A ground-up approach to baking

Chris McGann
Communications

Sage Dilts talks about her baking philosophy with WSDA
Director Derek Sandison in front of the Barn Owl Bakery's
wood fired oven. Dilts won a NASDA Foundation contest
for women in agriculture. 

When Barn Owl Bakery owner Sage Dilts explains the potential health benefits of the wild sourdough starter and heritage grains she uses in her artisan breads, she astutely points out -- the digestion process begins when you smell the food.

“That’s when you start salivating,” she says.

Walk into her tiny Lopez Island bakery and you’ll see what she means. The rich aroma of her craft bread, fresh out of the wood-fired oven, is sure to make your mouth water.

Wild Starter

Dilts says the yeast and bacteria in her wild leaven (or sourdough starter) provide the complex flavors that make the bread taste so good, and they also help break down parts of the grains that can be hard to digest, allowing the body to better absorb the nutrients.

WSDA Director Derek Sandison followed through on his
promise to visit Dilts' Lopez Island bakery after she won
a NASDA Foundation award in February. 

She is committed to using locally grown and milled grains and even grows her own specialty and heritage varieties of wheat, rye and barley that add to the distinctive flavors in her loaves.

In the 200-square-foot bakery she and her husband Nathan Hodges built in 2012, she has established a thriving niche market on the islands with baked goods made in ways she believes are healthy for the body and the planet.

Farm to Food Competition

This year, Dilts won the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) Foundation’s Women’s Farm to Food Competition. The contest is dedicated to fostering growth among women producers (i.e., farmers, fishers, ranchers) and women entrepreneurs with food and beverage businesses in Oregon and Washington.

Sage Dilts started baking bread on Lopez Island 8 years ago.
Now it's time to expand the Barn Owl Bakery.  

When competitors presented their business plans at NASDA’s Winter Policy Conference in Washington DC in February, WSDA Director Derek Sandison presented Dilts the $20,000 Grand Prize and promised to visit to the Barn Owl Bakery.

Barn Owl Bakery employee Ona Blue tends to the wood-fired
oven and some of the locally-grown ingredients.

Last week he followed up on his commitment and made the trip to the remote island in Northwest Washington.

Sandison said this type of competition and the awards are important because they help promote diversity in agriculture.

 “We are trying to encourage women to enter agriculture and for them to thrive once they are in it,” Sandison said.

A big challenge

“Particularly for small-scale operations, you have to develop your own markets,” Sandison said. “It’s not just that you have to grow or produce something, but you then have to find a way to market that product.”


Moving to the country

Sage Dilts bakes with locally grown and milled grain. She
recently won the National Association of State Departments
 of Agriculture (NASDA) Foundation’s Women’s Farm to Food
 Competition  

Dilts and her husband Nathan Hodges moved from the San Francisco Bay area eight years ago and set up shop on this laid-back island known for its artists, craftspeople, farmers, and fishermen. The area’s tight-knit, open-minded community was the perfect business micro-climate to start a bakery embracing ancient baking and farming methods, and adhering to Dilts’s ideals about health and nutrition.

Dilts makes her bread by hand from scratch using no commercial yeast or chemical leavening. Instead she maintains and relies on a wild leaven, rich with bacteria and yeasts, to impart flavor and nutrition to her breads and pastries.

A world of wheat varieties

Hodges, her husband, zealously experiments with heirloom grains trying to identify varieties that grow well in the area and taste good in the bread.

“There’s all these crazy flavors,” Hodges said. “It takes three or four years for us to get enough seed to mill up to actually taste the grain. So there’s always that moment where it’s like, what’s this one going to be? Sometimes it’s not that interesting but other times it’s really wild!”

Nathan Hodges shows Sandison a sample of the grain he is
drying at Barn Owl Bakery's granary.

In the past four years he had planted more than 50 varieties in search of a seed like the Ethiopian Blue Tinge emmer wheat, for example. His crop notes describe it as grain that threshes easily with an intriguing dark purple seed that makes a dough that darkens to the color of chocolate.

“In our baking trials, this is always a crowd favorite for taste,” he notes.

Hodges and Dilts hope to cultivate the connection between food and the land as part of their business model.

