S5 Ep4 Mallonee Farms + Maxime Etilé

This is the Farm Walks Podcast brought to you by Tilth Alliance and the Washington State University Food Systems Program. I'm your host, Keith Bacon. Following in the footsteps of Farmer Nicole and everyone on the team who first brought this production to life, the Farm Walks Podcast came about when in-person farm walks were put on hold during the pandemic. Those on-site visits for farmer-to-farmer education are now back in action, and you can learn more about them at our website, farmwalks.org. In this episode, we'll visit with Maynard Mallonee of Mallonee Family Farms, LLC, where he's continuing a legacy of organic dairy farming and sharing his knowledge of building healthy ecosystems with the next generation as a mentor in the Transition to Organic Partnership Program. Later in the episode, we'll make a provider connection at the TILT Conference and Farm and Food Symposium with Maxime Ettile of the Northwest Agriculture Business Center. But first, let's head down to Lewis County in Southwest Washington, where a fourth-generation dairy farm became an early innovator in organic practices.

Hello, I'm Maynard Mallonee, a co-owner of Mallonee Family Farms Limited Liability Company. We are live in Curtis, Washington. Curtis is located about 20 miles off the I-5 corridor, halfway between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.

Can you give us a general overview of Mallonee Family Farms, how it came to be and your involvement in it?

Yes. So we are a fourth generation Organic Valley dairy farm, been certified organic for 21 years on the milk truck. So in 1949, my grandfather purchased this farm and milked a few cows, of course in buckets, drove the milk truck, did various things. And in 1960, they, when they were doing Grade A, he became a Grade A dairy So we actually have the same permit that we started in 1962.

Wow.

Today is the same permit number for the state of Washington.

Wow.

To ship Grade A milk.

Uh-huh. And was that kind of a big deal for the area to have Grade A status?

Back in the day, yes. So that means you could actually ship to a company, get it pasteurized, and then go on shelf. And he milked the cows, lived on the farm near where the same house I live in today. Then my parents, my dad worked off farm for a while. And then when my grandparents decided to retire, It was my mom's parents that had the farm.

Mm-hmm.

And my mom and dad decided to take over. I left, went to college, came back, worked off farm for a little while. Now today, my 25-year-old son Jack is a majority owner of our company. So he's, he's actually running the farm as a fourth generation.

Awesome. That's great. Carrying the torch.

Yep. Passing the torch on.

Exactly. Or the bucket. I wanna talk a little bit about your organic certification. What motivated you to become a certified organic operation?

So years ago, we were one of the first 4 organic dairies that got certified in the state of Washington. So my grandfather had always been a big non-believer in herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics. We didn't use Roundup. We didn't put commercial fertilizers on. All of our cows were well taken care of, so they really didn't get sick. So he was a believer in that. And my mom is— I'll say she's a naturopathic type. Person. She believes in herbal medicine, right, and all the good that you can get from that, and like naturopathic ways. So I've learned that. So basically, when we went certified organic, it was just doing what we were already doing.

It's like it's in your genes.

Yeah, yeah. Part of organics is you have to believe in the system, and so we were already believers in the system. People that don't believe in it sometimes fail because of the non-belief.

Yeah.

So you kind of have to live the life of an organic farmer, and so it was super easy in that. It was a learning curve.

Sure.

And in the beginning, 20 years ago, we got made fun of, we got called liars, we got called hippies, you know, it's never gonna work. And 21 years later, Organic Valley is now a billion-dollar brand. We have 1,600 farmers in 29 states. Half of those farmers are plain, which means they're either Amish or Mennonite.

Oh wow.

So we have an average of 70 cows per farm is the average for the company. Smaller farms supporting bigger farms, bigger farms supporting smaller farms. With support for the next generation.

When you were talking about getting that pushback from the early days before you even certified organic, was that from this region that you're in, or would you say from the industry or community in the whole state or at large?

It was from everybody. Like, a bunch of my fellow conventional dairy farms were like, oh, you guys are just— you're never gonna be big. It's, it's never going to be a large volume getting sold. It's just a niche. Market. The valley where I live that you just drove through, there used to be 14 farms.

