- "Washington Grown" is made possible by funding from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, and the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant program, and by the Potato Farmers of Washington.

Learn why Washington is home to the world's most productive potato fields and farmers by visiting potatoes.com.

- Hi everyone, I'm Kristi Gorenson, and welcome to "Washington Grown."

Organically grown produce continues to be popular in our grocery stores here in Washington State.

But what challenges does growing this produce bring?

In this episode, we're gonna learn how some Washington farmers are raising organic produce, and we get to taste some delicious results.

Val's visiting Little Big Farm in Olympia.

- I love food.

- I think that that's incredible when food is something special.

- And I'm making a special carrot dish at Driftwood in Seattle.

Looks like a couple of legs.

- Totally.

- Then I'm visiting Gifts of the Planet Farm to see their blueberries.

- My wife and I planted these and we put a little blessing on each one when we did.

- All this and more today on "Washington Grown."

[bright music] It's a flavor-cation for your mouth.

- Flavor-cation.

- And I'm just gonna hold on.

- You got a long ways to go.

- Okay, sorry, I know, get with it.

- You were not kidding about a party of flavors.

Wait a minute, where are my pears?

- Eat two, pick one.

- Exactly.

- I'm gonna stick around a while.

- We're changing hearts tonight.

- Yes we are.

- Wow.

I got work to do.

- Yeah you do.

- All right, let's go.

[gentle music] - Here in Alki Beach in West Seattle, gentle waves splash on the sand of the Puget Sound.

It's tough to think of a better place to spend the day, which makes it the perfect spot for an amazing restaurant.

Driftwood describes its menu as hyperlocal, and the combination of amazing plates and a perfect atmosphere make this a must see spot for foodies and beach lovers alike.

- It's just absolutely beautiful seeing the Puget Sound.

- It really feels like it brings the outdoors in, those like feelings and vibes transmit in through the restaurant.

- No better way to enjoy your meal.

- We're very representative of time and place, and the intention of the restaurant is to celebrate Washington.

- Owners Jackie and Daniel Malahan use the inspiration of the area to make their restaurant the ideal spot for everyone who loves the Evergreen State.

- You get the sounds of people and families on the beach, even on like crazy wintery rainy days, you just can hear the water splashing up against the bulkhead out there, which is just a lot of fun.

- And as for their menu.

- Everything like serves a purpose and all the flavors like build off of each other and very complimentary of each other.

- There's a lot of depth I feel like, every time like you take a bite, it just, there's more layers that keep getting unpacked.

- All their seasonal stuff, great, from the winter kales to where we're at now and can't wait to see what they're gonna have in summertime.

- I don't think I've ever been to a restaurant before that's as local as you guys.

I mean you don't go outside of Washington.

- Yeah, we're hyperseasonal, hyperlocal.

The menu changes all the time.

Most of what we're bringing in is coming directly from the farm partnerships and farmer's markets, and then those relationships are just cultivated through shopping with them and having those conversations.

I trust them to just like tell me whatever ingredient is abundant and awesome, and they trust me not to mess it up too much.

- Stay tuned because later in the show, Chef Daniel and I are making a special Washington carrot dish.

- Hummus means chickpea, so to say chickpea hummus, you're just saying hummus hummus.

So I don't know if people know that.

[bright music] [gentle music] - Kristi might have seen how Driftwood makes such incredible food, but that quality doesn't start in the kitchen.

Here in Olympia, there's a small farm putting big efforts into making sure everything they grow is as perfect as it is tasty.

- We call the style of farming that we do market gardening.

So it is a little bit more similar to what you would see in your garden, just like scaled up to the max.

- Little Big Farm is run by two people who love everything about cultivating fresh produce.

Phelan and Maya may not have grown up in farming, but they have certainly embraced the lifestyle with both hands.

- We actually met at the Evergreen State College, so at Evergreen here in Olympia.

We did the immersion where you work on their farm there and do all the academics and the practical farming as well.

Actually started the business like right when we graduated from Evergreen on our first little site and have just been building every year since, exactly.

And then it's been six years of kind of a larger what we kind of see here operation.

- It was a lot.

It happened really quickly.

We had a business plan and we found ourselves at a farming conference and heard about a farm lease, and literally the next week, we were signing that lease.

And it was February.

So it was time to start seeds and it was time to get all of the things to start the seeds and to get the soil.

