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CapitalPress.com
Friday, March 5, 2021
Grass seed at heart of this seventh-generation farm
By GAIL OBERST
For the Capital Press
al Pres
it
/For the Cap
Gail Oberst
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ar Monroe
allory, Ori
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grass seed
Marion County sheriff was
coming to arrest him the next
day. Albert saddled up and
rode out that night, leaving
his wife, Ellen, with eight
children to mind the farm.
They never saw him
again, and the farm fell
into foreclosure. This fam-
ily farm might have ended
there except that Albert’s
father, George, a farmer and
20179 Main St.
St. Paul, OR 97137
503-633-1111
www.ErnstIrrigation.com
S223656-1
MONROE, Ore. — The
Humphrey-Nusbaum fam-
ily has farmed in Oregon for
more than 150 years — rely-
ing on seed crops for much
of the last century.
So, it’s not surprising to
find a few horse thief bones
rattling among those of good
honest folk.
“Albert was the black
sheep of the family,” Orin
Nusbaum said of his great-
great-great-grandfather,
Albert Humphrey. That
black sheep nearly ended
what became a seven-gen-
eration run on the grass seed
farm near Monroe.
As the story goes, Albert,
the farm’s founder, returned
from a cattle drive to Canada
with several horses of ques-
tionable origin. He kept them
hidden on the farm until one
day a neighbor told him the
Young O
rin Nusb
Courtesy
a
Monroe
when he um began tilling of the Nusbaum fam
his paren
was nine
il
.
ts’ fields y
in
banker, bought
the farm back. He eventually
left it to his grandsons, one
of which was Orin’s great-
great grandfather, George
Humphrey.
George farmed half the
place until he retired. His
sons, Fred and Carl, and
his daughter, Grace, and
her husband, Frank A. Nus-
baum, took over farming
on the property. The Nus-
baum boys, Earl and Her-
mon, eventually bought out
their Grandpa George and
the rest of the original prop-
erty that had been sold out of
the family.
There have been a host
of honest challenges for
the family that today grows
more than 2,000 acres of
grass seed and other crops
on the original land.
Orin, 41, his wife, Mandy,
and Orin’s father, Frank, 67,
and mother, Sharon, now
farm together. Orin man-
ages the farming operation,
while Frank focuses on the
seed cleaning operation and
marketing.
Early blooming seems
to run in the family. Orin
cleared a blackberry-cov-
ered 5-acre patch when he
was 11, planted it to annual
ryegrass, eventually earning
enough to buy his own
tractor — a ‘56 John Deere
80. By the time he was in
college, Orin was growing
grass seed on 350 non-fam-
ily acres he had leased in the
area. In 2003, parents and
son joined their farms in an
LLC partnership.
Orin’s son, Van, 12, has
been driving the auto-steer
tillage tractor since he was
9 — automation his father
calls “a game-changer.” For
the past few years, it has
been the father-son Orin-Van
team that does the bulk of
the tillage.
Mandy drives combine
during harvest, and until he
passed last year, Mandy’s
father, Steve Fanger, also
helped on the farm.
The Nusbaum farm also
runs an Angus-cross cow/
calf operation overseen by
Sharon Nusbaum. Sharon
gets a little help from her
granddaughter, Mallory, 6.
Nusbaum farms in past
generations and present have
tried every crop and live-
stock possible on land that
Orin describes as “… among
the wettest in the Willamette
Valley.”
On the hillside red Jory
soil, the family for 30 years
grew Christmas trees, clos-
ing out that crop two
years ago and admit-
ting they now enjoy
the holiday down
time.
In the valley’s
Waldo and Dayton
soil, the family grows
and processes forage
grass seed — currently
tall fescue and ryegrass,
in addition to a little
clover.
The generations raised
cattle, dairy cows, sheep,
hogs, angora goats, horses,
hay, oats, wheat, corn and
clover seed, but since the
1970s have settled into
grass seed’s ups and downs,
over the years specializing
in forage seed, as opposed to
turf types.
“The second-best cash
weed crop in the Willa-
mette Valley,” Orin jokes. In
his lifetime, he’s seen seed
prices range from 10 cents a
pound to 50, sticking by the
forage seed for its relative
stability — for now.
The family since 1980 has
processed its seed, selling
both open and proprietary
varieties, including their
own “Herdsman” Tetraploid.
The original mill was pieced
together in 1980 with equip-
ment and has been updated
through the years.
Does Orin ever regret his
decision to be a farmer, made
when he was younger than
his own son is now?
“I never aspired to any-
thing else,” Orin said.
His family is still young,
but Orin’s hopes for the
future of grass seed are
reflected in his work.
He is a member of the
Oregon Tall Fescue Com-
mission and the Oregon Seed
Council, and a past mem-
ber of the Oregon Ryegrass
Commission.
In 2019, the farm
was honored as a Cen-
tury Farm by the Oregon
Agricultural
Education
Foundation.