Mike’s Meats & Farmers Market: A family business

Mike McKee, owner of Mike’s Meats & Farmers Market on North Wenatchee Avenue, is all about family.

Originally in the wholesale produce market, he made the move to retail using family financing to cover his start-up costs. He opened the business in mid-July and his children have worked in the store all summer.

Mike McKee, owner of Mikes Meats and Farmers Market

“It’s truly a family owned and operated business,” he said. “I think it’s important for my kids to be able to work with the public, look them in the eye, and make change. I think that will serve them well.”

He got his meat counter up and running in mid-September and most of his meat and produce is locally grown. For instance, he’s got a deal with Chris Bailey of Bailey’s Farm Fresh Produce in Wenatchee, to bring in freshly picked produce to the market every morning.

He’s also got a deal with the Kallstrom family in Quincy, who provide his store with fresh sweet corn. McKee said the Kallstrom’s corn is especially fresh, and the secret is that they stagger planting in the spring so they only have a few rows of corn ripening at the same time. That way, the corn the Kallstroms supply is always fresh no matter what time of the season.

The Kallstroms also supply corn to Farmhouse Table Produce on Mission Street in Wenatchee and McKee said that he too has been talking to Farmhouse about perhaps partnering up next season. No specifics have been hammered out yet, but McKee said he hopes it will be a profitable venture because unlike Farmhouse Table, he is a for-profit business.

“They’re nonprofit. I’m hoping not to be nonprofit,” he said, emphasizing the word “not”.

One way he hopes to keep making a profit throughout the winter is by keeping his produce stocked. The only way he can do that it to use produce distributors and bring in non-local products.

But he said to him, the quality of what he sells is more important than the source.

“If you’ve got something local that I wouldn’t eat versus something from across the mountains that is much better quality, I’m gonna carry something from across the mountains,” he said.

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Taste of the Harvest Improv Chef cook off

This is a video of the Improv Chef cooking competition from the Taste of the Harvest festival in downtown Wenatchee on Saturday, Sept. 18.

I shot and edited this on my free time because the Wenatchee Downtown Association invited me to be one of the judges for this competition and I had a great time doing it.

It’s an “Iron Chef” style cook off and the chefs have 30 minutes to come up with a dish using the secret ingredient.

The chefs are Rochelle Feil Adamowsky, a reporter and food blogger for the Wenatchee World, and Ashish Dhingra, a medical IT specialist.

Enjoy … I know I did.

For a news recap of the day and what the Taste of the Harvest did for the downtown economy, click here.

Taste of the Harvest photos and a story update

There have been a lack of posts of late. My goal was to get one a day this month for the entire month, but last week was a busy week in Wenatchee business and financial news and that took up most of my time.

So the blog has been barren.

But I wanted to post this slide show from this weekend’s Taste of the Harvest festival in downtown Wenatchee.

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It took place on Sept. 18 and was organized by the Wenatchee Downtown Association. They closed Wenatchee Avenue from 1st Street to Yakima Street and the farmers market step up shop on the street. There was a battle of the bands, a beer and wine garden, 5 and 10K river runs, tractors, farmers, classic cars and the “improv chef” cook-off contest – which I helped judge.

I’m putting together a little video of the contest to post tomorrow but I thought I’d put up some photos I snapped while walking around speaking with vendors and patrons.

On other fronts – next week I plan to speak with Congressman Doc Hastings as well as a spokesperson from the USDA about farm subsidies and Ag business. I’m also going to go visit the folks over at Stemilt to talk about their operation, their business model and how it’s helped them become one of the world’s leading fruit exporters.

Trading a life in the sky for one in the soil and making a profit in the process

Chis Bailey left the air for the earth.

After being furloughed in February from his job as a pilot for Horizon Air he decided to take up farming. This spring he started his new business, called Bailey’s Farm Fresh Produce in Wenatchee, and he has done what many new businessmen fail to do in their first year – turn a profit.

Chris Bailey

“I turned a profit this season,” he said. “I turned a profit starting in August.”

He said he only farms one acre but that he has grown as many as a hundred different varieties of vegetables, beans, fruit and even some flowers. He sells his produce primarily at the Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market and Mike’s Meats & Farmer’s Market but he said he has also sold to Farmhouse Table Produce on Mission Street and even Visconti’s Italian Restaurant.

He said he made three very deliberate decisions when starting his business. One was to not hire any employees. Two was not to borrow any money and three was to do everything manually.

