People swear that Maury Island has a different climate than Vashon, and a visit to Celina and Joe Yarkin’s sunny acreage offers edible proof in early August.

While the north-end blackberries are still hard, green hopefuls, these brambles are yielding their first juicy offerings. The Yarkins have been eating tomatoes for weeks now, their bush beans are going into overdrive, and the corn is tall enough to provide a green hideout for their three young girls.

Celina says the name “Sun Island Farm” is Joe’s attempt to lure el sol from New Mexico, where they lived before moving here. Their sun-drenched expanse off S.W. 248th Street is edged with mixed forest and two acres of fields, now largely planted.

A native Washingtonian, Celina purchased the land in 1996, and she and Joe moved here in 2000 with the intention of building a house, raising a family and farming. They’ve grown food for themselves since they moved to Maury and started selling at the Farmers Market regularly last year.

Their eldest, Adri, was 9 months old when they moved to Maury. Now 8, she and her sisters Eleanor, 5, and Madeline, 2, like to help on the farm because their parents keep it from being too much like a chore. Adri and Eleanor agree that their favorite job is picking strawberries, cutting them up and drying them for “strawberry candy.”

“Because we snack,” Adri admitted with a smile. One hundred strawberry plants were just enough to feed his three girls, Joe says.

Only half joking, he added that one of the challenges of farming is growing enough to feed his voracious family and stock their market table.

Hungry after picking beans, the family’s lunch was a Potato Sun Casserole — a tasty concoction of potatoes, onions, basil, tomato and mozzarella. Appropriately named, it was heated to perfection in a solar cooker Joe helped design.

An engineer, he works three to four months of the year as a renewable energy specialist in polar outposts helping researchers “make their science cleaner” through wind generators and solar panels. He’s proud of the fact that his family uses an impressively low 500 watts of energy a day (averaged annually) and is working towards a “no-net energy” farm.

Joe’s work takes him away from the Island for weeks at a time, so Celina relies on family and friends to help her manage home, child care, farm work, market preparation and selling while he’s away. This challenge has grown with their expanded plantings, tripled since last year.

Joe loves applying his technical mind to improving farm efficiency, and his forward-thinking methods are evident around the property, from creative irrigation solutions to unique planting tools and a walk-behind tractor. He’s currently designing a self-closing door for the chicken coop, built partially from a power drill found discarded by the side of the road.

“I want to use technology on a small scale,” Joe said. “In the future we think everyone is going to have to produce food because we’ll have fewer fossil fuels resources.” Joe and Celina are proof it’s possible, modeling the necessary skills for their children.

One of the things Joe likes about Vashon’s Farmers Market is that people have a curious and ready palate.

“Earlier this year our wild edible lamb’s quarters were outselling some of our vegetables,” he said. “People are more open to trying new things here than anywhere I’ve lived before.” Joe has been involved with growing things since childhood, when he learned he could coax his favorite cherry tomatoes and strawberries out of the ground. Working as a farm manager in college gave him his first market experience.

Celina, an ESL teacher, had gardened in the past, but this is her first foray into market farming.

“There are a whole different set of skills and subtleties to doing the market,” she said. “Like where you place things on the table, where your table is, pricing and working alongside other farmers.”

Celina also brings her artistic skills to the Vashon Island Grower’s Association (VIGA). She carved the delightful soft-cut print that adorns the VIGA farmer’s market bag, picturing a smiling girl modeled after her daughter, Eleanor, wearing a hat piled high with vegetables.

Growing such juicy looking veggies using organic methods goes beyond hand-weeding and picking.

“We struggle with pricing — figuring what seeds, water, fertilizer, time and materials cost and how you translate that into how much a group of beets should cost,” Celina said. “What does it mean when you go to the store and (SEE?) something a little cheaper, but it came from so far away? The whole community is trying to figure this out together. When it comes to food, people are struggling and it’s shocking. We’re committed to keeping it affordable.”

As fuel costs rise, the Yarkins see the costs of “big agriculture” beginning to balance out with that of small producers like themselves.

“We will be able to produce cheaper than them soon and people should be watching for that and start coming to the market and looking,” Celina said, adding that many market items already beat prices at the grocery store. “I’m surprised by what a small percentage of people take advantage of a great thing.”

She appreciates customers who buy a little bit from every farmer.

The Yarkin’s selling approaches are vastly different: “He’s East Coast, I’m West Coast —he’s chased people down before,” Celina said laughing.

“I brought one customer back to the stand and said, ‘You need to go home with some potatoes because you will thank me next week,’ — and he did,” Joe said smiling, adding that most Islanders have set shopping habits that are hard to break.

It’s usually not this fun to break a habit.

CALL-OUT BOX COPY:

Wednesday’s Market is open today from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Village Green.

What’s fresh today from Sun Island Farms?

Tomatoes

Beans

Summer squash: Patty pan and zucchini

Onions

Potatoes

Cucumbers

Beets

Chinese greens

Ripe late August: Sweet corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, Crenshaw melons and blackberries

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This article, the second in a series featuring Island farmers who sell at Vashon’s Wednesday Market, was written with funding from the state Department of Agriculture through the Vashon Island Grower’s Association. Kathryn True is an Island writer.