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Since the mid-1990s, residents have tried to slow development as strip malls and housing subdivisions marched northward from Seattle. Skagit County residents pay extra taxes to buy development rights from farmers, and a charitable group, Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland, warns that "Pavement is forever."
Many conservationists have also decided that farms are better than pavement, and say they are willing to balance preservation with profitable land use.
Mr. Morse lives here and even volunteered to spend two days last spring selling Mr. Hedlin's produce at a farmer's market.
"We don't know anything about farming," Mr. Morse told the farmers recently over coffee and sandwiches at the Rexville Grocery. "You guys are the stewards of the land. You tell me what to do."
For this experiment, each farmer's 70-acre parcel has been planted with a mixture of clover and grass to enrich the soil. While a third of the land will be periodically flooded for birds, a third will be fenced as pasture for dairy cows, and the rest will be mowed and otherwise left alone.
Farms here are gradually shifting toward organic production because consumers willingly pay much more for organic food. As another incentive to join Farming for Wildlife, the 210 acres will be available for organic use after three years.
Mr. Mesman will start producing organic milk with his 225 Holstein cows next spring. Mr. Thulen sees a big market for organic potatoes.
"In my time, I can see our little valley was farmed very hard," said Mr. Thulen, whose 2,000-acre farm was begun by his grandfather in 1867. "That pendulum has swung to get the ground healthy again."
In an ideal world, the Nature Conservancy would love to persuade farmers to add wetlands to their regular crop rotation. To that end, the group's scientists will analyze soil samples to assess whether shallow flooding might improve soil fertility as much as cow manure and mowed grass do.
In a similar project on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Northern California, farmers reported better potato yields and fewer nematodes, a harmful worm, on land that had been purposefully flooded. But scientists say this may not apply in the Skagit Valley, where the soil has a higher clay content.
Whether or not they end up with more productive land, the three farmers seem pleased to try something new without financial risk.
"If 100 years from now," Mr. Hedlin said, "there are healthy viable family farms in this valley and waterfowl and wildlife and salmon in the river, then everyone wins."
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