Family farm fills stand with organic foods
Minto Island Growers' bounty goes straight from fields to consumers
| Minto Island Growers farm stand offers a variety of locally grown organic produce. / Dee Moore | Statesman Journal freelancer |
From the road, adventurous buyers are greeted by the sight of cornstalks waving in the breeze and workers picking produce out in the field.
It's likely one of those workers is Elizabeth Miller co-owner of Minto Island Growers, and she will be harvesting the fruits of her labors. This bounty will go straight from the field to the farm's produce stand.
The farm follows the National Organic Program guidelines for all of its vegetable production and received its organic certification from Oregon Tilth earlier this year, Miller said.
All produce is grown from seeds that have not been genetically modified.
| Elizabeth Miller, co-owner of Minto Island Growers, and volunteer Peter Isaacson of South Salem weigh a customer's produce. / Dee Moore | Statesman Journal freelancer |
"With farming, you just have to farm to know it. We mostly learned this kind of farming by doing," Miller said.
Sun glitters off the white canopy covering the farm stand. Under its roof are tables laden with freshly picked, organically grown fruits and vegetables, a palette of colors and a plethora of choices. Potatoes, carrots, beets, cantaloupe, peaches, peppers, tomatoes, shallots, chard, onions, garlic, the list goes on and there is often more than one variety of each veggie.
There is even a food cart that specializes in homemade food prepared from produce grown on the farm. Additional food items come from other local farms, dairies and meat companies.
Miller and her partner, Chris Jenkins, had hoped to open the farm stand earlier this summer but ran into quite a bit of red tape trying to meet the city's and county's requirements for food sales and service. Now with the complications out of the way, Miller hopes to open the stand earlier this next summer.
"It was a learning experience," It was "five, 10 times the work and time" than she had expected.
Even though she grew up on a farm, Miller didn't realize and how time consuming running a farm is.
"There is always more to do. It's a really complex business model."
When she isn't working in the fields she is marketing, managing employees and volunteers or working on the books, accounts, licensing, fees or county and city ordinances. She also updates the website or the Facebook page.
On top of this, she has to remain focused on farming.
"We need to continue to grow enough and good quality products," she said.
Miller isn't alone with this burden; Jenkins is just as overloaded. But the couple love what they do.
"I've been kinda preparing for this all my life," Miller said.
She learned early on what hard work really is. From the time they were in the eighth grade, she and her siblings were expected to spend their summers working on the family farm.
"I learned a work ethic," she said.
Miller and Jenkins met while attending Colorado College in Colorado Springs. She earned her degree in anthropology, and he earned his in environmental sciences.
"When I got out of college I wasn't quite ready" to return to farming, she said. Instead she worked other jobs until she could no longer deny the pull of the land. When she realized what it was she wanted to do, she and Jenkins decided to take an internship at an eco-friendly farm in California.
"I needed to go away and learn how to farm from a different farmer," Miller said. Now she is putting a lifetime of knowledge to work.
Miller and Jenkins didn't have to start completely from scratch; they are leasing the farm from her parents, the owners of Mount Jefferson Farms.
But although all the ground work had been laid, Jenkins and Miller had to begin the arduous process of converting the farm to organic growing practices. They did get a head start thanks to Miller's father, who had begun to allow fields to lie fallow and plant cover crops.
In addition to growing produce, the couple also have a nursery production specializing in native plants, and they conduct forestry research, grow mint and experiment their own unique blend of tea grown on the farm.
Copyright Statesman-Journal 2010
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20100915/COMMUNITIES/108160009
No comments:
Post a Comment