The first episode of season 2 is a short introduction to Jason and Jill Bishop of Living Heritage Farm in Edwall, Washington. In our ‘pre-season episode’ Jason and Jill describe coming back to the farm and working to build out value-added direct marketing enterprises to support the addition of their family on the farm. Hear how they embrace the farm name, and their experiences ranging from specialty beef, to seed increases from the Einkorn heritage grain patch started in their suburban Seattle backyard.
Carol McFarland
Today we’re outside of Edwall, Washington on Living Heritage Farm with Jason and Jill Bishop. We’re really excited to talk with them about all the things they’re growing here on the farm. Welcome to the podcast.
Jason Bishop
Thanks for having us.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be here. Awesome. Let’s start by talking a little bit about your farm name. Living Heritage Farm is, it’s not just like a last name incorporated, is it?
Jason Bishop
Yeah. No, it’s not. Well, it’s like all things we name— with our children or with the farm. It started on a spreadsheet. I think there’s so many choices.
Carol McFarland
Many good things start on a spreadsheet.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. We really like the idea of what the name encompasses. And, specifically the two words. Living— we wanted to, they have the idea of life that is going to be represented on our farm. So whether it’s in our vegetable garden or our livestock or the big acre crops, the idea that we are infusing it with life and stewarding that life. And then, the other key part was heritage, and I was just fascinated by the history of agriculture and how some of that knowledge has been lost and how we could perhaps bring it back to life and show it and use it in a modern context. And so that kind of is where I originated the name, in my mind. And Jill has a kind of perspective on it, too.
Jill Bishop
We have just so much that has been given to us to steward. This farm has been in the generations for five now, and, yeah, it’s just been such a gift to us. So we understand that we’re just here for a time and this is a heritage that we’ve been given.
Carol McFarland
And you’re continuing
Jill Bishop.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Bishop
Yep. We got four little continuations running around.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. So how long have you guys been back on the farm?
Jason Bishop
We came back in…
Jill Bishop
Twenty-sixteen.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. Twenty-sixteen, I think it was just the fall, so I don’t know if we started doing it. This is the classic story: loving parents, have three boys, and the farm is, you know, always struggling because farms always struggle. And they’re like, you should go get degrees and move off the farm and get good jobs, good paying jobs. And then we’re out in the real world for a period of time, and then we realize, you know, maybe the farm is really where it’s at. So we came back and it really was kind of a shift in lifestyle. But we did it a lot for our children and the experiences they can have growing up. And, Yeah, I think it’s been a good choice.
Jill Bishop
Yeah. We wouldn’t go back.
Carol McFarland
That’s great. My grandfather actually called that feeling of that love of the land and the lifestyle he called it the disease, and it’s amazing how much his lineage truly like reflects that, all in different ways but, just about every one of us have that disease.
Jason Bishop
What’s that saying? You can take the kid off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the kid or something.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, but, like, ain’t nobody got life skills like farm kids, so you can’t beat it. Well, with that in mind, let’s start with your management goals on your farm.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. So kind of really big picture, like, what do I want to accomplish on the farm? It was framed by my good friend Chris Eckhardt. I really want freedom. And, I want to be able to farm in a way that is independent from the attachment of large chemical corporations, big dealers with lots of equipment that they want to sell me.
Jill Bishop
Government subsidies.
Jason Bishop
Subsidies. I just want to be able to take what God’s given to us and be able to multiply it and share it with our community. And I think there’s a lot of strings attached to agriculture right now that, I’m trying to figure out how to cut them and how to separate from them. And so a part of that is in my management goals is to try to find a way to farm biologically, because I see that as like the only way of, the only path out of this conundrum, I think, we’re in.
Carol McFarland
Well, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s a whole food component to that as well.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. So when we came back to the farm, the classic story, like I said, you know, push the kids off the farm, we just couldn’t help ourselves. We had to come back. When we came back, my father and my mother were on their retirement. You know, it’s on the horizon. And they say, you know, it’s great that you want to come back, but there just isn’t enough farm to support two families at the same time. So you’re going to have to figure out some way to carry yourself over until your dad’s ready to retire. And so that kind of started the thought process of, well, how can we do some vertical integration on the farm and, do some value added something, anything to, you know, help pay the bills. And so we quickly landed on cattle as an opportunity and then also, I had, through some health challenges, I had read a book called Wheat Belly, which basically told the entire world that gluten was going to destroy us all. And, we…
Carol McFarland
There might be different opinions there.
