A Labor of Love Five Generations Deep
“I enjoy farming. I enjoy making stuff grow. I enjoy plants – going from seed to harvest, knowing it’s going to go to someone’s table, is pretty cool to me.”
Fall in the Skagit is a magical time, a riot of deciduous colors and crisp cool air. On just such a day, Michael Hughes knelt down in some of Skagit County’s most fertile soil, just south of Mount Vernon.
He dug his hand into the dark brown crumbly dirt, scooping out a handful of perfect golden potatoes. Behind him, his cousin Corey Hughes drove a massive potato harvesting machine, loading truck after truck with potatoes. The immense mounds of yellow potatoes glowed luminescent against the blue fall sky.
The Hughes Farm potatoes would be hand-sorted for quality, then bagged and boxed for delivery to nationwide stores like Safeway and Fred Meyer. The rich alluvial soil and cool sea breezes in Skagit County create the perfect growing climate for unique potatoes with especially beautiful bright colors – red, purple, yellow, white - and a flavorful, earthy taste.
The potatoes are also shipped to wholesalers in New York City, where chefs say they can taste the difference in a Skagit County potato from all the way across the country.
The satisfaction of creating meals for people all over the world is what keeps Michael Hughes working at the rigorous lifestyle that farming involves.
“I enjoy farming. I enjoy making stuff grow. I enjoy plants – going from seed to harvest, knowing it’s going to go to someone’s table, is pretty cool to me,” he said. Hughes is 33, and the first of his generation to buy into his family’s farm.
The farm’s history reaches back five generations, when Michael Hughes’ great grandfather, Lowell Hughes, moved to Skagit County from Iowa in the 1920s, and married a local farm girl, Evelyn. They started their own small farm with dairy cows and a mix of crops. The farm continued to grow and evolve over the years, passing from generation to generation.
In the 1980s, many of Skagit County crops were grown for freezing or canning. But when processing plants began shutting down due to corporate consolidation, Skagit farmers had to get creative in order to stay afloat.
At the same time, Michael’s father and three uncles, Dave, Tom, Jeff and Bob, all wanted to be part of their parents’ farm, built by the Hughes family over the previous 50 years.
That meant growing the farm enough to support five families, rather than just one. In order to accomplish all that, the Hughes Family decided to break into the fresh market, and began growing specialty potatoes – gourmet red, yellow, purple and white – now common in grocery stores and restaurants. The four brothers’ plan worked, and the company now produces 50,000 tons of potatoes per year, along with other crops like wheat, barley, broccoli and green beans.
Dean Cunningham, in charge of marketing the Hughes’ products for nearly four decades, said the family is united by a strong trait. “They’re all tremendous, tremendous workers,” Cunningham said. “They absolutely love being on the farm. They love being here day in and day out, 12, and 14-hour days. Everybody that’s involved in this operation lives, eats, and breathes it. It’s a labor of love and that makes it very successful, and everyone wants to keep it that way.”
The Hughes operation, which farms fields throughout Skagit County and North Snohomish County, involves a complex dance of crop rotation and land sharing with other farmers to keep the soil producing over the long term.
The Hughes’ wheat is grown for markets as far away as Japan and Korea, where it is used in pastries. Hughes Farms is also partnering locally with Fairhaven Mills to grow 1 million pounds of Red Spring Wheat for bread flour.
The four Hughes brothers are now at the age that they’re thinking of retiring, and their sons are actively working on the farm. Michael is the first of the new generation to buy into the farm ownership, after earning his degree in Agricultural Technology and Management from Washington State University.
His mother, Amy Hughes was concerned about limiting his world to farming, so as she raised him, she tried exposing him to other opportunities, but Michael was always drawn to the tractors and the dirt. “It’s in his blood,” she said.
The transition back onto the farm as a young farmer had its hiccups, he said, but he learned that working harder was usually the answer. “I just kept working hard to show that I could make it work,” he said. The long days and manual labor have not deterred him from the farm life.
And just like the generations of the Hughes family before him, he’s determined to keep the farm going for future generations, expanding and evolving to keep up with the ever-shifting demands of the market. He now has a one-year-old son, who, like his dad was, is drawn toward the tractor toys, and being outside.
At a time when many are pessimistic, Michael Hughes is full of hope and optimism for the future, so it’s fitting that his favorite part of farming is the spring planting.
“It’s the start of a new year,” he said. “You have all the potential there out in front of you.”
Story and photos by Tahlia Honea: info@skagitonians.org