Grow Skagit: Spring 2022

Uncertain future for dairy farms ◗ A unique way of farming ◗ Pandemic pushed state’s food system to brink of collapse

A S U P P L E M E N T T O T H E S K A G I T VA L L E Y H E R A L D A N D A N A C O RT E S A M E R I C A N

2 - Wednesday, March 30, 2022

GrowSkagit

Fall flooding Woman finds success a hardship for with hugelkultur farming many farmers After a year of drought and record-breaking heat, Skagit County farms had to deal last fall with another extreme weather event in the form of flooding.

Low-lying areas suffered the greatest impacts.

“On Allen West Road (in Bow), we lost some Brussels sprouts that are underwater and were flooded out,” Tony Wisdom, CEO of Skagit Valley Farm, said in the days after the most severe flooding.

He said the flooding came on top of an already rainy fall that made it difficult for farmers to harvest potatoes.

“A lot of potatoes are going to be left in the ground,” he said.

Small farms were also impacted. The 7-acre Farias Farm off Lafayette Road east of Burlington flooded with 4 to 5 feet of water, farm owner Francisco Farias said in the week after the flooding..

“This time was really horrible,” he said. “It flooded all the way to the road, and over to Highway 20.”

Farias said he had purchased what he thought were large waterproof containers to store equipment.

“But the water went inside the container and

Stories by Maddie Smith and Jacqueline Allison Photos by Oliver Hamlin and Jacqueline Allison COVER PHOTO Oliver Hamlin

everything flooded,” he said. “The biggest damage is inside the container ...

Planter, mower, farm tools and boxes.”

Some farm animals were also lost to the flood, said Don McMoran, director of the Washington State University Skagit County Extension.

He said many animals were relocated to higher ground, in part thanks to Skagit County’s animal rescue plan.

McMoran said the levee system helped keep the Skagit River mostly within its banks.

“I’m very pleased with our diking (district) commissioners, and pleased with improvements they made to the diking system since 1990 (flooding),” he said.

Many volunteers pitched in to help shore up the county’s levee system ahead of the flood, said Jason Vander Kooy, a dairy farmer and commissioner for Dike District 1, which includes the area west of Mount Vernon.

“We made the call for volunteers and right away we had 30 to 40 people,” he said. “They cranked out 10,000 sandbags just in an afternoon. To me, that’s impressive.”

Sarah Wagstaff is utilizing a centuries-old gardening method that originated in Germany.

Called hugelkultur (pronounced hoo-gull-culture), the method involves building a raised garden bed in the shape of a mound or hill.

The mound is made up of logs and branches, topped with layers of compost, wood chips and soil.

Plants are grown on top.

Wagstaff said the method mimics a forest floor, where fallen logs decay and supply nutrients to seedlings.

“As the wood decays, it provides the nutrients and is its own fertilizer cycle,” she said in October.

She is applying those principles to agriculture.

While hugelkultur started as a hobby for Wagstaff, it is now an integral part of her flower farming business, SUOT Farm, which she started in 2016. She also teaches workshops on hugelkultur.

Wagstaff said while many gardeners practice hugelkultur, she isn’t aware of other farms using the method commercially.

At her home and farm in Burlington, Wagstaff has built five hugelkultur mounds. Because she lives in a wooded area, she had no problem finding materials for the base of the mounds.

She prefers to use the materials on her property for her hugelkultur mounds rather than sending them to a landfill or burning them.

“It took a ton of years, resources and nutrients to grow that tree, and so that can be used again for the next generation,” Wagstaff said.

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Sarah Wagstaff poses atop her newest hugelkultur mound. Wagstaff has been building such raised garden beds for 17 years and uses them for her flower farming business, SUOT Farms.

She said hugelkultur also helps store carbon in the soil. If the wood she uses is instead burned, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Wagstaff’s first hugelkultur mound, built in 2013, is 150 feet long and 10 feet wide, and originally was about 5 feet tall.

What started as a pile of logs and branches covered with soil is now a garden filled with trees, shrubs, grasses, herbs, flowers and vegetables. Though the mound has settled, it has retained its hill shape.

