Nowhere in the country are contrasts in climate, topography and vegetation so dramatic as between the eastern and western halves of Washington and Oregon. In less than an hour’s driving, it’s possible to go from cold, gray sleet to warm, breezy sunshine just by heading east across the Cascade Mountains that bisect those states north to south.
It was exactly on such a day last month that I paid a visit to Tobin Farm, a unique and commercially successful egg business in eastern Washington (the sunny side of the state) that offers lessons in how some of the agricultural issues that concern both traditional and alternative farmers and producers might be addressed.
On the 10-acre spread he purchased just outside the town of Walla Walla, Wash., Leonard Tobin has combined egg production with a small herd of Highland beef cattle and an organic fruit operation, all within hailing distance of the trophy homes, golf courses and strip centers visible on the suburban fringe of town.
And done so at a profit.
Walla Walla (meaning “Many Waters”) is a city of about 60,000 that even most Washington residents would be hard pressed to locate on a map, other than a vague, “Um, it’s somewhere out east, right?”
Actually, the town sits in a beautiful valley not far from the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers (Main Street follows an old Indian trail stretching from the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho to the Columbia River), an area Lewis and Clark explored in 1805, and site of some of the first permanent settlements in the Northwest.
Settled, that is, after an 1860s gold rush and the ensuing flood of settlers forced the ouster of Chief Joseph (“I will fight no more forever”) of the Nez Perce people in 1877. Before eventually surrendering, the chief eluded Army troops for months using maneuvers that no less than General William “Scorched Earth” Sherman characterized as displaying “courage and skill that elicited universal praise.”
The more arable tribal lands the Nez Perce and Umatilla tribes once roamed are now planted in alfalfa, wheat and onions, and in fact hay fields already cut twice this spring stretch out in three directions from the modest homestead Tobin bought and began farming eight years ago after his discharge from the military.
At first glance, Tobin seems an unlikely farmer. An ex-Navy SEAL, the 5-foot 9-inch former commando still looks rugged enough slip into a wetsuit and head out on a recon mission later that night. (Asked about the legendary physical training SEALs undergo, he says it was challenging, but was not the most demanding part of his tour of duty.
“The physical conditioning was rough, but not the worst of it,” Tobin recalls. “Heck, we had ex-NFL players and other pro athletes in our group. The ones who dropped out – we graduated only six guys from a class of 75 – did so not because of the training but because of the conditions. It’s one thing to be in top shape. It’s another matter to sit in the cold and mud for nine hours before you move out. You have to be mentally tough, just to survive the elements while training for missions.”)
He’s now traded the challenge of combat for what many might consider the equally daunting – if not equally dangerous – challenge of turning a profit as a small family farmer.
“I know what I won’t ever be able to expand enough to market beyond the local area here,” he admits. “But I know I’m producing food products that are so much better then what’s in the grocery stores, I have to believe there is market for them.”
Tobin’s 3,000-bird operation consists of several chicken houses mounted on skids and fenced off within a small section of pasture. They roam freely inside the enclosure and roost at night in the houses. A rotational system provides forage for the birds. After his cattle graze a section of pasture for several days, the houses are then dragged into a freshly “mowed” area.
“The grass is short enough after the cattle are moved out so that the chickens won’t try to lay their eggs in the grass,” Tobin says.
The mini-barns where the birds roost are essential to providing shelter during winters where temperature routinely plunge below zero. But the system allows the chickens to consume grass and insects, in addition to the grain-based rations provided at feeding stations set up inside the enclosure.
What’s most intriguing is that Tobin raises a commercial breed of chicken and feeds a standard formulation, yet his chickens not only produce remarkably large, tasty eggs, his “free-range” flock is so healthy he sells the spent hens for $6 each at auction each month, mostly to Hispanic buyers who typically continue raising them as egg layers.
And the flavor and quality of those eggs are remarkable. The shells are thicker, the whites are more viscous and the yolks are a richer, golden color that cooks up beautifully and with a flavor not to be found even from the pricey “natural,” “vegetarian” or “free-range” alternatives egg brands sold in supermarkets.
Tobin also applied for and received the Certified Humane label approval from Humane Farm Animal Care organization, a process that confirms adherence to a strict set of production requirements, including raising animals with no antibiotics, no animal-derived feeds and access to an outdoor environment.
