Fresh Connections – The Parfitt Way Blog

Farmer extraordinaire,  Brian MacWhorter, this time with his Protein Posse, has folks scrambling for his pork these days. The pub was able to snag two of his prime snorters this month and the resulting pork has  been getting rave reviews. Locally raised, right here on Bainbridge, chops and bellys, trotters and cheeks have been seen as special plates of late. But you have to get there early! Last night’s chops sold out within an hour of them being posted. To stay ahead of the race watch for upcoming specials with Twitter… Search for HarbourPub or PegasusCoffee…

Brian MacWhorter’s BUTLER GREEN FARMS of Bainbridge Isl. and Poulsbo marked a full year of supplying the Pub and Pegasus with fresh greens this summer. “This is a huge milestone for us!” stated Chef Jeff. “A large part of the difficulty of utilizing local products is their limited supply. Brian stepped up and delivered on his promise.” Since the pub committed to sourcing organic and free-range products in 2002, the Chef’s efforts to shorten the distance from supplier to table has been stymied by growers who just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, grow year around.  Brian has  delivered his produce to several restaurants in the past and has worked in the restaurant industry as well, so he is capable of anticipating the needs of the restaurant chefs. Asked about this milestone, Brian explained that his capabilities just didn’t occur overnight. “It’s been a long road to get to this point and I’m really happy that it has worked for us both.”

Abe Waite shoveling compost for the Community Garden at City Hall (Photo Brad Camp: Kitsap Sun)

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND —

In a few weeks, visitors to City Hall will be able to get a summer squash with their building permit, a bit of broccoli with their business license and a vine-ripened, heirloom tomato before giving testimony to the City Council.

“I want people to see City Hall differently — that it’s our public land, and that it works for us and with us,” said Sallie Maron, one of about a dozen mud-streaked, rain-soaked volunteers who planted the grounds there with more than 40 vegetable starts on Monday morning.

The kale, cauliflower, strawberries and other crops are free for the taking.

“It’s for people in need or people who just want to try some fresh food,” said Brian MacWhorter, an island farmer who donated many of the organic vegetable starts. “It’s just public food. It’s a great concept.”

The idea of planting free food around City Hall came out of a talk given by author Darrin Nordahl at the IslandWood environmental learning center in April. Nordahl was promoting his book, “Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture,” which calls for the enlistment of public lands to increase the availability of fresh, healthy foods.

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/may/31/bainbridge-island/#ixzz0pdfuCGwQ

Pierce County’s first mobile slaughterhouse
Cheryl Ouellette has a dream about meat – real meat, local meat, and how meat can save the family farm. Known as the “Pig Lady” for the swine she nurtures at her Summit-area farm, Ouellette is the source and the force for the first mobile meat-processing unit in Pierce County.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/04/07/1138248/from-field-to-table.html?story_link=email_msg

Passions take shape early in life. My passion for raising quality cattle started as a young child on a 320 acre Original Donation Claim property in rural central Pierce County. Old buildings with steeped history, our home set on stones with hand-hewn logs as support beams that even today hold the same historic ranch house where I reside. I grew up working cattle, showing beef calves in 4-H and helping develop a good herd of quality stock.

Time moves ahead, buildings change, fences are moved, repaired and built, families before ours came and moved on. Some things do not change, however. The land, now entering 150 years in agricultural use, remains fertile, healthy and vibrant. Historic, native flora and fauna abound. My passion to sustain this marvelous, intimate land have unfolded over a lifetime, first tended and improved by my parents, now my charge to take into the next century.

Becky Weed, the author, with a New Calf, Feb 20, 2010

The pastures are key. Every cattle rancher is first a grower of grass. Retaining and improving productivity of ranch grasslands while preserving habitat for endangered wildlife, birds and flora that share the ranch pastures, oak savannas, and brushy woodlands is paramount. Cattle movement through various pastures offer soil enhancement and forage health under carefully supervised grazing.

The Camas Prairie Ranch embraces these age old ideals of maintaining a healthy vibrant ranchland providing home and feed for equally happy, premium beef cattle. Our new focus to market our cattle close to home, feed the cattle grass forages their entire lives and provide premium local grass fed beef as an end product, not shipping calves for sale at auction any longer, takes our ranching passion another step.

Grass-fed beef even has a light carbon footprint. Truth be told in words from a recent article in Time magazine: “Conventional cattle raising is like mining. It’s unsustainable, because you’re just taking without putting anything back. But when you rotate cattle on grass, you change the equation. You put back more than you take. It works like this: grass is a perennial. Rotate cattle and other ruminants across pastures full of it, and the animals’ grazing will cut the blades — which spurs new growth — while their trampling helps work manure and other decaying organic matter into the soil, turning it into rich humus. The plant’s roots also help maintain soil health by retaining water and microbes. And healthy soil keeps carbon dioxide underground and out of the atmosphere.” Time Magazine Monday, Jan. 25, 2010 How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet by Lisa Abend

Harlow Cattle Company’s delicious, healthy, humanely raised grass fed beef marketed straight from the ranch becomes a reality. The Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative offered a perfect opportunity to assist in finding like-minded customers. The Harbour Pub and Harlow Cattle Company, brought together by fellow Puget Sound Meat Producer Cooperative member, Tracy Smaciarz, owner and meat cutter at Heritage Meats in Rochester, now embark, with mutually shared passions, to serve the finest, local product available.

Passions meets opportunity! Excitement prevails! Harbour Pub now buys our locally raised beef, prepares and serves the premium product from the calves raised quietly and happily on prairie grasses and the deep, lush bottomland forages of the Camas Prairie Ranch. Our mutual passions unite! Benefits are all yours! The beef from our pampered cattle stays close to the fields where they were born, grew-up, grazed, cavorted and lounged. You enjoy a fine meal with superior nutrition, unique flavor and all naturally grass fed cattle.

The Harlow Cattle Company is operated by one woman, Becky Harlow Weed, once a small girl on this sizable ranch, now a mature woman with a lifelong passion realized and the constant assistance of her husband, Mark, working weekends on the ranch to keep the enterprise operating smoothly. With much delight, I present to you the delicious joys of my deeply passionate cattle raising enterprise. Enjoy!