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About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (March 13, 2015)
March 13, 2015 CapitalPress.com 7 Farm gives its customers the produce they want By SARAH KICKLER KELBER For the Capital Press Triple Crown Blackberry vines are trimmed back for the winter at Fordyce Farms. Photos by Sarah Kickler Kelber/For the Capital Press Raymond,left, and Graham Fordyce of Fordyce Farms east of Salem, Ore. tober. Fordyce bakes as well, and a kitchen was added in 2010. The farm’s baked goods are available at the Salem Sat- urday Market year-round and at the store when it’s open for the season. Following the customer has also meant many changes to the farm’s crops. “The problem with large- scale agriculture is that you’ve got to sell a lot of it,” Fordyce said. “I can afford to grow small quantities because I sell direct.” Alongside their tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini, beans, apples, plums, strawberries and other produce, you can also find black currants and sweet gooseberries. “Black currants are unique- ly horrible tasting,” Fordyce said. “But they sell like crazy to our Russian customers who turn them into juice, which, as it turns out, is uniquely deli- cious.” “We grow lots and lots of other things now,” he said. “The store makes it possible to sell small quantities.” Graham Fordyce, Ray- mond’s eldest son, manages the store, as well as helping with the harvest and every- thing in between. “Almost all the berries we harvest are sold through the store and U-Pick,” he said, “but about half the blueberries go to the Willamette Valley Fruit Company.” They’ve been adding more foods to sell to customers at the store, such as grilled sau- sages and milkshakes made with fresh berries. They’ve also added nursery stock to the list of things they’re sell- ing, and opened up their dis- play garden to events such as weddings. “We also have a pumpkin patch and corn maze in the fall,” added Graham, noting that this will be the farm’s 14th year offering those at- tractions. But, Raymond Fordyce noted, “strawberries are the most important because peo- ple eat more strawberries than any other kind of fruit that we grow.” Ag & Industrial Tracks Dual Rims, Hardware, Tires & Hubs Flotation Tire & Wheel Sets Tire Sealant PSF-PLUS High Performance Tires, Wheels & Tracks Bill Schendel (503) 990-3637 Creating Solutions for Growing Needs Serving Northwest Farmers Since 1980. S15-4/#7 Many things have changed since Fordyce Farm opened in 1959, but one has remained constant: strawberries. They started with 6 acres of strawberries each year, some of them set aside for “U-pick” starting in the mid- 1970s. “In the ’70s, my father decided to dedicate more of the strawberries to U-Pick,” said owner and operator Ray- mond Fordyce. “He put me in charge of that when I was 9. So I’ve been doing the same job for almost 40 years, and I’m not yet 50.” Not everything has re- mained the same, however. Fordyce said his father was “a standard farmer, growing for canneries and seed com- panies and so on.” But he considers himself a “retail farmer.” “I sell direct to the public, not to wholesalers, but to cus- tomers,” he said. He’s developed this philos- ophy by following those cus- tomers’ lead. “First, they wanted straw- berries. Then blueberries. And they certainly want rasp- berries even though raspber- ries don’t grow well here,” Fordyce said. “Then, as some of our customers grew older, they wanted already picked fruit, so we needed a fridge.” In 2005, they built the store that sits on Sunnyview Road, open May through Oc- Fordyce Farm Owners: Raymond and Annette Fordyce Where: 7023 Sunnyview Road NE, Salem, Oregon Contact: (503) 362-5105 Online: www.fordycefarm.com, on Instagram @fordycefarm Crops: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, toma- toes, pumpkins, corn and more Farming since: 1959 Acres: 60 Available: At farm store starting May-October and at Salem Satur- day Market November-May S15-5/#18
