Welcome to Farm Kitchen

Hi everyone, Jenny here.  I thought I’d share what I know of Farm Kitchen’s history.  I only have information on the past 50 years but I’m hopeful I can find out more from the county or from the various local historical societies and tribes. 

The Lazy O Ranch

The Farm Kitchen property was originally cleared by Al and Margaret Opsata in the mid-1970s.  Retired from the Bremerton grocery business they owned, they built the original house and barn and named the property the “Lazy O Ranch,” which you can still somewhat see on the entrance timbers.  They raised cattle and had a butcher shop here until Al died in 1993.

Farm Kitchen is Founded

Hollis Fay bought the property in 1995 near the time she sold Bainbridge Bakers which she’d created in Winslow in 1986.  She farmed the property for four years, selling produce through a CSA and at the Bainbridge Island Farmers Market.  During this period, Hollis began to remodel the barn and create its commercial kitchen. Hollis and Anne Thatcher officially opened Farm Kitchen for business in 2000.  They offered a “First Saturday Breakfast” which became a much-beloved local tradition.  I’m planning to revive the tradition in the coming years with a slight twist—since we’ll be hosting many weddings on Saturdays, we plan to start up “Farm Brunch Sundays.”  Stay tuned for more info!  

What Farm Kitchen Stands For

Since 2004, Farm Kitchen has hosted hundreds of weddings, parties, business meetings and other events.  Additional gardens and indoor spaces were developed.  Today we have a healthy roster of food producers utilizing our highly regarded commissary kitchen.  When my husband Jeff and I bought the property in August 2021 we decided that continuing to provide this community-oriented service at affordable rates was a high priority.  Farm Kitchen is proud to have helped dozens of local food businesses get started.  We enjoy dining locally so we have a vested interest! 

We’re also committed to providing access to farmland to local farmers.  While we’re not certified organic, for the past twenty years all of our land has been farmed organically.  We are learning about and implementing more ways to be as sustainable as possible.  In the coming years, we hope to have more acreage available for lease.   If this is of interest to you, please sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date.  

I hope to use this space to share my thoughts, information, and more history in the coming days.  My family was part of an Italian farming cooperative for many decades in the Puyallup River valley.  I’ll share a bit about that and how it’s shaped my agricultural awareness, as well as some of my hopes and dreams for Farm Kitchen and the community we love so much.