Author Archive for Deborah

On Day 3 hosting USDA Undersecretary Ann Wright, we started off with a tour of New Seasons Market with President Lisa Sedlar; I think Ann was impressed. From New Seasons we were off to the Oregonian for an editorial board meeting to talk about Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.

But really the highlight of the day was cutting the red ribbon to mark the official launch of FoodHub at Ecotrust.

Thank you to one and all who participated. We were joined by WSDA Director Dan Newhouse, ODA Director Katy Coba, USDA’s Vicki Walker, FIC’s Michael Morrissey, representatives from Whole Foods, Safeway, New Seasons, Food Services of America, SYSCO, Duck Delivery, Truitt Brothers, Bob’s Red Mill, Ladd Hill Orchards, Big B Farms, Nostrana, Oregon Tilth, Oregonians for Food & Shelter, the Bill Healy Foundation, the NW Health Foundation, Portland State University, Portland Public Schools, Gervais Public Schools, Oregon Agribusiness Council, Farm Bureau, OSU, Washington School Nutrition Association, First Harvest, GrowFood.org, Community Food Security Coalition, Willamette Farm & Food Coalition, Oregon Food Bank, Adelante Mujeres, Sungold Farm, FoodFront, Burgerville, Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, and on and on and on.

The room was packed with luminaries of the Northwest food & farming community, all gathered to wish us well. THANK YOU. FoodHub is, was and always will be your resource. We’re looking forward to working with you well into the future.

After lunch we spent two hours designing association pages with dedicated colleagues and friends. Watch for those soon. And finally, we ended the day over yet another delicious meal with invigorating conversation. This time about school lunch reform.

Photos by Mike Davis

Day 2 with USDA Undersecretary Ann Wright began at the Eugene Local Food Connection conference. Ann gave a great keynote speech and we signed up 73 new FoodHub members. Welcome good people of Eugene!

From Eugene we raced to Philomath and Gathering Together Farm for a fantastic meal with Organically Grown Company and seed pioneer Frank Morton.

Next step? Stahlbush Island Farms for a tour of their new biogas facility. There I have one word: AMAZING. Stahlbush is a vertically integrated fruit and vegetable operation in the Willamette Valley. They power their production plant using the energy derived from vegetable scraps. It’s an entirely closed loop operation. They even sell energy back to the grid. Truly impressive.

After a tour of Stahlbush Island Farms we sat down for a discussion with area farmers and foresters. The conversation ranged from new organic dairy rules to inheritance taxes to immigration reform, Christmas trees (Oregon is home to the largest Christmas tree grower in the WORLD), wheat prices and the nursery industry (Oregon’s #1 agricultural crop), among many other fascinating topics.

Finally, we ended the day at Navarre in Portland where owner John Taboada joined us for dinner with Garry Stephenson from OSU’s Small Farms Program, Laura Masterson of 47th Avenue Farm, Kendra Kimbirauskas from Friends of Family Farmers, and Sarah Brown and Connor Voss, two young farmers just getting started.

Photo by Mike Davis

I picked up USDA Deputy Undersecretary Ann Wright at the airport today. She’s in the Northwest to help celebrate the official launch of FoodHub. Having out of town guests always gives one the opportunity to get out and about and that’s exactly what we did.

On our way to Eugene for the Local Food Connection conference we stopped at Mahonia Vineyards & Nursery (a FOODHUB member) to visit with Congressman Kurt Schrader and his wife, Oregon State Senator Martha Schrader. Congressman Schrader is a veterinarian and farmer who lives with his Martha on Three Rivers Farm in Canby where at one time they grew and sold organic fruit and vegetables. I had a chance to to show the Congressman and his wife FoodHub. Their response? “Where were you when we had all those organic lamb to sell!?” In other words, they liked it quite a bit.

From Mahonia we traveled on to Pacific Biodiesel. What an impressive operation! These guys will try to make biofuel from just about anything!

Our half day ended with a meal at Marche (a FOODHUB member) shared with Eugene area farmers and FoodHub members (Cattail Creek, Creative Growers and Afton Field Farm). Again, an impressive group of people!

Our thanks to Ann for making the trip. Touring her around the Northwest only serves to remind us how lucky we are.

We wanted to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH to the Washington State Farmers Market Association. Today we had the great honor of participating in their annual meeting. About 50 Washington state farmers market managers joined us for a brainstorming session to help us design FoodHub’s association pages.