“The Certified Humane label helped me create an ‘identity’ for my eggs,” Tobin says. But he stresses that the quality is what keeps customers coming back.
“I talked a local restaurant into buying some of my eggs,” he relates. “Their pastry chef later told me that the recipes had to be adjusted, because using only about half as many of my eggs produced a better flavor and moister texture.”
And that represents perhaps the most powerful reason Tobin Farm has a future: His eggs, beef and fruit offers genuine value added for their premium price points. Unlike so much of the natural or organic alternatives available, which tend to be marketed as an antidote to perceived problems with mainstream foods, the products of his operation conform to the most basic and enduring principle of marketing: You get what you pay for.
Beyond that, however, Tobin Farm is symbolic of more than merely marketing pricey food products that only a minority of consumers can afford to buy. His farm, and ideally hundreds like it, represents a potential “last stand” to the onrush of development that threatens to obliterate what’s left of close-in farmland near our nation’s ever-enlarging urban sprawl.
As land that was – or could – be tilled or used for livestock production gets converted into strip malls, golf courses and condos, it’s not long before the only things being raised on it are property taxes.
Many policymakers, of course, point to our nation’s huge agricultural surpluses and note that we have no food shortages, and thus no need to maintain land in agricultural uses. And realistically, nobody running a 10-acre farm of any sort can compete head-to-head in the commodity arena.
But maintaining viable farmsteads close to cities is about more than chasing food security. Open land provides natural filtering systems to recharge groundwater and helps control storm runoff that frequently overwhelms cities’ sewage treatment systems and offer habitat for birds and other wildlife, beyond the green space and social diversity they provide the citizenry.
Has anyone ever gone for a drive to enjoy the scenery of the latest shopping center or gated housing tract?
Granted, a small-scale operation such as Tobin Farm can only service specialized market niches, but whether it’s producing free-range eggs, operating a local winery or raising honeybees, the benefits of keeping such farms viable – both through land-use policies, as well marketplace choices – go well beyond the value of the foods produced. I’m already scheming on how to obtain another flat of Tobin’s magnificent eggs back here in rainy, slate-skied Seattle.
Meating Place : Quality Farming Lays More Than Just Tasty Eggs
Posted: June 4, 2004 by Certified Humane
Nowhere in the country are contrasts in climate, topography and vegetation so dramatic as between the eastern and western halves of Washington and Oregon. In less than an hour’s driving, it’s possible to go from cold, gray sleet to warm, breezy sunshine just by heading east across the Cascade Mountains that bisect those states north to south.
It was exactly on such a day last month that I paid a visit to Tobin Farm, a unique and commercially successful egg business in eastern Washington (the sunny side of the state) that offers lessons in how some of the agricultural issues that concern both traditional and alternative farmers and producers might be addressed.
On the 10-acre spread he purchased just outside the town of Walla Walla, Wash., Leonard Tobin has combined egg production with a small herd of Highland beef cattle and an organic fruit operation, all within hailing distance of the trophy homes, golf courses and strip centers visible on the suburban fringe of town.
And done so at a profit.
Walla Walla (meaning “Many Waters”) is a city of about 60,000 that even most Washington residents would be hard pressed to locate on a map, other than a vague, “Um, it’s somewhere out east, right?”
Actually, the town sits in a beautiful valley not far from the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers (Main Street follows an old Indian trail stretching from the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho to the Columbia River), an area Lewis and Clark explored in 1805, and site of some of the first permanent settlements in the Northwest.
Settled, that is, after an 1860s gold rush and the ensuing flood of settlers forced the ouster of Chief Joseph (“I will fight no more forever”) of the Nez Perce people in 1877. Before eventually surrendering, the chief eluded Army troops for months using maneuvers that no less than General William “Scorched Earth” Sherman characterized as displaying “courage and skill that elicited universal praise.”
The more arable tribal lands the Nez Perce and Umatilla tribes once roamed are now planted in alfalfa, wheat and onions, and in fact hay fields already cut twice this spring stretch out in three directions from the modest homestead Tobin bought and began farming eight years ago after his discharge from the military.
At first glance, Tobin seems an unlikely farmer. An ex-Navy SEAL, the 5-foot 9-inch former commando still looks rugged enough slip into a wetsuit and head out on a recon mission later that night. (Asked about the legendary physical training SEALs undergo, he says it was challenging, but was not the most demanding part of his tour of duty.
