Farmers, fishermen, and families gathered at Hazel Blue Acres on September 8 for the second and final part of our “Tales of Two Rivers” film festival.

“It dawned on me as I was listening to the panel responses last night that we got really lucky in this effort to have such amazing participants,” said Lindsey Desmul, Sustainable Lands Strategy Communications Group co-chair.

The films highlighted at the film festival told the stories of individuals’ connections to the Stillaguamish River basin, whether through farming, fish, or floods. “It's hard to disagree when you're hearing a personal story from a neighbor about their lived experience,” Kari Quaas, Snohomish Conservation District Community Engagement Project Manager, added. The videos were produced as part of a Digital Storytelling project with Sustainable Lands Strategy.

The videos featured were as follows:

A Plunkers Day on the River — Jerry Brekhus
What Can One Person Do? — Ben Curley
Church Creek - Don Bayes and Laurie Devereaux
Stillaguamish Chinook: A Future? — Curt Kraemer
Perfect — Christi Bell
Dr. Bill — Morgan Ruff

Morgan Ruff, a Tulalip Tribes employee, dedicated her video to Terry Williams, who she described as a mentor. Williams was an advocate for salmon and passed away in July 2022.

“Our experiences are bound together, and we truly hope to be able to bring more training opportunities like this one to our integrated floodplain work,” Kari said.

What’s Next for Sustainable Lands Strategy and Agriculture Resilience?

We will be deep in the writing and editing process for the new FarmFishFlood.org website that will provide a more general framework about the collaborative work of Sustainable Lands Strategy and groups like ours. This website will include elements of listening, watching, exploring, and learning. We cannot wait to roll it out later this year!

Through another grant, we will also begin work on a companion video about the floodplain similar to Lifeblood and Changes Are Coming.

We are hosting at least one more farm tour this fall to share the agriculture resilience practices that are being rolled out within Snohomish County. Keep an eye on our website for more details about this farm tour! In the meantime, the Agriculture Resilience Plan is being moved to action thanks to funding support from Floodplains by Design and other National Estuary Program Near Term Action (NTA) grants to help develop an index of floodplain health.

“We will continue to synthesize the voices of our coalition into advocacy to attract more funding to implement projects on the ground and tell more stories,” Kari said.