Carter Hick, an Olympia based lawyer, has been farming a small plot of land he doesn't own in northwest Thurston County. He leased it in March so he could sow the seeds of a passion project.
"It was me figuring out, 'How can a guy who doesn't have a ton of cash, doesn't want to go into debt, farm more than just my backyard and my local community garden?'" Hick said.
He has grown legumes, grains, winter squash and some mixed vegetables so far. Long-term, he said he wants to expand his enterprise into a patchwork of farms on leased land.
"My motivations are all to be part of an effort to make food security a reality for cities and counties and regions," Hick said. "If I get help and expand my farming efforts, that effort is all going to be geared with an eye toward making food accessible locally."
Hick, who's 47, found the plot with help from the Thurston Conservation District (TDC) South Sound FarmLink program, a service that matches interested farmers with local property owners and connects them with lease building resources.
FarmLink launched in 2015 and has supported at least 17 matches so far, said Tina Wagner, Community Agriculture Program Coordinator for TCD. Farm My Yard, a similar program for urban areas in Thurston County, launched in April and has made one match, she said.
"South Sound FarmLink and Farm My Yard serve to maintain agriculture viability," Wagner said. "Both in production, to make sure that we have a robust production in our community, and as a community service that provides jobs and supports the local economy."
What is the state of agriculture production in Thurston County?
Farmland in Thurston County is "rapidly disappearing" while still being a significant part of the local economy, according to an analysis by the Washington State University Extension Program.
Farmland acreage in the county decreased from 170,640 acres in 1950 to 62,250 acres in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture.
Data from the 2017 census indicates county farmland acreage decreased 19% from 2012 to 2017. Meanwhile, the average farm size was 52 acres in 2017, a 10% decrease compared to 2012.
Though that's the average size, a plurality of farms, 41%, were between 10-49 acres in 2017. At the same time, the census shows 37% were 1-9 acres and 17% were 50-179 acres. About 5% exceeded 180 acres.
From 2012 to 2017, the market value of products sold increased 44% to more than $176 million but expenses increased 40% to $156 million, according to the census.
About 56% of the 2,120 producers in Thurston County are between 35 and 64 and nearly 36% are 65 and older, per the 2017 census. That leaves about 8% who are under 35.
The census is taken every five years but the USDA says the newest results will be released in 2024.
How does farm matching help?
Sarah Moorehead, executive director of TCD, said South Sound FarmLink gives retiring producers an option to lease their land instead of selling it. It also facilitates opportunities for younger farmers who can't afford to buy land.
"If there's nobody in a family to take (an established farm) on, it's really hard to transition that to an up-and-coming farmer when land prices are astronomical," Moorehead said. "There's no way that a new farmer, with the slim margins that farmers live on, will be able to access the capital to purchase large amounts of farmland."
If farmland dwindles, less food is produced locally. Hick said he hopes his efforts can help keep production local and boost the local food economy.
"There's no guarantees that all trains will operate and all the trucks will run and planes will fly without incident," Hick said. "Having a robust local food economy ensures that when crazy things happen, we still have the ability to feed people in the area."
The matches TCD have made are helping keep farmland in active use and creating new opportunities for local growing. However, it's not without its limitations.
The FarmLink program only had 14 farm seekers and seven landowners actively enrolled as of Oct. 12, Wagner said. Meanwhile, she said the budding Farm My Yard program had no active enrollees.
The number of farm seekers typically outnumbers landowners about three to one, Wagner said, and some applicants are not serious about leasing land.
Sometimes, participants meet through the program but opt to finalize the match outside it, she said. They may do so via similar matching programs across the state, such as the Washington Farmland Trust Farm to Farmer program.
That makes it difficult to keep track of how many successful matches have been made, Wagner said.
"Whether a match is made entirely in-house with SSFL, Farm My Yard, or outside our programs, we satisfy our goal of assisting all our community members," Wagner said.
How do these matching programs work in practice?
Hick said he applied to the FarmLink program in January and Wagner notified him about multiple potential matches soon after.
Wagner eventually arranged for him to meet Diane Carney, a business and education consultant who owns a five-acre farm on Kaiser Road near The Evergreen State College.
"We just each talked about what our visions were and what we were looking for and hoping for," Carney said. "It just seemed like really great match from the very beginning."
Carter signed a lease for a corner of her property that's less than a third of an acre, both said.
Other farms had previously worked on her property, Carney said, and she wanted to keep it in production.
"It's less about the income, honestly, as just making sure that this particular place is used to grow food that benefits the local community," Carney said. "I really was inspired by Carter's specific vision to grow storage crops."
TCD also helped Mark and Sandra Spee, a retired couple, lease part of their five-acre property to their neighbor this past summer.
The couple have their own garden on a corner of the land, which is near Olympia High School, but a large portion of the property is an open field with trees. They said it has a history of being farmed but it's largely been out of use for about 20 years.
"Our wish, for quite some time has been to not develop our property, but to have it be used in farming," Sandra Spee said.
Mark Spee said their neighbor approached them about leasing their land as they were separately having conversations with TCD. Spee added TCD connected them with online resources to help them draft a two-year lease.
"We feel we have a good relationship with our neighbors who are leasing it," Mark Spee said. "At this point, we're feeling quite excited by it, that we finally have someone that again is going to farm it."
Laura Graham, 48, farms and sells vegetables and herbs on her own property nearby. She said she chose to lease a little over an acre from Mark and Sandra Spee so she could expand her small business, Chickadee Farms PNW.
"What makes this arrangement very wonderful and exciting to have is that we can walk to this site and it's walkable to where we make vegetables available to the community," Graham said.
Matching a farmer with a property owner can be difficult because each party may have different needs, wants or situations to factor, Graham said. That's why she appreciates the service TCD provides.
"Having something central where people can go to and communicate what they're looking for ... I just think there's a great value in that," Graham said.