I mean I was 21 so I had all the energy in the world.

We would wake up at 3:00 in the morning to harvest, work until 10.

And I think it was we were just running on adrenaline for a few years for sure.

We found our success early because we focused on a crop.

We were like, okay, we can't grow 40 things perfectly.

So let's figure out the one thing that we want to become known for, something that people eat a lot of, something that we like eating, and that was salad.

It was just salads across the board.

So whether it's arugula, a lettuce mix, a spicy salad mix, micro greens.

I mean there was a lot of failures.

- Of course, of course.

- But like the grand scheme of things, our relationship succeeded the first year.

Our farm, like at the end of the year, looked better than it did at the beginning, and we were excited to do it again.

So we have our cherry tomatoes.

- Oh my God, they look so delicious.

- The like dripping trusses, they're really nice.

- Cheers.

- Really good.

These are the tastiest though, in my opinion.

These are the humble sun gold tomato.

There's no sweeter.

They have kind of ruined me for most tomatoes.

- It's like candy.

How do you get anything picked with all this deliciousness?

- Well you get full eventually.

- Eat two, pick one?

- Right, yeah, exactly.

- So we're seeing some cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower right here for the fall.

But we do specialize in certain things.

Like we grow a lot of carrots.

This is actually tomorrow's carrots.

We'll be harvesting both of these beds of carrots tomorrow.

There's a lot that aren't the prettiest and a lot that are super pretty.

But you can just come on in and yeah, just grab.

- Here's a little, yep, here's a little.

- Exactly.

See, look, that's a good one.

That's a perfect one.

- Isn't it pretty?

- Getting to know the people that grow your food is a great thing.

And that's why we're big advocates for the farmer's markets, for CSA programs, for local food in general.

- I love food, I love eating.

We have to do it three times a day, I think that it's incredible when food is something special.

I think we feel super blessed to be able to do what we do.

I feel fortunate to be farming here in Washington state, and I think customers should also be stoked to be an eater in Washington state.

I mean it's just like there's, yeah, there's like so much beautiful stuff going on.

People like to choose to go to the farmer's market on a Sunday morning when you could be sleeping or doing a crossword and drinking coffee or literally anything else I think.

Like I love those.

Those are our people.

- Your people, my people.

- Yeah, exactly.

This is not easy.

Like, I mean we eat really well, but like this is not easy.

And so I think it's so beautiful to have people that are receptive to what we do.

[bright music] Did you know that wild carrots were not originally orange?

- What color were they?

We'll have the answer after the break.

- Coming up, I'm making a special carrot dish at Driftwood in Seattle.

Looks like couple of legs.

- Totally.

- And we're in The Kitchen at Second Harvest trying Chef Laurent's ginger carrot soup.

- Wild carrots weren't originally orange.

They were actually a lightish color, purpleish.

- And they turned orange as they were bred to be sweeter.

- We're back on the beach at Driftwood in Seattle.

Here, an amazing team of chefs and friendly staff are making sure every plate is not only beautiful, but perfectly crafted to make the flavors of fresh ingredients sing to the guests.

- Everything is uniquely put together.

- Everything just looked delicious.

I think it took me maybe like 20 minutes to really make a decision.

- We're very representative of time and place, and the intention of the restaurant is to celebrate Washington.

- Owners Daniel and Jackie Malahan focus their efforts on relationships with local farmers meaning they get all the best ingredients straight from the source.

- All of the fresh ingredients they bring are just from Washington state.

We pride ourselves on our sourcing practices and shopping at the farmer's markets.

I take my daughter with me and we have a big cart and we just fill up giant piles of product and push it around and try not to have it tip over too many times.

- The closer you are to your food, the better it is.

- Fresh, local, direct relationships with all the producers that's the food I want to eat.

- It's so abundant here.

There are so many ingredients.

The things that we're getting have been pulled from the ground that morning.

It's limiting, but it kind of forces us to be a little bit more intentional with how we're preparing things.

It's what everybody used to do.

So that's not anything new.

My mother has an entire pantry full of things from four years ago.

- I get to cook with you today, so what are we gonna make?

- So we're gonna do a Little Big Farm overwintered Napoli carrot, and it's overwintered, which means they've had it in the ground all year and the freezing and thawing during the wintertime allows the concentration of sugars in the vegetable, so they're super fantastic.

