It’s the winter season in the Sumner Valley, which means the tender and fresh hot house rhubarb soon will be for picking at Leslie Farms.

In a few weeks, workers at Leslie Farms will start to harvest the new crop to ship to grocers back east.

“We load up our greenhouses in the winter time, and then we harvest,” said Nik Leslie, a fourth-generation farmer, along with his father, Ron. “There is about a month growing time. We have a lot of seasonal help that comes back every year, and a good group of guys that stays with us all year round.”

In 1919, Nik Leslie’s great-grandfather, John Brown Leslie, came from Scotland with his brother, leaving their wives in the Old Country in search of rich soil. Nik Leslie said he suspects the two brothers liked the good soil in Sumner and decided to settle and harvest the land. Their wives and families soon followed.

Since 1919, Leslie Farms has been a well-known purveyor of rhubarb. In recent years, as costs of business have increased, farming and distribution have become a challenge.

“It’s a competitive market,” Nik Leslie said. “A lot of guys in it are price-gougers. They try dropping the price (of rhubarb) to get their product sold. It makes it tough to make a living when the competitor is more willing to dump the price to get the sale.”

To help control costs, Leslie Farms is part of a larger co-op of rhubarb farm operations called the Washington Rhubarb Association.

“With the association, we can buy cardboard boxes (for product shipment) in bulk with all the growers and keep the costs down,” Ron Leslie said.

The co-op comprises six growers, including four in Sumner. Leslie Farms is the largest operation in the co-op, which has its offices on the Leslie Farms’ property. Nik Leslie handles all the co-op’s sales.

In today’s market, Nik and Ron Leslie said they compete for market share with Poland, Scotland and the state of Michigan.

Leslie Farms delivers its rhubarb back east by semi-truck, the cheapest delivery method. Yet  the Leslies say even those costs are spiraling up.

The farm does a good business during the summer, when it ships about 20,000 to 30,000 boxes each season. A cardboard box of rhubarb is 15 pounds for a winter crop and 20 pounds for a summer crop.

There is a science to rhubarb farming. Nik Leslie said rhubarb grows very well in Sumner because the region receives a high level of precipitation, and the soil is very rich.

“We have to do certain things to maintain the richness of the soil,” Nik Leslie said. “We take soil samples to make sure it has the nutrients it needs to grow. Whether its iron or PH levels are off, we try to get it to where it’s supposed to be. We do custom mixes of certain fertilizers depending on what the soil needs.”

For the hot house rhubarb in the winter, Ron Leslie said he keeps warm air flowing through each of the five greenhouses. The temperature is kept consistently at 50 degrees.

“If it’s too hot, it’ll take the color right out of the rhubarb,” he said.

The brighter the pink-red color, he said, the more valuable the stock is to buyers.

Ron Leslie said the challenge he faces from a business front stems from over-regulation of Washington State farms. The biggest thing that can hurt a farm these days is liability insurance claims, he said.

Leslie Farms has never had an L&I claim, and to continue that record, Ron and Nik Leslie plan to do mechanical operation of equipment and repair on their own.

In addition, the myriad business taxes in the state weigh heavily on the Leslies, as does the recent increase of minimum wage to $9.04.

“The over-regulation of farms in Washington is a challenge,” Ron Leslie said. “Having regulators regulate us who don’t know about farming at all is a big problem.”

Reach Puyallup reporter Andrew Fickes at 253-841-2481 Ext. 313 or email at andrew.fickes@puyallupherald.com.