Local food in the modern era

SANDPOINT — Dozens of North Idaho farmers, ranchers, restauranters and residents met in Sandpoint on Nov. 8 to discuss the state of local food. 

The University of Idaho’s Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center hosted the third annual Selkirk-Pend Oreille Food Summit on Friday. At the fruit orchard and research facility, experts shared their experiences as part of the local food industry — and the challenges that come with it. 

“The food summit is really about a celebration of the local food and farms within our region,” Colette DePhelps, University of Idaho Extension educator, said at the event. “There's so much work that goes into bringing local food to the table.” 

That work is tackled by people like Julie Dillin of Farm to Market Grains, a fifth-generation grower whose family has worked land in Boundary County for 100 years. 

During her presentation at the summit, Dillin described her venture into producing stone-milled flour from the grains grown on her Kootenay River Valley property 3 miles south of Canada. 

“I taught for 35 years, and I decided I needed a project after I retired,” Dillin said. “I wanted to stay home. I wanted to be on the farm. I didn't want to have to drive someplace, and so we came up with milling some flour.” 

Since purchasing a mill in Lewiston and transporting it north, Dillin and her husband, Tim, have produced and sold wheat and barley flour, all while sharing the craft with local students and residents. 

“We love to have field trips,” Dillin said in her presentation. “To me, that's the most important thing — educating people about farming and seeing where everything comes from and how it's done.” 

In Priest River, Toni Carey began farming 10 acres in 2000. Since, Four Seasons Farm has sold goods at local farmers markets to provide animal products and produce to countless community members. 

“We got started mostly just to feed our family, and it has grown from there,” Carey said at the summit. 

Additionally, Carey said farmwork has been a valuable way to instill ethics like the value of hard work in young family members. 

“I taught all my kids how to do stuff, and now I'm teaching grandkids,” Dillin said. “We're just working on the next generation here.” 

Life on a small farm is as difficult and unpredictable as it is rewarding.  

“At the beginning of the season, we had a coyote get in and get some of our meat birds,” said Carey. “That put us back a little bit.” 

Additionally, deer broke through a fence earlier this year and grazed on some of her produce. “So, we put more effort into our meat animals,” Carey said. 

Perhaps the greatest challenge of all for small agriculture operations is the current food market. In the modern era, local food producers must compete with mass industrialized operations that can drive prices down and create cost expectations for consumers that are difficult to meet.

For Dillin, finding bakeries or stores willing to use or sell her flour is a major obstacle to creating a profitable business. 

“Our costs were a little bit higher; they wanted something a little bit cheaper,” Dillin said of an experience with a local vendor. “That to me was the hardest thing to do, and it still is,” she said of finding retailers. 

Today, local organizations are in the slow and difficult process of rebuilding a system where small, family-run operations produce sustainable and nutritious food for North Idaho residents. 

“When our farms were smaller and we had different ways of procuring food … we had a lot more local infrastructure,” DePhelps said at the summit. “A lot of what we're doing is recreating the types of connections and infrastructure that work for the farms that we have now.” 

Importantly, that doesn’t mean living in the past. With the right support and development, North Idaho food industry professionals believe there’s an opportunity for community agriculture in the 21st century. 

“It's not about going back to what things were,” she told attendees. “It's about understanding where we are now.”