Growing a Farmer Read online

  Growing a Farmer

  Growing a Farmer

  How I Learned to Live Off the Land

  Kurt Timmermeister

  W. W. Norton & Company

  New York • London

  To my long-deceased father, August “Bud” Timmermeister,

  a man I only know through photographs

  but whose continued presence has shaped my life

  in ways that only slowly reveal themselves.

  Contents

  Introduction

  One Before the Farm

  Two Growing the Farm

  Three Bees

  Four Fruit, Apples, Vinegar

  Five Sheep, Goats, Pastures and Grazing

  Six Cows

  Seven Dairying

  Eight Raw Milk

  Nine Vegetables

  Ten Fowl

  Eleven Pigs

  Twelve The Slaughter

  Thirteen Butchering

  Fourteen The Present-Day Farm

  Fifteen The Table

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

  The Farm Bookshelf

  Growing a Farmer

  Introduction

  I live in a lovely place. It is a small farm, just a few acres, but it is beautiful. I created this farm over many years, and it is still evolving, and will continue to for many years hence. I never intended to be a farmer and yet it feels right. I enjoy a connection to the land, to the animals here, and I am endlessly thrilled to make food; to feed people.

  The primary product of this farm is cheese. A small herd of Jersey cows also call this bit of ground home. Twice a day they head down from the upper pastures to the barn. There I will meet them, milk them and in the hours and days to come transform that milk into cheese.

  When I say that I live in a lovely place, I also mean place in the abstract sense. I work for myself; I have no boss. This is not to say that it is a perfect job, or one without challenges. Each day brings new setbacks and new rewards. This farm, this business, changes every year, sprawls in every direction seemingly without a plan. I pretend to control it, but often it controls me.

  This is the story of a farm. It is the story of my journey from the city life of a restaurateur to my present life as a farmer. It is not a cookbook, although the preparation of food is discussed. It is not a how-to guide to farming, although much can be learned about farming from these pages. It is not a treatise on agriculture in America, although I certainly have opinions on the health and viability of small farms.

  My wish for this book is to add a perspective on the food we eat: where our food comes from, what goes into producing it and how it was traditionally prepared. I would be thrilled if some who read this book quit their day jobs, moved out of the city and built small farms. I doubt, however, that this will happen, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. I would be content if the reader, while at the supermarket the next week, picks up a small round of cheese from a local farm, pauses and contemplates how it was made. If that reader looks at carrots at the farmers’ market next weekend and marvels at their existence, picks them up and smells the earth that they had come from hours before, that would bring a smile to my face.

  One

  Before the Farm

  When I was twenty-four years old I opened my first restaurant. It was a small, actually very small, ten-foot by twenty-foot, café. With just four tables squeezed together and a minuscule kitchen on the side, this humble space represented the start of my career. I had worked as a waiter and a pastry cook around town and felt that I could run a restaurant better than my much more experienced bosses and coworkers. Despite this confidence, I really had no clue what I was up against and was immediately overwhelmed by the difficulties of owning and managing a business.

  Every morning at four I would walk the two blocks from my small studio apartment in downtown Seattle to the café and bake pastries in the manner of a home cook. The kitchen was tiny, the equipment of small scale and my volume of baked goods originally very limited; one pound cake, a couple of coffee cakes, four dozen biscuits. At seven in the morning the café would open and I would sell the fresh pastries and coffee to the receptive locals who would line up daily. They could see into the small kitchen, see the mixer, watch the rolls come out of the oven and onto the counter in front of them. What was significant to me about this entire process was there was integrity; I bought butter and flour and baked it into pastries and handed it to people to eat right there. Yes, this is the description of every bakery the world over, but I thought, perhaps arrogantly, that no one was doing it so directly. I reached into the oven, pulled out a biscuit and placed it on a plate. I had made that biscuit, I had served it and the customer ate it. There were no cake mixes, no canned fillings, no waiters, no corporate offices. I sold goods for cash and then walked across the street to the bank and put the money in the bank. It was real and it was good. This influenced the way I would look at my world henceforth, though this simple and satisfying arrangement couldn’t last.

  As the café grew to be more popular and therefore more profitable, I realized I could afford to buy a house and settle down, move out of my small studio in the city. If I could have afforded a home in the city, I most likely would have stayed in Seattle. Even then, twenty years ago, the price of real estate in the city was quite high and well out of my reach.

  My universe at the time was the café and my apartment, both in downtown Seattle. I began to look for less expensive places to live that had the luxury of space. Seattle is located on Puget Sound, an expansive protected body of water dotted with islands that extend northward to Canada. The island closest to downtown Seattle, and accessed by ferryboats that docked a few blocks from my apartment, is Bainbridge Island. Originally I checked out homes there, but found them to be too costly. South of Bainbridge Island is Vashon Island, accessed by state ferryboats as well, but much less conveniently; the dock is located in West Seattle, a long trek from downtown Seattle.

