Kai Ottesen
Kai Ottesen, Member Spotlight, October 2011
Although Kai Ottesen works on his family’s farm – his journey to farming is an unusual one. Kai grew up in Juneau, Alaska where food (save fish and a few seasonal blueberries) arrives on a barge after three days at sea. “There is just a whole different standard, a whole different starting point regarding what food looks like when it finally makes it to Juneau,” says Kai. After completing a degree in English and Environmental Studies, Kai decided he was happiest with work that challenged his body as much as his mind. With that, he set off to join his uncle and aunt, Dave and Serena Hedlin of Hedlin Farm, as the fourth generation on their family farmstead. As Kai puts it he decided to “just go farm.”
Were you ready to farm when you got to Hedlin?
I moved down here in the summer of 2006 without a lot of preconception. I had a vague sense of what was involved weeding, moving pipe, cutting cabbage from visiting on summer vacations and holidays. I’ve learned pieces of the operation season by season and year by year.
What are you doing on the farm nowadays?
My role has morphed into some of things that I am good at. My main responsibilities now are sales and marketing, both wholesale and farmers markets. I’m proud of the working connections we’ve made with people. Our work with the Skagit Food Coop is a great example. We’d been certified organic for a couple years but we hadn’t done a blessed thing with the Skagit food coop – but we ended up with a vast quantity of cauliflower one year and they liked it and we started selling to them. And now, they are probably our single biggest customer. Those kinds of connections have been really fun to make.
We also hear you dabble in pigs.
Kevin Mores, who worked at Hedlin, grew up in his grandparents butcher shop eating all these great dried meats. One day he picked up a pork belly from Lopez Island and made pancetta. Serena cooked it up with Swiss chard and balsamic vinegar. As an on again and off again vegetarian, that was it, I had no idea meat could taste so good. So Kevin and I talked to each other, and we got into raising some pigs. We raised four pigs – we didn’t know where we were going with it, and we may still not – after that first year, we applied for a business loan on credit – it was as much to go through the motions and see what that was about as anything. And now we are up to 17 pigs.
What piece of farm equipment would you rather not go without?
My favorite piece of farm equipment – it would be the little Monosem vacuum seeder – because that is just a dream. You can get your plant basing just exactly as you want it, your depth just as you want it, quick to swap out – it’s just a remarkably accurate and adjustable machine.
What is your favorite crop to grow?
When it comes together, I’d have to say cauliflower. I think because it’s so damn difficult, so if you can get it right, you feel like you can get just about anything right.
Five years in, do you still consider yourself a young farmer?
Yeah, absolutely – I’m not 30 yet. Anyway you measure it – I’ve got too much left to learn to be old.
Any advice for farming newbies?
I guess I would say just tap all the resources you possibly can. Go to conferences. Ask your neighbors questions, get to know your neighbors. I didn’t come here with a farming background, I came here as an English major who liked the idea of farming. Sometimes the things that you believe going in become true, but sometimes you have to completely recalibrate. Go in with an open mind and be ready to learn and be ready to acknowledge when you’re wrong.
Kai will present at the 2011 Annual Conference on business planning for the beginning farmer. Learn more about Hedlin’s Family Farm here.