Photo Essay: In Conversation With the Land

Story and photos by Kumiko Juker

While the land doesn’t speak with words like people tend to, Long Hearing Farm prioritizes developing and maintaining a relationship with it. This philosophy is a part of their practice as farmers, and something they share with the people in their community. Long Hearing Farm is an organic mixed-vegetable farm in Rockport, Washington, just over an hour away from Bellingham. 

The turn into Long Hearing Farm is easy to overlook. No sign denotes the business, but the land just past the bend is home to the 4-acre farm within a 40-acre plot, tended to by worker-owners Kelly Skillingstead and Elizabeth Bragg. This no-frills entryway reflects the simple clarity of their values: community, food and land.

In late fall, the farm transforms from an abundant place of harvest to a sprawl of fields. The winter season is when the farmers let their bodies rest, and prepare for the following year of work.

Some tomato stragglers cling on to their dying vines in the Long Hearing Farm greenhouse. In the world of farming, deadlines and demands are almost never arbitrary. “You’re in relationship to something actually outside of your control,” Skillingstead explained.

In some parts of the farm, ryegrass has been sowed as a cover crop. It protects the soil for winter, and makes the plots indistinguishable from their grassy edges. In other parts of the farm like this one, the separation between the fertilizer-covered bed and surrounding area is obvious.

Not all vegetables have the same demands. Kale is a brave brassica, even into the colder months. It’s one of few vegetables that remain; the farm work at the moment is mostly “tucking the farm in, so it’s nice and cozy,” as Skillingstead described it.

There aren’t many decorative pieces around the farm, but one notable figure is this bird sculpture. It valiantly guards a short fence leading off of the farmland. One turn in the path later, and there rushes the Skagit river.

Sky-scraping mountains surround Long Hearing Farm, with evergreen and deciduous trees mottling the horizon. The Skagit river curves around the farm, and every winter the river rises and floods the land. It’s a cyclical part of the land the farmers tend, one they understand and prepare for.

Northwestern salamanders are just one of the many animals that call the farm home. Herons and hawks fly above; beetles skitter through the loamy soil. Bragg once saw a seal, bobbing through the Skagit river. This coexistence is a vital part of the farm.