i’m here
to write
to farm
to spin yarn
to pick fruit
to not follow suit
to analogize
to proselytize
to take my morning shot of Yeezus
and play imaginary tennis in the orchard
to be still
to burn, flex, and rest
to mine time
to sit on the dock of Highway 228
breathing a concoction of oxygen and carbon
to tap in
to tap out
to plow the page with ancient symbols
the clouds are moving fast
i’m here
and that’s exciting.
Hi, I’m a designer from Oakland, California who has the great pleasure of making Oregon Country Farm my home for six weeks. I first met Serah when we studied at CCA together a number of years ago. Since then I’ve worked in design studios in the Bay Area. Over the last months I’ve felt a need to reconnect with my craft, particularly design, writing, and photography. So, here I am, the third musketeer on the filbert farm. Although the weather has been hot, and the days can feel long, working outdoors and getting my hands dirty is a welcome change from my life behind a computer. My personal work seems to morph and change regularly, similar to the greens in the raised beds and the blackberries growing on their vines. I am capturing my residency through photography and writing at designresidency.tumblr.com and invite you to follow as the adventure continues.
Fear is, without a doubt, the root of all evil. Some say it’s money, but money merely fights the fear of having nothing. The needy and the greedy succumb to fear. It is universal. No amount of gold or things or bling can stop fear. It will paralyze you. Fear dashes dreams. Fear kills crushes. Fear fakes the funk.
If we can minimize fear, we can approach freedom. You may have met freedom, but fear was just around the corner, telling you know you didn’t belong. The first time you spoke in public fear was jumping around and cheering and doing a whole fucking routine. Fear has a pretty decent set-up in your stomach, considering it’s been there for years.
Thankfully, I realized fear is our main foe years ago. I’ve let go and stopped caring about a bunch of shit. Life has been better ever since. Yet, there has been one nagging fear I’ve yet to face. In the grand scheme of things, it may seem minor, but my fear of snakes has had a major impact.
Every time I’m around Gabriel, one of Oregon Country Farm’s fine stewards, I think about Ecuador. That small coastal country in South America is my paternal homeland. And Gabriel sits atop a list of friends and acquaintances who’ve been to Ecuador. Each time I meet someone new that gets added to the list, I curse myself.
My Grandparents emigrated from Ecuador in the mid-1950s. Ever since I could remember adults making promises, I remember being promised a trip to Ecuador. It was mainly from my Grandma. My Grandpa could’ve cared less about the Old Country, he was too busy chasing the American Dream.
The promise was never fulfilled. (My Ecuador trip or my Grandpa’s Dream.) The next thing I knew I was graduating from university, evicted from the warm bosom of adolescence into the harsh world like a loitering drunk. It was early 2008 and I didn’t want anything to do with Bush’s America. I had to get the fuck out of the country, but where to?
Ecuador was the obvious choice, but there were no work visas. Did I really want to spend money on a six-week volunteer project and have to return so soon? My frugal father would never support that kind of reckless philanthropy.
Pull up your own bootstraps before you help my distant cousins with theirs, he’d say.
Alternatively, there was a six-month work visa for the United Kingdom. I chose the European adventure, not only because of the earning potential, but also because Ecuador sits in the Southern Hemisphere, where most snakes slither and dwell.
During my short time on Oregon Country Farm I toiled among the creepy crawlers. Sure, the Southern Willamette Valley is no Amazonian rainforest, but there are a host of earthworms beneath the soil. And as I weeded the gardens I observed and adored those friendly little hermaphrodites, which remind me of snakes, who I believed to be my mortal enemy. I reflected on that fear during my first stroll through the hazelnut orchard.
Later, out in the greenhouse, I got to thinking; why do I fear snakes so much? Surely, the media was to blame. Indiana-fucking-Jones. That suave archeologist! Thanks a lot Hollywood. Okay, there was that one time my friend Hunter brought me to his mom’s classroom and fed a mouse to her pet snake. That was gruesome. Either way, the fear is deep rooted. And like those pesky weeds, I need to pull the whole thing out.
It would be premature to say that I’m free of my fear of snakes. But I’m ready to face the fear. Because while I was on Oregon Country Farm I also contemplated the interconnectedness of life. All forms. The trees and the bees and the weeds and me.
A few years ago, during the existential crisis that sparked my curiosity and nurtured my nomadic nature, I spent many hours meditating on that idea. But this time was different. I touched the leaves, breathed the air, turned the soil, planted the seeds, peered into the holes, and inspected the insects. It hit me hard, like an apple falling from a giant Gravenstein.
We are all connected. Every one of us. Each bit of bark and starter seed. The homeless and the homemaker. The beast and the bug. The cobra and my conscious. We’re in this together. Coexistence. It’s not a dirty word. Let it be. The Beatles said that.
I’m going to Ecuador. I said that.
But I will never get to share my experience with my Grandma. She passed away the month before I came to Oregon Country Farm. For the last thirty years of her life she kept a vegetable and rose garden in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It wasn’t her father’s farm in Ecuador, but it was her own piece of land. Now her ashes will return to the same soil that once supported her award-winning flowers, like she supported me, and I support small-farmers and so on and so forth and forever.
Forevah, forevah-evah, forevah-evah? Three Stacks said that.
I have visited the Portland Zoo twice since my last blog post. Both times I liked watching the bears and seals the most. The most recent time, the bears were all sleeping. I don’t think they hibernate at the zoo, but that was my first thought while gazing on their big haunches rising and falling with each huge sleepy breath.
