Everybody wants Brian Lowry’s job.
Lowry manages Hogsback Farm, one of Vashon’s most established and successful organic enterprises.
In exchange for running Amy and Joseph Bogaard’s three-acre operation in Dilworth, Lowry and his wife Sarah enjoy a “living wage,” free housing and all the produce they can eat.
“It’s one of the ideal situations,” said Lowry as he sipped black coffee at a wooden table beside the couple’s modest cabin. “But it’s not an easy thing to find.”
Amy Bogaard and a pair of friends purchased the 14-acre parcel on 91st Avenue S.W. in 1996. The three had an orchard in mind. They had just planted their first fruit trees when Bogaard read “Rebirth of a Small Family Farm,” the organic how-to manual by Bob and Bonnie Gregson, former owners of Island Meadow Farm.
Smitten by the Gregsons’ book, Bogaard abandoned the orchard plan, bought out her partners and with her new husband Joseph transformed the old sweet corn farm into the productive, well-oiled organic machine that 32-year-old Brian Lowry now oversees. (Hogsback, by the way, was named for the narrow hump — called a “hogback” — that rises between the two streams at the back of the property.)
Lowry’s farming resumé was a little thin when he assumed the reins in 2006. It featured a degree in political science from the University of Washington, a brief stint on a farm in southeastern India, three years pulling coffee at the U District’s Bean and Bagel and a single season as a Hogsback intern.
“The first year I didn’t know what anything was supposed to do,” recalled Lowry, who grew up gardenless in Salt Lake City. “I didn’t know when we were supposed to have peas or onions or when the tomatoes were supposed to be in. I would stop by Amy’s in the morning and say, ‘What absolutely has to get planted this week?’”
Bogaard was very hands-on during his rookie season.
These days, Bogaard is busy teaching science and horticulture at Vashon High School and raising her two children, and Lowry is the one answering the questions. In his four seasons as Hogsback farm manager, he has mentored six young apprentices.
“What I really hope they go away with is as much of a big picture for a small farm as I can give them,” said Lowry. “Big ideas about soil sustainability, financial sustainability, building up a good, responsive and educated clientele, and putting all that into practice whether they farm, or just have a large kitchen garden.”
Lowry, like Amy Bogaard before him, has been wildly successful. Along with the farm’s peppers, salad greens and more than 30 different kinds of tomatoes, young farmers are one of Hogsback’s most successful crops.
Three former interns manage farms on Vashon and Bainbridge Island. Two are cultivating a large garden with an eye toward selling at the Island’s Farmers Market. Alum Stephen Bramwell runs the sustainable agriculture program at The Evergreen State College.
Bramwell is the one who brought Lowry to Hogsback. The two met in India in 2001 during a work-study program on a small farm near Pondicherry. When Bramwell landed at Hogsback several years later, he recruited Lowry as an intern. When Bramwell moved on to a Lopez Island farm in 2006, Lowry moved into the manager role.
This season Lowry and two full-time interns Rose Robinson and Alyson Kral tend the farm’s 40-plus crops, which are spread across three acres of fields, two hoop houses and a green house. They also manage about 50 chickens and ducks, the farm stand, the Farmers Market stall and an 11-year-old community supported agriculture program (CSA). “The interns make things work,” said Lowry. “There’d be no way for me to stay on top of everything by myself.”
This has been an interesting season at Hogsback. Business is off a bit. CSA membership is down about 25 percent, and farm stand traffic has slowed. Lowry blames the recession in part. But he also points to the steady rise in competition over the years.
“There’s so many good vegetable growers on the Island right now,” he said, “that if you’re not producing something really superior you’re not going to sell it.”
Besides raising the bar on quality, stiffer competition also puts a premium on marketing and customer relations, even for a well-known, well-respected farm like Hogsback. These days, Island farmers have to cultivate customers as studiously as crops.
To that end, Hogsback has polished up its presentation at the weekly Farmers Market with a new sign, new produce boxes and a new spot in the southeast corner. Lowry plans to expand the stall this fall and start selling eggs again.
A strong market presence can attract new customers, who then frequent the farm stand and may eventually join the Hogsback CSA. The CSA’s $500 membership fee — half up front, half in mid-July — buys 20 weeks of fresh produce, and a deeper connection to the farm.
“I want CSA members to think of themselves as a bigger part of the farm, as the core constituency,” said Lowry, who enjoys chatting with subscribers on Wednesdays or Fridays when they drop by to pick up their bags.
“CSA members get the first peas, the first tomatoes,” he said. “Along with the benefits, we’re asking them to take the risk of farming, because farming is inherently an uncontrollable process.”
CSA subscribers are investors with edible dividends.
Lowry added a second hoop house this year. The new 15-by-95 foot “tunnel” will pump up yields of Hogsback’s cold weather crops — beets, turnips, etc. — effectively expanding the farm’s growing season.
Look for Hogsback to have a strong early spring showing at next year’s Farmers Market.
“More season extension,” said Lowry, “is one thing I’m trying to do to differentiate us.”
If he owned Hogsback Farm, Lowry would fence and plant the field at the back of the property and put the “hog” back in Hogsback. He really likes pigs.
“They’re easy to take care of,” he said. “And they’re tasty.”
Brian Lowry has come to view farming as more skill than art. A successful farmer needs intuition, but nothing can take the place of experience. “A lot of farming,” he said, “is just paying attention and doing the work.”
Lowry is ready for his own farm. “That’s pretty much everybody’s goal, right?” he said. Buying land on Vashon is probably out of the question, but he’s flexible. A long-term lease arrangement would work just fine.
“I’m not necessarily wedded to the idea of having 10 acres of my own,” Lowry said. “But I would like to continue farming. I’m not really capable of doing something else.”
— This article, the third in a series this summer featuring Island farmers who sell at Vashon’s Farmers Market, was written with funding from the state Department of Agriculture through the Vashon Island Growers Association. Mary Bruno is an Island writer.
