Good Groceries, Farm-to-School, and Supporting Small Farmers with Kristy Athens

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. Welcome to the podcast. This is Kim Allchurch Flick. And I’m so happy to be here with Kristy Athens of good groceries. Kristy has an MS in Food Systems and Society from Merrill Hurst University and is the author of Get Your Pitchfork on The Real Dirt On Country Living.

She has worked in rural minority economic development for decades, currently connecting Eastern Oregon farmers and school districts as the procurement liaison for the Oregon Farm to School Network and serving for a number of years on the Willa County Farmers. Market board. Kristy moved to Willa County in 2013 and before that lived in western Oregon, Washington, and the upper Midwest in her spare time, ha ha ha.

She manages Pitchfork Garden with her spouse, makes collage art, and plays songs on fiddle and electric base. Today we’re gonna talk about how Bilocal is not a drill. Kristy, I’m so excited to have you here. thank you Kim, so much for having me. Thank you. And the waas are beautiful. You live in an amazing place in eastern Oregon.

And curious, what has been your life journey and inspirations that brought you to the current moment? I. 

Kristy Athens: I would love to say that it is a linear path, but I don’t think that’s the case. I started out as a writer and as a generalist. I wrote about lots of different industries and, after doing that for oh gosh, probably 15 years. I wanted, I decided I wanted to specialize and around that time my spouse, Mike and I moved from City Life. We had grown up in the Midwest, in Minneapolis, and then we moved to Portland in 1995 and we were looking for something a little more rural. We would go out and hike in the gorge and, fell in love with that area and thought, geez.

Seeing all these houses on the sides of the road, it’s like, how do these people live here? What are they doing? And so we moved out to white Salmon Washington in 2003 and, that’s how the book Get Your Pitchfork on came about. I learned a lot of lessons not having lived in a rural community.

There are lots of cultural lessons I learned as well as, how to work the land and that kind of thing. And so I thought other urban people might like a guide to moving to a real place. And when I started doing the research, it was a lot based on my experience, but when I was doing research for that, I was learning more about agriculture and learning nuances like scale and farming methods and different markets and different philosophies about agriculture.

And that sort of piqued my interest in. In agriculture writ large, but also specifically about small farms because I talked to a few small farmers and one of my friends had also started a farm, moved to the area around the same time as I, and just learning how. Not profitable. That was really surprised me.

And so I started to get interested in that. And around that time I learned of a brand new master’s program that was at Meryl Hurst University. It was called Food Systems in Society. And I had not yet done a master’s program. And. Finally, I was interested in doing one, and so I joined the first cohort of that in 2013.

And so it’s a social science degree, so I learned about what are called in quotes, externalities, which means all of the sort of very serious side effects of industrial scale agriculture. Including land grabs and environmental degradation and human rights abuses. And by then I had moved to an even more rural area.

So in Malawi County, Oregon where we are now. And I was, so now not only am I learning about in how agriculture works, but I’m learning about rural economies and I originally started a gift box business using the different things that people out here make carb wooden and spoons and different value added food products and things like that.

And I also, as you mentioned, join the farmer’s market board. And after a couple years of doing the gift boxes, some of the farmers came to me and asked if I would do something like what I was doing for the artist, for the. For the farmers. And I said yeah, that’s what I should be doing anyway so I launched I had a couple of them help me, be on an advisory board and start what is now called good groceries.

Originally the original gift box business was called Genuine Malawi County, and then the food delivery was called Genuine Malawi County Provisions. And then I sold off the gift box piece to another local person and then so I could focus on the food. And so I rebranded the food delivery to good groceries in 2024.

So that’s my direct line to this position. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Wow. You’ve learned so much along the way, and I’m really intrigued in what have been your impressions through time about learning about agriculture and the factory farming side. And also what you’re deeply in now is more the rural local soil carrying side and what are you seeing around you and how are people responding to those differences? 

Kristy Athens: This area. So first of all Eastern Oregon is a very different growing climate from Western Oregon. I felt like when I lived in St. John’s in Portland, I could throw a candy wrap around the ground and something would grow out of it.