“Modern wheats tend to be ill-suited to our form of agriculture here,” he said. “We don’t water our wheats, we don’t fertilize our wheats, and our soils are relatively poor. But the older wheats, like the Landrace varieties, are perfectly suited to that form of agriculture because that’s the way they were grown for thousands of years.”

Locals pick out hand-made baked goods themselves and pay
on the honor system. 

The right niche

The Barn Owl Bakery’s business model may not be suited to other bakeries. They run a bakery with no counter help and customers pick out their own purchases and pay on the honor system in an open bowl on the baking rack.

But on this low-key, high-minded island, it seems to be working.

In fact, the bakery is expanding. Dilts can make 25 loaves an hour in her Allan Scott style wood-fired oven, but even with 13 hours of baking a day, that’s not enough bread to keep up with demand.

With the prize money from the NASDA Foundation competition, she is upgrading to a Bassanina wood-burning deck oven that will allow her to quadruple output.

“We really needed to expand to make this work for us as a family,” Dilts said.

Lessons shared on goat dairy farm walk

Kathy Davis
Communications

Matthew Tuller and Rachael Taylor-Tuller kick
off the farm walk on their goat dairy, Lost Peacock
Creamery, in Thurston County.

Farmers share a natural affiliation – and maybe none more so than those who raise goats. Goats have an undeniable charm with their floppy ears, expressive eyes, and craving for human attention. Plus, they produce milk and delicious cheese!

No wonder a recent farm walk at the Lost Peacock Creamery in Thurston County was a big draw. The walk’s title was “How not to start a goat dairy; Lessons learned and models for success from a veteran, female farmer.” 

About 30 people attended. Most were small farmers and most were women. Some were exploring farming and raising goats. Some were military veterans or about to be honorably discharged from service. Others had links to food systems or sustainable farming organizations. 

Rachael Taylor-Tuller and her husband, Matthew Tuller, led the tour of their Lost Peacock Creamery. While they shared insights about how they got into the business and currently manage their farm, the event was definitely interactive. 

Along with asking questions, many on the tour offered advice and resources based on their own experiences. Everyone was learning and sharing. And that is the purpose of these Farm Walks, sponsored by Washington State University Food Systems and Tilth Alliance. 

Farm walk attendees get up-close and personal
 with the goat herd.

Goat yoga pays for feed

In just three years since they got their WSDA dairy license, Rachael and Matthew said Lost Peacock now provides them with a living wage without off-farm employment. Statewide, more than half of all farmers have a second job. 

“It’s possible because we don’t live beyond our means,” Rachael said. 

They have avoided taking on debt, she said, expanding as they had the resources. For instance, by adding one barn at a time as they could afford it. 

They also rely on agritourism, including an interesting blend of fitness and farming that has been featured in the news. 

“We do yoga every day, but I wasn’t sure if anyone would want to come to the farm to do yoga with goats,” she said. “But now goat yoga pays our feed bill.”

Another unique event on the farm is called “Cheese and Cuddles.” For $20, visitors can cuddle with the springtime baby goats and sample the farm’s cheese. 

Their event space - decorated with goat art and featuring a climbing wall - is available to rent for birthday parties or other private occasions. 

Mindy Ross enjoys some goat love.

Marketing is key to success

Rachael is a natural and enthusiastic pitch person for her farm.

“The most important way to make a farm successful is with marketing,” she said. “You need to tell your story. Your farm has its story, and you have a personal story – your background, family, struggles -- that goes with that.”

Lost Peacock has a farm website, where Rachel regularly posts on a blog, and are active on social media. 

Rachael shared with the group that she bought the farm after serving in the Air Force. When she got divorced, she had a young child and a fulltime corporate job, but she hung on to the farm determined to make it work. That’s the “how not to start a goat dairy” part of the story. 

After meeting and marrying Matthew, Rachael’s dream started becoming reality. Now she had a partner who was as excited about building that farming dream as she was. 

“Rachael is great at marketing,” Matthew said. “Farms make for great storytelling; there’s the cycle of birth, life, mating…” he trailed off as a male goat mounted a female in the background to illustrate. 

Fences, feed, and people food

As the group watched our hosts and an able volunteer demonstrate a fence repair, the topic turned to feeding practices. We watched the goats nibble on tree bark as Matthew pointed out a lush green patch planted just for them. 

