Calixta writes from her road trip around the Pacific Northwest where she’s visiting organic farms…
Local Roots was the penultimate farm I visited. They were one of the farms I was most excited about when planning my trip, as husband-and-wife team Jason and Siri are considered the godparents of the radicchio movement in the Pacific Northwest. With their family ties to Sicily, they were hugely influential in bringing the crop to the US many years ago and cultivating it before anyone else.
It was fascinating seeing their farm, situated on a floodplain, and talking to them about changes in weather and resilience and their plans for the future. We looked at their radicchio and other crops they're cultivating from seeds from Italy, including many of the same crops we're growing, like some of the cabbages and the leaf broccoli Fiolaro (our first time growing it this season).
They have many ties to restaurants in the Seattle area, which they supply directly, but they've also recently opened a farm shop, so seeing many similarities in their development to how Flourish has evolved was very cool. Their shop is in a nearby town and full of beautiful things, loads of amazing produce and many other delicious foodie items. We have lots of the same products in both our shops, which was an unexpected surprise!
One of the things I thought was unique is that all the people who work on the farm also do shifts in the shop, so they don’t have a separate shop team like we do at Flourish. The teams are very interlinked, and part of the reason they do that is to create more year-round employment, as they're not producing as much produce in the winter. It was interesting to see how they built that into their business model, but it would be very hard to make that work for us because of the pressures and workload we have on the farm currently.
Jason and Siri with one of the old tree stumps
They also have some amazing old-growth redwood tree stumps on their farm, which hail back to when the land was settled and all the trees were cut down. It's just incredible that there are still stumps remaining from that time. They spoke a lot about the history of the land, including the Native Americans and the settlers who came and took that land and understanding the significant cultural importance of that - a thread that has been woven through lots of the other farms that I visited.
The last farm I visited was on the other side of Washington. Dharma Ridge Farm is owned by Zach, his wife, and their children, and it’s very cool to see and learn about a true family business where multiple generations are involved in its operation.
It’s located in a very interesting area; it’s basically on an island with very few other farms nearby. Just over half of the land is owned by Zach, and they rent the other half, totalling 80 acres. I wanted to visit them to see their amazing harvest conveyor, essentially a conveyor belt which runs off the side of a harvest trailer, making it very efficient to pick large quantities of produce. I’ve seen them in the UK and a little bit in Europe, but they’re much bigger over here and built specifically for crops like lettuces or broccoli heads.
The design that they have at Dharma Ridge is highly versatile because it's just a flat conveyor belt, and when I first saw it on their Instagram, I knew this would be such a fantastic way to improve our harvesting efficiency at Flourish, particularly at the scale that we are now. One of the questions I asked all the farmers that I visited was what one change they had made or one piece of investment they made that was the biggest game changer, and Zach said it was integrating the harvest conveyors into their operation. It was very inspirational to see how their whole farm has evolved. It’s nowa significant size, producing a diverse range of fresh produce, all of which is sold wholesale so they’re working with big distributors, and the emphasis on quality, consistency and scale that’s necessary to be working in that way is remarkable. They run a very tight ship!
I didn't get a chance to see any of the fields because it was such terrible weather when I was visiting, but I saw the barns and some of the machinery. Zach's what I'd call a “gearhead”; some people just have an affinity with machines. From some of the farms that I visited, you can see that's a real strength with the farmers and how they have built their business with loads of different tractors and machinery. None of it was shiny and brand new; just very clever systems, very clever designs, and truly inspirational to see how they're making it work, particularly when they're pretty isolated in their location. Their buyers and customers have to drive a long way to come and pick up the produce from them and they’re also competing with much larger farms in California. So it was fascinating - every single farm I visited was great but I feel like the end of my trip definitely ended on a high with Local Roots and Dharma Ridge.
Obviously seeing 12 farms in as many days was incredible, in some ways overwhelming, and I think it's taken a bit of time to reflect on the visits. Here’s a round-up of my biggest takeaways and some of the things that I’m inspired to incorporate into Flourish this year…
Less is more
One of the biggest things I took from every single farm is that even though they were growing diverse amounts of produce, it was significantly less than what we're doing at Flourish. They had worked out what they were good at growing and what they could grow well, and they had made sure they had really good systems for growing, caring for the produce, harvesting, packing and storing, and a good market - and therefore, everybody seemed to be playing to their strengths. While the diversity of Flourish is a huge part of our identity, from observing how much more efficient and streamlined a farm can be, we are going to be focusing on fewer crops but maybe more varieties within those crops, which will also make things easier for our team.
Delegation
Another really interesting thing is how each farm manages its employees and their teams. Each had slightly different set-ups; some were using H-2A workers which are basically seasonal workers from Mexico and other countries; other people had businesses that were operated mainly by the family; some focused more on the local labour force, and others had a blend of all of those things.
Another interesting thing is how they divided up the roles and responsibilities on their farms and how they managed different teams… every farm did it differently, and seeing so many other ways of doing that was inspirational. I've always felt that the scale and the size of Flourish are so big and diverse that it's been hard to figure out how to do that well and then how to communicate well between the different areas, roles, and responsibilities.
It was a real lesson in the importance of delegation, team training, and encouraging people to flourish in a specific area instead of having people working over larger areas of the farm. What we're doing now is that we have certain areas divided out, but all of our growers are doing a bit of everything, which makes it difficult for people to have more autonomy and responsibility to make improvements because there's not enough time, energy and eyes on specific areas.
We’re looking forward to dividing up our farm roles and responsibilities in a much more detailed manner.
Efficiency
Another point is about efficiency. Sometimes, it can be seen as a dirty word, like we’re removing labour or relying on automation, but what I’ve seen on a lot of the farms that I visited is that the job became much easier for the workers when they had equipment that made complex or mundane jobs quicker, with less strain on the human body and in less time so that human effort could be used elsewhere. That was hugely interesting to see, and I think that our harvest procedures are one of the main areas we will be looking at. We will be sourcing equipment to help make washing and processing much better, quicker, and easier for the team.
One of the battles we've had at Flourish is the balance of doing the harvesting alongside doing the production. I feel like, especially towards the end of 2024, so much time was needed to do the harvesting that a lot of the output and the actual growing of the crops got delayed or had to come second to actually harvesting for our customers - which is a good problem to have - but I now see a lot of changes that we could do that could completely revolutionise our farm and reduce that problem.
Education
The final thing that was really interesting was education and marketing. I’ve seen some incredible examples of farms that are so good at branding their products, talking about their products and educating their customers. We at Flourish haven't engaged with customers as much on that level yet. And there’s the idea of “merch,” which I’ve seen being done in a really interesting way. A lot of the farms that I visited had added-value product lines, which is something I’ve always dreamed of. Hayshaker had beautiful packaging on all these diverse chilli lines, with hot sauces, pickles, popcorn and other various products.
Being at the Sagra del Radicchio festival and seeing all these farms and the beauty of what they were growing celebrated, supported and shared, was awe inspiring, and it's something that I would like to try and embrace more at Flourish. Sharing the story and some of the beauty that we're growing will hopefully bring a lot more relevance to the vegetables that we are growing and the flowers that we’re cutting.
In the UK, farms are seen as a bit more “rustic” and “dirty,” but I’m energised by having seen all these amazing ways of sharing the messages about seasonality and regenerative farming practices. I’m looking forward to really stepping up our game, not just with pretty packaging, but with how we talk about what we do and share more of the farm story.
Next week’s update will bring us back to Cambridgeshire - I’m back on the farm now, and we’re in full swing with the New Year and putting exciting plans in motion for 2025.
