Sunshine Farm Market

Out to Make a Difference

JULY 18^th, 2006

'Broken Limbs' filmmaker out to make a difference: Guy Evans and his family are determined to establish a business model for other orchardists

By Rick Steigmeyer World staff writer

CHELAN -- Guy Evans wanted to walk the talk. He wanted to do more than just make a movie about the loss of the family farm. He wanted to save it.

Which is why -- three years after the initial release of his Emmy-nominated video, "Broken Limbs" -- he is not working on another video project, but instead running the Sunshine Farm Market.

Sunshine Farm is the Evans family farm that Evans and co-producer Jamie Howell documented in their much-lauded 2003 video. The video was aired on national PBS television stations and was nominated for an Emmy award last year.

Plagued by low apple returns and high costs, the farm was failing then, as were many others in the state. The video offered alternatives to commercial farming that could bring long-term success, but only with a dramatic shift in thinking.

A year after its release, Evans and his wife, jewelry artist Juliana Marquis, moved to Chelan to operate Sunshine Farm Market. The fruit stand owned by his father, Denny Evans, is on Highway 97A overlooking Lake Chelan. Guy Evans said he felt compelled to follow the path on which he was led in making his video.

"Living the question. That's what it's all about," said Evans. "How do we sustain the farm? What do we grow? Who grows it? What do we do with it?"

Evans, 35, admittedly has more questions than answers at this point. But he has no shortage of ideas about how to sustain most of his father's remaining 95 acres as productive farmland rather than liquidate it as high-priced real estate. Many of those ideas have already been put into action.

Guy Evans, above, restocks shelves at Sunshine Farm Market on Monday. After producing his Emmy-nominated video “Broken Limbs,” Evans and his wife, Juliana Marquis, returned to Chelan and took over his father’s farm and fruit stand. (World photo/Dianne Bentz)

On a tour of the Sunshine fruit stand last week, he showed off an array of fruits and vegetables, most of them picked earlier that day off the farm's 15 acres of soft fruit orchard and two acres of organic garden. There are whole grain products milled at a farm near Winthrop, jellies and jams produced nearby.

A stage and wine bar is set up for weekly Saturday night music shows. Two baby goats are penned next to the fruit stand to entertain children now, but will be part of a dairy herd in the future. An old barn will become a bakery and cannery to make pies and jams and jellies to extend the season for the fruit stand and its employees. His father's winery and wine-tasting room are also on the property.

The idea, Evans said, is to create many products that are entwined with a sense of people, place and history. "We want authenticity," he said.

Things have changed since the "Broken Limbs" project began, at least in Chelan where land values have skyrocketed. Denny Evans was able to hang on to most of the land he owns on the northwest flanks of Chelan Butte by selling some of it off to repay debt incurred by successive years when apples couldn't pay their growing costs. As orchard land, it was worth about $6,000 a acre at the time, he said. As real estate today, a one-third-acre lot sells in the six-figure range.

"It's crazy. It's scary," Denny Evans said. Asked whether the farm is now sustainable, he answered, "We're still here. Are we making the same kind of living we were before? Not really. Production agriculture is over. But what we're doing now may be a better fit for what's going on in the valley."

Only about 40 acres of apples remains out of more than 100 acres on the ranch a decade ago. Most of that is leased out to another grower. Denny Evans is now more interested in growing grapes and producing wine for his Tunnel Hill Winery. Guy Evans is growing soft fruit, 40 kinds of vegetables and running the Sunshine Farm Market.
Denny Evans

Guy and Juliana are also selling real estate. A plan to keep a portion of the farm in the family and in agricultural production will be supported initially through the sale of about 10 acres of property carved up into half-acre view home sites. The land is zoned rural residential and is not restricted by regulations for land of long-term agricultural significance, Guy Evans said.

Another 3 to 5 acres will be dedicated to a high-density housing community surrounded by orchard, vineyards and pasture. The idea is to create affordable housing for people who want to live on a farm without all the work, Evans said. He said the area may also be developed as a retreat. The land may be put into a land trust as a way of stabilizing its value, he said.

"We're land developers. I never thought I would be doing something like this," he said. Increasing land prices in the Chelan area, however, may help them finance their visions for a future in which local agriculture continues to be a flourishing part of a community, he said.

"Six years ago, Dad was on the ropes. Now things have shifted. This land is worth a lot of money," he said. "But we can do something better than sell it all off. We envision the farm to be a cooperative effort. We want what we're doing with our land to be a model for others."

Jodie Powers, right, and her friend Kathy Seureau, both of Chelan, pick up their weekly vegetables from Rachel Airmet, left. Airmet manages the two acres of Community Supported Agriculture gardens at Sunshine Farm. The gardens provide 30 subscribers with vegetables 22 weeks out of the year and also supply the Sunshine Farm Market. (World photo/Dianne Bentz)