Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Nichols.
Hi Aaron, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
This is our 12th season farming on this land. Before we moved here, I had farmed for others in upstate New York before returning to Oregon to farm here.
When our farm started it was an abandoned nursery – the land was very compacted and nearly impossible to grow food on. But the soils are some of the best in the world and, with years of care and cover crops, we have rebuilt the soil and the farm into a very productive vegetable farm.
We are primarily as CSA farm. That stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it means that folks subscribe for a season and pick up vegetables – either at the farm or at a farmers market each week. Our CSA members get a discount over what they’d pay at the market, they get to come to the farm to pick flowers or see where their food is grown, and they get a real sense of community with their farmers. The farm gets consistency and much of the money early in the season when we are spending on seeds and labor. But, more than that, it builds connections between those of us who grow the food and folks who eat it. Our members really care about farming and farmland and are there to help us when we need to advocate to protect farming in our area. They are understanding when a wet spring means a slower start to the CSA. It builds a kind of economy that we all want to be a part of in a time when many things are impersonal.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There are always struggles farming! Even very experienced farmers have a lot of on the job learning on new land (where does the water sit, what fields are good for winter production, how far up does the creek flood, what pests are already on the land). And there are always new problems or challenges. Farmers experience the changing climate a lot more directly than many – we’ve seen entirely new species of pests move in as the winters warm up and our once predictable weather patterns are far less predictable. The heat, though not the problem it is in many vegetable growing regions, is much more significant meaning we have to take care of ourselves as we work on the farm.
But, that said, we’ve had a huge amount of support over the years. Our model of farming means that I get to communicate with our customers every week, at least by e-mail and often in person. As the CSA has grown (we started with 35 members and are around 550 now) we still see the real support we need to keep farming in terms of understanding and being willing to commit to a season of farming.
I am also blessed to have amazing, long term employees. Many folks have worked here for multiple seasons, some of them going on ten years. The knowledge that our amazing farmers bring to the business is also very sustaining and helps us adapt to the many challenges of farming.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Our farm is Stoneboat Farm, we grow vegetables primarily for a CSA but also for a few busy farmers’ markets (you can find us at the Hollywood Market on Saturdays and the Orenco Station Farmers’ market on Sundays) and some wholesale vegetables for amazing clients like Grand Central Baking and Hot Mama Salsa. We grow a huge variety of veggies and are often experimenting with new crops. Our CSA members get a lot of amazing carrots and potatoes but can also try agretti or orach – something you likely won’t find anywhere else!
We are one of the biggest CSA farms in Oregon with about 550 members in the summer and around 300 in the winter (we grow veggies year round!). We’re really proud to be providing food to so many people and very thankful that those folks support us in caring for the land and making a living.
We also partner with a lot of local farms and producers to bring fruit, kombucha, fish, meat, eggs, local grains and breads, honey and more to our CSA for folks to add to their CSA. We’ve built a network that helps keep dollars in the community and lets folks purchase amazing products from people they know!
We grow all of our vegetables without any pesticides or herbicides and use organic practices though we don’t certify our farm as organic. We are creative about keeping pests off the veggies – often covering crops to keep the beetles out or buying specific beneficial insects to keep populations of pests down. We came to a pretty degraded farm and have been building the soil ever since with compost and cover crops (crops we grow to feed the soil, not sell). As we’ve taken care of the soil, it’s done an amazing job of producing more veggies on the same amount of space allowing us to grow our farm.
What’s next?
We are very proud of where we are and are pleased that we can feed so many families. That said, we are looking for more land to farm – a difficult prospect in our part of the state. While some of the worlds very best soils are all around us and many of them are being only lightly farmed or not farmed at all, the pressure from speculators hoping to sell out to data centers has made the price of land unaffordable. Apart from the work of farming, it’s also incumbent on us as farmers to make sure that the land is protected so I have advocated to keep our area in productive farming and not paving it over.
Pricing:
- CSA full share – $935
- CSA Half share – $560
- CSA Fruit share – $255
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.stoneboatpdx.com