But out here we have real winter, although we aren’t really having it this year, but that’s another story. We have a very limited growing season for things like tomatoes and basil, and we can have a frost any night of the year. In the middle of summer it can happen. Growing what are called specialty crops, which means everything that’s interesting, all the fruits and vegetables.

Things that as opposed to commodity crops, which are your wheat and liquid milk and things are sold on a grand scale. So specialty crops are hard to grow out here. The soil is actually good. Unlike a lot of Eastern Oregon we have. Because of the way the mountains are shaped.

We have more bunch grass than sagebrush and so we have a little bit more moisture. So we have really good soil, but it’s just we’re enterprise is at about 4,200 feet and elevation. And it’s just, it’s harder to grow things here. And just the, climate in agriculture the work that was done over the 20th century to have everything consolidated and and industrialized yeah. Everything out here has been industrial level. So people grow, hundreds of acres of wheat, hundreds of acres of grass hay and raise a lot of cattle out here. Because the land even though the soil could support.

Different crops, the climate and the season can’t really support them very well. Yeah, so it’s, it’s just like everywhere in the United States, most of the agriculture up here is a large scale

Kim Allchurch Flick: and what has been the need in the community and some of the solutions with with that climate. 

Kristy Athens: Most people get their food from a large corporate source. We have one corporate grocery store in our county. And then people travel to others in different areas. I know people will try, will travel two hours to go to Costco in Lewiston.

They’ll drive to La Grande to go to one of the big box stores there. People in Northeast Oregon, or I different from people anywhere else, most of them are by necessity looking for the lowest price of their food. And, you’ve seen it in news headlines. And I remember even in junior high school there being week or so that we spent in social studies class talking about food system. But every, the whole focus of it was, calculating the cost per ounce of something. And, getting the best deal was definitely the focus. And I think it’s been, we’ve been hardwired for a long time that the cheapest food is the goal.

And so I’ve got my work cut out for me 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. So how is Good groceries doing and how does it fit into these systems? 

Kristy Athens: It’s going well. As far as growth, it’s the year over year growth. So again, it started in 20. 20. And so I’m closing in on my sixth year. And the year over year growth has been there every year.

It’s grown every year. But it’s a tiny drop in the bucket of actually feeding people. As I did with the gift boxes, the goal was to create another revenue stream for local people. Here, it’s hard to live out here. People think that things are cheaper in rural places, and that’s not true.

I think if anything it’s more expensive because of scarcity and, and the, and especially the traveling, that one must due in order to get things or, ordering things that are shipped to you. There’s just a lot of extra and having to drive everywhere. I live four miles from town.

That’s a long walk. So there’s there are more expenses I think for rural living, but I I have a lot of, colleagues who are doing similar work around the state and around the country. And they, it’s really interesting. Food hubs are approached in from many different directions and they serve many different purposes with different organizations.

And so what I mean by that is a lot of organizations are. For-profits, a lot of them are nonprofits. And so the food hub in a lot of cases, is a one component of many programs within a nonprofit. Some of them are farmer co-ops. Most of those developed during COVID when they were trying to figure out another way to sell their food when farmer’s markets and other things were closed.

And so a lot. And then there’s that piece of it, and then. People also come at it from different mission bases. And what I mean by that is a lot of people are looking at food justice on the part of the eater. And which is incredibly important and feeds into that larger conversation of of income inequities that have developed over the last 50 years as well as the industrial agriculture trends that we were talking about earlier.

But my my focus has been on the farmers because there are so few. Farmers generally. It’s a few, it’s a handful of farmers that run a lot of land out here, and then there are just a very small number of small farms, on 10 or five acres or less. A lot of them are just backyard garden kind of farms.

We don’t have the big market farms that you have in the Willamette Valley. But I don’t wanna lose those. And my focus has been pay the farmers what they need to make this worthwhile. And in our current capitalists model, it’s really hard to make those two things. Work at the same time.

