Finnriver Orchard crew member Sam Scheidt and his partner Katelyn Porter were looking for an opportunity to get their hands in the soil, deepen their experience with production vegetable growing, and provide a needed resource for the local food bank. They found the connective tissue for their goals at the Finnriver farm when owner Keith Kisler suggested they dig into some underutilized space near the orchard. With the support of Finnriver, the Food Bank Farm and Gardens of Jefferson County, Sam and Katelyn began their first growing season this year.  They are currently responding to a need for an intentional grow of greens, lettuces and salad vegetables for the Tri-Area Food Bank in Chimacum. This is different from gleaning unwanted, overripe, or lesser quality foods from farms and supermarkets—how much of the food makes its way to the food bank. Sam and Katelyn feel passionate addressing the divide between people with means and people without means and the land’s capacity to provide for everyone. The same land can and does provide food for the food bank as well as for the Finnriver kitchen Sam says. Vegetables don’t make distinctions based on income and class. Perhaps humans can learn something from that. Either way, Sam is interested in blurring the boundaries, and feels good about all the labor he puts into growing food when he feels it is a needed resource. The food bank and this Finnriver partnership has also provided Sam and Katelyn a relatively low-risk environment to hone their farming knowledge and experiment with what they enjoy growing. Experiences like this can be vitally important and encouraging to young farmers, Sam says. He wants to encourage more farms to partner with newer farmers to better utilize extra space, address challenges of land access, and grow food for everyone in this community that needs it. This food bank garden has been producing a variety of lettuces, kale, collards, cabbages, and summer squash so far. A bounty of onions and winter squash are growing bigger everyday and will supply both the food bank and the Finnriver Kitchen later this fall. Looking toward future seasons, Sam and Katelyn are hopeful to put in more perennial crops like herbs and berries.

Finnriver relocated our tasting and tap room in 2016 to a historic dairy farm at the central intersection in the rural community of Chimacum. Our goal was to show how rural economic development, land and resource conservation and sustainable agriculture can all converge and thrive. The old cow feeding trough was converted, using reclaimed barn wood, into a 75 foot long community table and the space covered by an open air pavilion. Alongside the pavilion, we restored an old feeding shed into our cidery tasting and taproom. These and other structures make up the Cider Garden, which looks out over the 50 acres of organic farm and orchard. This Cider Garden has now become an all-ages gathering space, music venue and local food court, offering a welcoming space for neighbors and visitors to gather and reconnect to the land that sustains us. In order to continue the mission of educating and inspiring wise land use, we worked with local renewable energy advocates and Power Trip Energy company to apply for the USDA Rural Energy for America program (REAP). With matching funds from REAP, federal tax credits, support from a Barnraiser crowdfunding campaign and loans, Finnriver was able to install an expandable, grid-tied 65-kilowatt system, using 212 solar panels. These panels cover 3,000 square feet of roof space here at the Cider Garden. Initially, we estimated that it would produce 65,000 kWh of electricity annually which would produce enough electricity to supply more than half of our annual power needs and send green energy back into the grid. After one year in service, the solar panels have in fact produced around 74,500 kwh – which is enough electricity to cover almost 80% of Finnriver’s portion of electricity use at the Cider Garden property. To commemorate this feat, a Sol Mandala was crafted by the ceramic artists at Millbrook Clayworks and with metalwork by Abraxas Crow. It celebrates the generous contributions of supporters of Finnriver’s renewable energy campaign. We recently installed an educational display that will teach visitors about the benefits of renewable energy near our North entrance.  We hope that this renewable energy system will provide a venue to educate our community about the benefits of solar energy and give us an exciting opportunity to 'walk our talk' about sustainability and to showcase how the local food economy can integrate land conservation, renewable energy and watershed restoration!

That patch of yellow-flowering, wild mustard greens behind the Finnriver Kitchen aren’t just growing tall to look pretty; they’re working hard! Results are in from the first round of testing on our bioremediation project, revealing the decontamination efforts are meeting our goals of clean and healthy soil! The Remediators, one of Finnriver's land partners, took up the task of removing toxic levels of petroleum and lead from an area of the property where farm equipment was historically repaired. A network of specially selected plants, bacteria and fungus (locally sourced willow, rapeseed, PDN-1 bacterial endophytes, and a mushroom strain similar to the edible Stropharia rugoso-anulata) have significantly reduced the high levels of toxins detected on the site since the project began two years ago. In a decontamination method known as the Integrative Biological Approach, mycoremediation and phytoremediation are used in tandem to leverage each organism’s purifying talents. These living beings have proven abilities to grow in contaminated soils and take up or break down petroleum and heavy metals. “By combining this suite of organisms together, they work better than on their own,” said Howard Sprouse, CEO of The Remediators and lead of the project at Finnriver. For example, the chosen fungi strain are able to transform heavy metals into a soluble form that the plants can then take up and store in their tissues. In general, the methods of bioremediation transform toxic organic materials at the molecular level, converting them into more innocuous compounds. While full mineralization of contaminants is desired, it is sometimes not possible, as in the case of heavy metals. In these scenarios, the hyper-accumulating plant material can be removed from the soil and taken elsewhere to decompose. This will be the method utilized at Finnriver. The biomass of the plant and fungal matter will be significantly less than if the contaminated soil were to be removed directly, as is the case in more conventional forms of remediation. In some cases, the plant or fungi material utilized in remediation create useful byproducts, such as bio oils that can be turned into fuel. There is even consideration that edible mushrooms can be harvested as a food crop byproduct in instances where the organic soil contaminants might be decomposed without so imparting toxicity. Soil contamination, particularly involving heavy metals and petroleum, pose huge health burdens to society and to the earth. Conventional clean-up invokes a sizable financial strain as well. Through observation, appreciation and application of the natural capabilities of some specific plants, bacteria, and fungi, we can remediate the damage as we work in partnership with these incredible beings. The samples collected from the Finnriver farm this spring were from areas of the project where plants were growing well and that were expected to be cleaner. More complete testing will occur at the end of this year’s growing season.