#GSVMemberMonday Feature

Established in 1947, Bow Hill Blueberries is the site of the oldest family-run blueberry farm in the Skagit Valley. Originally founded by Severn and Ane Anderson, the farm changed hands in 2008 to Harley and Susan Soltes. When the Soltes family took on the farm project in 2011 from the farm’s founders, they focused on rejuvenating the soil and transitioned the historic fields to become Certified Organic. Fast forward to 2020 and siblings Ezra Ranz and Audrey Matheson, along with their respective spouses, Emma and Andrew, banded together and purchased Bow Hill in November of 2020.

Today the family-owned farm specializes in heirloom berries and has over 4,500 bushes that are a combination of Rubel, Stanley, Jersey, and Bluecrop. Ezra oversees the farm & field and works with long time field manager Pablo Silva. Emma is in charge of finances and operations, Audrey works on marketing and product development, and Andrew is in charge of photography, website UX/UI, events, and tours.

Open year round and available nationwide

All year round, Bow Hill Blueberries employs around ten people full and part-time to help in the fields, create products, work in the store, market, pack and ship products nationwide through their online webstore, and pitch in with art projects and ideas. During the summer harvest, as many as twenty-five adults (and sometimes kids!) hand-harvest and pack 60,000 pounds of berries. Bow Hill’s berries are featured in their signature Organic Heirloom Blueberry Juice, a winner of a 2019 & 2022 Good Food Award. Other delicious items offered include organic blueberry confiture, organic blueberry marinade and salad dressing, organic heirloom blueberry powder, organic heirloom pickled blueberries, and more. If you’re looking for some recipe inspiration, check out Fresh Flavorful’s Blueberry Lavender Simple Syrup recipe featuring Bow Hill Blueberries!

The farm store in Bow is open summer hours from M-Th 10-4, Sat. and Sun. 10-6 and is participating in this year’s GSV Farmstand Fresh program. Along with Bow Hill’s usual delicious ice cream treats from Lopez Island Creamery featuring their organic blueberries, a new dairy-free sorbet with their berries will soon be available. U-pick for 2023 is slated to be open on weekends in a few weeks. Frozen blueberries are also available locally at the farm store.

We recently asked Audrey of Bow Hill Blueberries, what her family’s favorite #SkagitGrown fruit or vegetable was:

“We would have to say our blueberries are our favorite, but running a close second are Silva Family Farm’s strawberries & raspberries that they grow over at Viva Farms and also Boldy Grown’s carrots.” says Audrey.

Looking to the future

The Ranz’s & Matheson’s goals are to continue creating harvest memories and connections to farm fresh food and to tread as lightly on the earth as possible — to put back in what they take out. They mulch heavily to retain and add nutrients into the soil, hire local beekeepers and sell their organic blueberry blossom honey, only pick the berries that are ripe and leave the rest to ripen, use an organic fungicide spray made predominantly from oregano leaves (If you happen to be there on a day when they are spraying, it’ll smell like you walked straight into an Italian restaurant!), use underground drip irrigation — compared to sprinkler irrigation — as it uses far less water, and many more sustainable practices. The family is also hoping to add an educational component to u-pick as well so that visitors can learn a little bit about organic farming and the importance of native pollinators etc.

Bow Hill Blueberries has been a long-time founding member of Genuine Skagit Valley. We’re grateful for their efforts in bringing nationwide awareness to Skagit County agriculture and helping to care for this special place that we all share. We can’t wait to see what the future holds at Bow Hill Blueberries. We’re certain it will be delicious! 🫐