The Autumn equinox was brought in with a weekend of farm touring in Jefferson County, as 19 farms in the eastern part of the county showed off their harvests. The weekend started off with a bright, sunny Saturday, and crowds drove from farm to farm to pet livestock, choose hand-spun yarns and pick up vegetables for dinner. “We had nearly 600 people come through the farm yesterday,” said Patricia Young, owner of Yaks in the Cradle Farm in Quilcene. On the first sunny day of Farm Tour, she sold out of nearly all her yak meat. Matt Montaya, one of the farmers at Kodama Farm and Food Forest, said they had to wake up and harvest more veggies on Sunday morning, after selling out on Saturday. On Sunday, the clouds came in, but Farm Tourers just put their boots on and prepared to get a little muddy. “I was really encouraged on Sunday morning when I still saw so many people coming out in spite of the drizzle,” said Justine Gonzalez-Berg, an organizer for Farm Tour. “It’s awesome to see people embracing the Pacific Northwest lifestyle like that.” According to Gonzalez-Berg, total participation in Farm Tour was at least 1,400 people, which is about 100 more than last year. The total number of farm visits was at least 5,100, meaning people visited an average of three farms or more, she said. The most-visited farms were Yaks in the Cradle and Arabians at Egg & I, each with at least 600 visitors, and Kodama Farm & Food Forest with over 560 visitors. At Compass Rose Farm, where owner Kateen Fitzgerald showed off the Dirt Rich School’s many farm internship programs and teachings, local artists and former interns created an art gallery in the woods, where poems and nature-inspired pieces gave people the opportunity to feel the true nature of farming on the Olympic Peninsula. Visitors to farms across Jefferson County were also invited to write their own works of poetry. Finnriver Farm and the Farm Tour organizers teamed up for the “Wording the Land” project, asking visitors to express through poetry what they saw at the farms they visited. “It’s not too late to submit a poem inspired by Farm Tour and being on the land,” said Gonzalez-Berg. Those poems can be submitted to wordingtheland@gmail.com. They will be collected and selectively chosen for a chap book, a short book of poetry, that will be sold over the next winter and spring to raise money for the Farmers Market Food Access program in Jefferson County.