Uh-huh.

We're the last one left. So, wow, you know what survived is— yeah, the organic farms. Yeah, survived everything else. And the pushback was also from the milk industry, and still is today, that we're no different than regular milk. But right, the proof is in the pudding.

Absolutely.

The spin to the consumer.

And in your opinion, what would you say are the benefits of choosing organic certification instead of simply practicing organic?

So it's a nationally recognized label. You have to get inspected every year, be able to put that certification paper forward. Yes, it costs a significant amount of money to get certified, right? But the proof of consumer is you're actually policed by a company or whoever your certification agency is, and they have the backing of the power of a federal stamped program to support that.

Are the costs of certification, are they scalable based on the size of your enterprise, or is it just one flat fee?

They're scalable on volume of sales.

Okay, that's good. I read that your cows spend a lot of their time on pasture where you have taken a diverse plantings approach to managing your land. When did that start and how does that work?

So in the last 5 to 10 years, we've been renovating our old pastures. You know, my grandfather wasn't big into plowing and renovating the ground, but nowadays the technology of grasses, legumes, forbs that are like more digestible higher in sugar, higher in protein. Those are non-GMO. They're just naturally bred plants that if you can make your own forage and the cow can eat that forage without harvesting with the machine, it's a lot better for the cow, a lot better for you, a lot better for the product that you're going to buy in a grocery store. And then secondly, the biodiversity is we're building soil health, we're planting different types of grasses, we're doing fescues, we're doing ryegrasses. But also in there, we'll be putting legumes like white clover, red clover, balansa clover, and then we'll have forbs. Chicory or plantain are two big ones. And then our medicinal plants, especially plantain, is a diuretic. So if a cow eats enough plantain, it makes her go pee more often.

Okay.

So she's naturally flushing her system. She'll go actually drink more water. So if she is sick, she's going to go hit the plantain a little bit more.

Yeah. She knows what she needs and she'll just go do it.

Yes.

Wow.

And then also the plantain and the chicory are what is known as a tannin-condensed species. So those tannin-condensed species, if the cow eats enough of them in their diet, they slow down the enteric methane process. So if a cow's naturally eating those forbs as part of her diet, that's slowing down CO2 and methane coming out of that cow just by naturally feeding them plants.

Are we talking about cow burps and farts?

So we're reducing farting. Yes, that too. A lot of farting reduction. Yeah.

Yeah.

And we actually, are also feeding a supplement to our cows that's a natural oil product, and that product does reduce also the enteric methane process.

It sounds like you're letting nature do a lot of the work here.

Yeah.

What was your journey toward becoming a Transition to Organic Partnership Program mentor? What does being a mentor entail?

So being a mentor means people can either reach out to you and say, hey, I'm interested in going organic, or they can reach out to the top people, and then the top people will match you with the person that's in your field. Like a dairy farmer— I'm a mentor for a dairy farmer, but I'm also a mentor for a couple people that are like going to be sheep farmers or goat farmers because of my knowledge of the biodiversity as far as like the land, the soil, right? So when they reach out, or you reach out to them, they can join the program, get help from me for free, and then I get compensated for my time for helping those. Currently I have 4 people under mentorship.

Oh, cool.

So I'm mentoring those people. One's already started dairy farmer, young guy in his 30s. Another one's going to be a startup dairy farmer, 26 years old. His grandfather owned a dairy, but he really has limited dairy background. And then 2 sheep/goat farmers just on soil health. And getting them to grow better forages for their animals.

And are these mentees' farms in your general neighborhood or where you go?

Yeah, they're all within an hour drive of me, so I can actually physically go to their farm. And they've— a couple of them have actually physically been to my farm.

I bet that makes a big difference. Yes.

Especially when they come to your farm, like the one that came to my farm. We talked about moving fences and went out and looked at all the plants, and it was very interesting.

Oh, it was like a farm walk, you might call it.

Yeah, a personalized farm walk.

I've heard of those.

A personal farm tour. Yeah.

