Skagit County Farmers Know About Conservation

Farmers in Skagit County know a thing or two about growing flowers and being good stewards of the land. Jesalyn Pettigrew is the farmer behind the Mossy Gate Flower Farm, specializing in beautiful flowers that you have probably admired at your local Haggen Food Grocery Store.

One of the major elements that sets Mossy Gate apart from the other regional cut-flower farms is the use of seasonal, native plants and her work restoring blackberry-ridden locations into usable spaces. And, when this single mom of two isn’t working the land, she spends time on voluntary stewardship practices that help make her agricultural land more sustainable and protects the water and soil in Skagit County. She does this by planting cover crops — crops planted in between growing seasons to protect the soil in what would otherwise be an empty field.

“We work very closely with the Skagit Conservation District to make sure that we are doing all we can to protect our land and the land around us. When we work together, we can get so much more accomplished than when we try to go it alone,” said Pettigrew.

Skagit County is one of the 27 counties in Washington state that are part of the Voluntary Stewardship Program or, as it is often referred to, VSP. Each participating county sets goals to ensure the health and durability of local natural resources and farmland. The program then engages agricultural landowners to help them achieve those goals.

VSP is a different kind of program that is incentive-based rather than regulatory. Farmers and landowners choose to be part of the projects and volunteer to do the work with support from the county or their local conservation district, making them active partners in stewardship.

The counties’ goals focus on areas that are critical in keeping the land, water and food supply safe for future generations of people, plants and animals.

VSP brings landowners and counties together to practice conservation by planting trees along streams and rivers to stabilize banks and giving out cover crop seeds to farmers like Pettigrew. Cover crops help keep soil on the field where it belongs, rather than being eroded away by rain and wind. Cover crops also improve soil health, increase water retention, and reduce weeds and pests. And that’s not all — cover crops help infuse the ground with nitrogen during the winter, which may minimize fertilizer requirements in the spring.

Pettigrew planted 300 pounds of organic rye and vetch (a wild pea) mix on her lands in 2021 that she received with the help of the Skagit Conservation District. “We almost didn’t get it in the ground last year before the rain started to fall,” Pettigrew said. “But, I am so glad that we did!”