During my last week in Oregon, I visited several brilliant small farms in Portland and Multnomah County.
First stop was Josh Volk at Cully Neighbourhood Farm. Josh is a long-standing member of the organic farming community in the Portland area, and author of several books on small scale farming practice and farm tools. I met Josh in my first week in Portland where we chatted seed over a pizza at Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, and he was kind enough to follow up with a tour of his current farm setup in the Cully neighbourhood of northeast Portland.
The site is an urban farm approximately 0.9 acres, nestled in the heart of the neighbourhood on land owned by the Trinity Lutheran Church & School. The farm feeds around 50 members during the summer months, and 25 throughout winter via a CSA scheme. Cully Neighbourhood Farm caters for the needs of the residents of the area – offering small shares of seasonal produce that are an ideal amount for an individual, couple or small family.
Almost all the crops grown at Cully Neighbourhood Farm are open pollinated, and Josh saves seed where he can. Josh prefers heterogeneity in the crops he grows, as the scale of the CSA means it’s much more efficient for him to do one planting rather than several successions. For this reason, having diversity within a crop is ideal. He looks for varieties that are likely to fulfil this need, Peace Seed’s ‘3 Root Grex’ for example allows him to offer beetroot over a longer season. He needs to supply something different to his customers each week, and this crop fulfils that in one bed, providing three phenotypically different beetroot from one sowing.
‘I realised at some point, it doesn’t really matter if everybody gets exactly the same thing, as long as everybody gets something decent. Having that realisation was very freeing.’ He makes it clear to his customers when they join that not every share is going to look exactly the same, there will be variation, but it will all be quality locally grown delicious produce.
It was clear Josh is committed to providing diversity to his customers, often something unique that they can’t find in the local store. He also seemed drawn to varieties that carried a story or had cultural or historical relevance to the Portland area. The seed of the sauce tomato he grows was originally given to him by a local pizza restaurant owner, who himself had been handed the seed in a paper towel at a fundraising event by someone who’s ancestors had immigrated here from Italy. They had carried that seed with them, bringing a piece of home. He had many similar anecdotes as we wandered the farm, and it seems he gets a lot of joy out of the seed saving process.
‘When I save my own seed, that is always the highest quality seed that I have, in terms of the vigour. For whatever reason, bought seed doesn’t match that. The chard I’ve been saving for 7-8 generations, I have seen it move in a direction. I’ve grown it multiple different places. With stuff that’s easy to save, it’s nice to have extra seed and it doesn’t cost more to have extra seed. It’s part of my fun, too’
As well as the crops, I was excited to see some of Josh’s tools and design principles in action at the farm. As we toured the site, Josh pointed out the ergonomic wash station, designed to limit back pressure, and the famous Farm Hands Cart – a simple bed-width frame with options to switch out multiple platforms, effective for most farm situations and of a size and structure that is easy to load. It can also incorporate rolling bed markers to enable multi-tasking. Cully Neighbourhood Farm was one of the smallest market gardens I had been to in a while, but it was no less abundant than larger farms. These smaller urban plots are just as vital for food sovereignty. Being placed so centrally within an urban community, these farms are important for providing locally grown food, for forging connections with the consumer, and weaving together the threads of seed production and culture. When I asked Josh why he does this work, he shared that ‘I love growing. It’s grounding work, and hard to imagine not doing it’.
After spending the morning at Cully Neighbourhood Farm, I headed south to visit Luke Maurer at Zenger Farm’s Furey Field site in East Portland.
Furey Field is a Winter CSA farm, offering fortnightly shares to up to 50 members in the local area between November and April, and it is one of the first CSA programmes in the state to accept food stamps. Zenger receives funding as a CSA Partnership for Health (CSAP4H) – a collaborative produce prescription programme that involves federally qualified health centres, farms, nonprofit organisations and academic institutions. CSAP4H holistically addresses issues of food access and community health while driving healthcare spending into local agriculture. CSAP4H targets areas of Portland where poverty and chronic disease converge: the produce grown at Zenger is distributed within the community by the healthcare providers, providing regular access to affordable healthy foods to residents. This is important equity work, and another example of these peri-urban farms providing a unique service to their communities, whilst strengthening food sovereignty.