What role does mentorship play, do you think, in farmers' decisions to become certified organic? Would they not do it otherwise, do you think?

A lot of them, if they're on the fence, one is I can't pasture my cows or I don't know how to pasture my cows. So they think they're going to fail. So teaching people to like how to pasture your cows and getting them to envision that. And basically that means you're going to have to go to their property and help them, right? But they're really going to have to come to my farm and I'm going to show them how we do it on my farm. Sometimes 3, 4 times a day. Wow. They don't have to do that. I explain that to them. Just start off and train yourself. So start off slow, easy, keep it simple, and then just keep your learning process going, right? Or call me and say, hey, I did this today, or what can I do better? And learn from your mistakes because, yeah, if you're not moving forward, you're not progressing.

Yes.

And mistakes is part of that. Failure is good sometimes.

Yeah, it shows you how not to do it again.

Yes.

When you move your fences that many times in a day, what is prompting you to move them?

So I like my cows to be always foraging on fresh grass and not giving them a big giant chunk of grass and just letting them pick. I'm more or less forcing them to eat what I'm giving them at the rate that I'm giving them. It does take more time, but the grass, when a cow grazes it, goes dormant for 3 days. On day 3, it starts growing again. So the most nutritious grass is that little 1 to 2-inch, 3-inch tall grass. Yeah, that the cows want to go back to, but I don't want them to go back to that because I want the grass to start growing back again and regenerating its roots and nutrients.

And how are you tracking all these things happening where you know that you want them to be over here? What's your method for that?

A long time of doing it experience.

So you're just like kind of watching out there and there's no like spreadsheet involved?

Because of certification, we do have to verify. So I do keep every day what field I was in.

Okay.

And how many days I was in that field and how many days I was gone out of that field. So we have— right now we're grazing like 8 fields that I track on a daily basis.

Wow.

So I go through there, but also you can use like a grazing stick, which tells you how high the forage is, which you can turn that over into tons per acre of grass available. I've been doing it so long, I just use my boot to know when it gets to the top of my 18-inch extra tough boots, that's about a ton per acre. So in my mind, I can think my 60 cows need approximately 1,200 to 1,500 square feet per cow per day. Right.. And so I get that number in my head and then I'm like, move the fence. And then if I move it too much, they're gonna leave too much. If I don't move it enough, they're gonna eat it too tight or too low.

So, um, the power of a muddy boot.

Exactly. And, and then adjust that every day. The farther in the season you go, you gotta move obviously bigger, sometimes faster.

Beyond organic certification, what are some other voluntary initiatives that you've taken to protect the health of your soils and ecosystems on your farm? You just touched on these. I know You're a soil health ambassador for the Washington Soil Health Initiative. What else are you involved with?

So we, because we are a dairy farm here in Washington State, we have to do yearly testing of our soil for our dairy nutrient management plan. So that involves that. We've also done some extensive soil testing on other things. We just signed up with a federal thing called SHAPE. Which they're going to come to my farm and do a super extensive soil sampling for free. So that's— oh, that's pretty cool.

Wow, that's great. SHAPE is what that— yeah, SHAPE.

Okay. And I can't remember, it stands for Soil Health and— I can't remember anyway.

It's out there somewhere.

Yeah, it's out there. And so we're gonna get that. And then one thing we've also done is a lot of like biodiversity. We started planting in our crop rotation, or our renovation now. We're going to renovate the grass in June, so the plants that I don't want, we're going to plow or disc those, allow them to sit in the sun because we can't spray, kill those roots off, and then turn around like a week to 10 days later and put in what's known as summer annual crop. A summer annual is a plant that you're going to plant in, say, June or July that's only going to grow when the ground is more than 60 degrees to germinate. It's only going to grow in the summer. When the freeze comes, it's going to die out, but it's going to grow super fast.

Okay.

