Local farmers plan for a healthy future
Anna Martin still thinks of herself as an athlete, many years after her time as a competitive gymnast. These days, instead of composing routines and practicing flips, she wrangles chickens and sheep, hauls truckloads of goods to the Bellingham Farmers Market and cares for several acres of young elderberry trees as the co-owner of Osprey Hill Farm.
“Farmers are athletes,” she insisted. “There’s no question.”
And while farmwork offers many rewards for a job well done, the physicality that it demands can be unforgiving. The profession is dangerous, stressful and, as Martin pointed out, it offers little in the realm of affordable healthcare or successful retirement models.
“Farming is physical in a way that is degrading, not building,” Martin explained. The unrelenting pace of agriculture and the constant care required by both plants and animals leave little time for the kinds of recovery periods normalized in formal athleticism.
For Martin and her husband, Geoff, the physical burden of their chosen profession is currently a “front-and-center” topic of conversation. The pair have been farming at their property in Acme for more than 20 years and, while aches and pains are nothing new, Martin acknowledged the growing physical stress that comes with age and decades of intense hands-on work.
“We’re both stubborn enough that we would struggle through the pain,” Martin admitted, recalling a recent image of Geoff wrapped in an almost comical amount of muscle tape, a massage hook slung over his shoulder as he reclined stiffly on the couch, “but we want to set ourselves up well to keep doing this for as long as possible.”
‘We’ve got to get tall, and we’ve got to get green’
For much of Osprey Hill’s history, the Martins reared livestock, chickens and up to five acres of annual vegetable crops. The farm’s diversity ensured a vibrant market offering, but they were challenged by the exacting and varied responsibilities toward their farm’s different components.
Their vegetable program in particular proved consistently draining. Plant care and harvest requires constant bending or squatting, heavy lifting and many other repetitive motions that can contribute to chronic physical strain. Finally, an extreme heat event forced a change to Osprey Hill’s dizzying set of routines.
As temperatures rose over 100 degrees in the South Fork Valley during the summer of 2021, Martin and her crew worked nonstop to ensure that their animals were properly shaded and watered, and watched as vegetable seedlings shriveled in the heat.
Martin noticed, however, that small oases were forming around one crucial component of the property: its trees.
“Every living thing was gravitating toward those trees,” Martin remembered. The farm’s animals flocked to the shade, while insects burrowed into the moist soil underneath. The Martins, overheated and overwhelmed, were inspired.
“We knew we had to change things. We thought, ‘we’ve got to get tall and we’ve got to get green’.”
The next season, after reflection and research, the Martins converted the acreage previously allotted to vegetables over to a large field of perennial elderberry trees, whose fruit they hoped to process and sell.
Perennial plants, which are planted once and cared for from season to season, offered a much gentler physical commitment, and a workload that was spread throughout the year, as opposed to the intensive and time-sensitive requirements of vegetable crops, most of which are grown new from seed each year.
“We love the pace of perennials,” Martin said, “And standing up (to trees) is so much easier than bending over.”
As she and Geoff grow older, Martin expects to continue to peel away various layers of the farm to accommodate their changing energy levels. The few vegetables that remain will be the first to go.
Putting crew members first
For Kai Ottesen, worries about physical health on the farm are devoted primarily to his crew, upon whom the successful future of his farm depends. Ottesen farms on 12 acres of land near La Conner and runs the Hedlin’s Family Farm stand with his wife, Jules Riske. During the busiest part of the season, they employ up to 20 people.
Hedlin’s grows a variety of mixed vegetables to supply its farmstand, but the farm’s primary wholesale crops are strawberries and winter squash, two crops with physically demanding harvest techniques that require each fruit to be picked individually. Strawberries in particular, Ottesen explained, “absolutely defy anything but hand-harvesting.”
Still, Ottesen and Risk mitigate this physical strain as best they can by specializing in June-bearing strawberries, which offer a shorter harvest season, so that their crew can move on to other tasks as quickly as possible.
Near the strawberry patch, Ottesen took care to point out the pathways in between beds of flowers. They’ve been seeded with a grass-like cover crop this year, he explained, which discourages weeds and prevents the need for hand weeding and hoeing. It also provides a sturdy, even footpath for his two-person flower crew, both of whom are in their 70s.
“On a small farm, it’s really hard to justify investments in equipment that would make more sense at (a larger) scale,” Ottesen explained, so he and Riske put much of their efforts into developing systems for safe and healthy work practices, and then choose the areas of mechanization that make the most sense for their team.
One of these carefully-selected technologies, he said, was the introduction of plastic mulch to their farm seven years ago. Using a tractor implement, Ottesen and his team lay raised beds covered in thin black plastic for many of their crops, including squash, lettuce, flowers, and garlic. The plastic has a number of positive effects, including a weed suppression effect similar to that of the cover crop in their pathways. The crew can devote less of their time and physical effort to cultivation, saving it for the all-important harvests.
“These systems don’t necessarily make the work easier,” Ottesen explained, “but they do make the work more valuable,” and cut out any superfluous physical effort that might hinder his crew down the line.
Farmer health faces larger hurdles
Martin and Ottesen both acknowledged that, despite the many effective changes they can enact on their own farms, systematic difficulties prevent certainty around long-term health for both farm owners and employees across the region.
While Washington’s Health Care Authority offers coverage to all residents regardless of immigration status, the transient nature of a seasonal job pool, combined with increased anxiety around identity protection and low earnings, can prohibit many of the region’s farmworkers from gaining access to quality health care. The industry’s demanding and short-lived harvest seasons, meanwhile, leave many workers unwilling to take time off to address health issues that, if left untreated, can hinder their future capacity for such physical work.
Ottesen shared his desire to offer full-time employment with health benefits to his employees, but called attention to the financial constraint of small farm businesses. Martin, for her part, works a part-time job off-farm, which offers benefits and decentralizes her reliance on her business for health support.
Both farmers look forward to a long future in this career, a future as healthy as possible for themselves, their teams, and their community. Martin sees great potential for community support in farmer-focused organizations such as the Bellingham Farmers Market, for which she serves as the board president, or the Puget Sound Food Hub. She admits to big ambitions for group insurance plans or revenue-return programs that could help support farmer retirement funds.
Asked about any existing models of long-term farm health that she takes inspiration from, Martin thought for a moment, then grew serious: “I think more about where I don’t want my life to go.”
She is wary of a future with no retirement plan, no health care, and a front row seat for her children to watch her “slip away” into physical disrepair, a scenario she has seen play out for other farmers before.
“That’s what I’m trying to avoid at all costs.”
— By Hannah Swartos
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Small farmers seek Skagit’s big magic,” Sept. 16, 2025
• “Farm models land stewardship, animal welfare,” Aug. 14, 2025
• “Proposed research station to change local ag industry,” June 23, 2024
• “Farming leases renew ag efforts in the islands,” Feb. 18, 2024
• “Farmworkers to return to Olympia to lobby for rights,” Jan. 17, 2024