The Skagit Valley: a hot spot for fresh food
Published 6:41 pm Monday, November 24, 2008
By Bill Morton
A decade ago, I conducted a “Taste of the Market” walking tour on Saturdays in conjunction with the then-executive chef of Seattle’s “Painted Table” restaurant.
Week after week, Chef Tim Kelley, a Pike Place Market insider, would turn our foodie patrons on to unusual farm produce from the Skagit Valley. It seemed that the most dedicated organic growers, the most innovative of new cheeses, the most obscure varieties of squash or Asian cabbages all hailed from that gorgeous flood plain 70 miles to the north.
To augment the excitement Chef Kelley was stirring, I did some of my own digging and came up with a number of factoids:
? The Skagit Valley floodplain is one of the six most fertile places on our planet.
? Eighty percet of the red potatoes on American tables come from the Skagit Valley.
? The Skagit Valley is on the list of the five most endangered agricultural regions by urban expansion and development in America.
? While vegetables and fruits are prime produce in the Skagit, seeds for America’s vegetable growers are equal revenue generators.
Slowly it dawned on me that Skagit County, from a travel writer’s point-of-view, was more than La Conner’s cute art galleries and brew pubs, or Disney-colored tulips in April, or the North Cascades Highway.
The notion that the Skagit Valley may in fact be some of the best of Napa, Holland, and Provence combined hit me a month ago.
I took a two-day French cooking class from Seattle executive chef Sally McArthur at La Conner Flats, a grassy Eden of flowers, manicured scrubs, and shady Lombardy poplars with an impressive kitchen for hosting weddings, teas and cooking classes.
With ingredients exclusively from Skagit producers, our dozen wanna-be chefs learned the ins-and-outs of Salade Nicoise Composee, Poulet au créme l’estragon et Coq au Chinon, and camelized upside-down apple tarts with Calvados créme and more.
Chef McAuthur spends half her summers in France’s Loire Valley teaching week-long “France Through the Kitchen Door” cooking classes and the other half sourcing her classes for her two-day Skagit Valley classes.
“I’m hugely impressed with the excitement and dedication and openness of these farmers in the Skagit Valley,” Chef McAuthur observed over a glass of viognier during a break-in-the-cooking game of pelanque.
I revisited a number of farm stands and small farm operations recently stretching from the I-5 exit at Conway to La Conner and across Highway 20 that connects I-5 at Burlington to Anacortes to the west and north up to scenic Chuckanut Drive. Here are 10 favorites among the area’s farm stops:
The Rexville Grocery
Exit Interstate 5 at Conway and follow the signs across Fir Island, the saucer-flat farmland created as the Skagit River forks into its delta, to La Conner. Halfway to La Conner, the Rexville Grocery will provide your entourage with an impressive array of gourmet goodies, from albacore tuna to lasagne, from deviled eggs to lingonberry jellies. Stewart Welch, the wise and wacky owner, has lived all over the planet with lots of time in exotic locales such as Indonesia. He’s a gourmet minus the attitude. Welch’s Rexville Grocery has a great little dinning room for breakfasts, lunches, and craziness (it was Humpy Fest last weekend) and serves wines and micros on tap. It’s worth the stop.
Snow Good Produce
Located on Fir Island Road, at least three attractions demand that you stop. This has been one of the largest fresh vendors of produce in the county for 19 years, with onions, pumpkins, fresh berries and more. Its seafood options are equally fresh and broad. And third, its ice cream cones are bigger than Mount Baker.
Merritt Apple Farm
Located at 8914 Bayview Edison Road, Merrit Apple Farms has drop-dead gorgeous views of Padilla Bay. It has a 30-plus-year history of producing Washington’s finest Gravenstein, Honeycrisp, and Jonagold apples. Owner Allen and wife Rose are moving their country store a mile east to “Rosabella’s Garden,” which expects to be open by late September. Stay tuned: Rosabella’s Garden appears to be on-track to become one of the best country stores in the Pacific Northwest.
Golden Glenn Creamery
Located at 15098 Field Road, Golden Glen makes Gouda, queso fresco, white cheddar, and the only hand-made mozzerella in the state.