A lot of those are brassicas, so turnip, radish, rape, or a lot of them are cross. Like, what one of our favorites is called T-Raptor. So it's a rape turnip cross with a bulb and a big giant leaf. That leaf will be about 30 to 35% protein. Wow. When it grows, so from the day you plant it, we will be grazing that 28 to 30 days later at about knee-high, and then we'll continue on the 28-day rotation throughout the summer. Also, it's not a monoculture. Mixed with those summer annuals are various grasses that grow really fast, like Italian ryegrass, Sudan grass, which is an annual, balansa clover is a clover you can put in there. So you're getting— when the cow's grazing that, you're getting a bite of energy and a bite of protein at the same time, but also a big bite of biodiversity. And so those also sequester or mine micronutrients from the ground.

Are all of these things strictly for the cows? Are you ever out there pulling some turnips for yourself, like a high protein turnip or anything like that?

So actually I'm one of the wacky farmers that like tastes his forages.

Uh-huh.

So the T-Raptor, if it makes it through to the spring, because it's a brassica, in the spring it'll put out a flower like a little fiddlehead. Uh-huh. If you eat that at the right time, it's phenomenal. Oh, it is beyond phenomenal. We were doing a tour with a class from Evergreen Rangeland Science class, and some of the girls in the class are like, hey, can we eat those flowering brassicas? I'm like, yeah, why? They go, well, they sell those for $15 a pound at the farmer's market. And I'm like, no, they don't. So they're actually, if you go to a farmer's market in the spring, they're like a broccoli rabe.

Oh, okay.

They're very sweet. And if you flash fry 'em in a cast iron skillet butter. Oh, they're to die for.

That sounds good.

And then also the bulb. You can eat the bulb. You just have to be careful 'cause sometimes it's like black pepper that you don't eat.

Just some of them randomly or—

No, it's the stage of where they're at. Oh, I see. And the weather. But if you get 'em at the right time, it's like cutting into a piece of like butter. It's really creamy, sweet, really delicious.

That sounds great. I'll have to keep my eyes open for those.

This episode of the Farm Walks podcast was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture Transition to Organic Partnership Program, partnering with nonprofit organizations to provide technical assistance and wraparound support for transitioning and existing organic farmers.

Your farm is also in a unique partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. How did that come about? What does it entail, and how has it impacted your business?

Our heifer farm. It's actually where my mom lives, 5 miles down the road. We do raise all our heifers there. So on that farm, we are the protectors of the federally endangered Kincaid's lupine. So the Kincaid's lupine is the host plant for Fender's blue butterfly. Approximately 20 years ago, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife person was riding her bike by, noted that we had a lupine in the field Just happened that later that year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife announced that was a federally endangered plant. So my friend who worked for NRCS told me and my mom and dad, you guys need to write a plan or they'll tell you what to do and you— it will not— oh, you— they'll tell you to remove the animals.

You want to get ahead of it. Yeah.

So they would have told us to remove the animals from the farm, but she said we can prove to them, if you graze it right, will actually make a larger population. So we wrote a plan and submitted it to our Washington State US Fish and Wildlife guy. He actually registered it in Washington, D.C. So we have a federally registered grazing plan to protect the Fenner's blue butterfly through the enhancement of Kincaid's lupine. 2026 will be the 20-year anniversary. As of 2 years ago, We've increased the population by 35%. So we have increased the population enough in the state of Washington that now Kincaid's lupine is no longer endangered. Amazing. It is now just threatened.

What does that mean to you and your business?

The deal is we've never, ever been compensated.

Okay.

For any of it. I mean, we've got some grants for like water lines, right? And different practices which have helped us. But the management of the grazing plan, is 100% on us.

Wow.

We do deferments, which means you can't graze that ground for 4 months. We've allowed the seed collection. It's funny because the lupine doesn't grow by itself, so the second we started diverting the ground or putting setbacks or set-asides, a bunch of their friends showed up—

wildflowers.

Oh wow. So there is about 38 different species of plants, forbs, wildflowers on there. 4 of those species you can only see in the state of Washington and only on my mom's property. So we have this little micro prairie cool thing. And then one of them is actually gonna be federally threatened, so we'll be protecting that one.

And is there access for people to come and see this?

