Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/543863
www.goodfruit.com Good Fruit Grower AUGUST 2015 23 Cloudview operates a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that delivers a box of produce to a hun- dred families each week. It also supplies fresh produce to school districts in cen- tral Washington. The Wenatchee School District makes a big effort to provide good, fresh, local food to students, rather than order from food-service distributors, and sends its cooks to visit the farm. Baird also puts on tours for restaurant owners, food-service managers, and others to showcase his growing techniques. Fourth generation Baird, a fourth-generation grower, started out in conventional farming, but has become increasingly interested in organic and agroecological production. His maternal great-grandparents, Charles and Elizabeth Reed, established orchards in Malaga, Washington, in the late 1800s, and his maternal grand- parents, Virgil and Grace Wine, had an orchard in Monitor. His father John Baird was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Wenatchee, Washington. After earning a law degree from the University of Washington, he and his wife, Mary, moved to Ephrata, where he served as legal counsel for the Quincy Columbia Basin Irrigation District for 47 years. He acquired farmland, mainly as an investment, and cultivated good relationships with his renters. The family had a small hobby orchard, where Jim grew up. After high school, Baird decided to forego college in favor of becoming what he now describes as "something between a hippy and a ski bum." After a few years of adventure, he yearned to do something more meaningful. He went back to Royal City, leased farmland from his father, and became a row-crop farmer and orchard- ist. Baird said he was always interested in the newest trends in agriculture and apple production and was quick to adopt Gala and Fuji apples, for example. He was interested in the idea of organic production and of using soft pest man- agement programs. "But I got swept into the larger-scale conventional 'chemicals will fi x everything' kind of movement," he said. "As I got older, I got less thrilled with that." Adventure In the late 1990s, he contracted with Mike Robinson to manage his orchards and set out again in search of adventure. His travels took him to eastern Europe, where he did tree fruit consulting, and to Mexico and Costa Rica. He stayed involved with his farming enterprises via the Internet. Eight years ago, he returned to Ephrata to take care of his parents and return to hands-on farming. Shortly afterwards, his father died, leaving him the responsibility of all their farmland. He was in the process of reassessing his life, when he was approached by a young couple who had traveled the world with EarthCorps and wanted to start a market garden. Baird had a piece of land on a ridge on the Royal Slope that had well water and a panoramic view, which inspired the name Cloudview. Baird lived there in a yurt and helped them get their quarter- acre garden established. They sold the produce at farmers' markets. "I had more fun than in all the years of big-scale farming," he recalled. "Here I am with thousands of acres of land, and I've been seeing this rise in farmers' mar- kets and the rise in CSAs and the organic AWARENESS "We in agriculture feed our society, so we have the responsibility of having healthy soils and growing as healthy produce as we know how." —Jim Baird PHOTOS BY TJ MULLINAX/GOOD FRUIT GROWER Whitney Johnson, an intern for Cloudview Ecofarms, sorts produce tags. The farm has an internship program with the goal of training the next generation of growers in ecologically friendly farming techniques. At left, Jim Baird discusses the Robada apricot harvest with Neil Vargas, right, at Cloudview Farms. Vargas started his horticultural training in Baird's internship program and is now a full-time employee.