Riley Starks and Judy Olsen didn’t know when they jokingly referred to their new farm on Lummi Island as “Nettles” that the name would stick. When they first saw the parcel, just uphill from a venerable island institution, The Willows Inn, it was thickly forested, and stinging nettles were growing everywhere. Riley explains “The Willows Inn is on nearly every map of Washington State, so we referred to our farm as The Nettles – the poor cousin of The Willows. It’s a joke that kind of backfired on us.”

On Nettles Farm and in the nearby waters, Riley and Judy have devoted themselves to producing food of the highest quality. More recently, they have expanded their enterprise to include the historic Willows Inn, where guests can sample the bountiful fare grown just up the hill, and enjoy a spectacular view of the other San Juan Islands.

Riley was born due south over Puget Sound in Port Townsend but spent part of his childhood in France. His approach to food is distinctly place-based and European, as embodied by the Slow Food movement. “A lot of people say our pasta is the best pasta this side of Italy,” says Riley. “That is sort of the ideal we aspire to. We can create that right here, we don’t have to go to Europe. We can take from our surrounding environs and produce real food, and if you go somewhere else it is entirely different — and it should be. That’s our mantra. Eat from your own landscape.”

Riley acknowledges that the impetus to farm was driven more by emotion than a business plan. “We started out of desperation – not having access to decent vegetables,” he explains.  He and Judy cleared part of the forest and nettles on their land, built a house using some of the trees they had felled, and started to cultivate the soil in the protected clearing they had created. Riley has been a commercial fisherman all his life, and Judy worked as a cardiac nurse. “We started slowly. Neither one of us quit our jobs, and we only farmed four acres,” he remarks.

Setting out to prove that tomatoes could be grown in the state of Washington without added heat, they showed up to the newly started Bellingham Farmers’ Market with 18 tomato varieties of all colors. “It really floored people,” Riley remembers. The greens they were growing were another challenge.  To wash and package them necessitated a commercial kitchen.  Since the house was being expanded anyway, they invested in the kitchen, but for much of the year – the non-greens season – the kitchen remained vacant. 

When the opportunity arose to purchase pasta-making equipment, Riley and Judy pounced on it with the intent of making fresh pasta.  It turned out to be more than simply a use for the kitchen space.  Everything on the farm could be funneled into the pasta, and the pasta equipment was top of the line.  It was a classic Italian design with an old, bronze die that roughened the edge of each noodle, enabling it to accept sauce like no other.  The certified organic pasta business became the moneymaker. “The local co-op gave us our real start,” recalls Riley, “then we went to the high-end markets in Seattle and Tacoma.” Still it took seven years and unflagging optimism for the pasta business to become profitable.

In Nettles Farm ventures, one thing often leads to another. Once they created the pasta, they recognized that eggs are the single most important ingredient in pasta, the one that makes all the difference. “You can use good flour, but if you use bad eggs your pasta stinks,” says Riley. “If you use bad flour and good eggs, however, you have a decent pasta.” Appreciating the need for organic eggs, Riley and Judy bought their first batch of chickens and built a chicken coop. Before long, eggs were part of the Nettles Farm offerings, and organic chickens soon followed. “I love chickens, and I happen to believe that the chickens in this country are a poor excuse for food,” contends Riley. “I knew that we could do better.” Nettles Farm chickens are grazed using portable coops and slaughtered on site, by Riley, in a USDA-approved facility he built. Given their success, Riley and Judy finally quit their jobs and, as Riley puts it, “gave ourselves over to doing the farm.”

Around this time, farm-raised salmon flooded the market, and Riley’s commercial fishing work became less profitable. He joined in a Lummi Island tradition and bought a reefnet in 1992. Reefnetting is the oldest net fishing known, originally practiced by the native peoples of Puget Sound. Today it only occurs off the west coast of Lummi Island. In practice, reefnet fishing looks like a high wire circus act on water, with two stationary boats strung together, nets hung like hammocks between them, and a precarious-looking platform high above each boat with barely room for one person to stand to look out for the salmon. It’s a passive fishery – as the armchairs on the decks of the boats attest – that relies on patience, currents, and underwater rope tunnels that look like kelp to attract the salmon.

Riley readily admits its inefficiency, but comments that it works for them because they occupy an upper tier market niche and don’t need to catch a lot of fish to make it profitable. Reefnet salmon is higher in omega-3 fats because they are caught so far from their home streams in British Columbia’s Fraser River system. The gentle handling and processing techniques used in this type of fishing mean there is virtually no bycatch. “The salmon tastes better because it is bled live in sea water; this is the only fishery where that is possible,” Riley explains.  He is having success selling Reefnet Salmon exclusively to Metropolitan Markets of Seattle and directly to neighborhood buying clubs across the country.

Two years ago, Riley and Judy decided to shift their focus from producing high-end retail food to presenting model meals directly to consumers. The historic Willows Inn provided that opportunity. “We bought the Willows Inn because we wanted to take the connection one step further, right to the people on their plate,” explains Riley. “We could produce the food and send it to retail markets, and that was pretty exciting, but it wasn’t enough. We wanted to go further and have all of that goodness right on the plate. Then you are one-to-one with your customer and you can really do some education.” To keep up with this transition, Riley and Judy sold the pasta business and downscaled their farm production to solely meet the needs of the Willows Inn’s two restaurants and pub. Nettles Farm Pasta and Nettles Farm Eggs are now independently owned but are still produced on the farm.

Riley describes the philosophy that has guided all of their work: “We can do better than the choices that have been given to us – not just by talking or trying to get other people to do other things, but by doing better and showing people that it can be better. To have a model that works – to me that gives hope.” Riley contends that part of their success is due to their ability to charge high prices for their products.  He insists, “You have got to be willing to charge and somehow it’s got to be okay, otherwise you are stuck with the same model that everyone else has: the corporate model – the cheapest inputs, the lousiest labor, and the most mediocre product you can produce – and that’s what we end up with as food.”

“Well not us,” Riley is quick to add with a grin, “we eat pretty well!”