Schuh Farms: From roadside stand to landmark
Photo: Schuh Farms
The last living relatives of the tyrannosaurus rex live on Memorial Highway. Really.
You know this if you’ve taken a child to Schuh Farms on a busy October weekend, when families are picking pumpkins and lining up for the lawnmower train and hayrides. It’s one of many farming factoids kids learn as they feed corn to the dinosaur’s cousins...the chickens.
Educating people about food and farming is a major emphasis at this flourishing farm and agritourism business, which turns 60 in 2023. Offering family fun, fresh produce and baked goods from March through December, the farm has evolved alongside the Schuh family’s talents and interests.
Steve and Susan Schuh grew fresh peas for local processors when they started farming in 1963, later adding seed crops, wheat and barley.
In 1978, the Schuhs planted a U-Pick strawberry field at the corner of Bradshaw and Memorial Highway. As the Schuhs stitched together a quilt of acreage, a berry stand followed, and when the Mount Vernon Farmers Market opened in 1987, Susan was there with her berries.
The stand was a family affair. Grandma helped. Kids Jen and Andy Schuh worked shifts. Soon they were selling in Stanwood, too.
“People would ask, ‘Why don’t you have this? Why don’t you have that?’,” remembers Jen. “They wanted corn, so we grew it and sold it by the sack.
“We had so much fun visiting with our customers that we decided to focus on being a fresh market farm.” That meant adding cauliflower, broccoli, squash, cucumbers for pickling, pumpkins and many varieties of berries.
Photo: Anne Basye
Eventually the farm stand became a farm store-in-a-barn, offering fresh produce and berries, jams and scones, pies, milkshakes and lattes. Thanks to Susan’s use-everything ethic, most fresh products incorporate something grown on their farm. Berries are turned into smoothies and milkshakes, baked into pies, or frozen.
“We don’t throw them away unless we miss half a flat somehow,” says Jen.
All the Schuhs have roles in operations. Steve is grower and field supervisor. Susan is “idea fairy,” says daughter Jen. She calls her son Stephen, an agtech major at Washington State University, “the innovation guy,” always looking for ways to improve the farm’s equipment and processes. Jen is the creative powerhouse behind the farm store and roadside espresso and ice cream stand. Her daughter Andrea runs farmer’s markets five days a week during the summer.
Seasonal workers are critical players. Many members of the field crew have worked for the Schuhs for 30 years. “They are really vested in taking good care of things, versus a crew that shows up, hoes, and leaves,” says Jen. A loyal crew of high school and college students staffs the store and a dozen regional berry stands.
Photo: Schuh Farms
After 60 years, Schuh Farms enjoys a strong and wide-ranging web of connections with employees and customers. Participating in community events like the La Conner Fourth of July parade and the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival helps nourish that network. Jen’s on the board of the Skagit Festival of Family Farms, an important way farmers share what they do with the public.
While the Schuhs share what they do about 270 days a year, Octobers are especially busy. On weekends, you can find Steve driving the hayride, barrel train or tractor train and Jen in her trademark orange hat showing kids how corn is planted, pollinated, grown and harvested.
She reads storybooks about pumpkins and leads silly songs about corn like this one that went viral in fall 2022. “Teaching in a silly way helps kids remember,” she says.
She loves bringing kids and animals together. When kids are hesitant, she urges them to get close to the chickens and look at their little toes, or to feed a carrot top to a goat. Most of all, she’s glad to see them out and running around and playing together.
Indoors, customers delight in watching the farm store change from season to season. Décor and merchandise morph from spring pastels to the red, white and blue of the 4th of July and the autumn hues of Halloween and Thanksgiving. The year wraps up with an amazing collection of Christmas items, including fresh-cut trees and Schuh-made holiday wreaths.
When first-time store customers talk to Jen, she asks them to come back. “It’s gonna look different every time you come, I tell them. And they do come back, see the transformation, and get excited!”
By the end of their seven-day-a-week, nine-month season, about 150,000 people have visited Schuh Farms.
That’s fine with the Schuhs.
“My mom, my daughter and I need things to be busy,” says Jen. “We have more fun when there’s more people around us. We feed off their energy.
“There’s lots of opportunity to come see us and have fun.”
Story by Anne Basye: info@skagitonians.org