BLYN — The keynote speaker sang the blues, but people perked him up again.
Ken Meter, a Minneapolis-based food economist, delivered a state-of-the-farms report for the North Olympic Peninsula during Friday’s “Food for Our Future” summit at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Center.
Clallam and Jefferson counties have 662 farming families, Meter began.
Three out of four of them work fewer than 50 acres.
But 21 percent of these growers sell their goods directly to consumers, at farmers markets or stands, “which is a bigger percentage than most places I’ve seen,” said Meter, who’s done reports on farming communities in the Midwest and California.