Food justice for eaters and income equity for farmers without there being some grant support in the middle. And because I don’t function as a nonprofit, even though I do function as a benefit company which we can talk about as well, but that, that basically is a commitment to focus on the environment and and social justice as well as profit.

So even though my business is a for-profit, profit is not the main focus. So yeah, so I’ve been focused on paying my farmers and I, in order to. I’m very aware of the fact that in some cases, not all cases, but in some cases, that results in my prices being higher than in a grocery store.

And to try to compensate for that, I donate a dollar of every sale to the local food pantries. As well as other community giving things, but that in particular. Is it an intention to acknowledge the fact that the pricing, because I’m supporting the farmers, the pricing might be out of reach for some people.

I also went to the trouble to be able to take snap payments, which if you’ve ever worked with USDA is a huge hassle, but it was also important to me to be able to do that as well. And on now I just just starting in January farmer’s Market Fund in Oregon is supporting my snap payments with double up food bucks.

So the people who do use Oregon EBT card to buy their groceries at groceries can get half off of their Oregon grown produce. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s so incredible. I’m curious also about your connection to the schools where a lot of food flows through public schools.

And what can you tell us about that?

Kristy Athens: So I do some work on a contract basis with Oregon Farm to School Network. And so I am working with the schools to, to make sure that they take advantage of state funds that are allocated through the Department of Education to school districts to purchase local food for their for their cafeterias.

And good groceries does not do any wholesale sales. For that same reason that because I’m paying most of the money up to 80% of the retail price goes to the farmer. So there’s no room for me to do any wholesale. With the current model that I have I might, you know, try and work out a different situation in the future, but at this present time, I just sell directly to consumers.

But I do work as a liaison and so the school districts and the farmers are still making their own contracts with each other, but I’m there to help them find each other. If they have questions about how the program works, I can answer those things like that. But it’s a great opportunity for local schools to support their neighbors, and, in a lot of cases, the kids of the farmers are in the school makes a lot of sense.

Kim Allchurch Flick: And for the kids’ health and variety of things. And can you share with us your thoughts about the environmental piece of local farming and what you’ve learned about the differences between large factory. Farming and more local. 

Kristy Athens: It’s an interesting topic. It’s pro, it probably could be its own topic.

I know we have we don’t have all day to talk, but it is a rich topic and I do think that I do think that it. Is, yeah, it’s something that, it’s something that people should look into from various angles, I guess I would say. And the reason I say that is there are a lot of farmers out here who use organic practices who are not interested in certifying.

And so for good groceries, I do not require organic certification. And I, I’m, I guess I’m a pragmatist. I think that I understand why chemicals are used sometimes and I also also understand that the word organic has become a bit of a it has. There are realities to organic that a lot of people are not aware of or don’t want to know about.

‘Cause there are lots of chemicals that are used in organic farming, especially in industrial organic farming. Personally I would rather eat food from a small non-certified farm then. Industrial organic that you get at a corporate grocery store. That’s my personal my personal preference.

I, I think that all organic is good. But I do think it’s become a bit of a panacea for some folks. And and I’ll leave it there ’cause it is its own topic for sure. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I think there’s another podcast coming up at some point, but we can definitely, I have to get more than 

Kristy Athens: me on it.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And it’s important. And thank you for that. And I also know that in your area there’s a a ranch that is Regener certified and concerned about soil health. So it seems like in the region there are some people who are really looking at the environmental piece. Yeah, from soil upward and it doesn’t always have to be small.

Kristy Athens: I would say that all farmers care about soil. It’s just some farmers have a different view of the impact of of traditional agricultural practices. I don’t think that there are farmers that don’t care about soil. I just think that they yeah, they just have a different approach. But yeah.

I don’t think it was because of a lack of care. I think it’s just a different approach. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. And I sense. While it still feels small scale because of things like films like Kiss the Ground, biggest Little Farm, common Ground, those types of films that are talking about agriculture, reaching people that.

Many of whom never considered where food comes from. And that learning can help move needles of awareness. And I’m wondering what you’re seeing in terms of that awareness of the consumers and awarenesses of the farmers as time goes by. 

