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Hi everyone - intro and about my farm in Mulino, Oregon USA

Hi everyone, I'd like to introduce myself and my farm.

My name is Joanne Rigutto. I have a very small farm in Mulino, Oregon, USA. We're located in the northern Willamette Valley of Oregon, about 15 miles south and a bit west of Portland, the largest city in Oregon.

Here are the specs on my farm and the business I'm building around it -
Size - 6.67 acres located right on highway 213 in Mulino, Oregon
What we produce - chicken eggs (free range, aka range hen eggs) ~ emus (the bird in my avatar is our foundation hen Sheila who turned 18 this year), emu meat, emu oil, emu eggs for eating and hatching, boer and boer cross goats for meat, milk (milk replacer for orphaned animals), brush control ~ purebred and partbred Lipizzan horses ~ culinary herbs, vegetables, greens, fruit and berries ~ some limited amounts of vegetable and herb starts ~ vegetable seeds (seed exchange through various networks).
Growing season - year round

Production methods - I start the bulk of my own seedlings in a small greenhouse with a capacity of 560 4" pots per lot. Seed for this year's production is primarily from other sources, both local seed suppliers and national seed suppliers. I use some seed saved from our own crops every year and I'm working on increasing my capacity for that. The greenhouse is being expanded to tripple its capacity this year, and I'll be adding worm bins in order to produce worm castings and worms for sale onfarm. This along with onfarm composting of horse manure, vegetable waste and other plant material harvested on farm will enable me to create my own seed starter from primarily onfarm sourced materials for next year's production. I'm also researching the possibility of incorporating aquaponics, which integrates hydroponics with aquaculture, to expand the farm's production capacity and variety of foods that I can offer my customers.

I use integrated pest management, and while I try to use organic farming practices when ever possible, I also use some conventional farming practices as far as weed and pest control go. I do a lot of hand pulling of weeds and recycle all of that plant material either directly back onto the ground it was pulled from, or it goes onto the compost pile.

Marketing - I sell produce, eggs and meats from the farm direct to consumers through a non-prepaid subscription CSA. Essentially the way I've set this up is that I have a 2 tiered list, with a set number of slots for tier 1, and an unlimited number for tier 2. People can sign up for the list on a first come first served basis. The first 6 who signed up were automatically placed on the tier 1 list, the rest on tier 2. People on tier 1 have first right of refusal for what ever is available that week, and the people on the tier 2 list can select from what's left over. Anything left over after that each week will go to the produce stand that just opened about a mile from the farm. The fellow there, while selling produce sourced both locally and from out of state, is trying to expand his locally produced offerings as quickly as possible. He's also the primary source of the vegetable waste that goes into my composting operation. I'll probably be getting 100-200 lbs of vegetable trimmings and discards each day.

I have an online store where my customers can log in to their account and select the types and quantities of produce, meats, eggs, and plants they'd like to purchase each week. Then I pick the morning of delivery day, and I deliver to their door. My current delivery area is the Mulino/Molalla area. Molalla is a small town about 5 miles from Mulino. I normally deliver on Saturdays, and people outside the delivery area can come pick up their orders on Sundays. I'm seriously considering adding one delivery day during the week and offering delivery to employees at their place of employment. There's an outfit in Portland that organizes deliveries like this. They provide a hookup for local farms and businesses so that those businesses' employees can order from the farm and then the farm can deliver to multiple people at work during the employees' lunch break.

Here's a list of what I'm producing this year
Online farm store
The Little Homestead Farm main website

I'm also currently working on another marketing project to help promote local farms and the infrastructure that keeps those farms up and running. I'll post about that next.

Tags: Joanne Rigutto, The Little Homestead Farm, farming, livestock, marketing

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Comment by Joanne Rigutto on July 9, 2009 at 3:07am: Regarding right to farm issues, there are some as areas are urbanized. Here in Oregon, there are pretty strict land use laws in place to keep land from being developed outside of a city's urban growth boundary. Other states deal with land use and zoning very differently than Oregon. For instance, I think it's a lot easier to develop land down in California or even to the north in Washington state, than it is here in Oregon.

I'm currently sitting on a policy advisory committee for my county (Clackamas), regarding long term land use policy, the goal of which is to identify land that the cities can expand into over time, and lands that should be protected from development in order to preserve peoples' right to farm and to protect certain natural features that are deemed valuable, for various reasons, to the region.

