It doesn’t look like Dungeness Valley farmer Nash Huber will grow organic fruits and vegetables at the White House.
But he came close — without even knowing about the contest.
The online election at www.WhiteHouseFarmer.com was for a farmer who would turn 5 acres of south-facing White House lawn into an organic fruit and vegetable garden.
The polls closed at midnight Saturday.
The top three vote-getters’ profiles will be sent to President Barack Obama’s staff for consideration of becoming the designer of the organic plot, the site says.
Huber, owner of Nash’s Organic Produce and the 2008 recipient of the American Farmland Trust’s Steward of the Land award, came in fifth.
He received 3,553 votes, or 6 percent of the total vote of 55,871 votes.
Huber said he has been out of touch, on vacation in California and didn’t even know he had been nominated.
In fact, he said he hadn’t even heard of the competition at all.
“I don’t really know anything about that, but I feel honored that people would consider us for doing something like that,” he said.
“But, you know, I’ve never been to D.C., and I don’t particularly care to.
“It is OK with me if we don’t go.
“But being considered to assist with those things is a great honor.”
Within the top three vote-getters is neighboring organic farmer Carrie Anne Little of Puyallup. The manager of Mother Earth Farm took 8,614 votes, or 15 percent of the total.
Claire Strader of Troy Community Farm in Madison, Wisc., won a few more votes than Little, 8,868 votes, or 16 percent.
Coming in third was Margaret Lloyd of Home Farming, Davis, Calif., who won 5,306 votes, or 9 percent of the total.
Fourth was Will Allen of Milwaukee, Wis. He won 5,280 votes, or 9 percent.
Author’s idea
The idea for the position of White House Farmer came from Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
In a memo to the presidential candidates last October, published in the New York Times Magazine, Pollan called for a collaborator for the White House chef, a grower who could show the American people how fresh, chemical-free, delicious food can come straight from backyard garden to kitchen.
The online election was the brainchild of the Brockman family, who farm in central Illinois.
Top four
Strader’s nomination says she has worked in small-scale organic agriculture for 15 years, including eight years at Troy Community Farm “where she turned a 5-acre parcel of weedy urban landscape into a highly productive and wonderfully beautiful vegetable farm.”
The farm not only produces food, but also educates high school and college students as well as adult volunteers through internship programs.
Little’s Mother Earth Farm in Puyallup produces more than 150,000 pounds of food annually for food pantries and soup kitchens.
She plants crops based on a survey of the wants and needs of customers of food pantries and developed a model program for the state Department of Corrections through bringing crews of female inmates from the Purdy Correctional Center for Women to plant, weed and harvest crops on a regular basis, the nomination said.
Lloyd is the owner of Home Farming, a business that teaches people to grow food in their yards. She was the assistant garden manager of Ecology Action’s Mini-Farm Demonstration and Research Center in Willits, Calif.
She has provided technical support to West African farmers and founded a “salad bowl” garden at the entrance to the Agricultural Sciences building on the University of California at Davis campus, her nomination says.
Allen is the 2008 recipient of a MacArthur Grant. He “has established a network of community farming enterprises,” his nomination says.
Allen is the chief executive officer of Growing Power, a national nonprofit organization and land trust that “provides hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner,” according to its Web site, www.growingpower.org.
Growing Power has farms in Milwaukee, Wisc., Merton, Wisc. and Chicago. It has training sites in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Mississippi.