Kristy Athens: As far, if I look at my customer base it’s definitely a lot of people who have moved here from somewhere else who maybe brought their value system with them and also brought a job with them that enables them to be a good groceries customer.

Yeah. Definitely people everyone who lives in Malawi County is very, very proud of living here and want to protect it. For example, we’ve had a lot, we have a, Al Land Trust has done a lot of work to preserve. Some lands near the wall Lake. There’s also been some land that’s been returned to the NES per tribe, or oo as the original inhabitants of this area.

There’s been a great, also the Land Trust has done some great work to work with local ranchers to invite the nimmi poo. Back here to dig canvas route and do other gatherings that they used to, that they’ve traditionally done in this area. Yeah, again, I don’t think, I don’t think that the love of the land has changed.

I think maybe some of the processes, people are re reexamining some of the processes. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And that’s good. What are some of the obstacles and challenges for you? 

Kristy Athens: Oh gosh. Where should I start? I mean on the really pinpoint on the ground I have a. Two wheel drive cargo van that has a refrigeration unit in the back and which is great for summertime, but it is impossible.

Not impossible, but very, very difficult and somewhat dangerous to take. If I because as I mentioned, it’s hard to grow food in Mulaua County, so a lot of the food that I sell is not grown in Mulaua County. That was one of the reasons that I changed the name. So I get a lot of food from the neighboring county, which is Union County.

That’s where La Grande is located. And then I also get a lot of produce and other food and some really great value added products from two food hubs in Washington. One is in Walla Walla, which is two hours away and one is Puget Sound Food Hub. And they deliver. Orders to Walla if food hub and then I go to Walla Walla and pick up the whole thing and bring it back.

So I have access to some amazing cheese some kelp snack chips and just all kinds of cool things that I would not be able to carry if I were just relying on our region. And also to get to Walla Walla, I have to go through the Blue Mountains. And in the wintertime, taking a two-wheel drive van over a mountain pass is terrifying, even with studded tires.

So I have practical limitations like that. I just got a grant slash loan to purchase a four wheel drive van, and I’m very excited about that. And so there’s, yeah, so there’s lots of logistical challenges in that regard. There’s also the challenge of this being a very sparsely populated county.

There’s 3,500 square miles and 7,500 people. That necessitate has necessitated me moving into, and I am just going to do this next week launch into a weekly delivery to Union County. And so that’s terrific. But that requires an hour plus drive also. So there’s just, there’s a lot of driving.

The the people who run benefit corporations for good, which is my B company. Certifier, are always pressing me to get an electric van, which I would love to do, but it either needs to be refrigerated or have four wheel drive. So there are those kind of realities at this moment.

Hopefully that technology will catch up with the need. But yeah, so there’s just lots of challenges, logistical challenges I would say. And then obviously the situation with it just being a short season and hard to grow a variety of crops here. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh indeed. And what makes you optimistic?

Kristy Athens: Lots of things. A lot of my existing customers are people who are new to the area. They tend to be in their thirties and they are unwilling to throw their ethics under the bus just for convenience or other considerate air price or anything else.

They make me optimistic. They are great supporters. They’re super excited about this. And they, they’re telling their friends. They’re making a point of it. So that’s been really great. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I really like that thought. Unwilling to throw their ethics under the bus and hopefully all of us how can people reach you?

That’s easy. Just go to good groceries.shop.

And is there anything else you’d like to share? Also, thinking about the people that aren’t in the county, but in terms of overall thoughts about how to select food and some of the considerations going to a store. What are some key differences of making a selection that can help us all not throw our ethics under the bus?

Kristy Athens: For a lot of people, we need in income equality for people to be able to to use that old phrase, vote with your fork. Not a lot of people don’t have as many votes as others, and I definitely don’t want to suggest that if people are buying from large grocery stores that they don’t have ethics.

It’s, there, there’s a lot to fix. I used to do just as an aside, I used to do a community con, lead a community conversation with Oregon humanities called good food, bad food. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the conversation project, but it’s it’s not a lecture.