- Cool.

Okay, I can't wait.

- They've all been taken off.

Yeah, twisty guy.

- Looks like couple of legs.

- Totally.

We're just gonna peel it and shock it in ice water.

I did a really bad job there to get started, but the idea is that you want these nice cross-sections of carrot.

- Oh, I see, like that.

- We reserve some for shaving.

We reserve some just to use in the restaurant for sauces and stocks and things.

And then a large portion of them go into a fermentation that we do.

- So that's what we've got going over here.

- Yeah, so these have been going since the end of March.

So we actually use them in our bar program.

A salty martini or something you'd have in a dirty martini with pickle juice, we would just use a carrot brine and it's fantastic.

It's really, really good.

So this is another one of our farm partners.

Alvarez Farms has some awesome chickpeas.

So we make some hummus.

Hummus means chickpea, so to say chickpea hummus, you're just saying hummus hummus.

So I don't know if people know that.

So don't say chickpea hummus, just say hummus.

So these are those awesome fermented carrots that we've just kind of cut into oblongy shapes just a little bit of- - Oblongy.

- Oblongy, that's technical term.

We have this awesome Cascadia Creamery 75 day blue cheese.

It has a really awesome sweetness and creaminess.

- Definitely getting your fiber.

- Yeah, this is a high health dish.

The best thing about vegetables is you can just eat a ton of them and it's totally fine.

These are some beluga lentils that we've sprouted.

Sweet, nutty, awesome texture, very tender.

And they look kind of crazy.

Little pea shoot nest on top of that.

These are also from Little Big Farm, and then this is a mix of equal parts blueberry and staghorn sumac.

That's a plant that grows that has this very lemony flavor.

There's not a ton of acidity in the dish.

- What do you need, beautiful old- - Napoli carrots.

- Meal.

This is right up my alley.

This is like food for Kristi right here.

Look at that bite right there.

Here we go.

- Cheers.

I forgot how good that was.

I haven't tasted this in a little while.

That's fantastic.

- Oh yeah.

I love the crunch of the carrots.

Everything about it just works so well together and it feels healthy, and it's so local and so fresh.

- Not only are we getting these awesome ingredients and showcasing things that are in season, but it's also like supporting all these other small businesses with our small business, which is kind of the whole point.

- It just comes full circle.

- Very much so.

- Let's have another bite, shall we?

Thank you so much for having me.

- Yeah, thanks for hanging out.

Your carrot shaves are impeccable.

- Thank you.

For more restaurants, recipes, farms, and fun, visit us at wgrown.com.

[gentle music] When we're shooting this show, there are days when we're in fancy restaurants talking about amazing foods.

Then there are days when we're talking about slightly less glamorous things.

- I don't know why I feel so nervous.

I love talking about compost.

- Dani Gelardi is a soil and climate scientist for the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

She's passionate about soil because it's the building block of so many amazing things.

- Soil is the literal and metaphorical platform on which all of our societies are built.

We grow food from soil, we recreate on soil, fiber, fuel, it all comes and starts with the soil.

- Here in Saint John, Doug Schuster and his daughter Erin Ruehl grow wheat and other grain products.

As a longstanding generational farm, it can be tough to make sure the soil has the nutrients it needs to grow good quality wheat.

- You know, these flats, they'll go a hundred bushel day in day out because there's always water and there's good organic matter and everything else.

But these hilltops would pull you maybe down to 20 bushels.

- Definitely face erosion.

Gravity is always working against you when you're farming the hills, that can be in the form of wind or rain and a multitude of other things.

- When you pull off the crop from the field, you're pulling off all of the nutrients that were in that soil.

And over time, that can lead to a really nutrient-poor and dusty material.

But compost is investing in the nutrient bank so that you can continue to grow crops year after year.

- And so I started buying compost and saw results immediately.

Oh my gosh.

The wheat was four inches taller.

And I took pictures of it and said, "This is amazing."

Just by putting this on the ground, it's enough moisture and warmth and heat, that was cool.

- Back in the day, they did this all the time because when horses were a very important part of farming, they used the manure from the barns as fertilizer on their crops.

- Compost is a really incredible opportunity to take all of that waste and really save it from becoming waste.

Instead, we harvest all of that and translate it into something really important for the farmer or for the backyard gardener.

