Is Jones Creek Farms Organic ?
This is a common question for us these days. Not best answered with a short, simple answer. Let me give you a little history of the farm…
I started farming in an official capacity in the mid 1990s. I had just graduated from Skagit Valley College majoring in horticulture and was also employed at WSU Mt. Vernon Research Station. I had decided I wanted to be diversified in a few different major crops since I had no real experience in anything.
I started out with apples, wine grapes, tomatoes, garlic and herbs. I already was sold on sustainable farming after seeing some of the terrible ways vegetables were being grown here in the Skagit, mostly potatoes, and my experiences with constant applications of pesticides which was part of my job requirements at WSU.
So I set about designing and laying out my orchards, vineyard and tomato plots to take advantage of a low or no spray program.
After doing trials with various popular tomato varieties while at Skagit we determined that tomatoes grown in the ground but covered by hoophouse/greenhouse provided the most economical and best tasting product. This primarily to beat the infestation of late blight P. infestens which, like all fungi, requires free water as part of its life cycle. At the height of our tomato growing we had 3 greenhouses.
For the vineyard the biggest spraying concern is usually powdery mildew. This fungi can be minimized considerably by planting in areas of good air movement. As it happens, our creek comes down off of the mountain and on to our farm. There is a long canyon, running up the mountain, that provides natural air drainage that then spreads out but is always more concentrated closer to the stream. I placed the vineyard close to the stream and oriented the rows parallel with the stream. This worked well and I never did get any Powdery Mildew.
Garlic is a natural for low inputs. With proper soil nutrition its pretty much just plant it and forget it. With our naturally light, sandy/loam, soils its easier to keep at bay the many soil born pathogens that can completely ruin you as a garlic farmer.
The fruit orchard was more of a challenge. I decided to trellis everything in order to keep the trees as 2 dimensional as possible. This was for several reasons but tree management was the primary reason. I knew some spraying was going to be necessary even if they were non chemical type sprays its impossible to grow acceptable apples here without some sprays. The trellis type system would allow me to apply far less spray and to a much more targeted area. Then I set about building my own sprayer, non air blast, that just targets this 2’ – 7’ trellised area, unlike the normal airblast orchard sprayer that puts out a cloud of spray that goes everywhere.
Tree fruit nutrition is an interesting thing. Most literature on commercial orchards is targeted at eastern WA orchards. Eastern WA climate and soil is completely different than ours, here in western WA. The soil texture, PH, mineral makeup is all different and these combined with the lack of rainfall make a completely different terror for apples.
I realized, early on, that I would never have a need to add nitrogen. By having grass ally ways that are mowed regularly and combined with the natural nitrogen cycle there is never a need for added nitrogen. Potassium is removed from the trees in huge amounts, in the fruit, each year and needs to be replaced. Its easy to do this in a sustainable manner as Potassium is a natural product that is mined from the ground. I will usually apply Potassium crystals to the orchard floor on a 2-3 year rotational basis.
So that fills in the background prior to our farm being certified organic. What follows is a brief synopsis of our organic program.
Important facts about us and WSDA certification program:
First certified 1.5 acres for 2005 as crop producer.
Continued to add acreage size eventually to 5 acres.
2020 was last year of certification.
In 2015 also certified as processor. Continued this till 2020.
16 years as a certified producer
6 years as a processor
When I first started selling my products at farmers markets, in the mid 1990’s, being certified organic was something to aspire to. There were many local, small farms flying the WSDA banner. I wasn't too concerned with it myself at first as most of my land was already meeting organic standards so I didn’t see any need to pay anything for a certification I didn’t need.
As time went on, however I did see that if I wanted to sell my products to someone else as organic so they could use them in a processed organic product or make processed product myself such as juice, I would need to certify if I legally wanted to call these products organic.
I went ahead and began certifying farmland as organic in 2005, see timeline above. These certifications were accomplished each time without transitional status since my land and orchards had always been worked by organic standards.
It was always most important to me to farm in a sustainable manner. This would always be more important than organic certification. The driver to be certified was purely the economics of it. If I could still farm in the same sustainable way and at the same time achieve certification then I would do it.
There were many reasons why I made the decision to drop the certification program. The straw that broke the camels back was when WSDA raised the rates for annual re certification by 4X the previous year.
WSDA had, in the past, favored small family farms and given special treatment to help keep these farms in the organic program. Apparently those days are over. Talking to someone in the WSDA organic program is like talking to a phone agent at the IRS… “the organic program is a pay as you go program where all farms are treated the same”.
Gee, its nice to know that WSDA has its priorities straight. Now all the small farms are playing on the same level field as the huge corporate farms. Its all just big business as usual when it comes to the organic program.
The handwriting is on the wall… its now Get Bigger Or Get Out for organics just like it is for conventional farming. If you don’t believe this sort of thing happens just take a drive across what used to be our great farm belt, the mid west. Farming, the farm life, farm community, has been destroyed in the farm belt.
Sure you will still see endless fields of crops but the community of farm folks and infrastructure that used to be there to support those fields are gone. Its mono culture on steroids.
It would be convenient to blame it all on Monsanto and Roundup but that would be like blaming sin on the Devil.
Monsanto just provided a mechanism for the rich to get richer. Make those mega farms produce even more per acre. The real sin, committed here, that made it all possible was we, the American people, allowing our government to allow Monsanto and their GMO crops on US soil in the first place.
This is what opened the door to the destruction of the agricultural community in the mid west not to mention, of course all the many other countries with now contaminated, polluted agri systems and gene banks.
Yes, I don’t have anything good to say about GMO. As far as Im concerned America should reverse its thinking on the use of GMO on everything.... including research. COVID vaccines could have been easily developed without the use of GMO. There is a non GMO vaccine in use now (Novavax) that could have been put in production much sooner had it been put at the front of the list, but of course its all about the big money and big pharma.
Getting back to Jones Creek Farms, You most definitily will NEVER find any GMO crops in use here! But as a consumer, beware! The first GMO apples are already being sold. They have a anti-browning gene inserted to make them look nicer, longer.... (think jurasic park)!
So we have gone back to our pre certification methods of farming. Our sustainable farming leaves us healthy, our environment thriving, our products clean and safe for our customers and a future that looks bright and promising.