Samish Bay Cheese
At 15115 Bow Hill Road, Samish Bay makes organic certified cheeses that are aged wonderfully, and you can taste the difference aging makes with sample nibbles. On site is the Rootabaga Country Farm Guest House, an authentic early 20th century two-story farmhouse, perfect for a casual family weekend. For details about renting the farmhouse, call360-766-6707.
Taylor Shellfish Farm
Located at 2182 Chuckanut Drive adjacent to the Oyster Creek Inn. I’ve taken the cliff hugging Chuckanut route many times, but had never driven the fern-sided one-lane lane down to the water and the Taylor Farm. Kumamoto oysters, Manila clams, mussels, geoducks, and you can get the oysters any way you want — live-in-shell, or shucked or smoked.
Sakuma Market Stand
At 17900 Cook Road, near Burlington, just off I-5 at Cook Road Exit. This is a “berry” nice stop, with strawberries, raspberries, tayberries, blueberries, as well as a cornucopia of vegetables. But, gourmet food aside, the real reason to stop here is the ice cream sundaes and strawberry shortcakes.
Northwest Home Grown Ranch Meat
Located at 13400 D’Arcy Road, near Bow. If you prefer your meats without the chemicals and implants,, this is the spot. All its pork, lamb, and beef is grass-fed in local pastures. These folks have created the first USDA approved mobile slaughter-house, so that animals can meet their ends in the comfort of their home and surroundings. The result? A tastier chop.
Breadfarm
At 5766 Cain’s Court, in “downtown” Edison. The hamlet of Edison is home to some of the very best cuisine, food products, and purveyors in Western Washington. Breadfarm makes bread. Artisan loaves that complete picnics, baguettes that are as soft and flavorful on the inside as rustic and gorgeous on the outside.
Slough Foods
A few steps away from Breadfarm in Edison, this purveyor has an impressive selection of European wines and local vintages. Its other two claims to fame — well-deserved it turns out — are cheeses and chocolates. Both are rare, expensive, and worth the price.
If you go:
? Mark you calendar today for Oct. 1 and 2. The Festival of Family Farms involves 17 Skagit Valley farms and includes oyster shucking, farm animal petting, hay rides and pony rides, u-pick pumpkin patches, scarecrow making, a 3-acre corn maze, alpaca walking and petting, along with free wine tasting and food samplings. For people who care about food and want an easy introduction to Skagit farmers, this weekend is the best reason to visit the Skagit — even better than the Tulip Festival. To get your own farm guide and map, simply click on www.festivaloffamilyfarms.com or call 360-428-4270
Where to stay
From Mercer Island, Mount Vernon is only a 90-minute drive or less — an easy one-day road trip. For those who want to stay over, I’ve enjoyed my visits at La Conner’s Channel Inn, with water views on one side toward the slough, and also at a very Victorian bed and breakfast, Katy’s Inn, on the hill above La Conner.
(SIDEBAR to Travel Column)
Group united in protecting Skagit Valley
Farmland as rich as the Skagit’s is rare, even precious. It gives each of us life, food, salmon, and eyefuls of beautiful countryside. What a shame, then, if it turned up like the Kent Valley with its big-box distribution centers or like the Puyallup with its auto retailers.
Urban growth, along with the retirement of the Baby Boomers, will exert an almost undeniable force upon Skagit County. Developers are drooling at the vistas of tulips, corn, and raspberries, not to mention the San Juans to the west and towering Mount Baker and the North Cascades to the east, with easy-to-develop, inexpensive, flat, rural farmland in between.
Friends of the farmers who understand the precious value of that floodplain land for table use have united to form “Skagitonians.” This organization, founded in 1989, has as its mission to protect farmland, to help market new high-value crops, to protect the family farm, and to develop agricultural infrastructure where needed.
If you want to learn more or get involved, visit www.skagitonians.org or call 360-336-3974. Once you spend a little time with these small Skagit farmers, you’ll realize what an essential gift to our Northwest lifestyle and future they are.
— Bill Morton
