Jeff Miller: Easy Rider 

The year was 1985. Jeff Miller, 23 years old, Pittsburgh city kid, CIA-trained chef, veteran of Jeremiah Tower's Stars in San Francisco, straps on a backpack filled with seeds (seeds!), climbs on his Honda Hurricane 600 and heads from the Bay Area to Washington state.

Miller has never farmed, but he finds land to rent near Monroe. Backbreaking work, 90 hours a week, but by 1997, he's done well enough to buy a farm of his own, which he names Willie Green's Organic Farm, Willie being his middle name.

He starts selling organic produce to farmers markets in Seattle, to a network of 100 CSAs, to produce wholesalers like Charlie's and Rosella's, to Whole Foods. When he bought the property, it was nothing but grass. Today, he's growing 60 to 70 different vegetables, pays a big staff: 30 field hands to work the 60-plus acres, half a dozen people to work eight markets, plus admin, marketing, social media updates.

Now the next step. The Fields at Willie Greens, turning about 10 newly manicured acres into an event venue for weddings and the like. The flip side of farm-to-table, if you will, bringing people from the city out to learn about organic farming, people who've never been on a farm. You can get here on freeways and divided ribbons of asphalt, or you can take the back roads, over Novelty Hill and along the Snohomish River, past stately barns and horses grazing in fields of clover, Mt. Pilchuck to the north, Rainier to the south. Ironically, the scenic route is faster.

It's a great location for a summer wedding (chapel-style seating area, main tent, greenhouse, fire pit, parking), or a grand harvest gathering. Summer Saturdays go for $2,500, pretty much the standard price for a ten-hour, countryside rental. To start, Miller has given exclusive rights to one of his best clients, Herban Feast, the SoDo caterer, but he foresees adding a few additional companies. Miller also looks forward to acting as sous-chef for "guest chef" nights (he's done that for Lisa Dupar Catering), when a smallish group of urbanites might come out for supper under the Raj tent (custom made in India). Eventually, even overnight accommodations, in yurts. And maybe, the possibility that his son, now 16, could take over.

Until then, Miller is content. Surveying the grounds, landscaped to his own design, he takes a breath. "It's a dream finally come to fruition."

Corky Luster: It's the Little Things  

Ten thousand little worker bees, as it happens, plus one queen, inside a three-pound, $75 "box" of bees. Transfer contents into a 10-frame Langstroth hive and you're ready to take on the world.

Three years ago Corky Luster was a contractor installing Koehler fixtures. When the construction market softened, Luster looked for other ideas. He'd gone to WSU to become a vet and had done some beekeeping, so he started Ballard Bees with a couple of boxes in his back yard. Today the company has 85 hives, most of them in backyard gardens around town, and the homeowners--happy to have the advantages of bees (flowers, birds, seeing nature-at-work) pay him.

Ballard's Bastille Restaurant and Kathy Casey Studios use his honey, but would beekeeping fly in downtown Seattle? Gavin Stephenson, executive chef at the Fairmont Olympic, came to Seattle with a mandate to expand the hotel's "lifestyle cuisine." Serving honey from the hotel's own hives was an attractive alternative to pasteurized commercial alternatives. He called Luster and they worked out a deal. Five brightly-painted boxes went onto the roof, and, at the beginning of May, the hives were populated. By the end of the year, each hive will grow from 10,000 to 50,000 bees and eventually produce over 150 pounds of honey.

"A bee can forage in a six-mile radius," Luster says. "We don't know exactly where they go, but they're already coming back with pollen on their legs." Once bees find a particularly attractive site, they do a waggle dance inside the hive to tell the others how to get there. The first thing they do is dive straight down from the roof, then they make (you should pardon the expression) a beeline for their feeding grounds. Trees, gardens, parks, p-patches, anything that blooms is a target. It's a short season in Puget Sound; the weather has to be above 55 degrees for these particular species (the Italian and Carniolian western European honey bees) to leave the hive. "But just wait until blackberry season!" Luster exclaims.

Seattle's a good place for urban beekeeping. Backyard chickens are everywhere. Goats? Well, not so much. But bees, not a problem. Luster has a two-year waiting list of households.

As exec chef, Stephenson oversees food service for 400,000 covers a year. The rooftop hives won't provide nearly enough honey. "What's important is that we're doing the right thing," he says.

 Ronald Holden is a Seattle-based journalist who specializes in food, wine and travel. He has worked for KING TV, Seattle Weekly, and Chateau Ste. Michelle; his blog is www.Cornichon.org.

June 2013