Greenbank Farm and Flea Market

History:

 - The Green­bank Farm was a spe­cial gath­er­ing place for Native Amer­i­cans from pre­his­toric and his­toric times, probably because of its loca­tion at an unusu­ally nar­row junc­ture of Whid­bey Island and its attrac­tion for hunt­ing, fish­ing and trad­ing.
 - The Calvin Philips fam­ily owned and oper­ated a fam­ily farm at Green­bank in the early 1900's, har­vest­ing trees and main­tain­ing a dairy herd. The main barn at the Farm dates from 1904 and the other build­ings repli­cate farm build­ings of the early 1900's.
 - In the 1940's the prop­erty, which then con­sisted of 522 acres of fields and wood­lands, was sold to John Molz, who intro­duced logan­ber­ries and built the Farm into the largest logan­berry farm in the United States by 1970.
 - Chateau Ste. Michelle acquired the prop­erty in the early 1970s in con­nec­tion with the pur­chase of the wine company.
 - In 1995 the com­pany shocked the local com­mu­nity with plans to sell the prop­erty for res­i­den­tial lot devel­op­ment.
 - In 1995-1997 res­i­dents, islanders and friends ral­lied to save the farm!
 - In 1997, a con­sor­tium con­sist­ing of Island County, the Nature Con­ser­vancy and the Port of Coupeville pur­chased the 522-acre prop­erty, the Port acquir­ing the 151-acre oper­at­ing farm and the other par­ties acquir­ing the adja­cent wood­lands.
 - In 2008, the Green­bank Farm Ag Train­ing Cen­ter was estab­lished to train new farm­ers in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture. Par­tic­i­pants in the seven-month pro­gram study organic crop pro­duc­tion, busi­ness plan­ning, and sus­tain­able land stew­ard­ship as well as grow veg­eta­bles for sale through a local CSA pro­gram which offers com­mu­nity mem­bers a weekly share of fresh organic produce.
 - In 2009, a new Mas­ter Site Plan, devel­oped and writ­ten with com­mu­nity vol­un­teers, was approved by the Port of Coupeville and is now the Farm's "road map to the future."