FROM BOTSWANA TO WHIDBEY ISLAND TO YOUR TABLE
Lesedi (Sunlight in Tswana) Farm is a family-owned micro-farm on Whidbey Island in Washington State's Puget Sound. Our mission to bring fresh organic produce and prepared and packaged foods straight from the farm to local farmers markets and your home.
Dorcas Young is the owner and founder of Lesedi Farm. Born and raised in central Botswana, Dorcas grew up on her parents' 500-acre farm where they raised cows, chickens, sheep, goats, and donkeys, and grew millet, sorghum, sweet potatoes, and cassava. The farm produced everything the family needed.
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As a young adult in Botswana, Dorcus left the farm and pursued a career as a bookkeeper and accountant in the retail sector. She met and married her husband, Matt, a Washington State native who was in Botswana teaching with the Peace Corps. In 1996, Dorcas and Matt moved to the U.S. with four children to settle on Whidbey Island.
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Although Dorcus had long left the family farm, she brought seeds from Botswana with her and soon planted them in her garden on Whidbey Island. As those first tender plants took root in Washington soil, so did the idea for Lesedi Farm. Dorcas began to sell produce from her garden at local Farmers Markets. She also put her culinary skills from Botswana to work and started selling meals and food products to local stores.
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Today, Lesedi Farm continues to offer our unique African cuisine, vegetables, and shelf products. In addition to a range of delicious bottled sauces, we also sell packaged raw kate chips. This year, Dorcas has opened a Lesedi Farm Take-out Restaurant at Whidbey Island's historic Greenbank Farm.
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Recently Lesedi Farm has been featured in the Amazon bestseller “The Ten Mile Diet”. Lesedi farm can be found weekly at the Pikes Place Market, West Seattle Farmers Market and Bayview Farmers Market.
Back to That Dirt
Lesedi Farm germinated in the dirt of central Botswana and now bears fruit in the soil of Whidbey Island.
A Taste of Botswana Made on Whidbey Island
These traditional African sauces are perfect for salads,wraps and meats.
Whidbey Island
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Although Whidbey Island is only about 30 miles from Seattle, it feels much farther away. It is home to some of the Pacific Northwest's most beautiful scenery.
Surrounded by the protective waters of Washington State’s Puget Sound, and lying in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, Whidbey has natural prairies, rich black loam, marine air and a temperate climate. It is a place the first permanent settler, Colonel Isaac Neff Ebey, called “a paradise of nature.” The island nearly begs to be farmed.
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The Island was once inhabited by many Native American tribes, including members of the Lower Skagit, Swinomish, Suquamish, Snohomish tribes. Whidbey Island was fully explored in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver. In May of that year, Royal Navy officers and members of Joseph Whidbey and Peter Puget, began to map and explore the areas of what would later be named Puget Sound. After Joseph Whidbey circumnavigated the island in June 1792, Vancouver named the island in his honor.
