Celebrate Taste Washington Day on October 4th

Annette Slonim
WSDA Regional Markets

Taste Washington Day is a day for school districts around the state to celebrate Farm to School and local agriculture. This year, on Wednesday, October 4th nutrition services staff, school gardeners, teachers, administrators, and volunteers all over Washington will serve school meals with local ingredients and do activities to help children learn about the farms that feed us. Cafeterias across the state celebrate how Farm to School looks in their district by featuring local and Washington-grown products, farmers sign up to supply ingredients or speak at a local school, school gardeners host classes or lunchtime in the garden, and teachers do food and agriculture-related lessons in the classroom.

October is National Farm to School Month! If October 4th doesn’t work for your school, you can choose any day in October to join in on the Taste Washington Day fun.

Chief Leschi Schools Taste Washington Day 2022

How to participate

School districts: Food and nutrition services directors and staff can sign up on behalf of their district. Celebrations look different in each district and school, but some options include:

• Serving special menus with local ingredients. The Washington School Nutrition Association has developed some sample lunch and breakfast menus that use Washington-grown ingredients in each item. Click here to see more menu and recipe ideas.
• Highlight the Washington-grown foods already on your menu.
• Buy a product from a local farm to feature on the menu.
• Spotlight a “Harvest of the Month” crop.
• Participate in the “Washington Apple Crunch” at noon.
• Share your activities on social media with the hashtags #TasteWADay and #WAfarmtoschool.

Farmers: Sign up to join the list of participating farms for Taste Washington Day. WSDA will share your contact information and product availability with participating schools.

School gardeners: Let us know what activities you have planned in the garden for Taste Washington Day! Share photos on social media using the hashtags #TasteWADay and #WAfarmtoschool.

Teachers and educators: Feature a lesson on Washington agriculture, food, or nutrition. Let us know what you have planned! Some farmers love to do classroom visits. If you are seeking farmers in your area, contact WSDA Farm to School. 

Principals, superintendents, parents, administrators, and community members: Find out what’s going on for Taste Washington Day in your classrooms, cafeteria, or garden. Support it and let the community know all about it! You may also be able to help organize guest educators, farmer visits, or other activities.

Check out WSDA’s Taste Washington Day webpage for recipes, promotional sign templates, and other free resources to help you get started! 

How Taste WA Day works

School district food services sign up with WSDA Farm to School to participate, and share their local
menus, ingredients, or other Farm to School activities they have planned for the day. Other activities may include farmer guest speakers, taste tests, FFA presentations, or visits to a school garden. WSDA tracks and helps coordinate and promote all of the efforts statewide. Schools have access to free promotional templates and materials from WSDA, and receive information on participating farms to purchase products.

Farmers sign up to be a part of Taste Washington Day to offer to sell their products to schools, participate in school activities and receive information on participating schools. WSDA Farm to School Program helps with local food procurement by matching farms with schools, finding farmers to participate in school events, and other logistics.

This celebration was cooked up by the Washington School Nutrition Association (WSNA) and WSDA with support from Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Child Nutrition Services (OSPI) to promote locally grown food served in school meals. Taste Washington Day serves as Washington State’s kick-off for the month-long celebration of National Farm to School Month in October.

For more information on Taste Washington Day, or to get help linking to your local school districts or farms, please contact Annette Slonim, WSDA Farm to School Lead, at aslonim@agr.wa.gov or 206-714-2757.

More than a pickle: How grants from Washington State Department of Agriculture are yielding impressive impacts across the state

Micha Ida and Galen Van Horn
WSDA Regional Markets Program

Small farms and food businesses play important roles in maintaining vibrant and robust local food systems that support growth in local economies and ensure healthy communities. Disruptions to supply chains and food distribution systems can have far-reaching impacts, as witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. To increase the resiliency of local food systems, Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) has distributed nearly $20 million in grants to small farms and local food businesses through several grant programs administered by the WSDA Regional Markets Program. Continued funding from the Washington State Legislature will further bolster the resiliency of our local food systems in the years ahead.

Recent grants from WSDA have allowed businesses and organizations to expand and diversify in a variety of ways, including increasing the amount of product they produce, expanding their customer bases, and facilitating linkages with other businesses in their local food systems.

Lum Farm: Building resilience 

Amy Lum welcomes one the farm’s newest members.

“Living on an island, buying local food, and having local food access is critical,” says Amy Lum, of Lum Farm. Her farm is located on Orcas Island, and during the pandemic, Lum witnessed how difficult food access became for her community. According to the San Juan Community Food Assessment, in 2020 less than 5% of the food consumed in San Juan County was produced locally. In response, Lum Farm scaled up and increased its food production and distribution within the county by 275%. 

Lum Farm is the only WSDA-inspected dairy in the state that produces goat’s milk ice cream, along with a variety of goat’s milk cheeses and pasture-raised meats. Everything produced on their farm is sold and distributed within San Juan County through restaurants, grocery stores, the local food bank, and directly to consumers. 

The farm used Local Food System Infrastructure Grant funds to support their growth and resilience through added cold storage space, additional equipment for cheese making, a new cattle handling system, and technological upgrades to their operation. These enhancements are allowing them to raise more animals and produce more food for their small island community. “Our customers and farming partners have all experienced the positive impact of this grant, and celebrated each new change with us,” Lum said.

Expanding services at Windy N Ranch 

The Newhall Family of Windy N Ranch.

