Help Goodness Tea Buy the Farm!
Creating Goodtopia through Goodness Tea
Please help us save Goodness Tea Farm. We have a chance to buy the land before it goes to open market. I hope to keep this place in organic agriculture and sharing our production facilities with the emerging producers cooperative as the long term steward. I was inspired to make Goodness Tea through a desire to have my work create systems for collective benefit. Help us see the vision through! We have until July 7th! We can do this together!
Vision and Values
Regenerative Farming: We farm and forage what the land is naturally suited for. Flowers, fruit and fodder are harvested from seasonal abundance, providing for our brews while leaving plenty for wildlife and pollinators
Collective Benefit: Goodness Tea shares low-cost access of commercial food/beverage processing facilities with emerging food producers. We buy from local farms as often as possible, choosing ethical suppliers for exotics
Organizational Justice: We demonstrate system sustainability as best we can: transparent practices, cooperative decision making, reparations payments, indigenous royalties, compostable packaging, plus staff & community care
Let’s Save The Farm!
After 7-years of love and investment into the landscape, my landlords asked Goodness Tea to buy the farm. We were approved for an FSA loan for the appraised value!!! Tragically our landlord passed before we formalized the agreement, and the new trustee for the estate nearly pulled the rug out from under us by starting to list the farm on the open market. Now at the insistence of the landlord's heir, we have a chance to buy the farm. A fuller back-story follows if you want more of how I got here
Goodness Tea has 91.7% of the total cost at hand. So close! Help us close the gap! With your support, Goodness Tea can raise the $50k needed to keep collective kitchen access open and tasty local harvests available for years to come.
SUPPORT US DIRECTLY! Venmo:@goodtopia Paypal:goodnesstea@gmail.com
Storytime
I am a horticulturalist by trade, a forester by education, wrapping my life around the care of plants. I fell in love with blending herbal tea around 2006 as a solution to make the pregnancy-infusion my midwife prescribed tasty and semi-homegrown. Soon I had about 5 blends to cover all occasions (Zap! Conk-out, Mt Ma’am Chai, Yule, Femme); Goodness Tea was founded in 2008 as a way to share these blends.
Realizing Choice in Paths and People I Support
Tea became provision and purpose in 2014; my life-line to good community when everything changed. One summer evening in July, los chicos and I were kicked out of our home. I was 8-years, and 3-children, into a marriage with a man who struggled with anger, depression and alcoholism, who refused to get help. It hit me hard to see that I was passively supporting actions and beliefs I didn’t agree with by staying in that relationship. No more! I had the power to stop and create a new path. We never went back to that life.
In Goodness Tea I saw an opportunity to craft a business that valued caring for people, planet, and joy. One that could reinforce the channels that felt like life! So I dove into a 1-yr commitment at the Port Angeles Farmers Market with a dream to make a real tea company; a chance to own every decision for goodness’ sake.
Getting Tea to Market
Turns out herbal tea has to be processed in a state licensed food processing facility! The cost of commercial production was daunting, so my journey began as a “food booth” at market, making drinks and treats on demand from ingredients bought at the store. There was a real sense of tragedy that I couldn’t use homegrown without a lot of infrastructure, which motivated a heart to share access as I got it and to source from local growers in the same boat. The real gem of this time was finding community, from the fellow vendors putting themselves out there, to our patrons braving the often-wild weather at the year-round PAFM to support us.
Los chicos helping at the booth while Shaelee was out with a broken ankle, summer 2021
One drizzly winter morning over a cuppa I got to talking to Harvey. He listened to my story and the seeming helplessness of my situation. His response: Well! I happen to have a farm that needs a farmer, and you need a commercial kitchen! Come visit, let's see what we can do. I visited his farm to find lovely woodlands, orchards, an abandoned garden, and a family living in their commercial kitchen!
4-Acre Farm and 7-years of Sweat-Equity
At my first visit, I walked the land with Harvey and saw so much potential. His mother, Eloise, built the farm infrastructure for him to have retirement options from a caring heart, but he was too preoccupied as her caregiver to tend the farm. There was an enchanting woodland with an irrigation channel, young orchards, and a small field. The raised beds were overgrown, with greenhouse plastic and irrigation buried under thick sod. The outbuildings were mostly storage, and the commercial kitchen had a family “temporarily” living there. I was excited, but wondered how much time and energy it would take to get the place setup for tea farming and production..
Just before leaving the day, Eloise (a 97 year old environmental activist and retired doctor) sat me down. What do you see here? she asked. I told her what I imagined on the land: shade medicinals in the woodland, herbs and tea in the field, goats and ducks on the edges, buildings cleared out and becoming the barn, garage, farmworker housing and market-kitchen as intended. She loved it. What do we do with the family? was her follow up. We hatched a plan to set up my yurt for them to move into.
Fast forward some three years later. My kids and I lived in a tiny home on the farm. I’d established a garden and had the kitchen licensed for what I made: tea, chocolate, cookies and many of the new local-source recipes born that first year at the farmers market. Still I struggled to keep my head above water. As a homeschooling mama of three, self-employed and carving out a new business; tackling farm cleanup on my own was a never ending and overwhelming task. But I held the faith! I was surrounded by good people in a lovely landscape and knew the work was mine to do. So I went back to college to learn how its done.
Go Peninsula Pirates!
