Cultivating Connections — Family’s Heritage Becomes New Venture to Help Farmers
Taken from West Sound Home & Garden – April 4, 2019 – Featured, The Garden – Comments: 1 Text by Suzanne O’Clair Photography by Molly Shurtleff
Newcomers and longtime Kitsap residents alike can overlook some of the most treasured local assets: the hard-working farmers and their land. Tucked in here and there on back roads are families who have been in West Sound for generations farming the land, growing food and figuring out how to make farms survive as times change.
Allen and Nikki Johanson’s farm grew out of this heritage. Nikki Johanson’s parents bought their farm on Clear Creek Road in 1949 from Conrad Peterson, who produced eggs — lots and lots of eggs — as a commercial operator. They continued with a smaller egg production but let the egg business go when Johanson introduced hogs and cattle to the farm in 1979. When the couple inherited the farm in 1987, she cleared and cultivated more land, and added basic vegetable farming.