Sometimes we'll put on like a lopin walk, we call it. Uh-huh. So it has a very short blooming window, usually first 2 weeks of June. Totally dependent on the weather, but if it gets hot, it'll bloom and go away in 10 days. Yeah.

So it's very short window, but yeah, we've We've been protecting that thing and that's really cool. And it's not too much extra work, I hope, on your part.

It takes a little bit of work, but we've got some like cross-fencing and some stuff. Kind of learned how to manage it.

How do other farmers in the Organic Valley Co-op support each other? Is there a lot of back and forth? Is it similar to mentoring or is it more just you're all in it together?

Organic Valley is a unique co-op, probably one of the most diverse unique co-ops in the world. We are actually a farmer-owned cooperative, so if the company does make profits, those profits have to go back to the farm. Organic Valley is a totally transparent company. We have a board of directors that's a governing board. We have 16 farms in 29 states. 50% are plain farmers. We still pick up guys that hand milk their cows, so it's a very diverse group. And we have an annual meeting back in Wisconsin every year. It's mandatory. By our bylaws, there'll be about 800 farmers show up, including Amish buses full of 40 farmers or 50 farmers. Yeah, because a lot of those guys do not drive, so they'll take a train or a bus. So you get to meet those guys. We have meetings and discuss things and then relay how the membership feels back to the board. So we lay everything out. I can also call any one of my network of friends to ask them questions on like, hey, this is happening on my farm, what do I do? Yeah. So we're a giant network of helping each other.

How often does that happen? That you might talk to one of your co-op farmers about an issue that you're having or they're having?

Sometimes daily, multiple daily, sometimes at least probably twice a week.

Uh-huh. Is it— there an epic text thread or message thread with all the farmers, or is it—

no, one-on-one? Usually it's a one-on-one. Yeah, it's more of a one-on-one because a lot of people don't like to have your name on a thread, stuck on a thread.

Yeah. And of course the Amish wouldn't be on there.

Yeah, Amish don't have— they don't even have phones. Yeah. They—

it's very—

yeah, depends on who they are. But yeah, so we have this giant network community. Like, I can call my friends in Vermont, in Ohio, in Virginia, Oregon, Idaho, ask them questions. They can ask me questions.

Yeah.

But the cool thing is also is I have every board of directors phone number. Uh-huh. We're probably the only cooperative in the world where you can talk to your board of directors. I also have our CEO's number, so it's more of a transparent community where we all work together for the good of the order.

Yeah, it sounds very supportive and nice to know that you have all these people to turn to and talk to. When you're talking to all of the other farmers in your co-op or your mentees, what do you see as some of the biggest challenges for you in particular, and what are you hearing from the people that you're talking to?

So one of the ones is sustainability, but the sustainability of the farm to make it to the next generation, because today 70% of the farms don't make it past the third generation. Interesting. In my case, I would be the one to lose it because the grandfather worked hard to get the farm. Yeah, the middle people paid off the farm and then the third one just took over and floating around. When they get time to sell it, are you going to sell it for all it's worth or are you going to work out with your kids? How do you make that happen?

Mm-hmm.

Or what do you compromise to make that happen? And are you willing to train your kids to give them a choice?

And are your kids willing to be trained? Yes.

So you have to make it user-friendly. Yes. I'm just lucky because my son loves doing it. You have to back off a little bit and give them a fight in the game and see if they can do it. Because we're a milk company, right? If we don't have milk to sell because all the farmers quit or go away, we don't have cooperative anymore.

Right, right. And you lose that network, that support, especially a small-scale family farming cooperative. So this has been and will continue to be your family business for a while. For you personally, what is it that drives you the most and gets you back up and at it every day?

I just love it. It's just getting out the door every day and there'll be a beautiful sunrise. We're notorious for beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets. So we live in the valley, it's 20 miles long, mile and a half wide, kind of mountains on each side. So when you get a rainbow, it's going a mile and a half. Size rainbow and they farm rainbows. Yeah. And we're like, we're like an hour from the ocean. So when the sun goes down, sometimes you get a beautiful red sunset. Oh, wow. But also being able to walk out the door and see my son every day, that's pretty cool.

