AGNEW — It’s obvious why they’re here.
Christy and Kelly Johnston love farming — and each other.
The couple’s six-year-old farm is one of the stops on Saturday’s tour de fields, aka the 10th annual Harvest Celebration.
The Johnstons’ 7.5 acres are, in a word, dazzling.
Scarlet-skinned apples bend every slender branch on every tree.
Surrounding them are vines loaded with fragrant Chanterais melons, snow peas, blueberries and 30 kinds of tomatoes.
Alongside those sweets are the potatoes — not as glamorous, but with evocative names. Inca gold, butterfinger, Peruvian purple are among three dozen varieties thriving under Johnston Farm’s surface.
Then come peaches, cherries, apricots, plums, black beans, amaranth, quinoa, oats, peanuts and poblano, jalapeno and habanero peppers.
And the kitchen garden, a spring-green plot dense with carrots, celery, beets and basil, occupies the farm’s west side.
Visitors to this farm, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. year-round except January, might think rich soil made its hundreds of crops happen.
That would be incorrect.
The Johnstons’ composting, weeding and determination are what made the ground fertile.
In 2000, they started from scratch when they bought what was a clay-heavy hay field.
Farming here “is a lot harder than you would think,” said Kelly, 47.
Then he chooses a different word for the farming life: “It’s challenging.”
“[But] He’s got the vision,” added Christy, 51.
The Johnstons have been married 17 years, and have two children, 10-year-old Nick and 14-year-old Sarah.
They farmed someone else’s land in the Edmonds area, and spent a decade searching for their own spot.
Today they say they’re still figuring out which fruits and vegetables people like — and what they will buy at organic-produce prices.
Walking with the couple among the rows, a visitor can’t help but notice the gentleness with which they treat each other.
And the fruits of their collaboration — and experimentation — beckon: watermelons, honey-scented flax, deep-violet eggplant, snap peas that squirt sugar onto the tongue.
But as Kelly said, none of this came easy.
Thistles and dandelions are relentless — Christy jokes that she’d like to host “you-pick weeding” — so the Johnstons are collecting compost and straw mulch.
“Our goal is to become self-sustaining,” Kelly said.
