Farming, specifically on the La Conner land his family has owned for four generations, has always been in Kai Ottesen’s blood. But that doesn’t mean he always planned on being a farmer.
“I’d just graduated with a degree in English Literature from the University of Alaska Southeast but had been down here to the farm pretty much every summer of my life,” Ottesen says. “I saw a lot of issues, connecting around land use, around where our food came from as I graduated…and farming made as much sense as anything…So I came down here to work the summer, work a season, and see how I felt about it.”
And that’s when he met his wife, Jules Riske. Riske studied agriculture and knew she wanted to farm long-term—if she could make it work financially. She was farming full-time with Anne Schwartz at Blue Heron Farm that summer when Ottesen was seeing how he felt; the pair met at the Mount Vernon farmers market, when Riske was snooping on the competition’s tomato prices.
Photograph courtesy of Hedlin’s Family Farm
“We started having farm swap dates,” Riske says, “because neither of us had any extra time. And so I came down to the farm here and we spent an afternoon pruning cucumbers, and then he came up to the farm I was working on and he spent an afternoon slaughtering chickens.”
Eventually they found time to go on ‘real dates,’ but the relationship was forged in farming, and it was clear from the start that this was more than a summer fling.
“I remember being really frustrated that I had met Kai,” Riske says with a wry smile, “I knew right away that it seemed kind of serious, and I didn’t want to move and he was tied to the family land, and so I was really grumpy for a few weeks.”
Ottesen’s ties to the family land have always been non-negotiable, whether or not he was interested in actually tilling the generational soil.
“There was never any pressure on us kids to go into farming,” he says, “but there was the expectation that whatever we chose to do in life, we would be good stewards of the family land.”
Photograph by Anne Godenham
Ottesen’s Danish great-grandfather Rasmus Koudal moved to the Skagit Valley in 1906, and the land he purchased has stayed in the family. When Dave Hedlin and Serena Campbell, Ottesen’s uncle and aunt, took over the farm in the 1970s, they initially focused on growing hybrid cabbage for seed, peas for frozen processing, cucumbers for pickling, and fresh market cauliflower. As the markets and industries they were working within began to consolidate, the couple began to add more direct-to-consumer offerings. They built the now-iconic roadside stand right off the roundabout as you drive into La Conner and sold strawberries, sweet corn, and greenhouse gomatoes to local customers.
When Ottesen began working for his aunt and uncle, he was mostly on the sales side, running farmers market stalls and managing business relationships.
“My farming trajectory kind of grew up with the farm,” he says, explaining that as the organic fresh market grew, so did his involvement with the farming side.
Photograph by Anne Godenham
That was 17 years ago, Ottesen points out—nearly two decades of hands-on farming and business experience, plus Riske’s years of experience working in the seed and organic farming program industries, and a graduate degree in business management from Presidio Graduate School for Ottesen. All of which aided the couple’s decision and ability to lease the farm stand from Hedlin and Campbell for a trial year in 2023, and then to make the leap to starting the transition process in earnest.
“We’ve taken tons of different courses on farm business, farm finances, marketing, HR—all kinds of stuff,” Riske says.
“The largest stumbling block for new and beginning farms is finding that land base to operate on,” Ottesen points out. “So we recognize the privilege we had in that respect. And so it was a matter of having that background to take a run at it that trial year, to see that there was enough growth potential in that business to make it profitable.”
After they decided that they wanted to take over, it was time to figure out how to structure that transition.
Photograph by Anne Godenham
“[There were] so many meetings,” Riske says, “so so many—and we’re not done. There’s many meetings ahead of us, because we’re in a slow, rolling transition. Some farms, they transition and it’s done. They buy the whole thing. We’re more complicated, because they are not ready to be done farming yet, and we’re not ready for them to be done farming yet. And so we utilize resources between us that help both farms be sustainable and profitable, but also kind of keep everything stable for our employees, keep equipment functioning, [and] keep markets stable.”
The two families are making the transition one step—and one crop—at a time. Hedlin and Campbell continue to own and operate Hedlin Farms, and at the end of each crop cycle they sit down with Riske and Ottesen and let them know which crops, if any, they no longer want to grow. Then the younger generation purchases the crops that fit in with their business, Hedlin’s Family Farm, which includes the farm stand and also sells into restaurants and retailers through Puget Sound Food Hub. The two businesses share resources and wisdom, and they also have a non-compete agreement to ensure their business activities remain complementary to one another; they both produce organic wholesale produce, but they grow different crops, and Hedlin Farms continues to produce seed crops, grain, transplants, and greenhouse crops as well.
Photograph by Anne Godenham
“We’re all here where we are today because Dave and Serena took the farm and innovated and adapted to the markets and conditions and opportunities that they saw,” Ottesen says. “The thing that undergirds it all is that sense of stewardship and that sense of shared values.”
“I think as long as we continue the family philosophy on soil health, land health, environmental health, sustainability,” Riske says, “those are all things we consider as we make each farm decision, each purchase decision. And we can’t always do the best thing, but we’re always trying to get as close as we can.”
“As Dave likes to say,” Ottesen adds, “‘we’re just trying to make new mistakes every day.’”
Photograph by Anne Godenham
So far, the results are delicious. The farm stand heaves with bright, beautiful produce every summer, in addition to a selection of products from outside vendors.
“We carry largely what we like to eat,” says Ottesen, “things that complement what we’re already doing, right? So if we’ve got Hedlin Farms tomatoes in there, and lettuce, it makes sense to have the [Water Tank Bakery] bread, and if we can find a local bacon…it lets us be not just a flagship for our own farm, but a flagship for the valley, for what’s what’s grown here and made here, and it’s really a privilege to be able to kind of show that off to locals and to visitors.”
Hedlin’s Family Farm’s La Conner roadside stand is open from late May through the end of October.
12052 Chilberg Rd., La Conner, hedlinfarms.com