I met Peninsula College in 2001 as a running start student, staying on to study science at this little community college. So wild to return some 16/17 years later to get a BAS in Applied Management at the 4-year university it is becoming! Dr. Rae Rawly led the program with a heart for social and environmental activism through the leadership of ethical businesses. The years back at PC were a blur of endless projects, but I graduated in 2018. My main takeaway that the only path to success is through sharing knowledge and power; collaborative systems of mutual benefit last the test of time.
The Real Work
College inspired professionalism and a greater long-term lens with which to view Goodness Tea. I saw that for this tea company to be of real benefit to the world it had to keep growing, and had to include more voices. So we did! Soon Goodness Tea was represented at 3 Olympic Peninsula Farmers Markets and had a stable 10ish hours a week of staff help. Our processes and costing were shared with our wholesale clients for full transparency. We sourced increasing amounts of local herbs from area farmers and foragers, and shared the farm-kitchen with new producers. It quickly became clear I needed to invest in the land and facilities at 4-acre farm for our work to be efficient enough for wholesales and to keep access open.
Faith through Uncertainty
And like that, Eloise’s health was failing, and security at the farm was suddenly slipping. After 5-years on the farm together, we had a great relationship and ever-present intentions of writing up a lease with a purchase option. I was here to love the land and lean into the vision of a community-benefit based business tied to the infrastructure here. It was her and Harvey's dream to have an organic farmer settle into the space, find success and carry on that torch when his role as caregiver was done. But we never formalized the details.
When Eloise passed a trustee was appointed to manage the estate (this farm was one piece) for Harvey’s benefit. We all walked the farm, Harvey and I sharing the story of the work we’ve all put into the trajectory, curious as to when and how that hand-off transition could begin. Harvey was ready to move on, and I was ready to start putting roots down. Its not written in the trust, you have to deal with me now. Wait for probate. Was the trustee’s answer. After that it was to wait until after tax season. Then I heard the farm isn’t for sale. You can get a lease. Don’t make any improvements unless you get written permission. Another year passed with all attempts at transferring the farm, or keeping it in good, repair dismissed.
At one point we three walked the land with an appraiser to confirm the farm's value, the trustee insisting to only sell the farm on the open-market despite our history. Committed to our shared success through a happy transfer, Harvey encouraged me to make an offer first -going so far as to sign a purchase and sales agreement with me so I could pursue FSA financing- We got full funding for the appraised value! Time to celebrate! Wait. The trustee roadblock: I don’t feel good about it. There isn’t a reason, but I’m just not ready and you have to wait. Over the next year I sent many emails, certified letters with the purchase offer and requests for a lease if not a purchase approval. All I got was to wait. We were down to 3-weeks remaining with my funding option on the table when I wrote the Trustee another email requesting a lease or sale. This time a response: Talk to this real estate agent in regards to the future of the farm.
I learned the farm was to be listed, that Friday! Heartbroken, I learned from the real estate agent that as my plants were all in the ground I would not be allowed to dig them up, they were part of the sale. Suddenly I was facing homelessness. For Goodness Tea and my family, and my plants to be orphans. We wouldn’t have a way to process the harvests without the kitchen access. How could I find another kitchen? How much time and expense would it take to outfit a new place? In sharing my sorrow with Harvey, I learned he was outraged. This was not the plan! He leveraged any authority he has over the trust (as its beneficiary) to give Goodness Tea a chance. We built this vision and farm together, and needed some magic to see it through. He convinced the trustee to sign a new agreement at $50k over what our down payment and FSA loan could cover. It requires I move out of my house so they can make repairs and rent it along with Harvey’s house (if the sale falls through). But in return, I get a 2 year lease on the lower farmyard regardless and a chance to buy the farm!
Falling in Love with the Vision Again
This upset made me stop and ask if it’s worth fighting for. Should Goodness Tea pivot to another landscape? Sometimes resistance means its good to walk away. There's other farms in the field for sure. But what about a full commercial kitvhren and barn for shared use? What about the other producers who use the kitchen, and the plants that would suffer if moved or not cared for. What about the people who’re nurtured by the land that would be cut out with a new owner. What about the migratory birds and pollinators that are sustained by the gardens? Sometimes resistance means something is being done right, and that its time to rally.
I walked the farm alone last month, asking myself, asking the land, if I and the tea farm should stay. I realized the biggest challenge all along is to believe in myself and the worthiness to follow these dreams. For the plants, for the pollinators, for the migratory birds, for the people; it is worth it! Goodness Tea is committed to improving habitat and sharing as much as possible. Realizing business stability with this ethos as a foundation is a dream worth fighting for. As the land has held me, I will give it my all to care for it back.
So Close
Goodness Tea has 91.7% of the funding together, we only need $50k (update, we only need $38,500!) to keep this land in agriculture and collective food production for the long haul. In all the causes we can support, I hope this one truly is able to pay it back, and pay it forward through a farm enterprise all about infusing goodness into all we do. This is the world I want to live in, please, help us make it happen! GoodtopiaNow.
- FundRaise for Goodtopia Here -
Fabulous Perks! Build Community! Save the Farm! Official rally from 4/9-4/31 donate today!
You’re invited to our Goodtopia Slack group and be a part. This is a place for feedback and transparency in how the farm and our business is managed. Where the public, cooperative members and our staff have a place to discuss the best ways we can cultivate a healthy environment and help us give back in ways that are of real benefit. https://join.slack.com/t/goodtopia/shared_invite/zt-5pt4i0yp-TTJHE2vUHyJ89u2hVRAkng