“My objective was to start up as cheaply as possible,” he said. “It’s really impossible to do this kind of farming if you’re paying a mortgage on the place.”

He said that rather than borrowing money he dipped into his savings and didn’t pay more than $1000 for any piece of equipment. And doing everything himself has taught him a lot. He said he’s always been a gardener but this is first foray into Ag business.

“I decided this first year was kind of like being an intern for myself,” he said. “And I’ve learned a lot.”

He said next season he hopes to expand and farm five acres and produce less variety so he can sell more of what Wenatchee Valley consumers want.

Bailey said he enjoys his new job and doesn’t think he’ll go back to aviation. He said he appreciates the fact that he gets more time with his family – especially since he and his wife recently had their second child. He said the new business is like a baby as well.

“My wife says that we had twins this year.”

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Sustainable agriculture: Farming’s future?

North Central Washington road trip

Last week I went up to Winthrop, Wash. and visited Crown S Ranch to check out their 180-acre farm and meat production facility.

They raise cattle, pigs and chickens and are one of only three or four facilities in the state that have WSDA poultry processing certification – they can butcher their own chickens and sell them right off the farm.

The ranch is owned and operated by Louis Sukovaty and his wife Jennifer Argraves. Sukovaty was born and raised on the farm and both he and his wife are engineers. They used to live and work in Seattle but they said when they decided to start a family they didn’t want to raise kids in the city. So they moved back to the family farm and put their engineering backgrounds to work. They’re big on the marriage between technology and traditional animal husbandry.

I’ll have a video up tomorrow that will go deeper into that but I wanted to post a slide show today because I stopped at fruit stands along the way and got some photos that help illustrate just how abundant local food is in Central Washington.

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Stemilt apple bread and social responsibility at Great Harvest Bread Co.

Today I spoke with Chris Skalisky, owner of Wenatchee’s Great Harvest Bread Company, about owning a small business in a recession, giving back to the community and fresh apple bread.

Chris Skalisky, owner of Great Harvest Bread Co. in Wenatchee

Great Harvest Bread Company is actually a franchise headquartered in Dylan, Mont., and was founded in 1975 by a young newly-married couple who started baking bread to pay their way through college. They got so good at it that after college they moved to Montana and opened a bakery.

The franchise could be better described as network of independently owned and operated bakeries that share successful regional recipes and a philosophy of individuality. Skalisky called it a “freedom franchise.”

“They’re a bunch of hippie rebels,” she said. “It’s kind of like the un-franchise franchise.”

Skalisky owns the store with her husband, Kyle, and they’ve created a few of their own recipes, including their apple crunch yeast bread and apple spice batter bread, which they bake using apples from Stemilt Growers in Wenatchee. The apple bread is popular but their signature is the raspberry cream pie, she said.

They don’t use any frozen dough in their bread – all their wheat comes directly from farmers in Montana and is milled on a stone grinder in the back of the shop.

Though they’ve considered offering organic products, Skalisky said they decided against it. She said organics sell better on the West side of the state.

“We just don’t have the market for (organic). It’s just too expensive,” she said.

Skalisky said they have built up a profitable business and that’s all they could ask for in this economy.

“We’d all like to be busier but just to survive in this economy is good,” she said.

Skalisky and her staff do a lot of what could be called “pro bono baking” – and sometimes they’ll come in on their day off to bake for worthy causes. They’ve raised funds for local charity events, races and to support the local humane society.

“The community really appreciates it,”she said.

After the earthquake in Haiti she and her staff came in to work on a Sunday, opened the shop and donated all the day’s profits to Haitian relief. The community got behind their efforts and at the end of the day they’d raised $3,500.

“I had people handing me $100 bills for two loaves of bread.”

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Milk in the raw at Lemongrass

Today I stopped by Lemongrass natural foods market on Springwater Avenue in Wenatchee. Lemongrass has been in business about 19 months and is a boutique-style whole foods and supplement shop, owner Natalie Bennett told me.

Lemongrass owner Natalie Bennett

Bennett said that Lemongrass’s most popular products are supplements from Blue Bonnett, assorted nuts from CB’s Nuts from Kingston, Wa., honey from Lazy B Farm in Wenatchee and organic beer from Iron Horse Brewry in Ellensburg, Wa. They also have local wines from the Wenatchee and Yakima Valleys.

But it was the unpasteurized milk from Pride and Joy Dairy in Granger, Wa. that drew me to the store. Bennett is an advocate of raw milk and said she’s been drinking it her whole life. She said there’s a big movement to get back to whole foods and that raw milk has more health benefits.