That having been said, there are some issues with urbanization around farms. As land around farms become urbanized, land values go up, and along with that the tax rates. Sometimes the taxes on the land become prohibitive to a farm's profitability. There are also water issues. Last year a vegetable farm in Washington state lost its water rights. The water rights were seized by the city near the farm and given to an industrial development that needed them. The justification was that the city would make more in fees and property taxes from the industrial park than they ever could from the farm, and so the taking was in the public interest, and therefore a legitimate use of emminent domaine, a process where the government can seize your property to further the public good. People who's property is siezed through this process are supposed to be compensated for the taking, but from what I've seen of the compensation received in other cases, the compensation that people usually get isn't for the real value of the property taken.

There are also other issues with land being urbanized around farms, such as increased traffic, littering and vandalism, etc. Not always, but sometimes.

Comment by Joanne Rigutto on July 9, 2009 at 2:37am: Hi Deborah,

As far as subsidies go over here in the USA, those are geared more towards certain types of commodity crops than acreage. The big 4, as I understand the subsidy system, are corn, cotton, rice and wheat. There has been some talk of subsidising what are termed 'specialty' crops, which would be fruit, berries, vegetables, etc. but since I don't participate in any subsidy programs, I'm not sure how that came out. I think some were trying to get some type of subsidy program for those specialty crops into the 2008 farm bill, but I don't know how that turned out.

One thing many people would consider a type of subsidy though, would be a lowering of the tax rate on property that is not already zoned as exclusive farm use (EFU), where that property is being used for farming. The property I'm on is zoned rural residential (RR) and is taxed at a higher rate/$100,000 of value. If I can show a certain ammount of gross sales per acre, then I can get the property tax rate lowered to a certain level for those acres placed into agricultural production. I don't have to show a profit, just a certain minimum of gross receipts for sales off the property. I think the minimum is $300/acre, which our sales of hen eggs would just about cover.

It's my understanding that on the big 4 commodities crops I mentioned above, that the price supports that the federal government put in place are still there, but considering how high corn and soy were last year, I don't know if they were needed last year.

I think small acreage farms could be elligable for government subsidies generally associated with the big farms, but I don't know if it would be worth the hastle of trying to get them. A lot of the small farms I know of, especially the ones my size, are selling retail to the consumer, so we're selling for much higher prices than a larger farm selling wholesale to a distributor or store.

Comment by Joanne Rigutto on July 9, 2009 at 1:46am: To Ray Jamieson,

Thanks for the compliments. I'm not an organic farm, although I do follow organic principles where ever possible, especially where the food plants and animals are concerned, but I don't, for example, use organic feeds.

I've had a lot of people tell me that you can't farm on small acreages. These are mostly people who either don't farm at all, or only know of farms/ranches who's farm/ranch type does need large acreages to operate, such as cattle ranches, grain farms, etc.

Comment by Deborah Willis on July 8, 2009 at 9:57pm: Hi Joanne, further your comment on profitability re farms, do all farms, small and large receive the same benefits from govt subsidies? or are the larger farms favoured?. I would think that the 'right to farm issues' would be huge too as urban populations encroach. Deborah

Comment by Ray Jamieson on July 8, 2009 at 6:25pm: Hi Joanne,
I think you deserve some congratulations! You are producing so much from such a small acreage really, and you are an example to everyone at what can be achieved! Doing it organically too - amazing! Good on you, as we say here!
Ray Jamieson

Comment by Joanne Rigutto on July 6, 2009 at 10:54pm: Thanks for the info Steve. I'll check it out.

Comment by Joanne Rigutto on July 6, 2009 at 12:00am: Thanks Deborah. One of the things I'm doing in addition to starting up my small farm is to work on a marketing system out here to promote other small farms and the support infrastructure that needs to stay in place to enable those farms to keep functioning and stay proffitable. Right now, in the USA there are some serious issues with proffitability in farming, especially with the larger farms and ranches. Also, there are some serious land use issues we're dealing with in my area, with a lot of pressure to develope smaller acreages especially those near to urban areas. I think that if small acreage farms are able to stay proffitable, that will encourgage those property owners to keep those acreages open, and they act as an important buffer between the urban/suburban areas and the large acreage commercial/commodities farms. I'll be writing about that in the next few days.

Comment by Deborah Willis on July 5, 2009 at 10:23pm: Hi Joanne, what a wonderful job you are doing!!

Comment by Joanne Rigutto on July 5, 2009 at 2:39am: Thanks Steve,

I'm really interested in learning how farms and other orgainzations are operating and marketing over in you're neck of the woods. I'm really glad you set up this site and looking foreward to learning from everyone here.