- Doug and Erin were able to get assistance in buying the compost thanks to the WSDA's Compost Reimbursement Program.

That assistance has made it so they can already see results on top of their hills.

- So the compost laid here for three months, two months, and then I seeded it about a week ago.

And there's little wheat plants coming up.

- We're just trying to rebuild those soils that have been lost over generations of farming because we don't want to lose the productivity of the ground.

- We're doing the best we can to be good stewards of the land and the product that we're providing them.

- Coming up, I'm visiting Gifts of the Planet Farm to see their blueberries.

- My wife and I planted these, and we put a little blessing on each one when we did.

[bright music] - When you discover a food you absolutely adore, it can be downright spiritual.

And Saint Bread in the university district has a congregation waiting around the block to partake in divine treats and heavenly burgers.

Co-owner Randi Rachlow works with her team to create a menu that will keep you coming back singing hallelujah.

- So it's kind of based on the concept of the sacred bread from the Danish sandt brod.

But we really just wanted to do something that was special and casual and also to be a big part of the community here.

- I think it's safe to say you're a big part of the community.

When I see the line of people that are extending out your door, there's also gotta be something drawing them into this store, that's awesome.

- Yeah, we think we have some pretty good treats.

- One of their signature treats is a rhubarb danish that combines walnuts, a flaky dough, and a fruity Washington rhubarb jam.

- Rhubarb is one of my favorite fruits, honestly.

It's one of the fruits I grew up eating.

Now as a kid, my grandmother would send us out to her yard with a bowl of sugar and I would just eat rhubarb dipped in the sugar.

I love rhubarb, but it's also for us too.

It's one of the first things we see in the spring here in the Pacific Northwest.

- Just look at that.

- It's okay?

- First off, the thing I enjoy so much is that sweet tart of the rhubarb, but to die for is this pastry.

- It's really nice, right?

- It's just so flaky and crunchy.

And when you bite into it, you just get that soft center.

And if this is just one of your dishes, I can't wait to try the others.

Let's see what the people think of this blessed rhubarb treat.

- It's delicious.

- That's good.

- Okay, all right.

- It's fluffy.

It's yummy.

- It's pretty sweet.

It's like sweeter than I was expecting.

- I really like the tartness.

- I'm a fan.

- Yeah, I feel like it seems kind of scary, but this is like it tastes good.

- Rhubarb, the scary fruit.

- I wanna have more of it, but I wanna answer your questions.

- That's good.

I'd rather you enjoy that than answer my questions.

- It's perfect.

[gentle music] - Retirement looks different for each individual person.

Some people travel, others garden or read more books.

Then you have someone like George Brereton.

- I'm the kind of guy that can't sit still.

And then I retired and I wanted something to do.

So I started a farm.

- Today, he runs Gifts of the Planet Farm in Woodland, home of some amazing organic produce.

As a former captain of the Navy up in Alaska, he knows what kind of discipline and work ethic it takes to run a farm.

Turns out working the land isn't all that different from working the water.

- There's a lot of similarities, believe it or not because I maintain diesel equipment, we do that on the ships, we do it on the farm.

I used my splicing and knot tying ability to put up this trellis.

Quite a few things, you know, code of federal regulations on ships, different chapter, but there's still a code of federal regulations on the farm.

And I grow apples, pears, cherries, Asian Pears, a few hazelnuts, a few walnuts, lots of blueberries.

- And still there's more.

But that variety of produce hasn't stopped him from doing things right.

With careful planning and some help from the local conservation district, he's keeping his farm productive and healthy so he can sell his produce, both wholesale and on site.

- There wasn't a blueberry on this place.

- So these are all you.

- My wife and I planted these, and we put a little blessing on each one when we did.

- I love that.

Well that's why they're so happy.

- Yeah, they're pretty happy.

These are very productive plants.

I'm right at the top of the charts, 10 pounds per plant average.

- Good job.

- As much as I can expect.

Took 800 pounds last week off of here and 120 pounds today.

So we're up to about 920 something pounds.

- Good job.

I see some fruit trees over here.

- Yeah, apples over there, and pears across the front right here.

There's a great big Gravenstein as you came in the drive on your right and it's about 110 years old.

And last year that one tree, and we call it mama tree, produced over 2,000 pounds of apples.

One tree.

