Fenton Wilkinson has a plan for Whatcom County. It’s ambitious, yet simple. He’s not a bureaucrat or regulator for any government agency. Nevertheless, he has a vision for how to steer the county’s economy away from destructive overgrowth and export-dependent policies, toward something more self-sufficient, sustainable and local.

It all starts with a $25-box of groceries.

“If I could deliver you a box of organically grown local fruits and vegetables for the same price it would cost you to go and buy conventionally grown food yourself at the grocery store,” Wilkinson asks. “Wouldn’t you do that?”

Through his business, Full Circle Foods, Wilkinson is offering a box of organic produce that includes: four Gala apples, two grapefruits, four naval oranges, six bananas, four bartlett pears, one lemon, one pound of tomatoes, a half-pound of onions, one and a half pounds of broccoli, spinach and one acorn squash.

All of this costs $25, the same as the cost of conventional produce at a grocery store. Yet Full Circle customers need only pick up their weekly box at a pre-arranged delivery site.

So, how is this going to transform Whatcom County?

“The only way you can preserve farmland,” Wilkinson says, “is to make it valuable as farmland, which then combats development, which in turn, enables people to spend local.”

Walking up to his converted hayloft office in the barn behind his home near Everson, it would be easy to mistake Wilkinson for a farmer. The air smells of horses, mud and hay. The heavily rutted tracks leading from his yard into the back pasture show that the tractor doesn’t just stay in the barn.

Certain visual clues give him away, however. A picture shows Fenton in full English regalia riding his horse in competition. The computer, fax machine and modem all hint at an urban past. But the true gumshoe would fixate on the throne-sized leather chair that dwarfs Wilkinson’s compact frame.

The chair is a memento from his years as a lawyer, first in Richmond, Va., then in Greenville, N.C. and then in Seattle. It is the only noticeable pretention for a man who was first in his law class.

During his years battling legal cases, Wilkinson brushed elbows with policymakers in many levels of government. As he learned how society makes its decisions, he started to think about how to improve the process.

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