It's summer, but school is in session. Near the old barn, I'm standing with five other students, gingerly gripping our recently killed Cornish Cross chickens by their feet. One by one, we dip our chickens into buckets of scalding water to loosen the feathers. Then we lay them on a long wooden table and begin the arduous task of plucking them. It's messy, it's smelly, and it's exactly what we're here for.
If this sounds more like a typical day on the farm than a day at school, it is. But this is not your typical farm. This is Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts, located on 36 acres in the foothills of the Huckleberry Mountains, near the tiny Eastern Washington town of Rice. Quillisascut is named for the stream that meanders through these hills, and you may already know it for its heavenly goat cheeses, which are served in top restaurants throughout the Northwest.
But for Rick and Lora Lea Misterly, proprietors of Quillisascut Cheese Company since 1987, establishing the farm and cheese company was just the beginning. They had a broader vision that began when they first invited a couple of chefs to come and learn how the cheeses are made.
"We wanted the farm to be a place where people could come and learn together, to understand where their food is coming from," says Lora Lea. The Misterlys' vision for the farm soon encompassed the larger community of farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and others who have a place in the farm-to-table continuum. Lora Lea and Rick want to show us the intricate web that links producers and consumers with the land.
In the four years since chefs first came to visit, dozens of culinary students have driven across Eastern Washington's deserts and farmland, over winding roads along the upper Columbia River to this unassuming hive of activity. Here they spend a week learning how to milk goats, butcher chickens, preserve fruit, and perform the myriad other tasks that make up daily life on a working farm.
Every day starts at 5am in the goat milking shed. Rick leads four gentle Alpine Cross goats with names like Mocha and Pansy into a narrow raised balcony along the walls of the tiny room. Locked into collars, they munch on grain and periodically inspect us with their delicate, inquisitive faces.
The goats know the drill--it goes this way every morning, 365 days a year. They stand still while we brush their udders clean and position our buckets. We watch as Rick firmly but gently rolls his fingers into a fist around a goat's teat. A stream of warm milk tings into the bucket. It looks easy and I tug at another goat's teat, trying not to let the milk creep back up into the goat's bag. But after a while, my hands are cramped and tired and Lora Lea cheerfully takes over. Her small hands work quickly and the warm milk streams out into a stainless steel bucket. Eventually all 37 goats have been milked, and the buckets are full of foamy milk to be strained and sent to the cheese room for processing.
Hot French-press coffee is waiting as we join the other students for a quick breakfast of leftover coffee cake from yesterday's pastry class. Thirteen of us sit around a long wooden table in the sunny kitchen of the energy-efficient straw-bale house that the Misterlys are building with the help of neighbors and friends. Even some of the students at this table have worked on the house.
Most of this week's group is from Seattle, where they attend the culinary programs at Seattle Central Community College. Word is getting around that this is the place to come, and not just for young, up-and-coming culinary students. Top chefs such as Thierry Rautureau of Rover's in Seattle have come, too. Groups such as Chefs Collaborative, Slow Food, the Kellogg Foundation, and others have lent financial and physical support to this project. This is how the Misterlys envisioned it, a kitchen full of food lovers sharing their experiences and learning what happens on the farm.
This morning's discussion revolves around "community." We talk about the various communities we belong to--classrooms, kitchens, neighborhoods, households--and how our actions affect others in the community. Lora Lea describes the farm as a community within a community. The livestock, the bees, the vegetables and fruits, the insects and predators all have their part in this ecosystem. Humans are at the top of the food chain here, which makes them responsible for keeping the system in balance.
"When we first started the school," she says, "I wasn't very aware of water usage. So a farm that had consisted of two people taking two showers and washing dishes for two each day suddenly went to a population of 10-15 taking showers and doing dishes, drinking, and washing." It was a few days before she realized that her well was being depleted.
That summer, at the beginning of the next session, Lora Lea walked all 15 students out to the well to show them where the water came from and how low the level was. From that day on, there were new efforts in the kitchen to reuse as much water as possible. Biodegradable dish soap makes it possible for dirty dishwater to be poured on thirsty fruit trees; toilets are flushed only when necessary. Water conservation has become a part of the farm routine and makes a huge impact on the way students think about their natural resources.
"A lot of people believe in the idea of sustainability," says Lora Lea, "but when they come out here, they can live it. They begin to think about how to treat different kinds of plants--which parts to harvest, which parts to let regenerate--and look at the farm as a whole."
Most of the farm school day is spent at work, where the real learning is done. Everyone gets to milk the goats, and one day is spent learning to make cheese in the Misterlys' cheese room, a government-inspected facility where the cheese magic happens. Students make several kinds of cheese during the first part of the week--fresh chèvre, mozzarella, ricotta, and hard-aged styles. All week, the students cook with the cheeses they've made, along with other cheeses from Lora Lea's stash.
I soon realize that many activities on the farm derive from everyone's favorite phrase: "What's for lunch?" Today's lunch starts with lamb sausage and ripe vegetables from the garden. We've also got the five chickens plucked, gutted, and hanging outside the kitchen, waiting for dinner. Inside, chef Kären Jurgensen and several students busy themselves chopping vegetables and inventing sauces.
