-based system that leeches all nutrition and carbon from our soils. I see my place in it as helping bridge gaps in getting food to all the people who need it.”
Hailey also shares the ways in which she and her neighboring farmers support each other: “The community of farmers here is really cool – we’re not competing with each other, we’re competing against the food truck that comes in on the ferry every week, so we’re all really trying to build each other up. When I don’t have salad and Rising Oaks has salad and I’m doing my sandwiches at the farmer’s market, we can support each other.”
In a similar vein, Derek Eisel of Watmough Bay Farm on Lopez Island, highlights how “everybody who’s doing these small farms, we’re creating an alternative to walk away from this big food system.” Abe Gates (also of Watmough Bay Farm), shares his perspective, “I’m a pretty firm believer that we’ve evolved growing food together as a community and that is being lost and I think that is part of the sickness this culture has. We’re all so siloed by ourselves […] and we’re not growing, preserving, processing food together like we have.”
Beyond walking away from Big Ag, at the farm, Derek and Abe are working to build a food system that is focused on community and creating opportunities to gather. Derek describes, “I think the biggest ray of hope of people supporting small farms is them understanding how joyful it is for them to be part of the farm, like with our CSA customers when we had our CSA farm dinner, we’re serving them food that we were able to grow and harvest in part because they upfront funded us in the CSA.”
We invite you to watch all films, to get to know our local farmers better. The films offer an honest look at both the beauty and challenges of farming in San Juan County, including the financial realities many producers face and ways in which we, community members, can show our support to strengthen the local food system. We are deeply grateful to West Beach Farm, Talking Horse Ranch, Watmough Bay Farm, the Lopez Food Share, and the San Juan Island Farmers Market for trusting us with their stories. This project was generously funded by an anonymous donor who we give deep thanks to.
Watch each video below.
