GENERATION NEXT: Honoring the past, creating the future
“I realized, I can have it all. I can be an activist and a farmer. ”
Sauk Mountain rises 5,541 feet, rugged and steep, towering above the remote town of Rockport in the North Cascades mountains, just above the confluence of the Sauk River with the Skagit.
Two young farmers work soil on the rich alluvial valley floor across the Skagit River from Rockport, pausing to address their attention toward the peak.
“What would Sauk Mountain think of what we are doing here?” Kelly Skillingstead said she commonly asks herself this question while making decisions about the farm.
Skillingstead, is petite, 30 years old, her appearance in equal measures that of her Japanese and European ancestors. She delicately cuts the stems of a salad mix she is harvesting to sell at the Skagit Valley Food Co-op in Mount Vernon, kneeling between rows of produce as she works. Her passion for farming is coupled with a responsibility to do it in a way that’s positive for the environment, she explains.
“This place is a gift to be,” said her farming partner Elizabeth Bragg, 31, who identifies with her Blackfoot, Cherokee, Gros Ventre, and European ancestors, and tries to incorporate the ideas and ideals of what she calls “indigenous farming” into their farming practices.
They consider themselves “guests” on the historical territories of the Sauk-Suiattle, Upper Skagit and Stillaguamish tribes.
The two young farmers recently took over the popular and established Blue Heron Farm’s annual crop production. Anne Schwartz (profiled here) started the farm 40 years ago. Through time and hard work, she established beautiful, fertile, organic soil, as well as deep community relationships and longtime buyer accounts.
“It was 40 years of hard grind and relationship building,” Bragg said of Schwartz, as she pulled bright white turnips from the ground and bunched them.
Schwartz continues to mentor the two women through the handover period.
The farm is now called “Long Hearing Farm,” so named after Bragg’s great-great- grandmother, Long Hearing Woman, who suffered through violence, trauma and racism, but was nevertheless always joyful and compassionate, her sweet disposition earning her the nickname “Peaches.”
“We want to live up to her name, and her values,” Bragg said.
Bragg’s trail to becoming a farmer was an unlikely one. With her sights set on becoming a lawyer, she earned her bachelor’s degree from Whitman College in politics, as well as a master’s degree in Law Development and Globalization from SOAS University of London.
She began working at a non-profit, but quickly realized that many people working in the more intellectual side of social justice work seemed to become “unhappy, jaded and cynical.”
She wanted something more hands-on. She started volunteering at an urban farm, which felt more fulfilling.
“I realized, I can have it all. I can be an activist and a farmer,” she said.
She worked at several farms, until her life partner, Reed Rankin, brought her to Darrington, where his family has lived for four generations. Bragg worked for Blue Heron Farm for a summer, just as Schwartz was thinking about handing off her farm. Everything aligned between the two, and Bragg took over in 2019.
“It was a steep learning curve,” Bragg said.
She was managing five acres of over 30 crops, and the logistics of the farm’s 50-member Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation, which distributes fresh organic produce to individual local customers. She also slogged through the laborious process of organic certification for the farm operation. Rankin helped establish the farm, building critical infrastructure, but the two soon realized they needed help. Bragg reached out to Skillingstead, a longtime friend from their post-college Americorps days. Skillingstead started out helping a couple days a week and soon became a part owner. It is now considered a cooperative, with the two women as the main owners, and Rankin continuing to help with infrastructure and other bigger farm projects.
Asked to explain the concept of indigenous farming, the two farmers say it’s first and foremost a high-level concept, grounded in the idea that humanity must return to an existence in symbiosis with the land, giving and taking in mutuality and balance.
They also take specific steps to honor the agriculture that existed prior to European colonization, like using corn, tomato, pole bean, greens and squash seed obtained from the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank, as well as chilies and dry beans derived from Oaxacan indigenous agriculture. The farm uses a raised bed/mound system with added organic matter, a practice used by the Cherokee and other agricultural tribal nations “since time began,” Bragg said. And the two are working with the Native American Student Union at Western Washington University to educate its members about subsistence farming and wild-tending.
The center of their effort, however, involves providing seasonal, local produce to the upriver areas of the Skagit ecosystem, an area with few healthy food options. The grocery stores nearest the farm carry limited organic produce, almost none of which is local – a great irony, considering that the Skagit is one of the most fertile agricultural valleys in the world.
Bragg and Skillingstead say they’re motivated by the goal of establishing “food sovereignty” in the community. According to the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance website, “food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
It’s an idea in opposition to the concept that a few large corporations should control the food supply.
Long Hearing Farm’s landlord, Lois Canright, shares the farmers’ passion for local, organic farming. Not only does she give the farmers an affordable lease, she is committed to keeping the farm producing food without using toxic chemicals and other industrial inputs. Canright, whose family owned one of the first certified organic farms in New Jersey, purchased the 40-acre Rockport property in 2005, at which point Schwartz’s Blue Heron Farm was already established on the land.
Canright is excited about the transition to the two beginning farmers.
“It takes grit and resilience to weather the unexpecteds of farming,” Canright said. “Long Hearing Farm is proving their capacity to problem-solve, engage the public and volunteers on the farm, and grow great food. I am so pleased to have found energetic young farmers to carry on, and to keep this beautiful silt loam in organic production.”
Long Hearing Farm sometimes has to sacrifice and make tough business decisions to carry out their mission – such as running local farmers’ market stands, which is not a profitable activity, in order get their food in the hands of the people that most need it, like SNAP and EBT recipients.
“It takes so much more effort to do the right thing. Why?” Skillingstead asked.
For Long Hearing Farm, it’s worth the extra effort to make it right with Sauk Mountain.
Story and photos by Tahlia Honea: info@skagitonians.org