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.”
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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
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