“The physical conditioning was rough, but not the worst of it,” Tobin recalls. “Heck, we had ex-NFL players and other pro athletes in our group. The ones who dropped out – we graduated only six guys from a class of 75 – did so not because of the training but because of the conditions. It’s one thing to be in top shape. It’s another matter to sit in the cold and mud for nine hours before you move out. You have to be mentally tough, just to survive the elements while training for missions.”)
He’s now traded the challenge of combat for what many might consider the equally daunting – if not equally dangerous – challenge of turning a profit as a small family farmer.
“I know what I won’t ever be able to expand enough to market beyond the local area here,” he admits. “But I know I’m producing food products that are so much better then what’s in the grocery stores, I have to believe there is market for them.”
Tobin’s 3,000-bird operation consists of several chicken houses mounted on skids and fenced off within a small section of pasture. They roam freely inside the enclosure and roost at night in the houses. A rotational system provides forage for the birds. After his cattle graze a section of pasture for several days, the houses are then dragged into a freshly “mowed” area.
“The grass is short enough after the cattle are moved out so that the chickens won’t try to lay their eggs in the grass,” Tobin says.
The mini-barns where the birds roost are essential to providing shelter during winters where temperature routinely plunge below zero. But the system allows the chickens to consume grass and insects, in addition to the grain-based rations provided at feeding stations set up inside the enclosure.
What’s most intriguing is that Tobin raises a commercial breed of chicken and feeds a standard formulation, yet his chickens not only produce remarkably large, tasty eggs, his “free-range” flock is so healthy he sells the spent hens for $6 each at auction each month, mostly to Hispanic buyers who typically continue raising them as egg layers.
And the flavor and quality of those eggs are remarkable. The shells are thicker, the whites are more viscous and the yolks are a richer, golden color that cooks up beautifully and with a flavor not to be found even from the pricey “natural,” “vegetarian” or “free-range” alternatives egg brands sold in supermarkets.
Tobin also applied for and received the Certified Humane label approval from Humane Farm Animal Care organization, a process that confirms adherence to a strict set of production requirements, including raising animals with no antibiotics, no animal-derived feeds and access to an outdoor environment.
“The Certified Humane label helped me create an ‘identity’ for my eggs,” Tobin says. But he stresses that the quality is what keeps customers coming back.
“I talked a local restaurant into buying some of my eggs,” he relates. “Their pastry chef later told me that the recipes had to be adjusted, because using only about half as many of my eggs produced a better flavor and moister texture.”
And that represents perhaps the most powerful reason Tobin Farm has a future: His eggs, beef and fruit offers genuine value added for their premium price points. Unlike so much of the natural or organic alternatives available, which tend to be marketed as an antidote to perceived problems with mainstream foods, the products of his operation conform to the most basic and enduring principle of marketing: You get what you pay for.
Beyond that, however, Tobin Farm is symbolic of more than merely marketing pricey food products that only a minority of consumers can afford to buy. His farm, and ideally hundreds like it, represents a potential “last stand” to the onrush of development that threatens to obliterate what’s left of close-in farmland near our nation’s ever-enlarging urban sprawl.
As land that was – or could – be tilled or used for livestock production gets converted into strip malls, golf courses and condos, it’s not long before the only things being raised on it are property taxes.
Many policymakers, of course, point to our nation’s huge agricultural surpluses and note that we have no food shortages, and thus no need to maintain land in agricultural uses. And realistically, nobody running a 10-acre farm of any sort can compete head-to-head in the commodity arena.
But maintaining viable farmsteads close to cities is about more than chasing food security. Open land provides natural filtering systems to recharge groundwater and helps control storm runoff that frequently overwhelms cities’ sewage treatment systems and offer habitat for birds and other wildlife, beyond the green space and social diversity they provide the citizenry.
Has anyone ever gone for a drive to enjoy the scenery of the latest shopping center or gated housing tract?
Granted, a small-scale operation such as Tobin Farm can only service specialized market niches, but whether it’s producing free-range eggs, operating a local winery or raising honeybees, the benefits of keeping such farms viable – both through land-use policies, as well marketplace choices – go well beyond the value of the foods produced. I’m already scheming on how to obtain another flat of Tobin’s magnificent eggs back here in rainy, slate-skied Seattle.
Category: news