November 6, 2026 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tess Ellison, Market-Ready Mason Program Manager | 360-426-2276
Market-Ready Mason Food Summit Connects Farmers, Buyers, and Community Partners
Market-Ready Mason convened the inaugural Food Summit on October 29 at the Shelton Timberland Library, bringing together 41 participants, including local farmers, institutional buyers, nonprofit and community organizations, public agencies, and residents, to strengthen connections across the county’s food system. Funding to purchase food from local Mason County farms for the event was made possible by Mason Matters.
Mason Conservation District opened the presentations with an overview of the programs and services it offers to landowners and producers in the county, giving attendees a direct look at the technical assistance and resources available locally.
Hood Canal School District described its work purchasing food from local farms for school meals, offering farmers an inside view of how institutional food purchasing operates at the district level and where opportunities exist to sell into school kitchens.
Land access was the focus of a presentation from South Sound Farmlink, a program of Thurston Conservation District that connects landowners with available ground to farmers seeking land to lease. The program serves Mason County and has already completed its first match between a local landowner and a farm operation.
Mason Public Health introduced the Charlie Cart, a mobile teaching kitchen used for hands-on food and nutrition education, and described the enthusiasm students showed during a pilot program conducted at Southside School last spring.
Food served at the summit was sourced from seven Mason County farms and prepared by Vern’s Foods and Farm, with each contributing farm recognized at the table. Reinforcing the event’s focus on local agriculture, Mason County Climate Justice also provided free fruit trees for attendees to take home and plant.
As part of an effort to measure long-term progress, attendees completed a baseline survey upon arrival, answering three questions about their connections within the local food system:
How many people in the room they had already met
Whether they had bought from, sold to, or worked with a Mason County farm in the past year
How they would describe the local food system at present
While 78% of attendees reported having bought from, sold to, or worked with a Mason County farm in the past year, 81% described the county’s food system as weakly connected or as people working mostly on their own. Strengthening those connections is a central aim of the program through February 2029. The same questions will be asked at the 2027 and 2028 summits to track how relationships and connections across the local food system evolve over time.
“It was incredibly encouraging to see how naturally people connected at the summit. During the open networking times, the room was abuzz with conversation, and I almost hated having to interrupt everyone to move on to the next item in our agenda. Seeing farmers, buyers, and community partners actively engaging with one another was a great reminder of why creating these opportunities to come together matters,” said Tess Ellison, Program Manager for Market-Ready Mason.
Attendees also expressed interest in more community-facing activities, including food tastings and on-farm tours. This feedback will help guide program planning for the coming year.
Market-Ready Mason is a three-year program funded through the USDA Farmers Market Promotion Program. The program helps Mason County farmers and ranchers reach new customers and markets, including direct-to-consumer sales and institutional buyers. It also works to build connections among the people and organizations that make up the county’s food system, and to raise visibility for local producers, farmers markets, and the resources available to them. Over the coming months, Market-Ready Mason will continue outreach to restaurants, care facilities, and other institutional buyers across the county.