Jason Bishop
There is probably different opinions.
Carol McFarland
but also different body types, like different bodies. And, you know, that’s one of the things that nature tells us, is that things are diverse.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. Yeah. I think the book really made me start asking questions like, why do we farm the way we do? And where what what is harmful about wheat today? Why are there so many gluten sensitivities showing up today than there was in the past? Why? Why do I have these gluten sensitivities? And, there was like a little blip on the very beginning of the book talking about the original wheat einkorn. And so I thought, oh, man, if I could if this einkorn is, there’s something special about it, maybe I could eat gluten again. And so that’s when I started growing einkorn in our backyard.
Jill Bishop
In our backyard in the Seattle suburbs.
Carol McFarland
Amazing.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. So probably better, like twenty-fourteen-ish. Yeah. And so, we were getting small samples and trying it, you know, on our lawn. We took out some grass and put in some einkorn. Yeah.
Jill Bishop
Yeah. And then, yeah, in that process, we figured out that he with his arthritis that he needed to have, no gluten, but then we also came across sourdough and the long ferment. And that has changed his world. Well, when we first began, the first, the gluten free breads were pretty cardboard tasting.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, there’s a lot of ways to go wrong in the gluten free space for sure. Yeah. But no, I’m sorry, Jason, I gotta out you because one of the first times we talked is because I noticed you bringing your own bread to the lunch line at one of the conferences that we were attending. And, I think I had to ask because it’s just, obviously something fun is going on there. So what I just heard, though, is that you know, that living portion that you were talking about in terms of your management goals is something that not only translates to your production management goals, but it really sounds like that’s translating throughout your food, your food chain, if you will. Even in your family. But how has that looked from the vertical integration path? How is that? I want to know more about growing einkorn and how that has evolved from the backyard in Seattle to the Living Heritage Farm now here in Edwall in twenty-twenty-four.
Jason Bishop
So we hit the ground running pretty, pretty hard. We acquired some einkorn, and we grew it out over a period of years. And at one point we had a field of probably thirty acres of einkorn growing. We quickly found out that einkorn is a hulled grain. And the challenge we had was, how do you take that hull off and process it? So, long story short, there’s now, like, a few super sacks of einkorn sitting in my building just waiting to find a method of de-hulling where it will grow a lot more. But in the meantime, like Jill’s just talked about, we found out that my health concerns with gluten could be alleviated by using the sourdough process. So it really didn’t matter if the bread came out of a bag in a store, or whether it was ground from my own wheat in my tanks, or if it was einkorn, I could still tolerate it as long as it went through…
Carol McFarland
Like microbially mediated pre digestion. That doesn’t make it sound very yummy, does it?
Jason Bishop
Yeah, they do the hard work for it. So on the vertical integration side, we thought that we could take it all the way from grain to a consumer product. And going through that process would require or depending on the level, I think we could do flour without the full on Washington State Department of Agriculture approved kitchen. But if we went beyond that, say we did bread mixes, or if we did pancake mixes or if we did pasta, it’s going to require facilities to be able to perform all those culinary tasks. And you’ve actually taken the training to do those, but we don’t have a kitchen.
Jill Bishop
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
What is the process of uncovering what that value at a chain looks like? Have you done a lot of that, Jill?
Jill Bishop
No. What he’s talking about is food handling and the food handlers permit. But, yeah, when we built our building, when we came back to the farm, we built this building, down by the others down there. And they, yeah we had the idea of having a USDA approved kitchen so that we could explore some of those opportunities and value added products. But in the process, Jason’s been also taking over the main farming for his father.
Jason Bishop
Yeah, since dad retired a few years ago. So one of the things that really impacted me is I had the opportunity to tour Bluebird Farms in Winthrop area, and I got to see his operation and I don’t want to say that he’s crazy, but after watching all the things that he does, all the hats he wears, I think he is actually crazy. It’s so impressive what he’s able to do and what he has done. But I realized that, as a father that’s trying to help raise my family and then trying to pay the bills, there’s just no way I could spread myself that thin to support that kind of a vertical integration piece. So we started pairing back a little bit in that regard.
Carol McFarland
Well, I’m excited to hear a little bit more about some of the other ways that you’ve kind of had a crazy impact on Eastern Washington, with the flourish project, of course. Are you guys still doing your value added beef? And I know, Jill, you were working on the website a little bit, but I know, like, life gets crazy and I hear a huge investment in your shared goals around the living heritage, being around the family and your family, getting, just being really embedded in the farm. And what is- what does that look like for you guys?
