A new community group called FoodMasters is helping islanders teach other islanders how to grow and raise their own foods, gaining independence from purchased foods and fluctuating global prices.

FoodMasters organizers are also rekindling some old island communal work traditions similar to barn-raising.

“I want to help other people in the community, my friends, my family to grow more of their own food so we can have a thriving local food system,” said coordinator Learner Limbach, a 10-year Orcas resident and landscaper who raises goats, chickens and sheep on leased land. “The premise of FoodMasters is that we feel there’s a new economy emerging that’s based on local production and exchange of goods and services,” he said. “Food is the foundation of that new economy…. Right now we don’t have the local production to support everybody buying local.”

The idea to start the group was raised at a meeting of Sustainable Orcas, an organization that holds monthly meetings aimed at improving sustainability of life on the island.

FoodMasters was launched this winter, with a core group of about a dozen folks including FedEx driver Ulanah McCoy, farmer Dan Borman and realtor Ken Wood.

Recently the group has offered classes on how to use greenhouses and hoop houses to extend the growing season, holistic land management, mushroom cultivation for food and better crop yields and even rabbit slaughtering. Roughly 80 islanders have attended. Limbach and McCoy said they have seen steadily increasing interest from islanders wanting to grow or raise their own food.

“FoodMasters is providing knowledge, resources, motivation, inspiration,” said McCoy. “I feel a lot of things are happening here because of FoodMasters, that [otherwise] wouldn’t be.”

Upcoming classes and workshops will cover crop rotation, cover cropping, soil enhancements, humane harvesting of chickens and lambs, lacto-fermenting dairy, grain and vegetable foods, seed-saving, using wild medicinal herbs and harvesting seaweed for food and medicine. The classes are taught by area experts knowledgeable in each topic.

Because growing conditions, crop-munching fauna and weather patterns can vary so greatly from clime to clime, FoodMasters aims to maximize the collective knowledge and wisdom of Orcas farmers and gardeners by sharing the wealth.

“A master is one who has responsibility to pass on a skill and a lifestyle,” said Borman, who coined the group’s name.

In addition to the classes, FoodMasters also hosts work parties to help community members install infrastructure needed to produce food (ie, building chicken houses, mending garden fences, pruning fruit trees). The events provide fun learning experiences and strengthen relationships. Wood said they hope to build some root  cellars in the future, so people can enjoy home grown, seasonally fresh foods as long as possible.

“Everybody’s a foodmaster,” said McCoy. “Everyone has different skills and different things to contribute. We have all income levels, all skill levels, landed or not, experienced or not…. we each do what we can and help each other out.”

Added Wood, “It’s not just some old grumpy guys and it’s not just some wide-eyed hippie kids… You need somebody to hold your hand to do something for the first time, somebody else’s energy, to create a garden, dig a root cellar, take down trees, build a greenhouse – we can share tools, we can share skills and get a lot of work done.”

FoodMasters folk are also sharing seeds, starts, and cuttings of plants that have been proven to grow well on Orcas Island. In synergy with the efforts of islanders who have been saving locally grown seeds over past years, the group is now working to establish a permanent, temperature and humidity-controlled seed bank building on Orcas.

“Saving seed provides a tremendous amount of independence,” said Wood, citing concerns about major supplier Monsanto’s patented seeds, which are illegal to save and replant. “One hundred years ago Puget Sound was quite self-sufficient.”

Sustainability in a crisis

Based on current global and climate factors, some members of Sustainable Orcas and Foodmasters have wondered about the possibility of a crisis in which fuel is scarce, food transport lines break down, and the island must feed its own population.

“How prepared is the island for such a scenario?” they ask.

Sounder research indicates that over 20,000 pounds of food are ferried to Orcas each week during the wintertime, and that’s only what’s sold through the island’s major grocery outlets.

In the extreme event that the islands were receiving no food from the mainland, Borman has roughly calculated that each acre of farmland could support 15 people on a vegetarian, subsistence diet of 2,500 calories per day. Orcas Island’s minimum 3,000 people would thus need to farm 200 acres to raise their food.

Simple land area is not a problem: a 2009 county survey found 13,463 acres of active agricultural land and 45,792 acres of potential agricultural soil in San Juan County.

The greater difficulty could lie in obtaining seeds: according to Borman, planting 200 acres would require 25,000 pounds of seed (at 125 pounds per acre). He said buying that much seed could well be impossible in a time of food shortages.

FoodMasters recently organized a bulk purchase of about 125 varieties (700 pounds) of seed potatoes from Eastern Wash. growers. Residents who joined the purchase are hoping to create and maintain a healthy amount of local genetic diversity of this staple crop, the better to resist whims of weather and diseases.

Borman also said it takes decades to develop a viable subsistence agriculture. The FoodMasters hope that in helping more islanders to grow their own food they will create a greater local food web, helping generate food security, reducing petroleum consumption, and creating more independence and self reliance in the islands.

For more information on FoodMasters, contact Learner Limbach at foodmasters.orcas@gmail.com, or Ken Wood at ken@orcasdreams.com or 376-4642.