You see, right now FoodHub accommodates individual user profiles. Yet, we’ve heard from trade associations, non profit groups, grower collectives, food banks, certification agencies, etc. that they’d like their own presence within the site to champion specific products, programs or members. We’re in the process now of gathering information from these groups so that when we roll out association memberships in FoodHub we have the benefit of early design feedback from the very groups who most want this feature.

We’re off to a great start. Those Washington state farmers market managers had fantastic ideas!

One of the things I like most about FoodHub is the degree to which this resource has been widely embraced by the community at large.

Case in point: the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) recently let us know that they will underwrite one year of membership in FoodHub for the first 100 food buyers and sellers to register for FoodHub at the Local Food Connection conference on Monday, February 1, 2010.

100 members at $100 per year = $10,000.

EWEB, thank you. You are wonderful, tremendous, fantastic, and amazing. You are the epitome of a good corporate citizen. We need more EWEB’s in the world, but in the meantime, we’re glad the Northwest has you.

Head on down to Eugene and we’ll get you signed up courtesy of EWEB.

Five days.

Five days left in beta.

Five days left to sign up for FoodHub at 20% off.

Five days left of Food Services of America’s generous offer to discount the membership fee an additional 20%.

If you aren’t already a FoodHub member, now would be a good time to join.

Oh, and there are FIVE seats left at the FoodHub launch luncheon. On February 2nd, from 11:30 – 1:30 we’re hosting USDA Deputy Undersecretary Ann Wright for lunch at Ecotrust in Portland. We’ll be celebrating FoodHub’s launch and hearing more from Ann about USDA’s new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. If you are a FoodHub buyer or seller you are welcome to join us. The food is going to be delicious! Just post a comment below indicating your interest and we’ll get you more information. MEMBERS ONLY though (one more reason to join if you haven’t already!).

Last week I had the great honor of making a presentation at the 55^th annual North Willamette Horticultural Society meeting at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds. (That’s right, fifty-fifth annual, think about that.)

With no access to the internet I had to help a room full of organic farmers understand the benefits of FoodHub. The old adage about looking for a needle in a haystack came in handy.

When talking about FoodHub I often recount a conversation I had a few years back with a retail grocery buyer. Said retail grocery buyer said to me, “Why can’t I just walk to my computer and type in the word cranberry and get a list of all the cranberry producers that might want to do business with our stores?”

Why indeed? This conversation was, in many respects, the start of FoodHub.

Here’s the tale I told at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds:

I wanted to test the theory that it’s hard to find local farmers on the internet so last night I sat down at my computer and typed in the word brocoli.

Google: Did you mean broccoli? (Why yes, I did, thank you.)

There were 4.2 million results for broccoli. Among the highlights: wikipedia informed me that broccoli is a plant of the cabbage family Brassicaceae; cooks.com let me know that if my broccoli turns olive green in color I’ve overcooked it; BBC News encouraged consumption of broccoli at least once a week to reduce the risk of prostate cancer; and I learned that Erin Brocoli is on Facebook. (Aw, somebody found their high school sweetheart.)

I narrowed my search to ‘broccoli in Oregon’ and got 672,000 results. I was immediately invited to see Broccoli Man sing and dance and surprised to learn that the Oregon Hazelnut Board popped up on the main screen. Why? They had a recipe for Zesty Oregon Hazelnut Broccoli. I also discovered that I didn’t need to suffer through eating broccoli in its original form thanks to some nifty 250 mg broccoli capsules.

What about ‘broccoli for sale in Oregon’? It took Google .27 seconds to return 167,000 results. There is a Broccoli Lane in Roseburg, Oregon; lots of shops are selling things on that street. Powell’s Books is also selling The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen, a classic if ever there was one.

I got closer at 139,000 results with ‘broccoli farmers in Oregon.’ My favorite? Learning that “miracles can happen and kids will actually eat broccoli” by way of a story about K-8 students in Corvallis who actually ate the Stahlbush Island Farms broccoli florets. Way to go Bill and Karla Chambers!

I tried ‘direct market broccoli farmers in Oregon’ and got closer still with 34,200 results. But honestly, what food buyer has time to sort through 34,200 results? Frustrated and just wanting to order some local broccoli I went with ‘Oregon broccoli available from Sysco’ and watched my results shoot back up to 503,000.

And that was the precise moment in which I decided it would be much easier to find broccoli farmers who deliver direct and broccoli farmers who deliver via Sysco by using FoodHub.

Don’t believe me? Type broccoli into the search box above.