Meet Louisa Brown, Farmer at Pumphouse Farm

I started as an extremely avid gardener. From here, I began to organize and run my community garden at Wise Acres Cooperative Association, the intentional community that I helped found. I kept growing way too much food for my immediate neighbors and expanded to being a partner in Persephone Farm for many years, and eventually broke out to form my own business, Pumphouse Farm. My focus has been on my connection with the community around me, person to person. 

My farm’s personality is happy, calm, beautiful, loving, low-stress farm. I choose this life and it’s important to me that the experience that I have each day is the life I would like to lead. I try to carry this out to each person that I interact with: helpers, customers, neighbors. I try to empower those around me and foster connection.

Flowers have special personal significance for me, as they are something that I learned from my mother, and have shared with my daughters. They are both excellent at arranging flowers. 

Most people never see any of the work I do besides marketing! Everyone knows it’s a lot of work, but they don’t understand things like I can’t take Thanksgiving off and still have food on the weekend. The part people don’t see is the consistency. When you’re working with living beings, you have to try to meet their needs all of the time. You have to check your chicks and your greenhouse seedlings three times a day without fail. If the weather turns foul, freezing, windy, heat dome...you must take action. 

My farm is hyper local, and people really rely on us. Many people have told me that they don’t know what they would do if I retired and that they hope I keep going forever. Indianola is a bit isolated and having food available right here, all the time, means far fewer trips in carbon-belching vehicles to the grocery store. Our markets provide an opportunity for folks to bump into each other, creating social capital and decreasing loneliness. Folks are comforted by the idea of having food right here in case of emergency.

I have tried to put a focus on making profitable decisions in recent years, though honestly, I have to fight for this all the time. I love experimenting and trying new things, I love the science of doing trials. I abhor waste and try to minimize this. I want my food, which is seasonally over-abundant, to find hungry mouths. The food bank is great for this and is the place where I would like to focus my less-profitable impulses. I strongly believe that good nutrition should be available to everyone.

My space is special, because I have a very unusual property for my town. I have a larger lot size, I’m up on a hill, southward facing slope, a sunny opening in our very wooded town. I have a microclimate that is about five degrees warmer than surrounding properties. My sandy soil warms up quickly, never floods, and is always workable.  We are six miles to the nearest grocery store, so people have motivation to get food closer to home. Village life, I love it! The neighbors know each other and feel connection and responsibility towards each other. They’ve been incredibly supportive of me. 

I think I keep going on hard days because I’m a bit compulsive. I also feel a responsibility to all of the people counting on me; the customers, the marketing organizations, the workers. I want to keep all of the helpful organizations going: the Farm to Food Pantry, Kitsap Fresh, the Poulsbo Farmers Market, the Indianola Market, and my stand. I don’t like to disappoint my community.