That's really cool. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to a little fun we're going to have. We're doing this segment called Barnstorming, and basically I'm going to give you a few options, 2 or 3 options of something, and you're just going to pick one and tell me why you picked that one.

Sound good? Sounds like a plan.

All right, chocolate or vanilla?

Chocolate.

But actually vanilla, you can add a lot of stuff to vanilla and make it—

that's true. Like, I'm a person that cans their own food, so you're making your own pan-picked blackberry jam or raspberry jam and stir that in some vanilla. Or lately I made some pear butter or apple butter. You put that spicy apple or pear thing in some vanilla Nice.

So vanilla plus is what you're saying.

Vanilla plus.

Yeah, exactly. Latte or milkshake? Milkshake. I'm with you there. I like my coffee black. I just need it to work. Don't need to mess around with a latte or anything.

A good old-fashioned milkshake. Yeah.

You can't beat it.

Yeah. If you hold the thing upside down. Yes. And it doesn't come out, that's a milkshake made with real ice cream. Mm-hmm. And add what you want to it. Okay.

Cheddar or Swiss? Oh, you can see the theme that's happening here, right?

What about Gouda?

No. Okay. We could do that. I will accept Gouda as your answer.

I mean, I, I, I, I like cheddar. Uh-huh. Sharp cheddar's my favorite. Yeah.

But sharp cheese is my favorite. Yeah. The sharper the better. Yeah.

Swiss is good on certain things, but yeah, I like Gouda.

Gouda is pretty tasty. It is good. It's Gouda. Portland or Seattle? Neither. Okay, fair enough. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Breakfast.

And what do you usually have for breakfast out here on the farm?

Usually it's egg of some type, bacon, sausage, sometimes biscuits and gravy.

The classic farmer's breakfast.

Sometimes we'll throw out a pancakes or waffles. Nice. Dutch oven baby, if you ever had one of those. Oh yeah.

Dutch oven, really good.

Throw one of those in the cast iron skillet and put her in the oven and that's 20 minutes later.

That's hard to beat.

It's ready. You're like, whoa. The cool thing about that too. Mm-hmm. Breakfast makes a pretty good dinner sometimes.

Yes, it does. Absolutely. The catalog or magazine you can't wait to see in your mailbox or email.

There's one called Progressive Dairyman. It has a lot of really good articles. Mm-hmm. That's probably one of the better ones.

The one tool you couldn't live without?

My milking robot.

Do you have just one milking robot?

We have just one milking robot. Yeah, we've had the milking robot for 10 years. I ran the farm for a long time by myself, so part of farming is it's hard to get away if you're milking cows. Yeah. And so if you have a milking robot, that allows us to run the farm. One person can run the farm by themselves for a couple, 3, 4 days. But everything's going good.

It's right, easy. Does your robot have a name?

The school kids came and they named it Rosie.

Rosie the milking robot.

Rosie the milking robot.

Yeah. What to you is the start of a perfect day?

Wow, that start to a perfect day is just walking out the door and seeing the sunrise.

That's a very nice door to walk out. I'm looking at the view right now. Yeah, I get it. Our listeners might not understand, but then again, probably a lot of people listening to this are also in beautiful places, right? They can relate to that, just stepping out the door and like, I live here and this is my thing, right?

And the deal is here, so when you step out my door, you're looking towards the east, which is where the sun's rising, obviously. But you also remember, I don't have a neighbor for over half a mile.

Nice.

And if I look to the west in the wintertime, there's a hill there, mountain, that's 3,500 feet. So you can get that snow-capped mountain view. Oh cool. Just going out that door and yeah, smelling nature and thinking, oh, I get to go see my girls. Yeah, what I call my cows.

See the girls. Last one: winter, spring, summer, or fall here on the farm? I'd say summer. It's probably a busy time for you.

