Cascadian Farm Organic Goodness

On Friday August 20th, a group of Cascadian Farm employees, and their friends and families enjoyed a beautiful Skagit Valley day, and took part in a longstanding tradition: we hiked up to the top of Sauk Mountain for a mile-high picnic, and then came back down to the farm to pick a basket of our mouth-watering organic blueberries. This has been an annual event for Cascadian Farm and Small Planet Foods employees for the last 7 years!

Check out the Flickr set for this event!

Now that our Roadside Stand is open for the summer, we took out the camera and snapped a few photos of the Farm! We asked Jim to smile for the camera, and he did as he led a group around the farm, teaching them about organic farming, and soil conservation. By the way - thank you to those of you who asked Jim such great questions this week! He's pretty busy because it's planting season, but he'll be trying to answer a few questions every week starting on Monday!

Here are a few snapshots from this week - check out the full album on Facebook!

The Roadside Stand is getting a new roof this week. The jolly looking man on the ladder is named Ray (he goes by "Sun Ray"). Ray was the one that first built our Roadside Stand!

Jim took a group on a great farm tour - teaching about how he uses the Skagit Valley's diverse ecosystems to grow healthy crops without synthetic chemicals or pesticides.

Do you recognize this landscape?

We haven't done a Whiteboard Wednesday post in a while, and with the mercury rising, we wanted to bring back a couple dry-erase masterpieces from Don.  We don't know about you, but these make us happy to be on the warm end of winter!

We hope you're having a wonderful week. It's just about time to start plating our crops in the Skagit Valley, and your gardens wherever you are!

Valentine's Day is on Sunday! Last week you saw Don's Strawberry Valentine, but this time Don had some fun with the Small Planet Foods logo:

Small Planet Foods Logo

Don took the logo, and made it really SWEET!

So what are you going to do for your Valentine? Share with us. We'll keep it a secret!

If you've ever been to visit us at the farm, you probably heard some stories about Gene Kahn. Gene founded Cascadian Farm, turning his vision into reality in the early 1970s. Many of you have even shared your stories of picking berries at the farm, or helping to build our roadside stand where we sold organic produce, jams, and homemade ice cream.

We've grown since then, and started selling our food at local farmers markets and coops around the Pacific Northwest. Today, as you know, you can find our organic cereal, granola bars, and frozen fruits & vegetables at many grocery stores around the country. But our mission hasn't changed: to pioneer organic farming methods, and bring great tasting and wholesome organic food from the farm to your table.

But for you old-schoolers (and our new friends too), we wanted to share this picture of Gene Kahn on the tracker back in 1972:

It's really true what they say about a "farmer's tan" isn't it?

If any of you have pictures from your trip to the farm please share them with us! You can post them to our facebook wall, or put them on your blog or flickr page and share the link with us here in the comments!

With the new year upon us, Don got out the dry-erase markers (see them laying there along the bottom?) and created yet another whiteboard mural masterpiece.

We hope 2010 is a year to win for all of you too!

Thanks to all of our friends that came out to see us at the Dallas Marathon last weekend! Here are some photos from the event:

Check out the rest of our photos on facebook. If you find a picture of yourself, make sure you tag yourself so your friends can see too!

For a list of upcoming events you can check out our the Cascadian Farm Almanac, or check our our facebook events page.

President Obama has been all over the news this week, from an interview with Charlie Rose about what's happening overseas, to an Oprah special where we all learned that the first dog Bo has his own Christmas stocking!

All this buzz reminded us of last year when Don took to the whiteboards during President Obama's inauguration ceremony:

Bo wasn't around, and didn't make it into the mural. We'll have more whiteboard murals to share with you in 2010!