Whidbey Island Bike Tour and Organic Farmstay
- Whidbey Island offers abundant scenic bike routes, bountiful community farms, and a growing bike advocacy movement.
- We spent a weekend on Whidbey biking its rural roads and lodging at the Organic Farm School, which is reviving the art of sustainable community farming.
- Book a farmstay, support BikeWhidbey’s advocacy, and learn about the effort to create a 50-mile bike trail.
Paul Tolmé
The proposed Bridge to Boat non-motorized bike trail would stretch roughly 50 miles from the Deception Pass Bridge on Whidbey Island’s north coast to the ferry terminal in Clinton in South Whidbey.
Completing this trail is among the objectives of BikeWhidbey, a new nonprofit that is building support for an island-wide bike network that would attract bike tourists and give locals more safe routes to ride.
“There aren’t a lot of jobs on the island, and bike tourism can play a big role in making the island more economically sustainable,” says Cascade Board Member Michael Payne, who co-founded BikeWhidbey in early 2024.
My wife, Katie, and I recently spent a long weekend on Whidbey exploring the island by bike and learning about efforts to boost rural economic development through bicycling and community farming.
Our home base for the weekend was the Organic Farm School, a nonprofit that teaches community scale food production to individuals who want to take up farming as a career. We stayed in the farm school’s luxurious guesthouse, harvested and cooked produce from the farm, fed the chickens, and pedaled the rural roads of South Whidbey.
Growing Bicycling
Located in Puget Sound and reached via the Mukilteo Ferry in the south or the Deception Pass Bridge to the north, Whidbey is Washington state’s largest island at 37 miles long. Whidbey is a great bicycling destination thanks to its scenic rural roads, but there is little bike infrastructure.
Now, BikeWhidbey is pushing to make the island more bike-friendly. “We have a goal of uniting 1,000 people who want better biking,” Payne says.
BikeWhidbey wants Island County leaders to adopt a bicycle master plan, with the goal of helping Whidbey Island achieve a Bicycle Friendly Community rating. Bicycle master plans such as those in Seattle, Spokane, and other municipalities are a first step toward getting public officials to recognize bicycling as a form of transportation.
“Whatever we can do to make bicycling more attractive will benefit tourism and the island’s economy,” Payne says.
BikeWhidbey is gathering feedback from people who bike to guide future planning. In addition, the group encourages people who bike to fill out the Island County traffic safety survey. The survey page includes an interactive map where people can mark the locations of crashes, dangerous intersections, or spots where crosswalks or signage are needed.
Bicycling South Whidbey
Over the course of three days, Katie and I pedaled much of scenic South Whidbey, from Maxwelton Road and Swede Hill on the island’s southern tip, to the charming tourist town of Langley on the eastern shore, to the farms and conservation lands near Keystone and Greenbank in the island’s narrow midsection.
With the exception of State Route 525, the island’s main traffic artery, the riding was low-stress and absolutely beautiful: lush farmlands, pine and deciduous forests, driftwood-strewn beaches, scenic bluffs overlooking Puget Sound.
As with road riding in many destinations, traffic worsened on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, while we often had roads all to ourselves in the mornings. It’s hard to avoid SR 525 when bicycling long distances on Whidbey, which is why completing the Bridge to Boat trail would be transformative.
Kurt Johnson, who organizes weekend group rides on South Whidbey, describes bicycling here as “lots of steep short hills, pretty good pavement, and not much traffic if you stay off the highway.”
A Hilly Sunday Ride
I met up with a group of about a dozen locals including Johnson, BikeWhidbey co-founder Nancy Ritzenthaler, and Cascade supporter Ron Sher for their regularly scheduled weekend ride, which starts in front of the Taproom@Bayview Corner, located near Bayview Bicycles.
After a safety chat, Johnson led the group on a 36-mile loop with 2,300 feet of climbing. See the 36-mile Ride with GPS route here.
“The riding here is challenging because it’s hilly,” says Johnson, who has a large catalog of Ride with GPS routes that BikeWhidbey plans to upload to its site as a resource for visitors. Meantime, you can download the Island County Bike Map, which offers recommended routes.
Bike Champion Ron Sher
The Organic Farm School operates on about 10 acres of property owned by Sher, a former Cascade Board member, Champion donor, and bike advocate.
Now retired, Sher lives in a home surrounded by fruit trees and meadows. He and his wife support the Organic Farm School for the same reasons they support better bicycling conditions. Both feed the community’s health and build the island's prosperity.
“We love the idea of a community of small farmers,” Sher says. “There are so many graduates of the farm school who are staying on Whidbey and creating a larger community of local farmers.”
Growing Farming
“Our primary crop is farmers,” says Judy Feldman, executive director of the farm school.
At a time when family farms are disappearing the Organic Farm School seeks to revive the lost arts of local, sustainable agriculture while creating opportunities for young people to enter farming as a career.
The farm school offers a seven-month intensive course where adult students from around the region, nation, and world can learn how to grow vegetable crops and stay on-site in the farm’s housing. In addition, the farm school partners with the local school district, which sends elementary students to the farm to learn about the soil, pollinators, and where food comes from.
“Carrots, chard, summer squash, winter squash, pumpkins, onions, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, sprouting broccoli, you name it we grow it,” Feldman says.
For 2025, the farm school will offer one-week programs to attract more families and working people. Or, like we did, you can sign up for a weekend farmstay and explore the island by bike.
“Stay in the guesthouse, ride your bikes, harvest food with us and then spend your weekend cooking and eating what you harvested,” Feldman says.
Book a Farmstay, Support Bike Whidbey
The farm school rents the four-bedroom, four-bathroom Feed and Seed guesthouse, which has a big and well-stocked kitchen, plus a fireplace and library, for Friday through Sunday stays. Katie and I roasted beets and squash one night, made an omelet with eggs, onions, chard, and garlic another night. We will surely return. organicfarmschool.org
Support the effort to grow bicycling on Whidbey at bikewhidbey.org
Share this post
