Last month, in what was a celebration of both a man and a cause, nearly 60 people gathered on Vashon to honor Mark Musick’s 60th birthday and to partake of a feast unlike any in recent history.
Mark has been at the forefront of the local foods movement for some 30 years — long before farmers markets were vogue and fine restaurants touted their use of local ingredients.
Thus, he and his wife Terry Mendenhall decided to celebrate his birthday by taking their passion for local foods to a new level: With support from dozens of Islanders, they put on a dinner designed exclusively — and I mean exclusively — around Island ingredients.
It wasn’t easy. It took a year of planning. It required ingenuity, persistence, patience and unwavering determination.
But when guests sat down to the candlelit dinner at Vashon Cohousing’s common house off of Bank Road on Oct. 20, every morsel they put in their mouths — from the ham, salmon and soup to the “Colvos brine” that flavored much of the food — was a testament to Mark’s mission in life.
Proof that it can be done. Proof that Vashon’s bounty can feed its people. Proof that, in Wendell Berry’s words, “what we need is here.”
Mark, who wore a red-flowered apron over his white shirt for much of the evening, beamed as he stood before his guests and talked about the meaning of the gathering.
“I was born on the Nisqually Prairie and had known of Vashon since I was young. And I was drawn to it, and drawn to this notion that ‘what we need is here,’” he said. “That is the theme of this dinner. What we need is here.”
Mark then called on several of the people crowded into the dining room — from farmers to fruit growers to a local vintner — to describe their role in what he and Terry had dubbed “a participatory feast.” And the stories began to unfold.
How do you make soup without salt?
What can you use to replace lemon?
Can you really use wild yeast to ferment your cider?
Some talked of struggling to come to terms with the only-from-Vashon rule, thinking they could surely use a little clove to spice up their recipe. Mark talked of his constant admonition to his co-creators that no, they could not sneak in a little of this or that from off-Island to fill out their recipe.
He also described how he, Terry and others overcame one hurdle after another, the “limiting factors,” as he called them, that beset his grand experiment in local dining. Take, for instance, the need for salt.
Mark called the King County oceanographer — “we have two,” he told the group — and asked her if he could safely draw water from the Puget Sound and use it as brine. “Yes,” she told him, “Colvos Passage has some of the purest water in the Sound.” She then directed him to go 50 feet out and draw the water from a depth of three feet. Mark then checked with a public health officer who agreed seawater is fine to use for cooking but, for food safety, should be brought a temperature of 140 degrees.
So sure enough, Mark’s friend Jean Bosch took her kayak out into Colvos Passage and “harvested” five buckets of seawater for the feast, he said. Terry and Mark heated the brine and then distributed it to people making key components of the feast. They also created small jars of Colvos brine — the feast’s version of a salt shaker — which adorned each table.
“That salt appears in dish after dish after dish,” he told the group.
For lemons, they used the sourest grapes they could find.
For grain, they harvested chestnuts a year in advance, grinding them into flour for the dessert, a lavender-infused custard-like dish called clafouti.
The wine was a delicate Chasselas Doré made by Ron Irvine from grapes that came off of vines planted in 1950 near Quartermaster Harbor. “The grapes are almost as old as Mark,” Ron told the group.
And what about caffeine? It turns out Michael Laurie and Karen Kenny grow green tea and Yerba Mate on their land.
There were figs from Jasper and Will Forrester’s fig tree; goat’s milk and cheese from Laura Weston and her goat Fluffy; potatoes made into a kind of cracker inspired by Leda Langley; and rotkohl — a German dish made from apples, currents and red cabbage — that Bob and Carol Norton provided.
As for the protein — that came from a pig raised by Matt and Mary Lawrence in a pen behind cohousing, an animal that was fed leftovers from Vashon restaurants until it was was butchered, cured in Colvos brine and smoked on the Island days before the feast.
But if this was Mark’s tribute to what Vashon Islanders can produce on their own soil, it was the Island’s tribute to Mark, a man who has been at the forefront of the local foods movement for about as long as anyone can remember.
His whole adult life has been given over to the cause.
In 1974, Mark helped to found Tilth, now a thriving movement that promotes organic farming and gardening throughout the region. For 10 years, he was a member of Pragtree Farm, a community land trust in Arlington that became best known for its creative salads made from wild, locally grown greens. He helped to bring the use of local ingredients into the mainstream by working at Larry’s Market to introduce what became known as “the Seattle Salad.”
In 1985, Mark was on the cover of the Seattle Weekly, photographed for a story about the growing farm-to-market movement and the use of local foods as gourmet ingredients.
“Mark’s vision has been remarkable,” said Joseph Bogaard, who with his wife Amy owns Hogsback Farm on Vashon. “He’s been there from the start and the source of so many great ideas.”
After most of the guests had left and only Mark, Terry and I lingered in the kitchen, the two — somehow still standing, still smiling and still relishing the evening — talked about the challenges of their homegrown meal. Terry bought Mark the planner that he used to organize the event a year ago, on his 59th birthday.
It wasn’t easy, they said. And they don’t know that they’ll do it again anytime soon. Still, Mark said, it was a deeply satisfying event, in part because of what they discovered about Vashon, its abundance and the strength of the farm-to-market community.
“It was an exercise,” Mark said. “We were testing the bounds of what’s possible and showcasing it.”
— Leslie Brown is
The Beachcomber’s editor.
For more information and to see photos of the event, please visit Mark Musick’s “participatory feast” site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_musick/sets/72157603000622174