Wagstaff said she plants a mix of plants, rather than a single crop, to encourage biodiversity.

The hugelkultur gardens provide habitat for bees and other insects, birds, frogs and snakes.

In addition to providing a source of nutrients, hugelkultur has other benefits for plants, Wagstaff said.

She said the wood at the base of the mound retains water, acting as a “sink” for plants to tap into.

“It is like a storage container for all that water to slowly release,” Wagstaff said.

Another benefit is that the mounds trap heat. Wagstaff said she is able to extend her growing season several weeks past the first fall frost because the soil holds warmth.

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Wednesday, March 30, 2022 - 3

GrowSkagit

Once plentiful, dairy farms in Skagit dwindle The number of dairy farms in Skagit County has been declining for years.

An industry that consisted of thousands of small dairy farms in Skagit County in the early 1990s, numbered 23 at the end of 2020, according to the Washington State University Skagit County Extension.

Extension Director Don McMoran said the industry “feels like it’s sliding fast.”

There are many reasons dairy farms have gone out of business — the price they can get for milk sometimes drops below the break-even level, and rising costs for everything from feed to equipment to labor.

McMoran said some dairy farmers got pushed out after their banks stopped approving loans due to debt from the previous year.

A struggle to get by Dairy farms are capital intensive and much of the equipment necessary is purchased at a fixed rate, meaning it costs the same regardless of how many cows a dairy owns.

Farmers with more cows will be able to absorb costs better than farmers with

A cow is milked using a robotic milker at Mesman Farm east of La Conner. The fifth-generation farm is one of 23 dairies remaining in the county at the end of 2020.

fewer cows.

“The scale of economics plays a big role in farming,” said Harmony Dairy owner Jason Vander Kooy said.

Along with upfront capital, the price of milk and the cost of cow feed are critical to dairy farmers.

For the past several years, milk prices were low at an average of $16 per 100 pounds, Vander Kooy said.

When the market was starting to look up, the COVID-19 pandemic brought it back down.

Vander Kooy said Harmony Dairy breaks even when milk prices are $18 per 100 pounds.

Now, milk prices are strong, Vander Kooy said.

Milk is selling between $22 and $23 per 100 pounds.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has predicted higher milk prices nation-

An enticing selection of common and uncommon plants

wide in 2022. But the higher prices are coming with higher feed costs.

Finding ways to save Similar to other county dairy farms, High Valley Dairy grows the majority of the feed needed for its cows, curbing the cost of purchasing and transporting feed from other farms.

High Valley owner Dwayne Faber does what is called upcycling waste,

turning potato and Brussels sprout scraps from local farms into nutritious feed for his cows.

Vander Kooy, who grows about 85% of the feed his cows need, said growing feed is still costly due to the equipment and land needed, but it provides security by keeping dairy farmers from having to rely on anyone else.

Mesman Farm typically grows enough grain and hay that it can sell some of it after feeding its cows, but last summer’s drought hurt the farm’s hay crop.

Usually, the farm sells about $30,000 worth of hay to other farmers, but this year it had to buy $50,000 in hay because of the drought.

Ben and Chelsy Mesman have taken measures to cope with low milk prices and increasing costs of feed, labor and equipment.

They opened a farm store on their property to sell their organic meat and they bought a robotic milker, which saves money on labor and feed because the data it collects tells them exactly how much food the cows need.

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they face, dairy farmers keep farming because it’s their passion, said McMoran, who grew up on a farm.

“I feel an obligation that, if anything were to happen to my parents, I would continue on their legacy,” McMoran said.

“That’s what our ancestors have always wanted of us.

Also, it’s in your blood, it’s a part of who you are, it’s ingrained in you.”

Vander Kooy is teaching his son how to be a dairy farmer, just as his dad did when he and his brother were young.

“I couldn’t see myself doing anything else,” Vander Kooy said.

Faber continues to dairy farm because he likes working with cows, the land and his employees, and he loves growing food for people.

