For an in-depth farm experience, join one of our small, weekend workshops that feature hands-on learning about such practical farming skills as turning your backyard chicken into a stewing hen, how to fillet a whole salmon, and other farming craft. Owner/Farmer Riley Starks will be teaching these workshops. If these are skills that you would be interested in learning, contact the farm and find out when classes will be held.

Filet a Salmon

Learn how to fillet a whole salmon. Riley, who filletted professionally for two years early in his career, has filletted thousands salmon, and will unveil the mysteries of handling a whole fish. You can save money by buying a whole fish and using all of the fish, carcass, and scraps— no waste! We will each fillet a whole sockeye salmon, and will watch as others perform the same technique. The workshop begins with a lesson on proper knife sharpening, and ends with the cooking of a reefnet sockeye on the Farm Suite's WoodStone oven. You will come home with two sockeye fillets to cook at home, a $40 value.

Cost is $100 per person. Bring your own wine for the Friday "Fruits of Your Labor" party. Take a 15% discount if you are staying overnight at the Farm or the Inn. Call 360-758-7616, or email us to sign up. Workshops are in spring, summer, and fall.

Butcher your own stewing hen

Learn to convert your retired backyard layer to a culinary delight, in the form of a stewing hen! Riley, who in 2000 had perhaps the only on-farm USDA poultry slaughtering facility on the West Coast, has successfully processed and marketed thousands and thousands of wonderful chickens. Allow him to show you how to humanely kill, pluck, gut, and vacuum seal your hens (or roosters!). Stewing hens can be an amazing addition to your cuisine, providing chicken so flavorful and tender you will be in heaven. We will all perform all of the steps on two birds, and watch everyone else do the same, so that at the end of the day you will feel skilled enough to deal with your own layers at home. Each participant will take home two stewing hens, a $30 value (if you could buy such a thing, which you cannot).

Cost is $100 per person. Bring your own wine for the "Fruits of Your Labor" party. Take a 15% discount if you are staying overnight at the Farm or the Inn. Workshops are in spring and fall.