The Farm
Pitchfork & Crow is a small certified organic farm, heading into our fourteenth year of growing vegetables for our CSA community. We are a husband and wife team who grow a variety of vegetables, valuing open-pollinated varieties and local seed sources.
After 3 1/2 years of leasing farmland in Stayton, Dayton, and Lebanon, Oregon we were able to purchase our 15 acre farm in August 2012. The farm is located just north of Lebanon, Oregon, about 40 minutes south of Salem.
The Farming
Our growing practices have been certified organic by Oregon Tilth since May 2010. At that time we also certified the 2 acres of rented ground we grew on that season. We certified the Lebanon farm upon leasing it in 2011 and continue to be certified by Oregon Tilth now that we’ve purchased the land.
We never use synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides in our growing practices. Also, prior to leasing this new property we tested for persistent pesticides, such as DDT and Dieldrin, and the tests came back clean.
We look forward to actively managing this 15 acre farm into the future. We plan for rotating vegetable families through the fields, so as to avoid allowing pests to build up in a single location. We also add fertility to the soil with annual liming and by working in composted manure and other organic amendments as needed. We currently use a clover/oat mix for cover cropping through the winter, love buckwheat in the summer, and are always exploring other cover crops and green manures.
We also manage roughly an acre of established fruit trees on the farm including many varieties of apples, pears, and plums. We’re learning more about orcharding and cleaning up the orchards including pruning, thinning out trees planted too closely, and establishing manageable ground cover.
The Farmers
We do not see ourselves as experts, but we are farmers!
Carri has a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources Management from Oregon State University and Jeff has a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Alabama. Jeff moved to Oregon from Alabama in 1995, and met Carri, a lifelong Oregonian, in Corvallis on New Year’s Eve of 2001.
While living in Corvallis, Jeff worked with people with disabilities and earned a Master’s degree in Special Education at Western Oregon University. After five years of teaching, he transitioned to full-time farming in 2010. After a year of working for another local farm, Oakhill Organics, where he gained invaluable farming experience, Jeff is now focusing solely on Pitchfork & Crow!
During college, Carri worked for the Forest Service as a Wilderness Guard in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness and later for the Bureau of Land Management mapping backcountry trails in Nevada. For 8 1/2 years, she worked as a GIS analyst, making maps for a software company. She happily transitioned into full-time farming in January of 2013!
Inspired to grow food and community by our past CSA farmers at Oakhill Organics, we started Pitchfork & Crow as a passion project to get us out of the office and get our hands in the dirt. The beginning of the farm now feels like a lifetime ago after more than a decade of learning the ins and outs of small-scale organic farming. We continue to learn and improve and feed our CSA members as many organic vegetables as we can manage to grow.
Although we do not hold Horticulture degrees and are definitely not experts, we are passionate about growing food for our local community!
Our goal is to provide fresh, organic vegetables while cultivating a lifestyle in harmony with nature and our values of respect for labor, craftsmanship, and community.