Spring, spring, summer gets busy, but that's when we're doing the majority of the fence moving and the pasture. Yeah, and we do irrigation. But to see everything like growing and lush and green and walking that and seeing what's growing, what's not growing, What did we do right? What did we do wrong? Just that it's rewarding. There's nothing better than a cow out in the pasture eating fresh grass on a daily basis. Our cows graze for 200+ days, and 60% of their total diet comes from grass during that time. So a lot of people go by, we let the cows across the county road. Now it's pretty popular for them to whip out their phone and take a video.

So summer is the time when nature is working hard too to help out here.

Yeah, yeah, nature, you know, it can be warm and it can be sunny, but that's also the rewarding time of all that good jazz.

Maynard, thank you so much for talking with me today. Thanks for having me out to your beautiful farm, and, uh, thanks for all the great work that you're doing as a top mentor and helping the next generation of farmers figure it out.

Yeah, and thank you for having me. And if you're listening to this and thinking of being organic, just reach out to an organic farmer or call up the top program, or we as farmers are here to help. We're not here to say, no, I'm not going to help you. My door is always open to anybody that wants to come, or if you want to stop by my farm, if you know where I live, you do now.

So that's awesome.

Thanks so much. All right, thank you.

Thanks again to Maynard for having me out to Mallonee Family Farms for our chat. You can learn more about Mallonee Family Farms and the Organic Valley farmer-owned cooperative at organicvalley.coop and malaneyfarms.com. And you'll find those links in the show notes for this episode. In our next recurring segment that we're calling Provider Connection, we introduce you to good people to know working in nonprofit organizations and government entities focused on supporting farmers of all kinds of fields. Think of it like a networking opportunity with out the awkward small talk. And in fact, this conversation took place at the TILT Conference and Farm and Food Symposium, a great opportunity for learning and connecting. Let's make a provider connection with Maxime Éthier of the Northwest Agriculture Business Center.

Hi, my name is Maxime Éthier. I'm a project manager with the Northwest Agriculture Business Center. It's a mouthful.

So NABC for short. Nice to meet you, Maxime.

Nice to meet you.

What is the purpose of the Northwest Agriculture Business Center?

Our mission is to inspire success, foster cooperation, and advance the economic vitality of agriculture in rural Western Washington by providing expertise, resources, and business technical services to agriculture Enterprises. All right. You see why?

Yes.

I had to read it.

The official line. What areas do you personally focus on in your role?

I am specifically interested and involved in cooperative development. We are a USDA recognized cooperative development center. We have supported the formation and the development of 5 different food hubs in Western Washington. I also am involved in the helping farmers transition to organic. Us project managers at NABC, we do different things.

How would you describe a food hub? What does that mean exactly?

So like I said, it's a cooperative. So typically, it can take different forms, right? But for those that we have helped in Western Washington, a group of farmers come together wanting to aggregate their production and to create a distributor. So the food hub is like a distributor, but it's a cooperative of the farmers. So it's controlled by the farmers.

Okay.

And they bring typically all their products to a warehouse and then the food hub is in charge of marketing it to restaurants, grocery stores, schools, all kinds of wholesales like that.

I've been here at the TILF conference this weekend and one thing I've heard from a lot of farmers is they're so busy farming that the idea of marketing, some of them have just said, nope. Nope, can't do it. Not gonna do it. So that sounds like a good solution for a lot of farmers. Yeah.

That's often something we hear from farmers is that they're not necessarily interested in marketing or like they go to the farmer's market, for example, that's their marketing. That's what they know. Yeah. But then when you look at it, it's like, how much can you sell at the farmer's market? And then how much time it takes of you, labor, people that you need to pay for, you know, all that. So then And part of our technical assistance is to help them understand that, okay, if you want to scale up, for example, you need to think about selling wholesale. And then it's a different kind. You have to adjust your business for that different kind of markets.

What size farms do you typically work with?

So in the Puget Sound region, the farms are not like they would be on the east side of Washington. So we're dealing with, like I would say, micro farms where you could have an organization that would provide, I don't know, an eighth of an acre to a farmer to be able to plant something. And so from there to, we have some farmers that have a few hundred acres that they farm. Yeah. And everything in between.