We haven’t really been hibernating all this time. We’ve actually been very busy bears, but I like the image of us awakening from a slumber filled with dreams of tomato abundance, excessive squash (which we’re still eating), a mighty Filbert harvest, and one c-c-c-cold winter.
Spring is upon us again and it has brought with it our inaugural-second artist in residence! Meet Zoe Minikes (5 word bio: Zoe draws daily and obsessively). She’s cookin’ something good here on the farm, but I’ll wait to unveil everything she’s been working on. One of the things I CAN share with you is our spanking awesome residency website designed by Zoe herself. Scroll down fast and then slow. We’re also so proud to be hosting Joey Grihalva (29 word bio: Joey Grihalva is a podcast host (“The Milwaukee Auer”) and journalist (of the radical first person persuasion) working on a lighthearted book about the philosophy and necessity of sustainability.Big things happening and dreams coming true!
I’ll be posting more about Zoe and Joey’s residencies, so don’t change that dial.
Zoe in her “studio” (our living room).
Joey in his “researching chair.”
boots and gloves and hats and stuff.
Gabriel planted four rows of tulips last winter and they are beautiful.
I told Zoe she could trim the Boxwoods out in front of the house and then one day I came home and found this little guy waiting for me.
These are potato cages. The idea is that as my potato plants grow I can keep dumping soil on them until the plant’s foliage reaches the top of the cage. It will continue to create tubers as it gets taller. At the end of summer I can harvest the spuds by simply opening up the cages at their seams, let the soil spill out and grab the delicious food! Hopefully it works.
rolley-polley vision (carrot starts)
We started tracking light patterns in our new greenhouse last month. That was when the sun was actually shining.
We’re proud to be growing seed crops for Adaptive Seeds again this year. What you see here: rutabaga, leeks, and some onion in the back.
Ed Fella is showing me new moods and styles and intriguing ways of communicating visually.
Dear soon to be hand-made/ man-made deities, thank you for Cascade hikes and Ed fella and Geoff McFetridge and Voodou. Thank you for making rosemary so oddly intensive to illustrate and thank you thank you for acrylics and allowing me to use them like a cognizant young artist instead of a drooling, bumbling excuse for a Neanderthal…and grant me patience thou deities of my subconcious!
with sweet sweet niesen crack love,
THE WHITE HARE
p.s. there is a magpie record cover and a far out mantle piece portrait a’comin’ so stay tuned!
After nearly 8 months of living in such a beautiful adventure-land, we finally went for a hike.
And they surveyed their land and decided it was good.
Jon in the slanted meadow.
happy.
the reward.
Hi Everyone! My name is Jon. I’m the resident artist for the next couple weeks here at Oregon Country Farm. I’m an illustrator /designer out here trying to boost my botany illustration skills while I work on a few commissioned projects for folks back home [Nashville, TN]. Oregon is just as beautiful as I remembered it! I’ve had such a fantastic time so far – learning how to care for all the varied life forms here on the farm while trying to draw a few of them. Since I’m self taught, I feel I need to pay my dues and focus on the technical side of drawing and painting via observation (at least for a short period of time) rather than follow my tendency to draw psychedelic imagined creatures and plants. So, of course, there is a bit of a learning curve that I have begun to climb. But I’m glad to do it! Whew! Alright here are some visuals y’all:
ground dwelling garden creature (done before arrival)
first observation with rosemary
I saw this plant in the garden and liked the colors
lil’ stationary type illustration
my job today: Transplanting these precious little Japenese Maples…so much Chi harnessed haha
My most beloved Japanese Maple baby
Once again, more than a month has gone by since we’ve put something up on this here blog. To no one’s surprise things have grown bigger, stronger, longer, fatter and juicier. Our apples are starting ripen and my new favorite pastime is walking through the orchard and taking bites off of anything that looks ripe. A symphony of flavors. The green beans are hanging long from the vines, ready for pickling. Almost every meal contains tomatoes, squash, and maybe black berries.
Last weekend brought another kind of abundance to the farm. We held our first annual Farm Stomp here on the farm. Three bands played under the canopy of the filbert orchard while local community members provided and roasted (on site!) goat meat, veggies dishes, berry pies, hand-made ice cream sandwiches and even freshly made soda (blueberry mint and peach – ridiculously good). The most common word used to describe the event since it has passed is ‘magic.’ And it truly was. It was inspiring to see these incredible musicians playing their hearts out beneath the branches that we carefully pruned and tailored over the winter. To see our friends donating their time and resources to provide food and drink reminded us of what an amazing community we live in. THANK YOU to everyone who came, enjoyed and helped. Please see our EVENTS page for photos
Some photos:
Gabriel sets a gopher trap while my favorite vehicle in the whole world stops by our mailbox.
Squash blossom.
Quinoa!
Quinoa and Calendula
Our first attempt at three sisters planting. Unfortunately we never got to the third sister so currently we’ve just got corn and squash in our nine mounds in front of our house. The third sister would have been some kind of been planted in the round between the squash and corn. There’s always next year!
Kale seed.
Waiting to be threshed.
Garlic flower. A volunteer.
custom trellis for green beans.
Beautiful pepper plants.
Cabbage.
Proud corn.
Grapes in the greenhouse.
This is what you get when you do something nice for us. Our friend dick has been buying our filberts and walnuts and selling them to friends in Corvallis, kind of like a promotions agent or marketer. We never asked him to do this yet he does. And so we thanked him in one of the only ways we know how.
Me and Gabriel’s mom Monica harvested all of our red potatoes. It was like digging for treasure while grunting and dripping with sweat.
Oregon Country Farm 