For some, this is their first time on a farm and the first time they've seen an animal butchered. Many decide it will be their last. But everyone is game on some level to experience the realities of life and death on the farm. So far this week, the students have butchered chickens and a lamb and made several different types of sausage. The work is overseen by Jurgensen, who shares the Misterlys' commitment to educating chefs about sustainability and traditional foods. Jurgensen grew up in Republic, WA, and her grandmother taught her to cook, bake, and preserve food. Jurgensen eventually settled in Seattle, where she is executive chef for Baci Catering and president of the local chapter of Chefs Collaborative.
In the farm school kitchen, Jurgensen encourages students to find a use for every part of a butchered animal. Bones are boiled for stock, organ meats are used for pâté. Even the caul fat--the thin, fatty membrane that lines the abdominal cavity--is used to wrap a terrine of organ meats. Jurgensen says the school gives her the chance to truly practice what she preaches, such as finding season-extending solutions for the tomato crop, and using parts of animals "that aren't readily available through commercial routes."
Whatever the job--from collecting eggs to slogging through the local stream to gather mint, watercress, and rose hips --the students are quick studies. The students on lunch duty don't need much encouragement to get out into the garden. The Misterlys' sprawling kitchen garden overflows with everything from cipolline bulbs and Swiss chard to anise hyssop and salad burnet. Beyond the barn are rows of apple, pear, and hazelnut trees. There are even merlot and cabernet franc grapevines that need tending. The symbiosis is simple: the Misterlys get help managing their overflowing bounty; the students consume and learn.
And what delicious lessons! Everything for today's lunch came from the farm: Quillisascut goat milk feta with honey and rosemary, lamb sausage with cumin and coriander, sautéed kale with garlic, caramelized onion, and apple relish, and grilled Italian prunes. Chef Jurgensen orchestrates the big picture but lets students work out the creative details. Sometimes they dip into one of the many cookbooks on the kitchen shelves, but more often than not, they just go to the garden for inspiration.
"Sometimes I feel shackled to recipes," says Ashlyn Forshner, a South Seattle Community College student. "Out here, we just pick what's available and go with it." It's a chef's heaven, working with such fresh ingredients.
Part of learning about the farm is placing it in the larger context of the area's economy. After lunch, we pile into cars for a visit to Riverview Orchard, a family operation owned by John and Janet Crandall. John leads us through the orchard, answering questions about climate, pruning, insects, and his organic practices, all the while encouraging us to taste the merchandise. We end at Crandall's store, which brims with the last of the Elberta peaches, Red Delicious apples like I've never tasted before, Red Bartlett and d'Anjou pears, petite Seckel pears, and crimson-fleshed Satsuma plums.
The store is just yards from the raspberry patch, so several of us stock up on berries straight from the cane, along with cherry almond jam, apricot jam, and freshly roasted coffee beans. The Crandalls have just started roasting and selling coffee to supplement their farm income in the winter. The neighborhood approves--the local school bus driver told them he kept thinking he'd spilled his coffee when he drove by their farm, until he figured out he was smelling the Crandalls' roasting coffee. Now he can get his fresh beans right on his route.
When we return, everyone enjoys a bit of sunshine before beekeeper Steve Schott arrives to show us the bee boxes he manages for the Misterlys. I sit in the sun next to the capacious wood-burning oven. (This oven is famous at the farm for baking 120 loaves in one day, when visiting instructor Don Reed of Seattle Central Community College taught a baking lesson that tested the limits of the oven. It gave a stellar performance.)
I'm jotting down a few notes and listening to the wind in the ponderosas and the chattering of robins, flickers, red tail hawks, crows, and pine siskins. From here, I can see across the farm's golden fields and over the pine-covered hills that stretch to the next farm and the next. It's easy to feel like a part of the cycle, as the flies buzz about in the sun and the kitchen starts to hum with everyone's favorite activity, making dinner.
As usual, the students have eased into their creative mode, quietly focused on their culinary creations. Tonight's dinner will start with a creamy garlic flan infused with fresh sage, rosemary, and thyme. We're also having a salad of roasted corn, watercress, and arugula with huckleberry vinaigrette, plus Swiss chard, roasted beets, and squash with brown butter. The pièce de resistance is Jurgensen's amazing cassoulet of duck, lamb, and rosemary sausage, flageolet beans, carrots, duck confit, and breadcrumbs.
We sit down to dinner just as the sun's heat begins to fade. Many of us are speechless as we taste. 
Even though the sky is still light at 10pm, every day has flown by. This meal, so simple and so delicious, brings the work full circle, and we feel the weight of the lessons taught here--the importance of simple nourishment from pure food, the support of an intertwined community--and a deep sense of responsibility to pass these lessons on.
The Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts offers two professional retreats and five student retreats this summer, starting in late July. Fee is $600 per session. Scholarships are available; the farm also seeks scholarship support. For registration details, email rmisterly@ultraplix.com or call 509-738-2011. For details, visit www.quillisascutcheese.com.
Writer Shannon Borg grew up in Spokane, WA, and now lives in Seattle.
First published in Northwest Palate, May 2004 Reprinted with permission.
