LoraLea and Rick Misterly are part of a dedicated movement of farmers preserving small-scale farming traditions and providing discriminating customers with unique, high-quality products. The Misterlys take that mission one step further, providing hands-on education for aspiring chefs that demonstrate the value of local sourcing and small-scale food production.

LoraLea has been selling her handmade custom goat cheeses to top Seattle restaurants for over a decade. She first invited chefs out to Quillisascut Farm as a way of thanking them. “I’ve really been appreciative that the chefs use our products, that they are willing to take the extra time to buy from a lot of small producers, instead of just going to some big wholesaler. So I thought, how can I give something back to that community?” A farm visit/retreat seemed just the thing, and in 1993 the first “Fude Ranch” brought Seattle chefs out to the foothills of the Huckleberry Mountains for farming and wining and dining.

Quillisascut Farm is named for the creek that winds through scenic Pleasant Valley before it drops into the Columbia River in the northeastern corner of Washington. The valley used to be called “Peaceful” before warring neighbors necessitated the switch to “Pleasant.” These days the wild turkeys are the only ones disturbing the peace, at least until the goat kids arrive in the spring. Fifty-two goats and a couple of cows range over much of the 36-acre farm.

LoraLea and Rick strive for self-sufficiency and grow most of their own food on the farm. An interest in stretching their farm income a little farther led the Misterlys to expand the occasional farm retreat for restaurant staff to a more structured on-farm school for those in the culinary trade. Says LoraLea, “We were looking for another way to bring an income to the farm so that maybe we could get a day off!”

Rick explains, “Our first idea was to get the chefs out here, and have them cooking with the fresh ingredients, and get all excited about it. They were excited about it, but as they got more famous, it was harder to get them out here. So we thought, what if we have the workers in the restaurant? We were able to do that for a while, but then we realized that they’re just young people making an hourly wage, and so it was hard for them to take the time off and get away.”

Culinary students have proven to be the most receptive audience, and several culinary schools now offer scholarships. The Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts “introduces culinary students to the source of their work: from the farm to the table.” Small groups spend seven days on the farm in the summer, learning and doing farm chores, and of course, preparing meals with the ingredients grown there. In addition to the dairy, LoraLea and Rick’s farm includes a small vineyard, fruit trees, two commercial kitchens, and organic vegetable and herb gardens.

The class schedule includes hands-on instruction in the early stages of food preparation unfamiliar to most culinary students: milking, canning, butchering lambs and chickens, and cheese and sausage making. Presentations on heirloom plants, seed saving and the benefits of grass-fed meats are interspersed with wild food walks and garden glove tasks like composting, transplanting seedlings and building raised beds. Farm students also visit other local growers to learn about beekeeping and orchards.

Slaughtering animals may be one of the more daunting parts of the farm school agenda, and also perhaps one of the most transforming. “People have this horrible mentality of blood and gore, but that’s not what it is about. The inside of the animal is all very orderly and it’s a respectful process,” says LoraLea. “A lot of the students leave feeling better about eating meat, and they want to find a source of meat that is grown in a respectful way.”

Every evening, students work to outdo each other preparing culinary delights using the fruits of their labor: sweet corn flan, lamb terrine with chokecherry mustard, purple potato gnocchi, lavender honey ice cream.

Says Rick, “They see what it takes for a small farmer – what they have to do to get their products from the seed or from the tree in the springtime, to the market. I want them to realize why a farmer might charge more than a big distributor. But what you’re getting for that extra cost is the freshness and the difference in the flavor.”

LoraLea grew up eating fresh cheese her mother made in Leavenworth, Washington. “I remember the taste of fresh curds, real creamed cottage cheese and butter, it is a taste that isn’t duplicated in anything found at the local grocer.” When she and Rick first moved to their land in 1981, they lived in a tent with no electricity while they built their house and outbuildings. LoraLea learned to make cheese in their outdoor kitchen, storing it deep in their well to keep it cool in the summer. She now has a state-approved kitchen for cheesemaking, and produces about 5,000 pounds of cheese a year.

The Misterlys style harkens back to an earlier time, and perhaps signals a wave of the future. LoraLea does not pasteurize the milk she uses, and thus can only legally sell aged cheeses. “I am interested in traditional production, the way people have been making cheese for centuries,” she says. LoraLea strives to teach American culinary students about food production common in small European communities, in which age-old wisdom is underscored and production speed is not valued over quality. “The chefs that we meet from Europe are more accustomed to working with fresh local produce.” She notes that community gardens abound in Europe, where people are used to eating locally and seasonally.

In her outreach to culinary schools, LoraLea found that most do not have courses that include a focus on how food is grown. “It seemed like this should be something that they learn in culinary school,” says LoraLea. One exception is Seattle Central Community College, which offered 10 scholarships for students to attend the farm school last summer. “My goal is to be able to offer one full scholarship to every student culinary program in the Pacific Northwest, and there are 14 of them.”

Last summer there were two week-long farm school sessions; this year the Misterlys are planning for four sessions. And they are expanding the accommodations, building a strawbale bunkhouse with a professional kitchen for visiting students. They clearly enjoy sharing their life’s work with students of all kinds.

Culinary students aren’t the only ones who are disconnected from their food source. Local kindergarten and elementary school kids have been visiting Quillisascut Farm in the springtime for almost a decade. Rick explains, “When they first started we thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of stupid. These kids live right here, in this area. They must know all this stuff.’ And then you realize that they don’t.” In fact the Misterlys are one of the few families in their agrarian community that rely entirely on the farm for their income.

“It’s about passing on our tradition,” says LoraLea. “There are a lot of things that are missing when you just go to the grocery store!”

Contact
Quillisascut Cheese
and Farm School
LoraLea and Rick Misterly
2409 Pleasant Valley Road
Rice, WA
509.738.2011
www.quillisascutcheese.com
loralea@quillisascutcheese.com