Jill Bishop
Well, yeah, it’s we homeschool. And so that, Yeah, it’s an ongoing adventure that takes time. And, yeah, we’re blessed to be able to, to do it and to be with the kids. It means that I can’t be in the…
Jason Bishop
And involve them.
Jill Bishop
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Really? I was going to ask how much farm work you get out of your kiddos. Well, we have goals on that. We might start milking a cow so that they can develop more, regular habits.
Jason Bishop
They were out on the chicken butchering. They did not want to participate.
Jill Bishop
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Really? Those are some of my, like, earliest childhood memories right there.
Jill Bishop
We went in with some neighbors on that, and so they got the go ahead to not be involved.
Jason Bishop
They saw it from a distance.
Jill Bishop
Yeah. No, they were helping though. They helped raise them and feed them, so that was a good portion. And yeah they each have their segmented jobs caring for dogs, cats, pigs, bunnies, chickens. We have our, one of our kiddos is, that her job is to care for the chickens and to feed and to gather eggs and to let us know when they need water. And, so we wanted to encourage her in that, help her to realize the benefit of her work. So we’re in the process of we have scaled up our chickens. We’re waiting for them to start laying larger amounts, but with her taking the reins on the egg business. So. Yeah, just we want to include them in and pass on that this is a good life, you know? Not, shooing them away and saying you need to find something better. Because this is obviously it. We think it’s better.
Jason Bishop
We see value.
Jill Bishop
We see value. We think that it’s great here. So yeah, we want to pass that on.
Jason Bishop
We’re trying to encourage the entrepreneurial side of their experience too. So whether it’s crafting little trinkets that our oldest does or eggs or, you know, maybe, maybe I can involve them in the cattle business more so in the future. And Evelyn, this year she helped do some swathing this year which saved me several days of work. So, I mean, they’re getting to the point in their age where they’re, they’re doing more than just opening gates, which is great.
Carol McFarland
Awesome. See? Life skills. Yeah. Farm kids got life skills.
Jill Bishop
They’re going to be helpers.
Carol McFarland
No, I love that. So, do you want to, I think we’re going to lose you here probably pretty soon, Jill. But if you do, you want to talk a little bit about your guys’ adventure in direct marketing beef.
Jill Bishop
Yeah. So let’s see. We are coming from Seattle, we have some great friends still back there. And, my sister’s family lived there as well, and so we have a lot of connections there.
Jason Bishop
They want beef.
Jill Bishop
And when we began, we were just getting plugged in here with a network of people, but we had the majority of our friends back there. And so we were saying, hey, we’ll raise beef for you if you want to buy it. And they said, yes. So, that’s been yeah, it’s been an ongoing adventure of six years maybe.
Jason Bishop
That’s a good side. What’s the bad side?
Jill Bishop
The bad side is. Yeah, all of the management of all of that. So these people were not your average beef customers buying a whole or a half beef and going and picking it up from the butcher. And our butcher is in Odessa and so for them to drive from Seattle to Odessa. So it was a lot of, yeah, just management of dividing up, cut sheets, walking through what that looks like to someone who’s never dealt with a cut sheet.
Jason Bishop
Tell them what a skirt steak is.
Jill Bishop
Yeah.
Jason Bishop
What do I do with a short rib?
Jill Bishop
Yeah.
Jason Bishop
They don’t, these aren’t cuts they usually would buy.
Jill Bishop
Yeah. Handling all the payment and communications was, yeah, it was a lot of work. And it’s something that we haven’t really, I guess thought that it would be there for the long term. And so I guess we haven’t set up a long term infrastructure, like with middlemen and handling all of that. So we did all that.
Jason Bishop
Jill did all that. Yeah. And that was on the beef side. And on the grain side. It was a challenge. I just had a hard time, you know if people want to buy some of our grain to mill at home and it could be, you know, heirloom, it might be special and maybe grown in a way that they agree with. But I just feel terrible, you know, putting it in a FedEx box. And I charge them what, you know, I think is a fair price. And it was like twenty bucks for a box for the grain, but then you go to pay the postage on it and it’s another twenty bucks on top of that. So when you get the price on top of that, you just think, man, are they really getting the value out of this? And I have a hard time, you know, trying to market really expensive grain unless they halve the prices and shipping.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. It’s really interesting to hear, there’s opportunities, it seems like, in this space to, add more value and capture more value as producers in this agrifood chain, that we have. I also heard that, like, your butcher is in Odessa. Why is your butcher in Odessa?
