Sustaining Ourselves on the KP Farm Tour

A live band is banging out Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” — loud — as we wander into the large barn set up to welcome guests at the sprawling Kaukiki Farm. Even though the great bard of Minnesota meant it as a dying man’s anthem, here the song evokes an appropriately pastoral, reflective mood; you really might mistake Kaukiki for the gates of paradise.

At over 114 acres, the place is gorgeous (sheep, sloping green pastures), making it a popular destination on the annual Key Peninsula Farm Tour, which this year took place Sept. 27. Inside the barn, after cooing over the penned sheep and piglets (visitors say, “Wake up, piggies,” but they don’t), we get to talking to the folks at the tables. Susan Arends of Key Pen Produce Express stands behind a table laden with exquisite-looking peppers, garlic, apples, and other produce she ships in from numerous local farms, some as far as Eastern Washington (“Susan Arends: Bringing Fresh Produce to the Community,” November 2023).

She tells us about her goal in life: to help people eat healthier. “I blame it on my husband.”

She has been doing this since just before the pandemic, but it was during the Covid era that Arends saw businesses throwing out mountains of unsellable onions and potatoes — 70, 80, 100 pounds of each, by her count. She managed to acquire some at rock-bottom prices, saying, “Dump ’em in our trailer. We’ll figure out what to do with ’em.” They did. After that, it was asparagus, then cherries, apricots, etc. Key Pen Produce Express attacks a multi-headed problem in the U.S.: bad diets devoid of fresh produce and the tremendous amount of food we throw away. The USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates food waste at up to 40% of our total supply (yes, you read that right: as a nation, we waste almost half of our food). In 2010, that translated to about 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of comestibles down the drain. Do better, America.

Next, we try to answer the question, “Can you stump the naturalist?” That’s what one of the signs at Chris Rurik’s table asks. (Answer: no.) He shows us specimens of plants and other treasures from his KP forest forays. There are some adorable Douglas-fir and cedar babies.

Then he takes about eight of us on a short trail walk. It’s sunny, hotter than expected. We stop to examine scat, dead rodents, and various flora. Chris points out a stately Oregon ash, with each of its compound leaves made up of several leaflets, the sort of detail I tend to disgracefully overlook. He tells us about its characteristics, its range, then adds, “They’ll all be gone from this region by 2050 or so, because of the emerald ash borer.” He says it with his usual soft-spoken calm.

Chris loves this land more than anyone I know. I often wonder at his equanimity and that of people like him in the face of the pointless natural destruction we see in the Anthropocene (our current era of human-induced transformation of the biosphere). My own reactions tend more toward the “non-cathartic” emotions, in scholar Sianne Ngai’s phrase: rage, indignation, loathing.

Some of Chris’s serenity is doubtless temperamental, but it must also have to do, I think, with his training. I have other friends with backgrounds in biology, environmental studies, etc.; they tend to take the long view. Earth has seen change before, and recovered — eventually. Life is change. Later, I look up that phrase and see that I’ve misremembered. The actual quote from Octavia Butler’s 1993 dystopian sci-fi novel, “The Parable of the Sower” (which previewed many of our current societal and environmental woes) is: “God is Change.” Tomato, tomahto.

We do other things that day, like chat with Kaukiki’s owners, Warwick and Janice Bryant, about water use, pasture management, and how to interpret Washington state’s Growth Management Act. We enjoy the vibrant splashes of red, orange, yellow, pink, and violet in the flower garden at Moon Mountain Farm, where Allison Kemp of Thistledown Farms tells me about the Peninsula Female Farmer Network and the importance of native plants.

Learning about wildfire prep; watching chickens roaming free-range; visiting with a bunny called Brownie, who looks like it stepped out of the Albrecht Dürer watercolor “Young Hare” (1502), I reflect as I do every year about the Farm Tour as our best, most concentrated opportunity to have dialogue, to cultivate those KP social networks, and bask in our beloved home right at “heaven’s door.” Or as Allison Kemp put it: “To sustain ourselves, so we can help sustain others.”

José Alaniz is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Department of Cinema and Media Studies (adjunct) at U.W. He lives blissfully with his wife and many animals in Longbranch.