  In addition to simply finding a home on Vashon Island cheaper than I could in Seattle, there was also the pull of nature. My impression at that time was that life would be easier in a small town, that life outside of the turmoil of a large city would be serene, orderly and tranquil. I confess that all these many years later I continue to fall into this flawed thinking. And so I began my search for a new home: I wanted more space than my humble apartment offered, situated far enough from the city to be affordable. I wasn’t looking to become a farmer; the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I just wanted a place where I could unwind after my grueling days at the café.

  I had never learned to drive and did not have a driver’s license. I never really wanted a car; found them wasteful and expensive. I enjoyed my downtown city life. I walked to the market to buy produce for the café, picked up flowers for my apartment, knew all the shopkeepers and lived a full, urban existence.

  I would peruse the classified ads of the local newspaper, looking for homes to buy. My family ethos was rooted in the American dream: buy a house and you will be financially independent. I never doubted it, I never questioned it. I needed to buy a house to have a complete life. Whether I realized it or not, even then I was striving for self-sufficiency: start a business, use the proceeds to buy a house, live autonomously. I’ve never expected my family to care for me in my old age, I intend to care for myself, and acquiring land and shelter was the next logical step.

  I soon discovered that Vashon Island was a part of King County, the county of Seattle, and therefore had the same bus service. I could live outside of Seattle and ride the bus to work. I made a perfunctory review of the bus schedules and confirmed that there were buses that ran from downtown Seattle to the island, the buses boarding the ferryboats in the process. I coul
dn’t really understand the schedules, knew nothing of the island and had never set foot on it, and yet proceeded to check out the local homes.

  In the Seattle newspapers in the “Islands” section were advertisements for the local real estate companies. Today at the age of forty-seven I feel as though little has changed in the world, and yet as I look back, simply the act of being able to look back tells me that the world is different today than it was when I was in my twenties. I called one of the real estate companies arbitrarily—the name was pleasing: Channel West. I was very nervous and so had rehearsed talking to them, ready for what I thought would be asked: my name, address, phone number and so on. The youngish-sounding woman on the line asked me if I was looking for land and if so, how much. I stammered and pulled “four acres” out of thin air. I have no idea where that came from. I had never seen four acres, I had no idea what it entailed and I didn’t know if that would cost ten thousand dollars or ten million dollars.

  The real estate office sent me a small catalogue of listings. A thick manila cover and maybe twenty pages of listings with poor-quality black-and-white photographs, it had been photocopied at the local island office supply store. As it was late in the month when they sent me this booklet, many of the homes had SOLD written across them with a Magic Marker. It was hard not to look at those and wonder if I was two weeks late to find a lovely home for myself.

  I made an appointment to see some houses and the agent agreed to pick me up at the dock. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I couldn’t drive and that I didn’t own a car. I took the city bus to the ferry dock and walked on the ferry.

  The vessels that ply the waters of Puget Sound, crossing back and forth with their decks filled with commuters, are run by the state of Washington. The ships are large, solid beasts, with a lower deck nearly flush with the water and packed with rows of cars and trucks, and with the upper decks fitted with tables and chairs, galleys with food service and restrooms. The crossing from Seattle to Vashon Island is but fifteen minutes, even if the wait for a boat can be five times that. The interior of the upper deck resembles a cruise ship on the high seas, if the cruise line was a sad little government-run operation with a decorating streak stuck in the disco era. Although the distance from dock to dock is minimal, it takes just a quarter hour, the distance in mood and feeling and sensibility is tremendous. As the ferry pulls out of the Seattle dock, the present-day rush and modernity are left behind. Upon coming off of the boat, a feeling of calm, slow-paced island living always washes over me.

  That first ride over was no different. I walked off of the large hulk of a boat, not knowing what to expect. My shoulders, held tight as if I were on a crowded city street, gradually began to relax. I quickly found the real estate agent waiting for me on the dock. I immediately felt comfortable as I sat in her ratty little car. She used a screwdriver to turn the ignition, which itself was lying on the floor, its wires stretched out on the wheel well. The days of real estate agents driving tidy Range Rovers had not yet arrived on Vashon Island.

  We went back to her modest office in the center of the town of Vashon. Thumbtacked on the wall were photographs of all the houses available. The homes showed their flaws in color more clearly than in the poorly reproduced black-and-white photographs of the catalogue. In the black-and-white photos my mind filled in the blanks of what I wanted the houses to be; in the color photos I could see that the siding was bad, the lawns unmowed, the windows aluminum and lacking charm.

  While in her office, I studied all of the photos and pulled one off the wall to get a closer look. The photo, which I still have, was of a small red shack, baby toys in the foreground, an old camper in the background and a scrappy apple tree framing the entire scene. The photo showed a house with little glamour or slickness. On the back was written: One bedroom home, four acres, greenhouse, swimming pool, historic house. The price, $125,000, was crossed out and $100,000 written below it in pencil. My mind was reeling. How could such a description match the image? I inquired further with the agent. She assured me that the description was true and that it was near town and we could go and take a look. The best part was that I could afford the $100,000 price; this was the cheapest property listed and the only one in my budget.