Jill Bishop
Because they’re really good.
Jason Bishop
Well, they’re good, and there aren’t many butchers anymore. I mean, that’s all. And the number of USDA processors, we wanted to go the USDA route because that allowed us to take it down to the piece part, and we could do individually packaged cuts, and that was more palatable to fill your freezer, which is a very small freezer in Seattle. It’s not a chef’s freezer like Eastern Washington has, so they really need like a twenty pound box of beef and they can’t take, you know, half of the cow, and put it in their freezer. So we had to have that USDA stamp to be able to do that.
Carol McFarland
Technically, an eighth of a beef will fit in an apartment size chest freezer.
Jill and Jason Bishop
Oh, okay.
Carol McFarland
Just in case anyone was wondering. Where did you guys go to learn more about some of the kind of food safety regulations around handling, even to the point of being able to put your grain and sell it to someone via FedEx package, or, you know, to learn about piecing out and the extra level of regulation, for being able to direct sale meat as pieces?
Jason Bishop
Yeah. Where did I come across that? I don’t know, I think it was just kind of word of mouth, connecting with other ranchers that were trying to do the same thing. I don’t think I’ve read the official, wack rules on it.
Jill Bishop
I think at one point we were looking to sell to our local, market place. May market co-op, and they needed the USDA, and then they also wanted…
Jason Bishop
There’s an insurance piece that they wanted too. We had to purchase a special kind of insurance.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. So it sounds like you’ve been having some very interesting adventures in this kind of exploring, alternative grains a little bit and vertical integration.
Jason Bishop
Yeah, yeah, we have done quite a bit of extensive testing of what will actually grow.
Carol McFarland
That’s an important question, though.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. I think, you know, you go to green cover seed dot com and you look at like all the different things you can put in your mix. And at the time, you know, when we were first looking at cover crops, like what does grow like what could actually, come out of the ground and survive in our climate? There’s exotic things that, you know, that are very interesting, like sun hemp or, you know, these, mung beans or, all sorts of strange things.
Carol McFarland
Cowpeas.
Jason Bishop
Yeah, that people are trying and what, like what is going to work in our soils, in our environment, under our growing conditions. So that was an open ended question. but we were also looking at, you know, not just cover crops side, but like the cash crop side. What can we do to add value to our farm that we could market directly, that people would find interesting, and then perhaps even pay a little bit above the normal price for rather than just getting your classic commodity, type grain
Carol McFarland
Well because it’s more alive.
Jason Bishop
Yes. Yeah, it’s more living. Which goes back to our name. Some of the thought process behind the heirloom varieties, and this is completely un-scientifically, founded, in my opinion, but the thought process is that the current seeds are grown for the current conditions, which is more of a chemistry based agriculture. And so the idea is, if you go back to, an heirloom variety, then that would be a variety that would be more conducive to growing in a biological, pre-chemistry based system.
Carol McFarland
You’d be a little bit better at scavenging nutrients and, use efficiency, that sort of thing.
Jason Bishop
Even thinking like the Green Revolution and the,you know, bringing in the dwarf wheat genetics to shorten the crops so they didn’t lodge so much when we put large amounts of nitrogen on them. That changed it, changing the structure of the plant above the ground. I can’t imagine it didn’t also do something to the root structure below the ground too. So all of these things are like open questions in my mind that I wanted to address. And so we went on a scavenge to try to find different sources of special varieties of barleys and wheats. And we tried some different kinds of oats and grew them in— out of little packets of seeds we grew them into little one strip trials with our hoes, and then collected the grain, threw them back to the ground the next year, and grew them out till we got about a five gallon size bag of grain.
Carol McFarland
Your own locally adapted seed increase.
Jason Bishop
Yes, yes. That’s what we were shooting for. And then we were looking for ways to, markets that would be interested in that. And right about that time is the time when my dad was starting to think, well, maybe, maybe I’m going to step down and away from the farm and could you help me a little bit more? And so I have stepped away from some of those, smaller seed trials and some of the more, fringe agriculture tasks that I was doing, and I’ve been doing the larger acres for the last three or four years now, taking a full time position two years ago.
Carol McFarland
Well, that’s an interesting transition, actually, in the sense that I’d like to hear more about maybe how some of your adventures when they said, oh, the farm can’t support two families. And then that pushed you into doing some of these other things. And now that you’re taking on more of the whole farm, how has that influenced your management?