[gentle music] If we go a little bit further up here, we have another variety called Chandlers, which are the largest blueberry.

We've gotten them over an inch across a few times.

- Wow.

Holy moly.

- And I wear large sized gloves, so it's not a small hand.

- Did you ever get sick of blueberries?

- No.

I love blueberries.

My wife thought she ate too many the other day though, she had an upset stomach, "I think I ate too many blueberries."

- Oh no.

Normally when the team and I visit a blueberry farm, we leave with full bellies and blue tongues.

But this time, we couldn't gorge ourselves straight from the bushes because the blueberries had just been sprayed.

- People have this idea that organic means no spray.

Sorry, it means you don't spray with non-organic compounds.

One of the main ones is spinosad, it's a bacteria that the worms eat and it doesn't agree with their digestive tract and kills them off.

If you're getting your blackberries in the wild or your blueberry from some place that says no spray, you won't taste the worms, but they're in there.

We try to keep them out of here.

- Before we could leave, there were even more cool crops to see.

- I got some chili peppers and some melons, a few tomatoes.

I have sweet peppers in this row.

New Mexico chilies there.

My wife's from New Mexico, ancho barons, which are a type of poblano at that end.

- What's next?

- I'm gonna write a book when I finish this.

- You are?

- Yeah.

I'm not short on ambition.

[bright music] - We're in The Kitchen at Second Harvest Food Bank in Spokane, and I am joined by my group of friends where we get to taste some delicious food.

- Good day to do it.

- Yes.

Thanks for being here today.

We have Val and Tomás and Chef Laurent Zirotti, thanks so much.

- Happy to be here.

So good to see you all.

- Well we love having you here because you are sharing your recipes that you create for just this specific segment of "Washington Grown."

And you can only find his recipes on our website.

- On my computer.

- Or up here.

You could only find them on "Washington Grown."

So yes, we appreciate that.

- I love it, because we're talking about carrots, we're gonna make a good soup out of carrots.

So it's a vegan soup, which is great.

And it's gluten-free and it's just a beautiful soup with ginger, coconut milk, and it's delicious, and it's heartwarming in the middle of the winter, it's gonna be a perfect soup for you to have.

- And carrots are so versatile too.

You can make a ginger carrot soup or like the salad- - Ginger carrot cake.

- Yeah, carrot cake.

The salad that we made at Driftwood that was so beautiful and kinda Mediterranean inspired with hummus.

So good.

- Complexion and eyesight.

- Makes us look younger.

Let's go, let's have some of that soup.

- They need some soup.

- Here's how you make it.

[upbeat music] - So colorful.

- It's so vibrant.

- And it smells incredible.

It reminds me of a curry because of the ginger that I'm smelling.

And the coconut milk.

- It has some similar ingredients.

- One, two, three, go?

- One, two, three, go.

- So good.

- And one little trick I found when you make a purée soup, that's a method of a soup with vegetable.

And you want it a little bit thicker, but you wouldn't want to make a roux out of flour because you want to keep it gluten free.

And especially here, vegan meaning no butter.

I add a little bit of a raw rice, just rice in it.

And when you puree it, the rice makes it thicker.

And there's rice in that recipe, but you cannot taste the rice, right?

It's just a thickener agent.

So it's a good way to do it.

- This is delicious.

- This is really good.

- Silky.

- It's so cozy.

But it's a little spicy with the ginger.

- It is really silky texture.

And it tastes healthy.

- And the toppings, what do we have here?

- Little pepitas.

- I can see it in there.

- And you could roast them, spice them up your way and add them to it.

And if you don't want pepitas, you make crouton or anything, it's a little bit of texture, because otherwise, yeah, some crunch.

Otherwise it's too much like baby food.

We're not babies anymore.

- No, we're not.

It's delicious.

- Yes.

This is a very good soup.

- And just warms you up.

- It's great.

- Yeah, thank you so much.

- You're very welcome.

And I'm very happy you enjoyed it.

- Yes, we always enjoy your recipes.

- You need to make it yourself.

- And enjoy.

- Yummy to our tummies.

- To get the recipe for Chef Laurent Zirotti's Ginger Carrot Soup, visit us at wagrown.com.

Whether your vegetables are grown organically or conventionally, if they're from Washington, you can count on them being delicious.

That's it for this episode of "Washington Grown."

We'll see you next time.