General
Diamond-S Farms, Whitman County
Diamond-S Farms in Colton, Wash., was homesteaded by Art Schultheis’ great-great-grandfather in 1874. After working for and with his parents in the 1980s and 90s, Schultheis and his wife, Sue, took over the farm in 1995, and they are now getting ready to hand the reins over to their own…
Double Z Farms, Lincoln County
In Lincoln County, Tom Zwainz and his son, Joel, are the fourth and fifth generations to farm the family’s land, some of which dates back to the 1860s. They grow mostly wheat and canola now, but they’ve grown malt barley, peas and chickpeas in the past. Joel’s path back to…
Kelley Brothers, Grant County
For five generations, Chuck Erickson’s family has been farming north of Hartline, Wash., in Grant County, but they haven’t always grown wheat. “Originally, we were orchardists. At the homestead where I live, there were 18 acres of assorted fruit trees. They had to bucket water to the trees by hand,”…
Harvest 2022
Every year, as June rolls into July, excitement starts to build across Eastern Washington for thousands of wheat farmers and their families who are stewards of more than 2 million acres of land. Nearly all of Washington’s wheat farms are family owned and operated, and they are often passed down…
Another harvest, another trip around the sun
Whew! Another year around the sun that we have harvested and seeded! Now it’s time to wind down and watch the wheat grow. As my late dad would say, “It’s time to round up all the scrap iron and put it in one pile,” which meant getting all the farm…
UW faculty field tour
Teachers generally do the educating, but last month, a group of University of Washington (UW) faculty members found themselves on the other side of the desk when they visited Sen. Mark Schoesler’s Ritzville farm to learn about the Washington wheat industry. The visit was part of UW’s Faculty Field Tour…
Where WAWG started
Nowadays, the Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG) is the main organization dedicated to legislative advocacy for Washington wheat growers, but it wasn’t always that way. Fourteen years before growers first met under the WAWG banner, it was the Washington State Farm Bureau (WSFB) that was performing those duties. In…
Growing a new kind of crop
Have commodity farmers become so efficient that they’re hurting themselves and the rural communities that they live in? Finding ways to add value to a crop could bolster the bottom lines of both. “We are producing more than we ever have before, and we are doing it cheaper than we…
From Peace Corps to hard-core soil conservationist
Founded in 1878, Lanefield Farms is located in southeast Lincoln County a few miles north of Sprague, Wash. Chris Laney is the fourth-generation owner/operator of the farm. Laney took the reins from his father, Bob Laney, in the 1970s. The farm was started by Laney’s great-grandfather, William Gaffney, who came…
Honor tradition by making new ones
Traditions. We all have them. From Christmas traditions, to wearing the winning game socks (religiously) in a high school Friday night football game, to flipping aebleskivers every Sunday morning for the family. People love their traditions, and it’s no surprise that farmers have their own. When I was farming with…
