Conjuring food gardens | Life on the Rocks
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 28, 2026
By Steve Ulvi
Journal contributor
Beaverton Marsh Preserve is deemed a “learning landscape,” a picturesque backyard to town without a hint of the sea. Flying over, one sees the pleasing contrast of a low timbered headland wrapped by a broad marsh of grasses and clumped willows. This preserve was skillfully knit together, tract by tract, over 20 years. The arable acres remained open to farm enterprises from the outset.
The ancient marsh, topping as much as 80 feet of peat, has a history of significant alteration by modern farming. In the deep time of Indigenous use and occupancy, the large wetland habitat and edges likely provided for many cultivated subsistence foods — roots, bulbs, fruits and berries — now referred to as “eco-cultural gardens.”
Modern islanders import about 95% of our food. Constraints to developing crops — land prices, soaring taxes, excessive land-use permitting requirements, infrastructure costs, water and a lack of affordable worker housing — are the results of a real estate investment mentality, an undiversified economy and a failure of imagination.
However, along Roche Harbor Road, a gently sloping, neatly fenced 40-acre pasture area within the edge of Beaverton Marsh Preserve, now under a 20-year lease with the Grange, has become an inspiring agrarian demonstration project. The farm site reminds me of 1970s Mother Earth News images; hand tools, sheds, wheelbarrows, woody debris for Hugelkultur, a tractor with implements, a seedling greenhouse, large tarps killing pasture, artsy gates, wood-chipped paths, mounded compost, transplanted mature blueberries and lots of water system components.
The agrarian commons idea is from yesteryear, but here it stems from the convergence of beneficial agricultural use policies by our Conservation Land Bank and a community garden commons spawned by a cohort of energetic Grange leaders. Both provide modest funds. San Juan Grange #966 is notable across Washington for the impressive membership, rare revenue from owning a commercial property and forward-thinking agrarian leadership that heartily embraces permaculture methods and recognizes our five-alarm food insecurity.
Farm practices ensure experimentation and food for dedicated participants while enhancing soils, restoring biodiversity, supporting pollinators and improving human health. This approach offers low-cost sweat equity, the empowerment of life skills-learning and repurposes a patch of under-utilized public land.
Overmarsh Commons Farm is a timely leap forward in island agrarian reform. The Land Bank and the Grange, with the necessary collaboration and cost-sharing of local ag, university and conservation partners, have formed the agrarian commons mimicking a land trust and tenants, creating expandable, low-cost collective food growing opportunities.
In this second year, the Farm Commons idea is growing to accommodate nearly 60 varied plot leases for individuals or families who agree to employ conservation practices, organic methods and volunteer 10-plus hours per month in Sunday afternoon work parties.
Enthusiastic growers, toiling elbow to elbow, are making friends and employing time-honored permaculture methods under the friendly mentoring of a farm manager who has a well-earned reputation as an innovative and successful organic farmer. A strong well and surface tank storage supplies the expanding drip irrigation systems down slope to new plots.
Perhaps a heritage fruit orchard, “silva pasturing” with animals, more berry varieties, a water retention pond, a nursery and other elements will be considered for hands-on teaching with a careful eye toward greater community stability in a time of cascading challenges. I feel a contagious sense of hope on this evolving site.
