Meet Our Vendors: Rill-Bustamante

Brandon Rill has brassicas in his blood. Well, not literally, but his father was one of the first farmers to successfully grow brassicas like cabbage and cauliflower in Washington back in the 1980s. Brandon uses the knowledge (and some of the tools) that he gained from working on his father’s farm to run his own farm with his wife, Yamel Bustamante, called Rill-Bustamante Farms. 

Brassicas can be finicky, especially cauliflower plants. They’re sensitive to everything, from the climate, to the farming conditions, and it can be difficult to prevent disease and bugs from killing them out. Learning how to grow them in Washington’s temperate conditions can be challenging, so Brandon is grateful that he was able to learn from a brassica master.  

True to his roots, Brandon uses traditional methods and tools, including a 70-year-old transplanter, used to transplant seedlings into the field. Other than the transplanter, they do pretty much everything else by hand. “The simplicity makes it easy,” Brandon says.  

That’s not to say that it’s not hard work. During the summer, they will wake up at 4 am to pick produce for the farmers markets and load up the van before heading out to work a market all day. During the spring, they wake up before the sunrise to do as much as planting as they can before the sun gets too high.  

The Rill-Bustamantes do occasionally get a break from all of their hard work on the farm. Usually from mid-November or early December until March they finish harvesting and have to wait before they can plant for the next season. Yamel is from Mexico, so they usually use their break to head south for the winter and visit her family, but then it’s back to work to get the farm ready for another busy season. 

The work is rewarding though. Brandon loves to see the smiles on customer’s faces when they pick up huge heads of cabbage from their stand. He is proud that everything they grow is beautiful, healthy, and delicious, and he’s happy that other people are starting to share in that joy as well.  

Cauliflower has grown in popularity in the past few years, with people realizing how underutilized the vegetable was. Now that people are using cauliflower to replace everything from rice to buffalo chicken wings, Rill-Bustamante Farms has seen a rise in their success as well. They are doing everything they can to keep up with the demand, but they are still a family-operated farm. “We’re a very small farm, but it’s enough to keep us busy,” Brandon says.  

You can check out their cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and more at the Capitol Hill Farmers Market this Sunday from 11 am to 3 pm.