It’s a conversation. And so we would all be talking, I would, seed the conversation with various aspects of the food system and then we would talk about them. But one of them was that, during the Reagan administration the Emergency Food Assistance Program was developed TFA and it’s still called TFAP or no, it was originally, I just gave away the punchline.

Originally it was temporary Emergency Food Assistance program, and eventually they just changed the name to the. Emergency Food assistance program because wage inequality has been going on for decades. And eventually it became clear that people are never not in an emergency situation anymore, a lot of people.

I don’t wanna judge anybody who doesn’t shop at good groceries or any other local farm stand. And there are, I wanna point. Farm stand or food hubs all over the state. So wherever you live in Oregon you can probably find a food hub where you live. But yeah, I think the thing I want to people to take away, despite what I just said, is that, and this is the title of our little program here.

Bilocal is not a Drill. If you can. Find a food hub. Find a CSA, find a farmer’s market. Find a farm stand and go there first. You can always fill in the rest of your list somewhere else, but first buy from your neighbors. Because once if we lose all of our farms. They’re not, if we put buildings and data centers on all of our farmland it’s not gonna come back for a really, really, really long time.

I don’t think, I think looking at the, our current global situation, I don’t, I think everyone can agree that importing food is not such a great idea or needing, more importantly needing to import it. It’s one thing to import. French wine because you want to, but needing to import our basic staples, I think is everyone can agree is a bad idea.

And the only way that’s not gonna happen is if people actively seek out local sources of food first. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Actively seek out local sources. Yes. And that can vary across regions, counties, and states. But as you said, they are there and they will, they want to sell. They want to continue doing what they’re doing and share food with people.

And it’s one of my greatest joys is going to a farmer’s market. It’s, they’re fun, they’re. It’s interesting to see what people bring in. It’s fun to talk with people, get to know who the farmer is. 

Kristy Athens: Yep. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Exactly. Indeed. Thank you so much. Thank you for those tips and giving us all food for thought.

And speaking of food if you could, this is the final question. If you could have dinner with anyone, up to three people living or deceased, who would they be and why? 

Kristy Athens: Can I have two answers? 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. 

Kristy Athens: Okay. So my first answer would be my Life group. And that would be my two grandmas and my mother-in-law ’cause I missed them.

And then my career group would be, also family, my father-in-law because he had a food broker business. When I started dating my spouse in 1990 when we were tiny babies and he had this food broker business. And at the time, like I said, I was a writer and I did not care one bit about his business.

He died in 2005 and I started doing this food stuff in 2013 with grad school, and boy do I wish I could ask him some questions now. But Jim Menlow and then and then my other two choices were Dolores Huerta. ‘Cause she was so inspirational. So good at motivating people and so food justice oriented a lot of people.

Might not know who she is, but she was right up there with Cesar Chavez doing the same work. And Cesar gets most of the credit and the streets named after him. But Dolores Huerta is somebody to look up. And then James Beard, another civic, Northwest Hero. The first television chef before Julia Child.

Although there’s no, no tape of it left anymore. But he is a he is wrote an a million cookbooks and he was probably the first besides native,

their whole, for millennia. James Beard I think was born. Like early, very early, 19th or 20th century. And he lived in Portland and he and his nanny house person helper would go down to the markets down on the waterfront in Portland. And so he learned to eat oysters as a young boy and learned the importance of.

Seasonal, eating seasonally and eating from the place you’re in. And so he’s a bastion of regional and seasonal cooking. So I would love to also, he was also if he, especially if he was making dinner, ’cause he was a great chef and and a good he had a good taste in wine from what I understand. Those would be my dinner tables.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, that’s lovely. And a nod to James Beard is the, Portland is building a new James Beard market in exactly. Downtown, so

anyone visiting Portland probably into 20 27, 28. I might wanna look that up. Kristy, thank you so much. I love the work you’re doing. The heart and soul you put into the hard work of driving in all four seasons with so much variability and continuing that congratulations on being benefit corporations for good.

And we’ll put everything in the show notes. Everyone. Thanks for listening. This is Kim Allchurch flick, signing off.