Why is a smaller or micro farm, as you put it, just as important as a bigger farm?

That's actually one of the things that we would, I was gonna say defend, is the importance of that diversity in all ways in farming. Because you have different markets and different needs. And a huge farm, yes, will produce a lot of something, right? But may not be the right kind of farm for a certain community with certain needs. So that's why we need that diversity. And not even talking about access to land, right?

Right.

That is a big thing in Western Washington. And if you happen to have 200 acres in your family and you're able to farm that great. Access to land for a lot of farmers is, is really an issue. So whatever you have, maybe you can do with 1 acre.

And do you work exclusively with farms in Western Washington?

Yes, currently that's how we're set up. We started in Mount Vernon in 2006, and last year we opened a second office in Chehalis. So we're expanding in the Puget Sound region, and now we're like pushing down also all the way down to Vancouver, Washington. Great. But maybe one day we'll go on the east side.

We'll see. Do you have a recent or favorite success story from one of your projects that you want to share?

One of the cooperatives I work with is the Hmong Farmers Cooperative, Washington Hmong Farmers Cooperative. It happens to be the first Hmong cooperative in the country. And so what happened is that during COVID the farmers market were closed, and maybe you been at the Pike Place Farmers Market. Yeah. And, and all the flowers you see there, most of them are cultivated and sold by Hmong farmers. And they reach out to us and say, we need to do something. We can't sell our flowers. And it started with a drive for Mother's Day. So Mother's Day is the biggest day of the year for flower farmers. Don't forget. And, and so it started with, they organized themselves to be able to sell flowers for Mother's Day. And then we helped them create cooperatives from that. And the cooperative since 2022 that it was formed has grown. And then this year they've been able to sell flowers to PCC, Whole Foods, other places where they were not. They're still selling at Pike Place Market. Sure. Like individual farmers.

Yes.

But the cooperative now is able to give them access to other markets that they would not have without the cooperative.

That's fantastic. I, I remember during that no farmers market period, which was awful, going to a house and burying and buying a bunch of flowers out of someone's driveway. And it was a big deal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, yeah, that's what they had to do, right?

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

What do you personally love most about the work that you're doing?

Yeah, it's working with people really. And it's all kind of people because I talk a lot, of course, about the farmers that I work with. But it's also, we do work with farm to school, farm to food bank. And you get to meet all these different people in the food system. Basically, that's my passion is food system things. And the people in the food system is really where that diversity, you know, like the farmer that is the 5th generation farmer compared to the African immigrant that got in the country 5 years ago. And that diversity, that's really rich.

A lot of great stories there. Yeah. And I imagine you are working directly with farmers, but you're also the middle person between a lot of complicated government entities and organizations like that.

Yes, absolutely. That's part of my background also. Before working with NABC, I was working with USDA, the Department of Agriculture. And so I know a little bit of that world too. So it's, yeah, it's a lot, as you mentioned, talking to farmers and they're not into marketing, but tell them also about the government.

It's a whole nother kettle of fish.

A barrel of hay. Yeah. So part of our work is also helping them, for example, grant writing. That's some of the services we help with, doing the interface with government services, access to capital, all these things that for a lot of farmers, it's like, hey, I need a little help here.

All the things. What is the best way to connect with you and learn more about your services?

We have a website, agbizcenter.org, and we also have a Facebook page, and that's the easiest way to reach out for NABC. And then from there, you can see the different project managers we have, the services, and you can just contact us through the website.

Sounds good. Maxime, so great to meet you. Thanks for talking with me today.

Thank you, Keith. Nice to meet you.

That's it for this episode of Farm Walks. If you like what you heard, you can rate, review, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And be sure to share this episode with someone you love or even just like. For transcripts, show notes, episode evaluation, and more information, check out our website at farmwalks.org. Behind the scenes logistics and wrangling by Brommie Pugh and Ray Russell of Tilt Alliance and Kate Smith of WSU Food Systems. Field recordings and audio engineering by Made with Bacon Productions. I'm Keith Bacon. We'll see you out there.

Thanks for listening.