Who we are
Long Hearing Farm is a rural worker’s co-op and certified organic farm with a
commitment to growing food as if the lives of kids in our communities matter.
Our commitment is to;
Feed as many local families as possible through our Farmshare, Farmstand and direct partnerships with local businesses and schools.
Create equitable land-based livelihoods and teach young people land-based skills.
Envision conditions for healing and transformation that center the needs of our communities.
Our co-op is here because we had ancestors who lived with joy, gratitude, care, a commitment to family, integrity and a reciprocal relationship with the land. We are here because we had ancestors that believed in the phrase, “never a failure, always a lesson”. Each one of us is still learning how to embrace the complexities of our identities with a sense of play and curiosity. Bringing all of ourselves into the farm’s food-growing practices in ways that honor the dignity of our families and communities and the ancestors that we hope someday to become.
Elizabeth Bragg
Our farm is named after my grandma’s grandma, Long Hearing Woman. She lived through violence, trauma, and structural racism. In spite of all of that, Long Hearing Woman was the most joyful person--so sweet that her nickname was Peaches! I hope to live up to her legacy. I am integrating indigenous growing practices with years of market gardening to run our weekly farshare program as a guest in Sauk-Suiattle, Upper Skagit and Stillaguamish lands. I’m an Indigenous mixed person with Blackfeet, Cherokee, Gros Ventre, and European American ancestry, and I am loving the creative space to incorporate indigenous ways of knowing and being into my food-growing practice.
We are incredibly thankful to be supported and cushioned from many of the barriers to entry for folks like us by our mentor and land-partner Anne Schwartz of Blue Heron Farm. She is a self-declared rabble-rouser. We are inspired by her farm skills and her contributions to the food system at large — she inspires us to create the future that we want to live in every day!
Growing food and feeding people is my dream job! I love mapping out the season and being the brains behind the vegetable production and plant health. Reed and Kelly are my two favorite non-family people and it is a joy to build this project with them!
Kelly Skillingstead
I am Japanese/European American. My mother’s side is Japanese and has lived in the Seattle area (Coast Salish land) and southern Idaho (Blackfeet country) since the early 1900s, which makes me yonsei (4th generation). My fathers Irish/Norwegian/French roots found their way to Arlington (Stillaguamish land) and then the Seattle area around the same time. I believe that Elizabeth, Reed, and I were meant to find one another. All of our ancestors shared physical space in complicated ways and the work we are doing feels healing at an ancestral level.
I have always been drawn to and at my best when I am working with young people. I have worked in a multitude of learning spaces, but until I found something deeper to connect that learning to - healing through relationship to land - the work never felt complete. I am joyfully fascinated with all that plants have to teach us and am excited to bring attention and energy that will allow Long Hearing Farm to invite community onto the land with us.
Reed Rankin
My family settled in the Darrington area over 100 years ago as the timber trade moved deeper into the mountains. The current landscape of the North Cascades has been shaped by generations of my relatives changing the land as loggers, farmers and community members. Continuing a complex relationship to and respect for these forests, mountains and people is my inheritance. My work on the farm reflects my belief in thriving rural communities and land based livelihoods through the next 100 years.
Emily Smaldone
I’m a descendant of European immigrants. My mother’s mother grew up in a French-Canadian community in upstate New York and her father’s family immigrated from Scotland in the 1740s. My father’s family came from Potenza, Italy in the 1880s and has lived in New York City ever since. They arrived as urban laborers, and each generation has benefitted a little more from the spoils of the empire. My parents, who followed the academic job market to Oregon in the 1990s, raised me on socialist labor history and the belief that as long as we’re living on occupied land, we might as well try to be good neighbors.
I spent most of my twenties working seasonally on trail crews in several western states, including at North Cascades NP. In 2021, I spent two days shoveling horse manure onto Anne’s blueberry beds with Kelly and decided that if I was ever going to try farming, these were the people to do it with. Nowadays, my role at Long Hearing includes managing the packshed, running small engines, and writing the newsletter.
Ben Stamats
Farming for me was love at first sprout. I grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and stumbled into farming organic vegetables in 2013. Working with my mentor for seven years, I unearthed my passion. The tangible glory of pulling roots out of the ground and getting my hands dirty was a thrill for me, and selling food to the local community made it even better.
I found my way to Washington in 2020 after a long reflection of my trajectory in organic farming. My partner and I decided to uproot ourselves to explore out west and see what it had to offer. The scenery was a whole different world compared to the Midwest landscape with which we were accustomed. Our intentions were to find like-minded folks who loved to grow food as much as we did. Eventually, we landed in Concrete, WA. Long Hearing Farm has a magnetic pull to which we were effortlessly drawn. We felt right at home. I am so grateful to be accepted as part of this farm and community.