To Bradley Newhall of Windy N Ranch, the need for this type of support is clear. “We all saw the devastating effects that Covid-19 had on food supply and distribution,” he says. His family’s operation is a Certified Organic meat ranch located in Ellensburg that specializes in humanely raised beef, pork, lamb, goat, and poultry. In May 2021, Windy N Ranch opened their own butcher shop on their farm, with licensing that allows them to process their own meat as well as provide butchering services to other area producers.

The Newhalls used Local Food Infrastructure Grant funds to make improvements to Windy N Ranch's meat processing facility, which has allowed them to expand the variety of products they prepare, as well as increase their butcher shop services to other farmers and ranchers in the Kittitas Valley. They also aspire to transition their USDA-inspected butcher shop into a Certified Organic facility.

Critical services, such as Local Food Infrastructure Grant funding, increase the viability of small farms and ranches by opening new marketing avenues and revenue streams. “With [added] infrastructure for local USDA meat processing in place, we and other ranchers will be better suited to meet the food needs of our local communities regardless of supply chain issues that may be occurring nationally,” Newhall added.

Increasing capacity: Beyond Pickles

Increased resiliency in our local food systems can come from surprising places too, and something as humble as a pickle can have an outsized impact. Beyond Pickles is a micro food processing company located in the Tri-Cities that uses lactobacillus salt fermentation to preserve and create sauerkrauts, kimchi, and other vegetable-based fermented condiments using locally-grown vegetables from small farmers in eastern Washington. Local Food System Infrastructure Grant funds helped Beyond Pickles install a walk-in cooler addition that is allowing them to quadruple the amount of product they can store prior to distribution.

Packing jars at Beyond Pickles.

Increased capacity and demand for Beyond Pickles’ products will allow them to ramp up their orders from local farms, which is one way these grant funds are supporting the broader local food economy. A larger walk-in cooler has also allowed Beyond Pickles to collaborate more on food distribution with other local food-centric companies such as the Walla Walla Food Hub, Chesed Farms, and Farmstand Local Foods. Strong linkages like these among Washington’s local food businesses create a more robust and secure food system.

“The remarkable level of interest in these grants demonstrates the clear need for WSDA to invest in local food system infrastructure in Washington,” says WSDA Local Food Infrastructure and Supply Chain Specialist Galen Van Horn. “We’ve received wonderful feedback from grant recipients about how their businesses are thriving beyond their imagination. These grants are allowing the people of Washington to benefit from those investments and we’re grateful for the Legislature for recognizing the impact and providing continued funding.”

WSDA is interested in making continual improvements to our grant offerings and are inviting interest and comment on future grant rounds. You can sign up to be notified of future grant opportunities and share your thoughts on investing local food system infrastructure by completing this short interest survey. Comments should be submitted by September 15, 2023.

For questions about the Local Food Infrastructure Grant Program please contact Galen Van Horn at galen.vanhorn@agr.wa.gov.

Small farms succeed with assistance from WSDA’s Regional Markets team

Laura Raymond
WSDA Regional Markets Program Manager 

If you run a small or midsize direct-marketing farm in Washington state, you know it takes a lot for your business to succeed.

You need to understand the local, state, and federal rules, regulations, and standards and know how to comply with them. You need an effective distribution infrastructure and relationships to ensure that the products you grow or raise can reach customers. If you want to sell in a different marketplace—such as wholesale instead of retail—you need information and guidance to decide whether that market is a good fit and how to be successful within it. You might even need to learn to farm differently. 

WSDA’s Regional Markets team helps small and mid-scale farms in Washington state with all of this—and much more. Their central objective is to help these farms succeed and strengthen local food systems. 

What Regional Markets does

Small farms, which make up 89% of the state’s 39,000 farms, have unique needs when it comes to selling their products on a local or regional scale. Planning, planting, tending, harvesting, storage, processing, and distribution all require different systems than those that are set up for larger producers. 

To help these farms succeed, Regional Markets offers wide range of support, including efforts to:

• Increase small farm access to local markets.
• Increase the availability of Washington-grown products in schools and institutions.
• Encourage connections and infrastructure to boost regional food economies. 
• Provide farms and food buyers with technical assistance.
• Provide farms with marketing support and guidance.
• Facilitate farmer-buyer connections.
• Support and regulatory guidance for good food safety practices.
• Advocate for small farms at the national and local levels.
• Create resources and publications to help farms strengthen local market connections.
• Provide opportunities to grow or strengthen their businesses through state grant programs. 

Regional Markets is often the first stop for farmers and local food businesses searching for information and resources to sell in their chosen markets. The program also helps buyers such as school districts that want to include local farm products in their menus. They might attend a Farm to School Institute, participate in a Farmer-Buyer Meeting, take part in regularly scheduled Community of Practice calls to connect with others in their sector, or download The Handbook for Small and Direct Marketing Farms (“The Green Book”), the Regional Market's complete guide to direct marketing strategies and regulations. 

By giving small and mid-scale farms the support they need, Regional Markets functions as a key program under the Focus on Food Initiative, which works to connect Washington farmers and food producers with buyers and to ensure that everyone in our state has access to good food.

Learn more about Regional Markets

To learn more about how this program supports small farms, visit the Regional Markets webpage or agr.wa.gov/FarmFoodBiz where you can find information about these grants, and more:

• Small Meat Processor Capacity Grants
• COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Grants
• Farm to School Purchasing Grants
• Profiting From Your Pivot Program
• Local Food System Infrastructure Capacity Grants