During the Spring and Summer of 2009, the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) committee members investigated the feasibility of a Farm Equipment Coop. Such a Coop would enable farmers of Lopez and other islands to increase and diversify the production of grain crops and increase local self-reliance. LCLT advertised for a grain research intern and connected with O.J. Lougheed, a grain research specialist. Through OJ’s work, the members quickly learned that more equipment existed than had previously been known. However, much of the equipment is older, and not necessarily appropriate to the needs or scale of grain growing on the island. Other higher priorities emerged. In order to have something to harvest, varieties of a diversity of crops suited to the island’s soils and climate must be identified and appropriate seed must be grown and saved. SARD members are exploring such crops as bread wheat, food grade hull-less barley and oats, rye, and many types of dry beans and peas.

The SARD committee currently has five primary areas of interest:

1. research methods to increase the fertility of island soils,
2. increase the availability of locally grown grains and legumes,
3. increase economic stability and self-reliance amongst farmers,
4. increase food security, lessening our carbon footprint of imported goods, and providing “Food — when the ferries don’t run.”
5. develop the necessary infrastructure to produce a variety of staple crops for local distribution and consumption.

LCLT Grain Project Goals:

Grain – dry seeds of cereals and pulses (legumes) used for animal feed and human consumption

• To increase food security in the San Juan Islands
• To further an ecological approach to farming the lands of the Islands
• To increase soil fertility by the choice of locally adapted crop varieties, crop rotations, and animal grazing
• To grow enough grain annually so as to have planting seed available for 100% island self-sufficiency within one year of a catastrophic event.
• To encourage island citizens to develop family food security programs, including storing a one years supply of grain and grain products.

Grain Project Research Goals:

• Identify landrace, heirloom and modern non-genetically engineered, patent and PVP-free, open source grain varieties with good end use qualities which will produce acceptable yields in the San Juan Islands environment.
• Identify grain and legume varieties which are suited to diverse soil improving crop rotations including cover-cropping, hay production, and grazing, as well as grain.
• Enable individuals – through workshops and written materials – to conduct ‘farmer research’ and seed saving on their farms, land and soils.
• Coordinate and assemble observations and data to make available to the community and other researchers.
• Create Webpages to post information, data, and provide for communications.

“Made from homegrown WHEAT, grown, threshed and milled by hand and foot power on Lopez Island plus water and sea salt”

At the Annual LCLT Potluck, this bread won First Prize. Ona Blue has been growing this wheat in her garden for several years and usually harvests about 90 pounds – a years supply of bread for her family of two. She obtained the original Certified Organic seed from Johnny’s Selected Seed. (They no longer carry it.) The variety is ‘Polk’ – a hard red spring wheat – which was bred at and released by the Minnesota Agriculture Experiment Station in 1968. It is a tall non-semi-dwarf wheat and maintains good resistance to the predominate Stripe Rusts west of the Cascades. The varieties from which Polk was bred have both Red Fife (a spring wheat) and Turkey Red (a winter wheat) in their pedigrees. We believe that Polk is one of many older wheats that have a place in the search for local grain production on the Islands.

Steve Lillestol and his "Seed Vault"

Downloads: (Documents are in either Portable Document Format (PDF) or in Rich Text Format (RTF). The later can be opened by MS Word as well as TextEdit on a Mac or various programs on Linux.)

• Written version of an address by O.J. Lougheed given at the Fall Grain Harvest Workshop (2009) hosted by the WSU Extension office in Friday Harbor. (16 KB Download)
• Grain Project Brochure (Fall 2009) in PDF format (2 MB Download)
• 2009 Winter Grain Data Sheet in RTF format (7 KB Download)
• "Finley Wheat, the Rest of the Story" by O.J. Lougheed, from which the text for the "Finley Wheat" insert in the Grain Brochure was taken. (6 KB Download)

Links:

• "Growing Your Own Grains" – a recent article from a forthcoming book, discovered on the Web.

For more information please contact OJ Lougheed at olougheed@gmail.com