By Bill Reynolds
La Conner Community News
Once a year, La Conner students welcome those who tend local farm fields to campus for a series of interactive displays, exhibits, and presentations.
It’s all part of the school district’s annual Agriculture Day celebration, which reminds students that the La Conner Flats and surrounding Skagit Valley boast some of the most fertile soil in the world and support a robust and uniquely diversified farm-based economy that preserves a much-envied quality of life here.
The 2026 edition of Ag Day at La Conner Schools, held on Oct. 7, featured tours of farm equipment, opportunities for students to meet with local growers and area ag services leaders, and even a chance for them to get up close and personal with a real live cow.
“It’s always a really great day,” said La Conner School Board President Susie Deyo, of nearby West Shore Acres, and whose director district encompasses the rural area outside town.
Deyo noted that La Conner teachers had planned agriculture-related lessons that day.
Middle school teacher Scott Novak, who earlier in his career worked summers for Nalley’s — a historic American food brand — at their former La Conner area station, assigned students to write essays describing what they saw during Ag Day.
At La Conner Elementary, teacher Cammy Alumbres tied Ag Day to her students’ unit on Washington state studies.
“It’s a great way for students to learn,” said Wylie Thulen of Pioneer Potatoes, who manned one of several information tables in the middle school gym.
“They come up and ask all sorts of questions,” added Thulen, a La Conner High alum.
As an added bonus, Thulen gifted potatoes to students throughout the morning. La Conner Elementary Principal Marcus Knowles took note.
“I love seeing a kid with a potato in hand, treating it like having gold in hand,” Knowles said. “They’re kind of like, ‘now, what do I do?’”
A wide range of presenters participated — from beekeepers and blueberry growers to Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland and Genuine Skagit Valley reps to Skagit County Historical Museum Director Jo Wolfe and Washington State University Skagit County Extension Director Don McMoran. And many others.
Each October La Conner Schools hosts Ag Day to provide K-12 students a first-hand look at how local agriculture supports the community. For some kids, the experience can be quite eye-opening — most notably when a farm animal relieves itself on the grounds.
When nature called for the cow at this year’s Ag Day, a group of elementary students took off on a dead run with loud shrieking.
That was just one example of why Ag Day lessons are among those that La Conner Schools students won’t soon forget — if ever.
Bill Reynolds is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.