Rachael and a volunteer demonstrate how to
repair a bent fence.

Susan Kerr, education and outreach specialist with WSDA’s State Veterinarians Office, explained that goats are curious and will explore for things to eat. And those may not be what you want them to eat. She suggested planting edible bushes or climbing vines along the fence line, since goats also tend to eat at face level. 

While they encourage natural foraging, Rachael said they also provide feed that does not contain any corn, soy or wheat, due to customers with allergies. 

“We only sell what we want to feed our own family,” she said. 

The whole afternoon was packed with practical tips about farming and goats, and with personal stories about the rewards and struggles of farming. The day wrapped up with samples of Lost Peacock goat cheeses. 


So, what’s with the peacocks? Rachael and Matthew got married on the farm and she wanted peacocks for atmosphere. They got one pair and now several roam their property and perch on rooftops. 

“Apparently, they really like it here,” she commented. 

To learn more about their farm and their story, visit the Lost Peacock Creamery website (and read Rachael’s blog posts for their story) or follow them on social media.

Women in ag conference inspires current, future leaders

Kathy Davis
Communications

Washington farmer Susan Ujcic 
bunches kale at Helsing 
Junction Farms in Rochester. 

A room full of women, all involved in some aspect of agriculture, can create a powerful sense of support and encouragement. A regional network of hundreds of such women connected simultaneously by technology generates mighty momentum. 

Participants across five states and three time zones gathered in 40 different locations to take part in this year’s Women in Agriculture Conference on Saturday, Nov. 18. This annual event connects women in ag throughout the Northwest with on-site networking and activities, as well as streamed speaker presentations. 

WSDA hosted the Olympia site in our headquarters, the Natural Resources Building. Occupations and interests of the 28 attendees ranged from small farms, farm/forest operations, and gardening to a seed company. Staff from WSDA Organics Program, Thurston County Conservation District, Olympia Farmers Market, Employment Security Department, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Washington’s Dairy Ambassador were also in attendance. 

This was the sixth annual Women in Agriculture Conference, sponsored by Washington State University (WSU) Extension. As with previous events, it was a day packed with learning, connecting and empowerment. 

The 2017 conference theme was “We Can Do It” and focused on building leadership among women in the industry. Topics echoed by the featured speakers, the local panelists and those in the room hit upon:

• How to support each other.
• Being a mentor and being mentored.
• Getting involved in your broader community; volunteering.
• Being an advocate.
• Understanding your natural strengths and where to improve.

Speakers inspire
Alexis Taylor, director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture, talked about her upbringing on an Iowa farm that had been in her family for 180 years. From doing chores as a kid, she went on to serve in the Army and work at USDA in Washington D.C. She was promoted to lead a USDA program with 14,000 employees, and offices across the U.S. and the world. 

Conference attendees at the Olympia site, engaged with event activities. 

“I knew I didn’t want to be a farmer, but didn’t know then I could have such an incredible career in agriculture,” she said, adding that her career has taken her to more than 30 countries. 

Anne Schwartz, the other keynote speaker, owns and runs Blue Heron Farm in Skagit County and has also long been involved in agricultural advocacy. 

Schwartz encouraged conference attendees to learn about their local community groups, joining, volunteering, becoming a board member, or engaging in any way that feels right to them. 

“Leave your farm a little more than you may be comfortable with,” she said.

Olympia site
In Olympia, we had the benefit of a diverse and powerful panel of local leaders in agriculture:

• Ava Arvest, founder of MycoUprrhizal, an Olympia-based mushroom business
• Mary Dimatteo, executive director of the Olympia Farmer’s Market
• Rachael Taylor-Tuller, farmer/owner of Lost Peacock Creamery

The panel members answered questions posed by the site facilitator, Christina Harlow from the USDA regional National Agricultural Statistics Service office. 

Among their many insights, all three panelists agreed that it’s often difficult for women to demand their worth. “If you don’t put a price tag on what you do, others don’t value what you do,” Arvest said. 

The Olympia site attendees pose for a group photo. 

If you missed this year’s conference but are interested in future conferences, you can visit www.womeninag.wsu.edu to sign up for notifications before next year.