Cat Sieh can’t forget the elderly man who approached Twin Sisters’ Deming location in disheveled clothes last August.
Clearly in need of groceries, the man had a senior farmers market benefits card with him to pay.
The market could not accept the card. As Sieh tried to explain, he seemed confused.
“But you’re a farmers market,” she remembers him saying. “This says it’s for farmers markets.”
In the end, he purchased “a single, beautiful heirloom tomato” with the few dollars he had in his pocket, she recalls. Sieh never saw him again.
Sieh, a self-taught Bellingham farmer and food advocate, is leading a push to overcome a legal technicality that keeps people from being able to use certain food benefits at mobile markets, such as Twin Sisters. Her advocacy has spawned a state bill now making its way through the Legislature.
Since 2021, she’s worked in various roles at Twin Sisters Mobile Market. Now, she’s the director of special projects.
Noelle Beecroft, coordinator of the county SNAP-Ed program, described Sieh as an outspoken voice in the food access world willing to say “the hard thing.” Beecroft recalled a time when Sieh said she always felt like the bad guy.
Even if that’s true, Beecroft said, “she gets stuff done. And I just admire her so much for that.”
The push for change
By the time Sieh joined in 2021 as the first paid employee, Twin Sisters was already participating in the state SNAP Market Match program, which effectively cuts the cost of farmers market produce in half for Basic Food benefit holders.
Qualifying for two other federal programs — one aimed at mothers and children, the other at seniors — has proved much more difficult.
It seems counterintuitive, as the state administers federal programs designed to give those same clients access to the fresh, locally grown produce sold at farmers markets.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) allots $30 per participant, up to $90 per family, to spend at farmers markets each year between June and October. The Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) gives each client $80 for the same time frame.
But there’s a wrinkle: For these programs, state code defines a farmers market as “a minimum of five or more authorized growers” who sell their produce to customers directly.
That’s a problem for Twin Sisters. Because the farmers are not physically present, Twin Sisters does not technically qualify as a farmers market.
East Whatcom residents receiving these benefits have few options close to home. Twin Sisters has partnered with other groups to offer a $40 senior voucher, but the gift card only covers about one shopping trip. And just one store in the Foothills region accepts WIC cards, said Beecroft, the SNAP-Ed coordinator.
Mobile markets are a growing trend in the last 10–15 years, said Sam Lev, a program coordinator at the national Mobile Market Coalition. He loosely defines them as farmers markets on wheels that serve areas with low access to food — but given how new the concept is, even coming up with a definition is tricky.
“They don’t really cleanly fit into any of the typical farmers market or food bank/food pantry language when it comes to policy and regulation,” he said. Groups in other states have already successfully undertaken efforts to allow people to use WIC and SFMNP benefits at mobile markets.
Twin Sisters is one of four mobile markets in Washington and the only one in Whatcom County, according to the coalition’s data.
Sieh’s effort to find a solution to the food benefit problem eventually led her to appeal to state Sen. Sharon Shewmake, who went on to sponsor a bill to create a mobile market program for WIC and SFMNP recipients.
“It was 100 percent Cat,” said Shewmake, whose district spans most of Whatcom County. “She was the one that brought the problem to me.”
The proposed law passed the state Senate last month and is now in the House.
Navigating confusing rules, funding challenges
Back in 2015, Twin Sisters started up as one effort to address the food access issues that have long plagued East Whatcom County.
Rather than ask rural county residents to travel long distances for healthy food, the market takes fresh produce to them in its eye-catching truck decked out in black-and-white woodcut style art depicting farmers at work. Twin Sisters collects food from about 18 local farms to sell at its Deming, Kendall and Birchwood locations.
“One of the things that I like about their program is that it was started by local farmers,” county council member Jon Scanlon said, “and it provides a steady market for them.”
Sieh stressed Twin Sisters is one of many organizations working to address food access. Others include the Foothills Food Bank, Meals on Wheels and Common Threads, a nonprofit that teaches kids about cooking and gardening.
“All of us are attacking this problem from the angles that we can,” she said. “And I would go as far as to say most of these organizations are understaffed, underfunded and really in need of support.”
Last year, the Whatcom County Food Bank Network asked the county for $2 million in annual funding, citing a 127% increase in food bank visits in the county between 2021 and 2023. Twin Sisters requested $200,000 more.
In the end, the county council, which faces severe budget challenges, increased its annual food bank funding from $138,000 to $750,000. It did not fulfill Twin Sisters’ request.
“We know that the need is there and we know that it’s been really persistent,” Sieh said. “It’s just a question of finding the funding to continue to address it.”
Sieh, 41, is originally from California. After studying journalism and art in college, she moved to Whatcom for a job at the Bellingham Herald. She helped found Make.Shift Art Space in downtown Bellingham and spent years doing industrial sewing at marine fabric shop Oyster Creek Canvas Company.
She bought the land that now houses her sheep farm, Legacy Lamb, in 2013, harboring “delusional agrarian dreams, just like half of the young people in this town.” Years later, the job at Twin Sisters got her involved in the food access world.
Though Sieh’s career path might be unconventional, she sees some common threads. Her years at a marine canvas shop taught her about small business management, and the sewing she did there was a form of art. Reporting skills still come in handy, helping Sieh relate to people from all walks of life and navigate bureaucracy.
She pushed for the Senate bill “in my quote-unquote spare time,” she said, because it was so upsetting to meet people in need who couldn’t use their benefits at the market.
“When you have to decline a nursing mother a benefit that she’s going to have to drive up to an hour to use,” she said, “it’s heartbreaking.”
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
