Author: Tristan Klesick

Here is a great equation for national security: Let’s continue to convert over a million acres of farmland every year for habitat restoration or strip malls. 

The conversions are great for a few landowners and the developers who profit from them, but what is in it for the rest of the community? For starters, eventually food production can now join oil as an imported control piece, a piece that is controlling us. Sure we have lots of land in this country, but most of it is going to the highest bidder and if crops don’t pay as well as something else, most farmland goes on the block and out of production.

Recently, the City of Arlington received an application to develop a piece of farmland at Island Crossing. Dwayne Lane’s Chevrolet has been fighting to move to this location before Congressman Rick Larsen was a congressman. At that time, the Growth Management Act was able to hold the line on preserving this prime agricultural land from going into development. Eventually, the City of Arlington was able to annex this noncontiguous piece of land and all of Island Crossing, and in the process doom agriculture and the ability of that land to feed the Puget Sound region.

The most valuable land we have in this country is our resource lands: timber, mining and farmland. These types of land provide the bedrock for our economy and our national security. We should do everything possible to ensure that these lands are converted as a last resort. I would contend that land closest to the cities is the most vulnerable land and also the most valuable. 75% of our dairies, fruit and vegetable farms are located near urban populations.

If we need more of anything in this country, it is more fruits and vegetables, not less. We need to expand fresh fruits and vegetables reach to the inner cities, hospitals and schools. We need to expand the reach of organically grown foods and foods grown without synthetic chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides. We need to stop coddling mega food corporations, mega chemical corporations and mega farms, and change our national food policy to feed our people healthy nutrient-rich food. 

I got an idea: Let’s make the quality of food a priority, not the size of a campaign contribution or the shareholder’s profits.

The farmland at Island Crossing is all but lost. Unfortunately, the loss of this piece will inevitably doom the land next to it and the land next to that and so on, until Arlington reaches from I-5 to downtown. Then all that beautiful productive farmland will look like the Kent Valley; all because Chevrolets sell better on cheap farmland at Island Crossing then at the better situated, commercially zoned and serviced, non-floodplain Smokey Point exit.  Really?

Oh baby, has it ever been warm. Of course, the one year I decide to skip sweet corn (our other local farmers are growing this crop) the weather is perfect. There is some corn in the valley that was waist high by the fourth. Shoot, most farmers are ecstatic with knee high corn by the fourth. For us, the raspberries are on, the peas are on, summer squash is on, the cucumbers and peppers are on. The tomatoes are just turning, the potatoes are already the size of baseballs and soon we will be picking green beans. 

I have been thinking to myself why am I so busy? The other day, I finally came inside at 11 p.m. and realized that I was as hungry as a bear waking up from a long winter’s nap—I had skipped dinner. But the real reason, I am so busy is because we are two to three weeks ahead in most crops. Having that rainy, sunny, rainy, sunny weather cycle has been good for almost everything.

I am a little nervous, though. Strange thing about weather in the NW, last year once it stopped raining at the end of July, it didn’t rain for another 80 days. Most crops appreciate some moisture. And because of the spring and early rains, most crops were able to catch up when the hot August nights rolled around. This year they are early, but will the rains come to carry them to harvest? I think it will work out. But in the end, I can’t change the weather, but I can work with it.

I just planted our last crop of green beans for September harvest and we are now in the process of mostly weeding and harvesting, as opposed to weeding and planting. I love this stage, when we begin to harvest. You get to see the fruit of your labor and, more importantly, you get to start paying off the fertilizer bill, fuel bill and the labor bill, and, hopefully, at the end of the season in November, there will be some $$bills left for the farmer ☺! 

We also managed to get a few hundred bales of hay in the barn. Feels good to have some feed for the beef cows put up in case this great weather holds. When it comes to raising beef, I mostly focus on the grass. My goal is to manage the grass so that the cows don’t overgraze it. I want it to bounce back and get growing again. Rarely does a day go by that the cows are not moved to a fresh pasture. Yes, it is absolutely way more work for us to move our animals daily, but it is way better for the pasture to move the cows daily. And in a year like this…August grass will be a premium if we have another glorious summer with little or no rain till October.

Our family snuck away to the beach for three days last week and was it ever relaxing. Washington State is so geographically diverse that within three hours of Stanwood you can be in a desert, on a mountain top, kayaking in the San Juans or building sand castles at the coast.

As typical Washingtonians, who are undeterred by the elements, we got to experience getting sand blasted while we were playing at the beach. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and mostly warm. There is just something about the ocean—calming, yet powerful.

And because of its great power, you can hardly escape the thought of tsunamis. Tsunami evacuation signs are everywhere. I can only imagine all the tourists on those rural roads trying to escape. The last Tsunami was about 300 years ago and it did some damage to mostly a forested and uninhabited coastline. While we were visiting Moclips, I asked the museum curator, “How high do you have to be for protection from a tsunami?” His answer, “90 feet”—wow, most two-story house are 30 feet tall. Our farm is 14 feet above sea level. When a major earthquake hits off the coast of Washington again, like it did 300 years ago, Ocean Shores, Moclips, Hoquiam, Aberdeen, etc., will look eerily like Japan did in 2010.

We can’t live in fear of what might happen, but we can live in respect of what can happen. Simple things, like having rope ladders in the upstairs bedrooms and using them once in a while, just in case, will go a long ways to mitigating the “stuff” of life we can’t control.

Oh ya, this was supposed to be about tomatoes…

The day we left on our trip the greenhouse was under control, but when we returned those plants had gone rogue. I don’t know about your family, but around here it is more like tyranny of the urgent. And if it can wait, normally it will wait. If laundry is most pressing, it gets done before tomatoes get strung. But when we got back, it was obvious that the tomatoes required center stage. They are all suckered (a.k.a., “pruned”) and climbing twine now! Of course, I could have done that the week before, but the potatoes, sunflowers, and strawberries all had needs as well and were just a little more pressing. Got to go, the orchard is out of control.

• Wait for better weather!  
• Repair equipment broken during the sunny stretches.  
• Pray for good weather to farm again.  
• Run the kiddos to and from. 
• Hope the weather prognosticators are wrong or right.  
• Go to end of the year school concerts.  
• Lie awake at night and listen to the rain.
• Sign up for vacation bible schools, track and soccer camps.  
• Make Sourdough bread, as if I needed a new hobby!

Making sourdough bread is fun and with a little planning relatively little work. Last Friday, Joelle asked for dinner rolls. “Hmmm…,” I thought, “I haven’t made dinner rolls before, but all they are is miniature bread loaves—I can do this.” Of course, when the weather breaks in my favor, this hobby will have to go on the back burner ☺ !