He bought another dairy in Astoria, Oregon, to diversify his business.

The milk prices in Oregon were higher than Washington last year and labor costs are lower partly because state law doesn’t require farm owners to pay their workers overtime.

“It feels like the future is not in Western Washington,” Faber said.

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4 - Wednesday, March 30, 2022

GrowSkagit

Cookbook to highlight Skagit County products Genuine Skagit Valley has teamed up with Raspberry Bow Press to launch a new cookbook, tentatively called “Genuine Skagit Cooking,” this spring.

The cookbook will feature recipes with Skagit County ingredients, as well as highlight the area’s agricultural history and its farmers, said Blake Vanfield, director of Genuine Skagit Valley, the certification mark that promotes area agricultural products.

“It is such an accessible and tangible way for the public to learn about the diversity of agricultural products that are grown in this region and the people who are doing it,” she said.

Each recipe that was submitted by the March 1 deadline was expected to have at least two ingredients grown in Skagit County.

“It is such an accessible and tangible way for the public to learn about the diversity of agricultural products that are grown in this region and the people who are doing it.”

– Blake Vanfield, director of Genuine Skagit Valley

Contributed by Genuine Skagit Valley

For example, a local farmer submitted a feta salad recipe that included cheese produced by the farmer, Vanfield said.

Recipes in the cookbook may be for food, beverages or

personal care products, such as soap.

Raspberry Bow Press, an independent book publisher based in Bow, is run by Michelle Gale. In 2020, Gale

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published her first community cookbook, called the “Washington Women’s Cookbook,” and is a cookbook editor for Modernist Cuisine.

She said she initially reached out to Vanfield to learn more about the Genuine Skagit Valley program. The two then came up with the idea for a Skagit Valley-focused cookbook.

“It seemed like this really seamless introduction to each other and the project grew,” Gale said. “I am very excited

about it.”

Vanfield said the cookbook will include not only recipes, but profiles on the different crops grown in the Skagit Valley and on the people growing them.

Food photographer Charity Burggraaf will provide the photography for the book.

Vanfield said the goal is to sell the cookbook from San Francisco to Vancouver, B.C. Proceeds will benefit the Genuine Skagit Valley program.

Farmers co-op opens retail store The Island Grown Farmers Cooperative has another way to get locally raised meat to consumers.

The co-op, which boasts about 80 area farmers, has opened a retail store called Northwest Local Meats at its new processing facility west of Burlington.

The store sells beef, pork, lamb and goat cuts such as cube steaks, tenderloin steaks, sirloin steaks, pork breakfast sausage and pork chops.

Travis Stockstill works at the co-op’s processing facility and at the new retail storefront that opened March 1.

Stockstill said Northwest Local Meats buys meat from the co-op’s farm members by the animal and processes it at its facility.

Because the retail store is affiliated with the co-op, it has the ability to coordinate directly with the farmers when it needs to order more meat.

Northwest Local Meats gets creative with its cuts and processed meat because it buys entire animals from farmers, Stockstill said.

It works to find ways to utilize almost every portion of the animal, he said.

Different cuts of meat fill the refrigerators at the new retail side of Island Grown Farmers Cooperative west of Burlington.

Northwest Local Meats tells its customers about the farms the meat was raised on as a way to showcase the coop’s growers, Stockstill said.

The co-op’s new processing plant at the Port of Skagit more than doubled the size of its old plant in Bow, which has allowed more space for equipment.

The expanded facility will allow additional farmer members to join the highdemand co-op, which is working through a list of potential new members, Stockstill said.

Wednesday, March 30, 2022 - 5

GrowSkagit

Studies show how pandemic stressed state’s food system Researchers from the University of Washington found the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the state’s food system to the brink of collapse, but that innovative farmers, producers and organizations working together — along with financial support from government agencies — prevented it from breaking.

Going into the study, the state Department of Agriculture, which commissioned the study, knew the pandemic had put a strain on the state’s food production and food access sectors, but most of the information it had was anecdotal, Communications Director Hector Castro said.