Jason Bishop
Yeah, it it really, it’s like a sharp wakeup call to, I have to make this pencil out. I have to be able to make the farm financially solvent so I could farm another year so we can support my family farm another year. And trying to walk that line has been difficult. It’s been quite an adjustment. And I have so much respect for my parents that did that for years and navigated through that. It was just like— we were talking off mic— it’s just the amazing amount of hats that a farmer has to wear, with being a mechanic, you know, being an agronomist, being a bookkeeper. I mean, it’s just it’s it can be overwhelming. Following all the regulations and rules, and just trying to be aware of all these things. And so, I feel like I’m still trying to land on my feet after taking on all this new added responsibility.
Carol McFarland
The price of wheat probably doesn’t help with that just at the moment?
Jason Bishop
It is really challenging. We were looking at it, was it twenty-twenty…wheat was up there like at that peak, like twelve dollars a bushel, now we’re sitting down around five. Which, when I was in high school, we used to— my parents would pay us in grain as we did labor on the farm. And so we had the opportunity to kind of learn how the market worked, and I remember the market wasn’t far off. I mean, it was probably in the high fours at that time. And it’s really kind of disheartening to see how, you know, the here we are, twenty, twenty-five years later and it’s the prices are about the same as they were before for the product we raise. but everything else costs two, three, or four times as much as it did before. And it’s, it’s a real challenge that I think all of us as farmers are trying to, how do we how do we wrestle with this? How do we how do we find a way through and perhaps out of this trajectory that we’re headed
Carol McFarland
Well, we are here to celebrate some innovation. So maybe there’s some answers in that.
Jason Bishop
Maybe.
Carol McFarland
Maybe not all of them, but maybe there’s a couple.
Jason Bishop
We’re searching.
Carol Mcfarland
Yeah. What you’re saying though, reminds me a little bit about, you know, I’d like to— the Direct Seed Conference gets a lot of shout outs in this space in including, from some things I’ve seen there. One of them, two years ago, I think they had a little bit more emphasis on the human dimensions of farming. And one of the talks was actually kind of elevating the intensity that farm stress can be, and also how that fluctuates day-to-day and through seasons. And they were talking about farm partners, which, you know, at this point in the interview, we’ve lost Jill. She had some other business to attend to, but, in the farm partnerships, like doing a check in of, like, okay, on, like a scale of one to ten, what’s your farm stress level today? And it seems like, you know, especially as we try to navigate things as a team or with partners that maybe there’s some value to theoretically, I saw that in a presentation and that does seem like it has some value.
Jason Bishop
Oh yeah. Yeah, I would think that would be huge. I mean, there’s, there’s those days we’ve all had farmers have them where things you start out the day think you’re going to do something, and then you have a major setback whether it’s a piece of equipment that breaks down.
Carol McFarland
Or starts on fire.
Jason Bishop
Starts on fire, and you walk in the door, and that stress that you have walks in with you. And how do you, how do you, not just— how do you deal with that in an emotionally healthy way that doesn’t hurt your family? I think it’s a major challenge. And then to find, the support of your spouse and your partner in that is huge in trying to to navigate through the stress of the farm.
Carol McFarland
Well, and I guess that scale in the farm stress scale in particular is but you know, like on a scale of one, oh, it’s all good. I’m going fishing to like, you know, I’m throwing wrenches and things are on fire, literally and figuratively. It seems like that check in resonated at least with me as a very potentially useful tool in just what’s that check in? You know, because I know it’s been said on this podcast before that farmers aren’t necessarily the most like, let’s talk about our feelings type. But that little check in and just like, how are you doing?
Jason Bishop
No, that’d be great. And just it could be used as a way to say, I need help. You know? Raising your hand and saying, yeah, I’m a six today and I need to get this, this, and this done, so could you help me, please?
Carol McFarland
Yeah.
Jason Bishop
Yeah
Carol McFarland
But also if you’re, if you’re showing up at like an eight for a lot, for the long term, like maybe there’s a different kind of help.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. No, it’s it’s, it’s a hard row to hoe sometimes.
Jason Bishop
Yeah. The challenges that me and my family are facing are not unique. I’m sure this is something that is across the board across the world, so. Yeah.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing a little bit about that. You just got a lot of, you know, big— a lot of big transitions. I mean you went from farming one way and bringing on new acres or you know, there’s a lot of things that can bring a lot more with it.
And yeah, so, you know, transitions can be intense, but a lot of times we get our freedom and under ourselves in the end.