As well as providing food for the community, the farm also offers volunteering and educational opportunities. The day I visited, Luke had several local people volunteering with him helping to weed the garlic. As the volunteers were set to task, Luke showed me around the farm, and we had lots of brilliant chats about folks I’d visited so far, and what he’d like to achieve in the future at the site. Like Josh, Luke values genetic diversity in the crops he grows. Being a winter CSA, he primarily needs crops that will survive a harsh winter. Uniformity is not a priority for him, what is critical is that the plants are winter hardy. Diversity, in this instance, is a huge benefit - if some of a heterogenous crop don’t make it through a harsh cold period, others might. He’s less likely to lose the whole crop if not every individual plant is genetically identical. A perfect example of diversity bringing resilience.
As well as cold tolerance, Luke has a big focus on flavour in the varieties he grows– he wants whatever he grows to taste delicious, as he knows this means the food will be more nourishing for the members. ‘An onion is not an onion is not an onion. I know the flavour difference’. They source a lot of their seed from small seed companies who prioritise culinary use, many of whom I have visited, or will be visiting, on my travels.
‘F1 hybrids, and seed from larger companies is consistent, but things are changing. We’re not trying to maximise, we’re trying to optimise.’
Luke emphasised the importance of sourcing seed locally and of bio regional adaptation, especially with the extreme swings in climate we’ve been experiencing in recent years.
‘Things are growing and adapting constantly, that is the way of life and evolution and this planet. The plant knows this place better. Anywhere we can be growing out diverse crops and giving them a chance to make seed. To be a repository for those genes that make plants adaptive to this place.’
It was brilliant to see these two very different peri-urban farms in the Portland area providing an important resource for their local communities.
My last farm visit in Oregon was to Tanager Farm in Corbett. Brindley and Spencer are in their 9th season of farming together, initially starting out their business with the help of the Headwaters Incubator Programme, they have been farming at their current site for several years. The day I visited, Brindley was off site, but I met Spencer for a tour of the farm and a chat about all things seed and soil.
Tanager are passionate about food justice, soil health and working towards equity in the food system. As stewards of the land, their priority is using an ecological approach that minimises inputs whilst maximising the health and nutrition of plants. They limit mechanical tillage, encourage life in the soil and grow a wide diversity of plants to support the whole farm ecosystem.
Tanager’s approach to farming is always evolving, and it was inspiring to hear how they are always looking for new methods and practices - experimenting to find what will work best within their context.
I was especially excited to see some of the Going to Seed trials. We have both participated in the Going to Seed online community and are interested in ‘adaptive farming’ - namely growing regionally adapted diverse populations. Tanager were 2024 recipients of the GTS Farmer Support Programme, which provides financial, technical and marketing assistance to production farmers who want to breed their own locally adapted crops. This has allowed Spencer and Brindley to start their own diverse populations on site and experiment with more adaptive farming methods. When I visited, there were several beds dedicated to these trials in the market garden, one of the main projects was based on the milpa style of planting using a combination squash, beans and corn.
The corn in the trial came from 3 sources: a purchased OP variety, a diverse population sent from Utah, and the same diverse population that had been grown out and saved by another local Oregon farmer last year. It was fascinating to see these crops, particularly the opportunity to compare the different seed side by side. It was very early days, but it was clear that the most healthy and vigorous plants at that point in time were the diverse population that had been grown out and saved locally the previous year. It made me reflect on something I have pondered for a while, and was summarised nicely by John Kempf in a recent Regenerative Agriculture podcast – ‘seeds are vectors for microbiomes’. Could these locally saved seed have brought with them a microbiome well suited to these soils, perhaps giving them a head start here at Tanager?
During my time at the farm, Spencer also showed me the fava bean flock, a population of his own creation which he hopes will cross pollinate and adapt over future years. They sourced as many different varieties of favas as possible to start this flock, seeking unusual varieties from small seed companies to combine as much diversity as possible.
Spencer and Brindley are also experimenting with more unusual offerings for their CSA members. They are running a trial of soup peas, growing multiple varieties together and looking for plants that grow well in their climate to provide an alternative source of protein, but that could also have a multipurpose as a cover crop. Spencer mentioned that they are particularly keen on the hyper tendril trait (seen at Peace Seedlings) for this purpose as it helps the peas support themselves in the field.
It was a brilliant afternoon spent wandering the land, and witnessing the enthusiasm for innovation that Brindley and Spencer both bring to their farm.
All three of the farms I visited are employing crop diversity to meet a very specific need that contributes to their success. From providing fascinating stories, to cultivating resilience, to inspiring innovation, diversity has a big role to play within each. It was wonderful to see how, with some creative thinking, small farms can provide unique services to their community and contribute to a truly local and diverse food system.