Sean C. Morgan
A local couple who operate an organic farm in the Sweet Home area are part of a campaign promoting farmers markets throughout the Willamette Valley.
David Landis and Anita Azarenko, who own and operate the La Mancha Ranch and Orchard in Sweet Home are pictured on a Highway 34 billboard east of Corvallis, part of a $110,000 advertising campaign, including radio, Internet and billboards, to increase consumer awareness and patronage of farmers markets. The campaign is partially funded by a $68,650 grant from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, with other funds provided by 51 farmers markets.
Landis and Azarenko run a farm in the Ridgeway area, raising apples, cherries, peaches, apricots, hazel nuts, hay and timber, along with cattle and sheep. They experiment with new crops regularly, including temperate lemons, asparagus and new varieties of the fruit they already grow, on the 160-acre farm, which is on a land grant owned by Gustav Krueger in the late 1800s.
The farm’s name is taken from the story of Don Quixote, Landis said. His father, James, a retired physician, named the farm when he moved to Sweet Home in 1967.
“(Don Quixote) saw things in a positive light and didn’t give up when things got tough,” Landis said. His father came to Sweet Home from SmithKline Pharmaceuticals in Philadelphia, Penn. and became the medical director for public welfare in Oregon while operating the farm. He died in 1978. His mother taught at the Oregon College of Education, now Western Oregon University.
“Dad wanted to raise cattle or something,” Landis said, and the family started a cow-calf operation, raising calves and selling them at market. The small-farm situation didn’t really pay the bills.
Landis married his first wife the year his father died, and the couple kept the cattle, sheep and timber going. He married Azarenko, who was a professor of horticulture at Oregon State University at the time, in 1993. By then he had half a dozen cows and was working as a building contractor, earning his license as a finish carpenter, working across the Mid-Valley until about two years ago when he went full time on the farm.
“(Azarenko) asked me if I ever considered raising fruit trees or nut trees,” Landis said. He said he hadn’t. He enjoyed working as a self-supporting contractor. “I said, well, I don’t know anything about it. I never considered it.”
She had considered it though, and suggested apples. They started an acre of apples, and they started organically farming.
“I think there’s too many chemicals in our environment,” Landis said, based on what he had been reading. He wanted to be certified organic. He had already taken the steps, if not gone through the certification process, with cattle.
There are two ways to raise beef, by pushing them hard in a feed lot or by pasture finishing them and avoiding grains and confinement. He started that in the early 1980s.
Feeding on grass, cattle are ready in two years, he said. “The meat’s better for you. We liked it better.”
He questions just how many chemicals are used in production, he said. “I just question how much of it is really in our food. I just tell people, I don’t like it. I’m not going to eat it, but you just make your own decisions.”
The high costs for certification have kept him from certifying his beef organic. Rather, he markets it as “grass-finished” and provides beef to about 19 or 20 families each year, mostly in the Corvallis area because in rural areas like Sweet Home, many others raise their own beef.
Landis and Azarenko have 19 acres of fruit and nuts certified organic, and it’s a challenge dealing with the pests, weeds and disease without chemicals, especially on the west side of the Cascades with all of the rain. They have installed two high tunnels, a sort of open greenhouse to help control the rain. He is able to harvest cherries earlier under the tunnel and is growing three varieties of apricots there.
“We focus on high quality, so we cull a lot of fruit,” Landis said. When he runs out of his best cherries, he pulls out the number-two cherries, for example. Customers ask him why they say “number two” and not “number one.” Landis explains that they aren’t the best of his cherries, and the customers tell him they look just as good as those they find at the grocery stores. They fly off the tables at Corvallis at $6.50 per pound or $12 for 2 pounds.
To help out, they employ Leslie Van Allen of Corvallis full time and Malachi Fisher of Sweet Home part time. It’s 14-year-old Fisher’s first job, and Landis said he is ahead of his age, working hard and well.
“Malachi is just incredible,” Landis said.
Landis loves working full time on the farm too, he said. He quit carpentry partially because the economy tanked, but also because the farm always required a lot of work. Meanwhile, Azarenko has become the associate dean of the graduate school at OSU.
Landis said people refer to him as a workaholic “but it’s not a job – it’s a way of life.”
Few jobs are as satisfying as raising and producing a healthy product for somebody, he said. Farmers market is a long day, but he never dreads it.
“I get really excited about these farmers markets,” Landis said. He gets to meet and chat with all kinds of people. “It’s fun. It really is a lot of fun.”
They take their harvest to the markets in Portland at the Portland State University campus, about three months each year, and to Corvallis. Portland is a big market, Landis said, so Landis and Azarenko were surprised to be featured in the advertising campaign. Other farmers featured in the campaign are Jamie Kitzrow of Spring Hill Organic Farm in Albany; Sarah Hucka of Circle H Farm in Dexter; Tom and Patreece DeNoble of DeNoble Farms in Tillamook; and Charlie, Vicki and Chris Hertel of Sun Gold Farm in Forest Grove.
“We want everyone throughout the Willamette Valley to visit their local farmers market, meet the farmers who grow their food and support the Oregon economy by buying locally from these farmers,” said Trudy Toliver, executive director of the Portland Farmers Market.
Katy Coba, Oregon Agriculture Department director, said the block grant is intended to boost the demand for organic farmers’ products.
“We hope these funds help celebrate our farmers, boost the sale of specialty crops in the Willamette Valley and potentially increase the servings of Oregon fruits and vegetables consumed by market shoppers. As demand increases, our farmers can reliably diversify and expand their specialty crop production, attend more and larger markets and ultimately prosper.”
Landis said he loves working at home, with so many different things to do. Even now, he can’t get every project done as quickly as he’d like. The scenery is amazing. From his elevation, on the south slope of Marks Ridge, he can see the weather systems develop.
“Nature is such an intricate show,” he said.
“I just wouldn’t want it any other way,” he said. The best part of it is “being your own boss and raising food for somebody.”