The agency needed data to make informed

Carolina Reid gathers squash to add to produce boxes in January at the Puget Sound Food Hub Cooperative.

decisions about the state’s food system, so last summer it funded the University of Washington study and another out of Washington State University.

According to datasets, surveys and interviews conducted statewide, over

half of the farmers and producers in the state reported they applied for government aid under a COVID-19 relief program, according to the UW study.

Farmers were affected by supply chain failures,

a shortage of farm labor, costly business adaptations and severe weather. Owners of large farms in Eastern Washington, veteran farmers and farmers of color were hit the hardest, the study says.

Alex Perez, who started the Latinx business development program at the Northwest Agriculture Business Center after being hired by the organization in 2017, said language and technology barriers stood in the way of many Latino farmers from accessing government aid during the pandemic.

The study also found that over a third of farmers reported forming new working relationships since the pandemic began, including those with other businesses, nonprofits and

each other.

The Washington State University study focused on food access during the pandemic.

The research team looked at the pandemic’s effect on increased rates of food insecurity, disruptions in the supply chain and disproportionate impacts on communities of color.

It provided recommendations for coping with such issues.

Washington State University researchers found that food banks throughout the state distributed 50% more food in 2020 than they did in 2019.

Government spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) increased by 48%.

The participation of Skagit County residents in

food assistance programs increased by 12% during the pandemic, making a third of county residents enrolled in a food assistance program.

The pandemic caused organizations that usually do not specialize in food access to develop programs that help feed their communities because they recognized the need.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided funding for a produce box program offered by the Northwest Agriculture Business Center, and a similar program offered by the Puget Sound Food Hub Cooperative received federal and state funding.

Food distribution boxes were a major innovation to come from the pandemic, Perez said.

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6 - Wednesday, March 30, 2022

GrowSkagit

In 2021, county protected four farms from development When Skagit County permanently protected a 103-acre farm in Conway from development last fall, it was the fourth farm in 2021 to be to secured forever as agricultural land through the county’s Farmland Legacy Program.

The program, which was started in 1996, purchases development rights from farmers to forever prohibit any nonfarm development on the land.

Farmers selected for the program are paid to sign an easement that prevents them, and anyone who owns or rents the land after them, from building a house on the property.

Sarah Stoner, agricultural lands coordinator for Skagit County, said the process takes a year or two from when an application is filled out to when the landowner signs the easement.

“It’s not like there’s farmland

Submitted photo

A 103-acre farm in Conway is now permanently protected from development thanks to the county’s Farmland Legacy Program.

cropping up elsewhere,” Stoner said.

Along with keeping those who live in the region close to their food source, the program preserves the character of Skagit County, Stoner said.

Protecting farmland from development preserves the open spaces that Skagit County

residents enjoy and gives farmers space to transport crops without traffic on the roads, she said.

Jim Glackin, who sits on the Skagit County Conservation Futures Advisory Committee that monitors the program, said the more farmland the county can preserve the more robust

the agricultural community will be as farmers rely on each other to share resources and knowledge.

Now, nearly 16% of the 89,000 agriculturally zoned acres in the county are protected with development easements.

The easement of the Conway property cost the county $155,000 in conservation futures tax funds, according to a news release.

That money was paid to the Tobiason siblings.

Their mother purchased the land when she first moved to Washington. She died in February, leaving her children the property.

The Tobiasons do not farm the land, but rent it out to the Morrison family, which has farmed the property for three generations.

The program determines the

price of the development rights by appraising the land with the development rights intact and without them, then cuts a check to the property owner for the difference.

The Farmland Legacy Program tries to give landowners good value for their development rights because it would likely be more profitable for them if they developed the land, Glackin said.

Stoner said that there are currently hundreds of acres that are in the process of becoming protected farmland.

“It’s been a slow and steady increase for 25 years of protecting farmland in the Skagit,” Stoner said.

The county protected 769 acres of farmland in 2021. It has budgeted $1.8 million in conservation futures tax funds to be used in 2022 to protect more land.

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