Charles Wainger

I wasn’t always on the path to become a farmer, in fact it was the furtherest thing from my mind. I was once focused on receiving a degree in print Journalism to perhaps become a watered down version of Hunter S. Thompson or a poor mans version of Hemingway. I finished my degree in 2009 and promptly spent a summer in Spain before moving to Seattle. I wasn’t having luck landing the writing gig I wanted, so I took a job at a co-op selling produce to pay the bills; Unbeknownst to me, this was the farming catalyst.

The produce had a snap to it I hadn’t seen at other grocery chains. Sometimes the farmers themselves would make deliveries . I especially enjoyed an older Stanwood farmer whom would arrive, with a cigarette stained mustache, speaking with an almost fluid language of the land. So I started gardening in the city and raising chickens.

Five years passed and I had the opportunity to manage an urban farming company while simultaneously creating and managing a farm program at my childhood summer camp in Granite Falls. Any free time I had I spent completing odd jobs for small farms to learn what I could quickly. I did all sorts of tasks; cleaning, weeding, once planting hundreds of tomatoes until my fingers were caked in a green resin. One farm specifically, I worked in a greenhouse on all fours planting and sweating into the soil, and every hour the owner would come by and tell me to work faster. I would laugh and do so; I thank her for that.

2018 rolls around like an unsettled dog and I’m broke. I had left the farming company in Seattle and was living all over and working farm jobs I’d find on craigslist. I decided to take the leap and move home to Redmond where my parents owned two acres and transform it into a farm, Rain Dog Farm. That May I had my first sale and I haven’t stopped working on growing the best salad greens, microgreens, microherbs, and edible flowers I can; and I’m not stopping there.

So here’s to seven years of Rain Dog Farm and many more. Here’s to more crops, more campfires, friends and family. Rain Dog Farm, here for the long haul. Here for you.