Sue Lani Madsen: Support small-scale farms while we still have them

Connie Klingenberg Vetter sought a way to preserve her grandparents’ small farm just west of Deer Park. She wanted it to be a place to show other rural landowners how to live on the land without spoiling it and to preserve the traditions of small-scale agriculture.

The WSU Vetter Demonstration Farm and Forest is her legacy. It’s an ideal education and research setting to push back on the “get big or get out” narrative coming out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture since the 1970s, as if farm consolidation is both inevitable and desirable. In the Spokane metropolitan area there is competition from new landowners with different priorities. Development near the Vetter Farm in the Williams Valley is putting pressure on the remaining small farms to subdivide and sell out.

Vetter donated the property to WSU in 2020 with a goal to support research and demonstrations aiming at the practical interests and limitations of the small farmer. Operated by WSU Extension and the Stevens County Conservation District, the Vetter Farm has been well received by county commissioners and by neighbors involved in agriculture, forestry and ranching.

Last week it received international attention, with one visitor proudly noting he had traveled from Dawson Creek, British Columbia. The Society for Range Management Pacific Northwest Section visited the Vetter Farm as the first stop on their summer 2024 field tour. The members of SRM are people whose profession requires them to “touch grass” on a regular basis. Not just grass but the forbs, shrubs and soil that supports a complete ecosystem, converting sunlight into forage for the livestock and wildlife that harvest and recycle nutrients back into the soil.

It was good to spend a sunny day away from politics, touching grass. It was the memory of her own glorious days spent outdoors on her grandparents’ farm that prompted Vetter’s determination to make sure future generations had the same opportunity to stay grounded.

The property is 158 acres with four types of terrain typical of small farms in the area. There’s sub-irrigated riparian meadow where researchers are testing agroforestry, the practice of combining trees with agricultural plantings. Another fourth of the property is now mostly grasses, although it used to be tilled and provides a site to experiment with cover crop combinations. Another fourth has traditionally been cattle pasture and the remaining property is a 95-year-old mixed timber stand.

Darla Clowser, from the Stevens County Conservation District, introduced the mission of the Vetter Demonstration Farm and Forest as community-based, farmer-focused research, not heavily academic. Two soil microbiologists from WSU are working with WSU Cooperative Extension on the agroforestry and cover cropping tests, but the site is available to let farmers try new ideas on a typical shoestring farmer budget.

The difference in research focus was reflected in what was described by local staff as the disdainful reaction of the WSU administrative types on visiting the aging infrastructure. It looked to the academics like the place needed to be cleared out, and the house is standing vacant. But then, academics don’t have to personally pay for their infrastructure. It’s just another state capital budget request.

Clowser said when farmers drive up, they look at the assortment of outbuildings and say “this looks like my farm, and I could use that building.” Farmers have to analyze the practical return on investment, and small-scale farmers in particular are used to a make-do or do-without culture.

In Wendell Berry’s book “The Unsettling of America,” Berry argues for the reformation of the land grant colleges to align academic research incentives with that sense of the culture of agriculture. He proposed requiring researchers to experience the pressures of literally raising their own salary. The small-scale agriculture that Vetter wanted to preserve with her bequest is of little interest to the large funders of commercial research. Experimenting with spreading manure and compost doesn’t develop new customers for chemical treatments.

The cooperative extension programs of land grant colleges like WSU do still provide direct technical support, when not being distracted by university politics. Andy Perleberg is an extension specialist in forestry and works in conjunction with Washington DNR’s Forest Health program to teach small forest landowners the importance of active forest management to protect habitat, reduce fire risk and protect the visual qualities that drew them to a rural lifestyle.

That includes periodic harvests, also known as logging, as well as knowing what to leave. “There’s more life in a dead tree than living trees,” said Perleberg, referring to the habitat value of selectively preserved snags.

The challenge of keeping in mind the complex ecosystem of a well-managed forest compared to a tree farm is similar to the difference between tending a field with cover crops versus monoculture cropping. It’s easier to manage for one crop, be it trees or wheat, but diversifying is a necessity to survive economically.

It’s always been hard to make a living in agriculture. Perhaps it’s an exercise in futility to hold back the pressure to break small farms into even smaller ranchettes for people who want a farm look but don’t want farm work. It’s already happened to the Spokane Valley and Latah Valley. But the folks now running the Vetter Farm are going to try.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.