“It’s raw so the enzymes are kept alive,” she said. “In my opinion milk that has been over processed isn’t even milk anymore.”

This brings up an interesting debate between people in the agricultural industry and it bears more investigation. I plan on speaking with USDA officials and commercial milk producers about the issue of pasteurization to get their take on the subject.

The sale of raw milk is only legal in 28 states and according to the FDA, in 2002, consuming unpasteurized milk made roughly 200 Americans ill. But in the name of journalism I’m going to take my chances and drink this milk. However at $7 a half-gallon, compared to roughly $2.79 for the pasteurized stuff, it is much more expensive for the raw milk.

But she said a lot of people come to the store specifically for the raw milk. Their coconut water is also a huge draw and she said she can hardly keep it in stock. But she said the almonds at $5.86 per pound are a good deal and their assortment of nuts brings people in as well.

Bennett said Lemongrass has about 35 customers on an average day and business is good but seeing that number double wouldn’t bother her any.

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Eating local doesn’t have to be expensive

From my last post you can see that the weekend was spent in a central Washington journey – searching for local foods of all shapes and sizes.

I tried to keep track of prices, quality and quantity as I went along and I will share the high points here.

This project is becoming more popular and I got a lot of food for free so in observance of tact, I refrained from inquiring about the cost of everything I was being fed.

On Saturday I stopped by Jones Farm fruit stand in Zillah, Wa. The Jones family farms about 400 acres, both organic and non organic, co-owner Barbara Jones told me. She said they ship almost all of their organic produce to the Seattle area because that’s where they can get a better price. This is a trend I’m seeing in many organic producers on the east side.

“We sell most of our organic stuff on the west side because there aren’t many people who are willing to pay for it around here,” she said.

Jones said that from what she sees, people on the west side shop smaller, planning their meals on a daily scale while people in central Washington plan for the week and shop accordingly. Thus, they are less willing to pay the higher prices.

At Jones I found one gallon bags of beans and lentils for $5. Comparatively Mike’s Meat & Farmer’s Market in Wenatchee sells the same size bags for $5.95.

At Jones’ I got Yakima Valley honey, cantaloupe, tomatoes, corn, garlic, lentils, beans, cucumbers, onions and assorted fruit including peaches and pears.

The bill was about $23. Compared to my bill from Farmhouse Table last week (about $32) I got more food for less money – though none of it’s organic.

On Sunday afternoon I was invited to a “locavore cook out” by a friend of the family in which we feasted solely on local foods. We had goat cheese from Tieton Farm & Creamery in Tieton, Wa. It’s an organic operation and the cheese cost $8 for 4 oz. Staying true to organic fashion, the creamery sells mostly to markets on the west side and the biggest retailer they do business with is PCC Natural Markets.

We also drank hard apple cider from Tieton Cider Works and ate locally grown organic beef.

I also stopped by Tefft Cellars in Outlook, Wa. The best deal I found was their 4 liter boxes for $26.95. A 4 liter box equals a little more than five bottles of wine. And they even sell the boxes at Costco.

In addition to wine and produce, I also stocked up on locally grown meat. Having cousins involved with the FFA means there’s always an abundance of proteins.

I picked up ground beef, T-Bone steaks, pork chops, sausage, bacon and even a leg of lamb while visiting family and out of curiosity I took the list to Safeway and had it priced.

Safeway employee Jake Yager in the meat department said I had between $150 to $200 in meat there – depending on the cuts.

So thank you to everyone who fed me and gave me provisions for this project – so generous of you!

Eating my way through central Washington. A slideshow.

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I’ve been eating local all weekend. And it turns out that apart from snacking, fast food and chain restaurants – finding sustenance in a region as fertile as central Washington is pretty simple.

You can find fresh produce, fruit and roots on the side of pretty much any road from Okanagan to Goldendale.

I even found fresh produce at a church! The congregation of Resurrection parish in Zillah, Wa. brings anything extra from their farms and gardens and put it on a table for anyone and everyone. It’s called the St. Joesph’s share table.

And since I’ve started eating only local foods that’s what I’ve been noticing: eating local is about community.

From the farmer’s markets to the fruit stands – eating local is an excuse for people to gather, mingle and talk. They bring howling babies and barking dogs, flicking melons and inspecting produce – they sniff for freshness and gossip and laugh and talk.

Simply put: It’s a wonderful experience. So I thought I’d post a few pictures of my epicureal journey.

Enjoy! I’ll post links to businesses and more later.