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Field Trip Sunday, April 23: Sustainable Agriculture in the Wenatchee Valley Our trip will consist of a lecture-discussion on regional food systems, and visits to three farms. Before we go, please read Kent Mullinix and Nancy Warner, Building a Healthy Future for Washington Family Farms. This will give you a good overview, primarily from a socioeconomic perspective, of the issues faced by farmers in today's Washington, and should provide a complement to the mainly ecological material from Altieri, Smil, and my presentation on April 19. We will meet in the parking lot at the back of the Burke Museum (between the Museum and 15th Avenue) at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 23. You should bring $5 as a contribution/donation for our lunch (see below) A sack dinner and beverage if desired A notebook and pencil A camera so we can post pictures on this website Questions about the article and related items for the author It will take us about 3 hours to drive across Stevens Pass to East Wenatchee, where we will meet Professor Kent Mullinix of Washington State University, head of the Institute for Rural Innovation and Stewardship (IRIS) in Wenatchee. He will give us A lecture/discussion on problems of regional-scale sustainability in US agriculture, as exemplified by the Wenatchee Valley A tour of the Wenatchee Valley College "almost sustainable" experimental apple and cherry orchard We will then retrace our steps to the Leavenworth area, where we will first visit farmer Nick Stemm and his wife, who will offer us A lunch prepared from local foods, many from their own farm (the $5 is to cover their costs) A tour of their farm Our final farm stop will also be in the Leavenworth area, at the farm of Grant Gibbs, described by both Kent Mullinix and Nick Stemm as unique, not to be missed. I'm not sure just what he's going to show us, but he was, according to his own and others' accounts, the first organic farmer in the Valley, beginning with selling raw milk. This will, depending on the prolixity of the farmers, take us somewhere close to dinnertime. I'm proposing that, weather permitting, we seek out a nice picnic spot beside the Wenatchee River in Tumwater Canyon, and munch our own local food lunches while recapping the day. Depending on when we get going and how long we stop for dinner, we should be back in Seattle by 10:00 p.m. at the latest, which will give us 12-1/2 hours till we meet again in FISH 203.