Cathy Fulton’s kitchen table looks out over a front yard that’s been given over to food raising. Chickens roam among fruit trees and vegetable beds. Leeks poke out of the ground, and kale is ready for harvest, not far from a greenhouse sheltering seed starts.
The mother of three is a bit of an evangelist for the joy and security that comes from raising one’s own food. Little wonder, then, that it was at this kitchen table that her dream of helping other Islanders create a new kind of food experience began to take shape.
Every Wednesday for the past four months, Fulton, Emily MacRae and Jessica Lisovsky have gathered around Fulton’s table, sharing a four-hour brunch crafted largely with food from their own gardens and discussing plans to bring a series of workshops to the Island to help inspire and inform others about a new way to think about food.
This weekend, the fruit of their efforts will be shared with the Island.
Vashon’s first-ever Food Summit will begin on Saturday, with a day of documentaries about food production, food policy and food security. It will be followed by next weekend’s actual summit, a rich, workshop-packed opportunity to explore nearly every facet of the local food movement — from canning to hog-raising, cheese-making to food policy.
As the three gathered at Fulton’s table Friday, they discussed a planning process that’s been remarkable; the conference, they said, came together relatively easily, with so many serendipitous moments that they found themselves feeling confident the time was right for such an undertaking. They also said they’ve loved working together.
“The three of us are connected at the hip,” Fulton said, laughing.
But their goals for the conference are lofty and serious, coming, as it does, in the midst of a growing awareness about the high costs of an industrialized food system and the empowerment a community experiences when it begins to shape its own future around food.
The food movement, they said, is both personally enriching and deeply political, an attempt to make real the notion of food security, healthful eating and community self-sufficiency.
“I see it as a quiet revolution,” said Lisovsky. “Food is political, yet also basic. It’s gratifying on every level.”
The effort to reshape the way Americans acquire and process their food has been growing for decades. Some point to a letter essayist and farmer Wendell Berry wrote nearly 40 years ago as one of the earliest articulations of this movement, when he noted that a “thoughtful and even knowledgeable constituency for a better kind of agriculture” was emerging in the United States. Unfortunately, he went on to say in a letter to two food activists, that constituency was “powerless because it has no programs.”
Since then, programs — from Seattle Tilth to farmers markets to countless classes on gardening, canning and food preparation — have given energy and life to the movement, making it a powerful force in America today. Indeed, the effort, some say, seemed to enter the mainstream last summer, when First Lady Michelle Obama announced she was planting a vegetable garden on the White House lawn; even Pres. Barack Obama, she said at the time, would help.
Now, some point to Vashon’s Food Summit as a sign of the constituency’s maturation, as food activist and Islander Mark Musick put it. Vashon’s conference, he said, “is a microcosm of a national, even international, movement.”
The summit, he added, is a milestone for Vashon. “It’s taking that constituency to another level, … and bringing more people to the table.”
Fulton said the idea for a summit came to her literally in the middle of the night. She had just held a “compost festival” at her house and went to sleep thinking about the well-attended event. “I woke up the next morning and said to my kids, ‘We need to have a food summit on Vashon,’” she recalled, adding with a laugh that her kids groaned at her pronouncement. (They have since become supporters.)
Fulton has been thinking about the food movement for years but only recently began to realize her dream of greater self-sufficiency — an effort she undertook, she said, in part because she lives on a limited income and could afford healthier food only if she began to raise it herself. Obama’s White House garden underscored her belief that a movement was truly taking hold.
“I thought, ‘Let’s get on the wave and let’s ride,’” she said.
Fulton reached out to her friends Lisovsky and MacRae, and the three began working in earnest last November, gathering weekly to plan an event they hope will be profoundly egalitarian.
Attendance is free. Child care will be available. And, perhaps most importantly, they said, the workshops will speak to people at nearly all levels of food sophistication, from those who are simply thinking about the need to eat more healthfully to those who are ready to raise hogs and butcher their own meat.
The theme of the weekend, Fulton said, is “take the next step.” Her goal, she said, is to help everyone who comes — individuals, families or communities — figure out how “to improve whatever their food situation is.”
“I hope we can reach the people who feel they’ve been left out of the food discussion,” she added.
There are many elements about the weekend that the women are excited about. Pre-conference events include a tour next Thursday of Island Spring Tofu, a Vashon-based company that MacRae says makes the best tofu she’s ever eaten; a tour tomorrow (Feb. 25) of Vashon Thriftway, where staff will give pointers on how to shop frugally; and ongoing demonstrations at Thriftway tomorrow and next Thursday on healthful eating on a budget.
The keynote speaker for the Food Summit, meanwhile, is Fred Berman, the small farm program coordinator for the state Department of Agriculture who’s passionate about small-scale organic farming, Fulton said. And Saturday’s conference will culminate in a dinner of “stone soup,” a community-made soup created from ingredients people bring to the event, followed by a contra dance.
Fulton, a warm and unpretentious woman who’s lived on Vashon nearly 20 years, said she hopes the event will strengthen the Island’s already vibrant food scene as well as its sense of community. In planning the event, she encountered an organization about food security called a Well-Fed Neighbor.
“I love that,” she said. “By teaching each other the skills that each of us have, we can build our skills as a community and make all of us more food secure.”
Food Summit offers tours, films and workshops
The Vashon Island Food Summit, sponsored by Sustainable Vashon and the Vashon Island Growers Association, takes place March 5 to 7 at Vashon High School, with pre-conference events beginning Thursday, Feb. 25.
The free event aims to explore food from a number of facets, including raising food, acquiring and preparing it and public policies that shape the food industry in the United States.
Events this week include a Frugal Food Tour of Vashon Thriftway at 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, and the Food for Thought Film Festival, which takes place from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday at the Land Trust Building. Among the highlights are “The Future of Food,” which begins at 10 a.m., and “Growing Awareness,” featuring small farms in Washington, which airs at 3:30 p.m. Each film will be followed by a facilitated discussion.
The summit begins at 7 p.m. Friday, March 5, runs all day Saturday and culminates Sunday at 3:45 p.m. A complete schedule of the pre-conference tours and the summit’s workshops can be found at www.vashonfoodsummit.org.
