Flynn Farms, Washington

Savannah Flynn of Flynn Farms in Everson, WA shares her enthusiasm for farming in a food desert and for using the organic techniques she learned from her mother while growing up in Oakland and San Lorenzo, California.

Know Your Farmer | Flynn Farms, Washington

I am grateful, I would say, because I get to do this. I’m Savannah Flynn and I have Flynn Farms.

It’s a certified organic farm in Whatcom County, specifically Everson, and I grow on 2.5 acres.

I think it’s really important to be able to provide food, especially if you’re in agriculture and being a producer, to the people who live in your area.

There’s not any available grocery store selling fresh produce in where I farm. So what do you do? You try to learn about your community and some of the adversities and how to feed people!

There’s a lot of food deserts actually in the United States. It’s just not really highlighted but I’m in this little niche. I have one of those.

And I get to be an organic farmer and help combat that.

Organic Farming At Flynn Farms

I grew up with some childhood adversities.

I’m from East Bay. I was born in Oakland and I was raised there for 12 years with
my mom and my aunt and we lived in poverty for probably the first 16 years of my life.

And in California we had a small house for two years. And during those two years my mom grew about an eighth of an acre of food. So that’s what we ate.

And then she used natural organic methods like bamboo to attract dragonflies for a
natural insecticide and beer in pie pans to kill the slugs. So I learned a lot from her.

I kind of like being a little plant doctor.

I think having issues with plants is actually kind of cool because it’s the soil really. So it’s telling you what it needs and then the plant shows you, and it’s your job – my job to fix it.

I would say the symbiotic relationship that you have like by building a farm everything else just, you see it all work with a little ecosystem that you have.

That’s pretty rad.

Seasonality, Hydroponics, And The Future

My season is so dependent on not only the climate and atmospheric temperature which in theory tells us what the soil temperature is going to be for that season and so many different things can happen.

Droughts are more common or our rains are changing.

So when you have something new but really stable and ready to produce like that’s so different than producing in the ground and in soil.

So I don’t think I’d be able to compete with the hydroponics.

The plan after next season my family and I want to buy our own plot. So then I won’t have to rent anymore. So far just to start it’s just small scale, seasonal outdoor.

I interviewed! I love you guys. I want to hug you guys!