  We drove the short distance to the entrance to the property and began the descent off the main road and down what barely looked like a driveway: overgrown with blackberries and willows, the gravel road rough and interrupted with large potholes. Her ratty car jolted up and down in response to the uneven road. When we came through the twisting and turning drive, we emerged in a clearing surrounded by brambles. There stood the small red house, still with the baby toys and the camper, together with old cars.

  I hopped out of the car and began to walk around. When we passed through the long tunnel of the driveway I knew that I had found my home. I knew that this was the property I would buy. I explored the property, but only in a perfunctory manner. I had already made my decision.

  There was nothing beautiful or gracious about what was to become Kurtwood Farms. It didn’t look like a farm at all: it barely looked like a suburban homestead. Very little of the property was open, most of the land was covered in brambles. Sixteen old cars littered the property, along with a broken-down tractor, the camper and a variety of shacks and storage buildings. But the description listed on the back of the photo was accurate. On the property was a swimming pool, a greenhouse and a second home. The swimming pool was of a homemade flat-bottomed variety that could not hold water, its base cracked in half. The greenhouse was one of the fifty-some that were part of the defunct Beall Greenhouse Company next door. The surveyor had made an error earlier in midcentury and as a result, part of one industrial greenhouse was on my property, its roof caved in, blackberries now enjoying the run of the space. The second home was a log house, said to be the oldest standing house on the island, one that after many years of work would end up being my home but which now was a varmint-infested rotting hulk of Doug fir logs, held in place by the English ivy that worked its way up the side of the building.

  I saw none of the reality of the property, but only its charms. In hindsight, there were few charms to be seen on that June day. I didn’t have to convince myself, though; I was smitten. What I experienced on that fateful summer day was a general feel. Most of the island was covered in large Doug fir trees, second- and third-growth tall, thin timber that blocked the sun. Many of the island’s homes were sited in claustrophobic clearings in the midst of dense canopies of evergreens. For over a century this parcel had been lived on; the log house was built in 1880 and this was 1990. There was a sense of history here, families had lived and died here, they had grown food and cooked many a meal here. There were rampant blackberries that covered up the garbage and refuse of a hundred years of human habitation, but it was cleared land. For a century the residents had worked hard to make this a home. I was not only looking for a home for myself, I was also looking for a sense of family. The large family with a gaggle of kids, the house with constant activity, the homestead passed from generation to generation, that was what I saw in this run-down property. I believed that if I bought this property, I would become part of this legacy.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon driving around looking at other properties with the agent. I didn’t have the confidence to tell her that I had already made my decision. It seemed too inexperienced, too humiliating. I knew what I wanted to buy but rode around with her, feigning interest in other properties.

  It was summer when I looked at the house and December when the deal finally closed. The ease of June was long past when I went out late that year to check on the home that I had quickly inspected months earlier. A friend drove me out to the island, and as we left the city late in the afternoon I made an important discovery: it gets dark at night.

  The ferry dock was lit with the large mercury-vapor cobra lamps ubiquitous in cities; the glow was of an orange hue, flickering randomly like a loose fluorescent light. I had spent my nearly thirty
years living in the city, first in a neighborhood and then in the heart of downtown Seattle. I had worked in restaurants for years, closing up late at night and walking home or taking the city bus well after midnight. I had the misguided impression that the darkness of the city was actual darkness. The streetlights in the evening give the impression that it is nighttime, yet you can see where you are going and walk around with no sense of darkness. I had never experienced the complete darkness of night except for the odd week or two of horse camp as a kid. Even then we stayed near the camp and never ventured too far from the buildings flooded with light.

  We drove onto the ferryboat and parked on the lower deck facing west, and watched the sun drop as we crossed the channel. By the time we arrived on the island, the sun had completely set. I remember looking up at the hulk of the dark island in front of me and seeing no lights, except for those at the Vashon dock. In that short fifteen-minute crossing the atmosphere had changed. As we drove off the boat, the illumination of the city was at my back and the foreboding darkness of the sparsely inhabited island stretched in front of me.

  As we drove down the highway toward my land, I was conflicted: excited to be headed to my new place and eager to show it off to a friend, but also realizing that I was ill-equipped to deal with my future home. I realized quickly that I would have to change my plans for living on this unlit island. I was naïve and I had spent too little time in shopping for a house, guided only by my desire to own some land and a home. I was scared and excited, but tried to hide it from my friend. I plunged ahead and gave the perfunctory tour, despite the darkness that surrounded us. Staring into the immense blackness, I began to realize the enormity of my decision to move here. Like it or not, this was my life now, and I was going to have to figure out how to make it work.