Farms
OF thE FuturE
CAMAS COUNTRY MILL AND FOOD RESILIENCY
IN THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY
By Rachael Carnes
o understand the future of the Willamette Valley as a food-producing
region, it’s a good idea to look at its history. And to get a good look at
its history, you have to go back about 50 million years.
Before the Pacific Northwest as we know it was formed, a series
of volcanic islands known as the Siletzia Island Chain sprouted up,
forming the backbone of what we now think of as the Coast Range.
Flash-forward 10 million years, and “the Siletzia block was
accreted onto the North American Plate and covered with a thick pile
of sediments,” says Leland O’Driscoll, a research associate at the
University of Oregon’s Department of Earth Sciences.
The birth of the Cascade Volcanic Range established high grounds to the east, leaving a
topographic trough now known as the Willamette Valley. Especially susceptible to erosion,
the unstable volcanic and sedimentary rocks were whittled down by tributaries, trickling
minerals downhill into our area over millions of years.
Now set your time machine to 14,000 years ago. A glacial mass dams a river valley in
western Montana, producing a large lake. As the glacier begins to retreat, it releases the
water from the lake. This happens again and again as the glacier advances and retracts.
The Great Missoula Flood, actually a series of more than 70 floods, was a wild
geological event that ripped a chunk of glacier from its moorings and sent an enormous
river of accumulated topsoil and mineral deposit throughout the Columbia Plateau and into
the Willamette Valley.
So why look to the past?
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January 26, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
Because as we move forward, with ever-increasing populations and widening growth
boundaries — and as we become increasingly dependent on food sources from outside our
local area — this resource, the Willamette Valley as a fertile cradle, a place where food
sources can and should be nurtured, becomes all the more compelling.
DEEP ROOTS
I’m sitting in the cozy Camas Country Mill Store & Bakery off Meadowview Road, just
north of the Eugene airport, on a bright, cold day.
The place smells wonderfully of baking bread, and the counters are stuffed with cookies,
scones and muffins, all made from Camas Mill’s wholegrain flours. Sue Hunton, a retired
sixth-grade teacher, is telling hungry patrons about today’s homemade soups.
Sue’s husband, Tom Hunton, has worked the land since he was a boy.
“My dad had an eighth-grade education,” Tom Hunton says. “Mom went through high
school, but from 14 on, dad was self-reliant.”
Tom Hunton’s father, Everett Hunton, and his wife, Ellen, grew up in Harrisburg.
“Mom is 93, and she still does our books, and she goes to the post office and the bank
for us every day,” Hunton says. “Her parents were Danish. And now, politically, socially,
philosophically, we’ve come full circle. My great-grandfather was a baker in Randers,
Denmark, and our millstones come from there.”
As a lifelong farmer, Tom Hunton has seen firsthand the changes in the area, and he and
his family have been no small part of that adaptation.
Photos by Todd Cooper