New county strategy against sprawl: Help small growers stay on the land and supply urban farmers markets

John Huschle has moved from one rented property to another five times since he became a farmer in the Snoqualmie Valley in the mid-1990s.

Renting has meant uncertainty about the future, agonizing over whether to invest thousands of dollars to bring in electricity, whether to build another greenhouse or plant berries. Once Huschle had to move sheds, greenhouses and other equipment at spring planting time.

He's lived with the fear that a landlord might give him permission to raise pigs but then change his mind if an animal escaped or the smell of manure wafted off-site.

Now those fears and uncertainties are gone.

With financial help from King County, Huschle and his wife, Anna Davidson, have bought the 23-acre property they've farmed for the past six years beside the Snoqualmie River.

Their farm, known as Nature's Last Stand, is the first to be protected under a new initiative intended to help dozens of small farmers stay on their land and continue selling fresh food at farmers markets in nearby cities.

In the case of Huschle and Davidson, the county paid $55,000 for development rights on the property, allowing the couple to pay the remainder of the $126,390 purchase price for the rich but flood-prone land.

Owning their land "means security," Huschle said.

"It's something to hand down to our next generation of people, to preserve farmland and work on the land like John and I are," Davidson added.

In all, County Executive Dow Constantine wants the county to buy development rights on 850 acres of land worked by farmers-market suppliers. He will use the existing Transfer of Development Rights Program, which was created to prevent sprawl by redirecting development to cities.

"The pressure on the family farms from increased values and the development pressure encroaching on them makes it really tough to farm in a county of 2 million people," Constantine said. "We're trying to help them work against some of those forces and help them produce healthy, locally grown food for local markets."

"I really salute the Huschle-Davidsons for stepping up and becoming part of the new farming economy of King County," Constantine said.

Huschle and Davidson tried for years to come up with the money to buy their land before the county made it pencil out.

The county is "banking" the rights from that land to eventually sell to a developer who can, in turn, transfer those rights to build more housing units in a city than would otherwise be allowed.

King County's development-rights program has protected 141,000 acres of forestland in the Snoqualmie Tree Farm, the Upper Green River Watershed and the headwaters of the Raging River since 2000.

Until now, the program hasn't done much for farmland. A separate initiative, the Farmland Preservation Program, saved 13,000 acres of farmland from urban development by buying development rights and "extinguishing" them, mostly during the 1980s.

County officials recently studied 59 farms that sell products at local farmers markets and found that 49 weren't owned by the farmers. The farms cover 850 acres, mostly in the Snoqualmie Valley, along with the Enumclaw Plateau and an unincorporated "island" between Kent and Des Moines.

The county wants to keep that land from being turned into housing developments, Transfer of Development Rights Program Manager Darren Greve said, because, "There is a direct, tangible, easy-to-digest connection between the cities where we're asking the densities to go and the lands that are being protected."

Greve hopes the purchase of development rights from the Huschle and Davidson property will be "the first of many farmland transactions." The land is protected by a conservation easement. Money for such deals will come from the county's conservation-futures tax levy, which acquires open space, and from sales of development rights to urban developers.

King County and Bellevue made a deal last year to shift development rights from the rural county to the city's 900-acre Bel-Red Corridor.

In Seattle, where rural development rights were transferred to the Denny Triangle between 2001 and 2008, city and county officials are discussing a possible new agreement.

Huschle, 40, "got the bug" for farming after meeting farmers who delivered food to a restaurant where he worked while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked on a farm for a few months and then decided on his career path.

"I just realized in an epiphany I could work at a desk job that has a field component or I could have a field job that has a desk component," he says. "This is how I can be outside all the time instead of occasionally."

After learning the basics of organic farming in their native Minnesota, Huschle and his high-school and college friend Andrew Stout moved to Puget Sound and co-founded Full Circle Farm in the Snoqualmie Valley.

As the farm quickly grew, Huschle struck out on his own. "I felt that the smaller, the better for me personally," he says. "Otherwise you end up chasing a crew around and not doing the work yourself."

He and Davidson live on Seattle's Capitol Hill with their daughter Eden, 4, and son Elias, 1, and stay in a canvas yurt at the farm during the height of the farming season. Davidson is also a professional photographer.

Huschle, the only full-time farmer at Nature's Last Stand, is scrambling to keep up with the demand of his home-delivery customers and weekend farmers markets in Ballard and the University District.

This past week, he and some part-time helpers harvested potatoes, tomatoes, beets, broccoli, Swiss chard, radishes, baby turnips and cucumbers.

Huschle soon will slaughter the dozens of chickens in a "tractor," or coop, he moves by hand to give the birds fresh ground to forage. He plans to build another three chicken tractors and hopes eventually to increase the amount of land under cultivation from 5 acres to 10.

Now that he and his wife own the land, he says, "We're here to stay."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com