I spent a month at Summit Farms and felt inspired to start my own homestead! I originally reached out to Summit Farms in May 2024, after being accepted to WWOOF’s Future Farmer Program. I arrived in late June with my partner and my friend, and we quickly settled into a weekly schedule of routine farm maintenance, some exciting special projects, and local adventures. In our first week, we became very familiar with planting, growing, and harvesting carrots, shallots, and garlic, participating in every step of the process from prepping beds and planting seeds to harvesting produce and selling it at [...]

We invite you and your out-of-town guests to stay at our turn-of-the century farm via our HipCamp program. We have three RV full hook-up sites for rent (a fourth one is available by request, if you are camping with a large group or family-otherwise we like to space them out for added privacy), with easy back or front in-and-out access, able to accommodate up to 30ft+ rigs. For our guests looking for a more natural and rugged experience, there are also five “dry camp sites” all chosen for their unique beauty, and well-spaced out, so you get that “away from [...]

It’s been a very busy time of year for us growers, while Mother Nature and weather have been fickle at best so far. Our 2024 growing season really began in October of last year with the planting of hundreds of garlic and red shallot so that they could “over-winter” and be ready for scapes in June, with harvest and curing in July. It’s going to be a banner year for the garlic as some of them are so large that some of the visiting school kids (below), thought they were corn stalks! We started early this year in mid-February for [...]

For the past couple of years, we have been hosting WWOOFers from around the U.S. who have helped us so much along with providing a safe and supportive environment for the Future Farmers of America. This organization links Farmers/Ranchers who are practicing to organic methods with folks who either have some school or first-hand experience and can learn by doing. The host farms generally provide housing and food in exchange from around 20 hours per week. Our previous WWOOFer, Jo, big project was to build a proper three-stage composting station which we inaugurated recently and been making good use of! Our [...]

We are super proud and grateful to be awarded a grant from the Tilth Alliance - WA State Organic and Sustainable Farming Fund that completes more than 500’ of additional critter-resistant fencing, tractor gates, and many yards of organic soil, and mushroom compost (to build on the lime/cover crops we’ve been rehabilitating this field with).  This will give us an additional potential of 6x5000 sq.ft. future growing plots for the likes of corn, squash, pumpkins and other vegetables including two dedicated for Community/School Gardens and to benefit the Food Bank.  This is the 2nd significant dollar grant we’ve won this [...]

We were so blessed in May and June to host our five local school busloads of kindergarteners, first graders, teachers, and parents from the Olympia School District here before the end of the school year. Coming from ORLA, Centennial, Pioneer, Madison and Boston Harbor, these kids were incredibly intelligent, energetic, and oftentimes hilarious! It gave me a new, even if just a slice of appreciation for dads and moms and teachers - and seeing the students learning and running and having pure fun in nature like kiddos should do was so heartwarming. I put them to good work like farmhands, pulling [...]

We are Mitch and Michelle Lewis, and this is a story of how We became late-in-life newbie farmers in May 2021 and “Our First Acre”. Neither of us had farming backgrounds, though Mitch had small gardens over the years. His corporate career in telecommunications included living and working on several continents before we returned to WA state in early 2018. Shortly after settling, our desire to find a home with a few acres evolved into a vision to build a multi-generational, self-sustaining, and commercially profitable family farm. We ended up purchasing a 28-acre turn-of-the-century homestead including a 1910 gambrel-style barn [...]

Why You Don’t Have to Suck at Succulents!  We hear this a lot every week at the Farmers Market, “oh I’m terrible with plants and they don’t like me” while they’re looking at our cacti, succulents and vegetable starts. Here are ten things I’ve learned while raising and selling cacti that might be helpful for those of you who’ve gotten the growing bug:  1. Pick the right variety and specimen.  Most all succulents are in the cacti family, but not all cacti are succulents. Makes sense? No, not to us either except, generally, those cacti with spines are not succulents. [...]

Mitch Lewis had no idea when he scaled Mount Everest that lessons he learned in climbing the highest peaks around the world would help operate a Thurston County regenerative farm and gathering space. But that’s exactly what happened. And today, Summit Farms reflects the values he and spouse Michelle gathered along a global journey that brought them to their farm’s 28 bucolic acres near Millersylvania State Park. “You can’t do it alone,” says Mitch in describing what climbing taught him about life. “You are part of a small team and a bigger team of a global community. You will have a lot of [...]