Small's Family Farm

Seth Small of Small's Family Farm took some time during a busy harvest season to talk about his family's approach to farming, and his marketing efforts to bring his single variety flour to restaurants and bakeries throughout the Northwest.

The restaurants and bakeries in the Walla Walla area have also embraced the local flour, and Small says "we work with almost all the restaurants locally in Walla Walla."

Although for a time, savvy grocery shoppers could find bags of Small's flour on the shelves at Harvest Foods and Super One Grocery in Walla Walla, the all-purpose and bread flours are now only available at Andy's Markets in Walla Walla and College Place in the bulk bins.

"We stopped doing the retail pack as it's very hard to deal with grocery stores," Small said. He explained that there are different buyers at each store, and each store deals with many various brokers. "The amount of time to sell a little flour isn't worth it," he said.

Small also ran into trouble when the pandemic started, as the printing companies for the flour bags just couldn't keep up. "Whole Foods prints millions of bags, and we only needed to order 25,000."

His initiative in approaching Seattle and Portland area restaurants and bakeries has had greater success, as chefs and bakers appreciate the high-protein flour that comes without any added fillers and ingredients.

"I would take them a sample and explain that we are a small family farm in Walla Walla growing Salmon-Safe certified wheat sustainably. The really big thing is just the quality of the product, and our milling specifications are pretty stringent - between those two things we have a higher quality product, even though it costs a little more."

A specialty mill on the Utah/Idaho border handles the milling of the wheat, which is trucked directly to the mill and back again. "In the grand scheme of things, we would like to come up with our own mill," he said.

With the pandemic, Small notes that "Business is definitely a little quieter and any kind of expansion we were trying to do we put on hold."

The typical rush of visitors from the coast is also not happening this year. "Normally, we have a lot of different restaurants that care about their sourcing, that will do an employee development program where they take their employees out to visit farms that they source their food from." The combine-rides and tours of the farm for Seattle and Portland area visitors will have to wait until the virus subsides.

Seth Small did have some immediate plans, though, "We're going to have one last hoorah," he said, when he told me that he and his two daughters and wife were off for a camping trip this past weekend. He expected to begin harvesting his wheat last Monday, a process he estimates will take three to four weeks.

About Salmon-Safe

Salmon-Safe has become one of the nation’s leading ecolabels with more than 95,000 acres of farm and urban lands certified in Oregon, Washington, California, and British Columbia. Through a peer-reviewed certification and accreditation program, we are leading the movement to implement farming practices and developments that protect water quality, maintain watershed health, and restore habitat.

Salmon-Safe Farms

The Salmon-Safe farm certification program is focused on management practices in six primary areas: riparian area management, water use management, erosion and sediment control, integrated pest management and water quality protection, animal management, and biodiversity conservation. - from salmonsafe.org.