Skagit farmers plant, plan in face of uncertain COVID climate

Will restaurants and breweries open again? What about schools? The export market?

While farmers are still grappling with big questions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, “we have to get farming,” says Eddie Gordon of Gordon Skagit Farms. “The growing season is here.”

That means moving ahead on plans made last winter – or coming up with a creative workaround. Also important to consider: soil health and crop rotation.

Here is what some La Conner-area farmers are getting in the ground right now.

Root crops abound

As John Thulen of Pioneer Potatoes was gearing up to plant, the Washington State Potato Commission was giving away hundreds of thousands of russet potatoes across the state, including 100,000 pounds at the Cascade Mall.

“The idea is not so much to help people with food insecurity but also to get rid of some of those potatoes in the warehouse,” he explained. “Hopefully in the fall, we won’t be competing against last year’s crop.”

With the food service industry shaky, Thulen is betting on the retail market. Very few of his acres are devoted to fingerling potatoes – a “one-trick pony,” he says, purchased mostly by restaurants. He is also growing organic and conventional beets, as well as barley for dairy feed.

He is pretty sure his potato sales will be about the same as usual, but it will take longer to sell them.

Over at Gordon Skagit Farms, Eddie and his brother Todd believe that come fall, people will be itching to get out and shop at their Autumn Market.

“We are growing more varieties of pumpkins and squash than ever, because that is what our customers want,” says Eddie Gordon. “And we’ll change our retail to make it safer, and put people more at ease.”

Fewer contracts for seeds

Ordinarily, Skagit farmers are key suppliers of global seed for cabbages and other brassicas as well as beets and spinach. This year, local acreage is down because contracts from seed companies “are getting harder to come by,” says Tessa Deyo, whose family farms land between the Hedlins and the Thulens on Dodge Valley Road.

Once cabbage seed planted last September is harvested, the Deyos will plant a new crop – providing it germinates. “The seed we are slated to plant this summer may have been damaged by high heat while it was stuck in transit in Florida during the shutdown,” said the sixth-generation farmer. Besides growing cabbage seed and grain, the Deyos lease acreage to the Thulens and the Boon family, which operates the Fohn Dairy at the foot of the Pleasant Ridge Cemetery.

“Since we don’t grow for the fresh market, the impacts for us are longer term,” said Deyo. “We’ll find out how we did next year or the year after.”

Dave Hedlin has two fields of hybrid cabbage seed in production and John Hedlin has one. Gordon Skagit Farms, which has farmed as many as 100 acres of beet seed, has just two hoop houses of it.

Don McMoran, director of WSU Extension, thinks global economics, not the covid-19 pandemic, is the culprit. “World currencies, supply, quality and cost are all factors that make our market rise and fall.”

Grains for feed, cover crops for soil

After significant contracts for malting barley were cancelled, the Hedlin family had to change its plans for 200 organic and conventionally grown acres.

Instead of growing barley for beer, they will grow it, for a lower price, for Conway Feed. They are growing some rye for Cairnspring Mills in Burlington, and quite a lot of cereal rye, “which is good for the ground,” says Dave Hedlin. There are also plenty of fava beans in Hedlin fields – a key cover crop that can fix 30 to 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre of soil.

About the decision to focus on cover crops, Dave Hedlin says, “Sometimes losing less is the closest you can get to making money. And because we strive for a five-year rotation of all of our crops, keeping ground in cover crops is an opportunity to spread out our rotations a little bit and steward our soil.”

Consumers want their veggies

Kai Ottesen, Hedlin’s manager of wholesale and retail organic row crops, is planting more cauliflower and cabbage, because consumer demand for fresh organic produce is up. “We’re selling what we grow and we haven’t seen a dip in demand,” he says.

Much of what Hedlin Farm grows is sold through the Puget Sound Food Hub on Best Road, which helps small and mid-scale Skagit producers of fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry, dairy, cheese and eggs reach wholesale and retail markets.

“While restaurants are struggling, our sales are up tremendously overall,” said manager Andrew Yokom, thanks to a diverse customer base that includes hospitals, schools, corporations and retail chains like Haggen and the PCC markets in Seattle.

No matter what gets planted, farmers like Todd Gordon spend spring in a tractor.

“I’m stuck in my tractor cab,” he says. “All I know is that radio doesn’t play ‘Hotel California’ often enough.