Local farmer Nathalie Chambers is celebrating the one-year anniversary of saving Madrona Farm by organizing the fourth annual Chef Survival fundraiser.
The challenge pits local chefs against several obstacle courses and a boat race to gather ingredients for their culinary creations. After gathering their vegetables, chefs are then forced to use what they call “survival cookware”: a cutting board, a knife, and a frying pan. Completed meals are then auctioned off while the event catering begins. All proceeds go to The Land Conservancy (TLC).
“I love TLC,” says Chambers. “This fundraiser has always gone to TLC.”
Chambers joined The Land Conservancy after Madrona Farm was saved last year. Saving the farm required raising $2.7 million, which at times was a daunting task for Chambers and her husband.
During the campaign Chambers kept a poster of US President Barack Obama prominently placed in her home. She was inspired by the phrase “Yes we can.”
“When you do something like this that feels impossible,” she says, “you just have to get out there and believe you can do it.”
Chambers, who used to be what she describes as a “bleeding-heart environmentalist,” has shifted from feeling a sense of doom to feeling that everyone can change the world.
“Action dispels despair,” says Chambers. “When I was working on this project, I had a total reprieve from what I call my ‘global environmental grief.’ When I got into the campaign and started working on it, it was gone, I was action, I was living in the solution. And that’s the thing, if we all lived in the solution, there wouldn’t be the problem.”
Once the farm was protected, Chambers began to believe that people can, in fact, change the world.
“Basically it restored my faith in humans,” she says, “because even though we all suck, and collectively we do crappy things, we have this ability to do beautiful things, and that is what we did. Conservation is a beautiful thing that we can do for the common good and the health of the planet.”
Chef Survival Challenge IV
Madrona Farm (4317 Blenkinsop)
Sunday, October 2, $50/ticket, $100 for a family of four.