 We have blackberries 30 feet into the trees we have I mean it was just consumed buildings Yeah, we there were buildings that we didn't know were there until weeks after we moved on what a two-seater outhouse no less They roam around and do chicken things what a chicken fight and they eat bugs and the seeds It's stuck on the other side of the fence falls into a hole. Those are the chicken things To be able to have someone who works off farm Yeah, help support my addiction to farming and enable me addiction Everybody welcome to the show. This is a show Well, it's a show about tenacity mostly because when people decide that they want to get something out into the world They want to share something with the world. They could be art music be a small business You're gonna start cutting people's hair. You're gonna develop the the the the the only oil They use to manufacture a particular type of screwdriver, which is a real thing And I don't know why I know that that's a real thing but if you're that type of person and You freak out and you're not quite sure what you need to do next and you make mistakes you fall on your face So this is a great show for you to watch tonight We will have blackberry bog farm on and it's three people started a farm You've got to give up so much of normal life to start a farm in Oregon And that's what they did and I'm excited to talk to them about it as always will also be drinking because that's what you do When you talk about up and tonight we don't have Jack Sanders with us and that's sad, but We have Sarah from Lady Jane and she's fantastic West y'all. She's been on the show before she's hilarious. I love her I'm so glad that she's with us Let's get cracking We're ready to go sounds good across the board everything's good. All right, cool. Cool. Hey everybody. Welcome to the show We got an exciting show for everybody tonight I'm really really excited to talk about mostly because I'm from Idaho and don't know anything about the stuff that we're gonna be talking About we've got the crew from a blackberry bog farm, right? We've got Scott and Bonnie and Andrew welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you guys are here. I do you First off tell me a little bit about the farm So the farm is it's 31 acres in Clatsop County, Oregon, which is where Astoria, Oregon is located Everybody knows when you say Astoria Yeah, yeah, so that's we're located about 10 miles from Astoria That's that's where we sell a lot of our chicken, which is one of the three main things that we sell on the farm So we do in the past. We've done poultry both chickens and turkeys We do produce we have three acres of produce berries and fruit trees And then we also do a nursery business which Andrew is primarily the lead on the nursery business And out of the 31 acres we use about a dozen acres. Yeah, it's a farm. It's been there since 1872 More or less the farmhouse was built in the 1884. What is the farmhouse where you live right now? The farmhouse is not where we live It's still standing. It is. We haven't had time to remodel it yet. Oh, so eventually you think you'll live in that house It was part of our five-year plan. Yeah We bought the we bought the farm five years and three days ago. Yeah, that's why she's mentioning the five-year plan She's letting you know. Yeah, we get there. Hey people. Yeah We went to look at this place, which is a whole story But he's out in the fields digging dirt and I'm standing in this old farmhouse like hoping the floor doesn't collapse going Oh, I want to live here and I'm taking soil samples 20 times during this process my brother was around on the farm as well We had no intention of doing whatever they were doing But they kept asking us like, you know, if if you think this is it really crazy Let us know because you know the electricity was turned off when they turned on the waterline Which is about a quarter mile long. They discovered that there was a leak somewhere in the waterline That was a quarter mile long. They didn't know where so it's like the waterline connected to the main waterline But somewhere in between there. Yes, there's no part We didn't throw in here is it had been abandoned for 15 years when we looked at the place So was it had been empty for 15 years? Yeah, completely. Yeah So to get back to the name of Blackberry Bog Farm, I said it's 31 acres, but we can only use 12 That's because the remainder is is wetlands. It's swamp. It's a bog Yeah, and in 15 years in Clatsop County, Oregon, if you don't do anything the blackberries take over wild blackberries We have blackberries 30 feet into the trees. We have I mean it was just consumed buildings Yeah, we there were buildings that we didn't know were there until weeks after we moved on what a two-seater Outhouse no less A two-seater outhouse covered in blackberry. Yeah, our son found it with an excavator when he just about fell into the the hole We had no idea it was there. Unfortunately, it was quick and you know what to do. Those blackberries are calling. Come here Sucking you in. Fall you into the two-seater outhouse. That was very nice. It had windows. It had windows It was all lined with feed sacks and flower bags, but you really have to like the person you sit next to you Good friends Like you're both together like hey, it's time. Are you filming it right now? And no one I care about that much They can wait but it was it's completely because because when you say the blackberries take over I'm like that's delicious Like I just oh no, I don't think of like an infestation type of thing You can't see 20 feet away. This is like you can't walk through them They're they're they're they're it's they're 20 feet high. They're they're impenetrable They're this big around and you can't like you're out there with the well with the blackberries are that big? No, no, no. The stems. The stems. I mean the thorns are probably you know half an inch long and if you fell in you would not extricate yourself You would not be able to get out. You would not be able to get out. You spent a day just trying to clear a path around the house through the blackberries What there's a whole basement we didn't know about because we kind of get to it because there were so many blackberries that From either direction Wait, so what is it? What is it like going so had that nobody had been in the house was the house empty when you moved in No, there's toothbrushes and toothpaste. We're still there. There was applesauce that was canned in 1985 So for 15 years the stuff we just said, yeah There's a freeze on the back porch. It had blueberries from 67 in it that were obviously not frozen at that point Yeah, they were kind of it was it was an interesting sugar in the sugar bowl. I mean it's it was really it was creepy that it is creepy I've always wanted to be a farmer I grew up in a farm country My dad and my granddad were farmers and life happened and this didn't it didn't come together and then things kind of came together really well and this We found this place and it needed a lot of work, but it was this blank slate We could do what we wanted to but we didn't really know what we wanted to do right So our first our very first summer there we did almost exclusively cut flowers And we have an elk herd that had kind of taken up residence on the farm in the 15 years that had been abandoned Yeah, and so we had we anything that we want to grow the elk like which is pretty much everything We have to put behind a seven-foot fence So we built seven-foot fence we grew cut flowers in it. We started doing a farmers market that almost exclusively cut flowers that first year and They went well, you know, we had some extra flower starts. We started our own seeds Piece of plywood in front of the window of our rental before we moved out And then we built one little greenhouse from pdc pipe and you know now we have six greenhouses And yeah, it's a different thing But I found that people also would buy the plant starts for the flowers It's like oh, oh, so the next year we got this idea. Oh, you know, we do some nursery things Yeah, but then that first winter as we're looking for markets and we're looking for places to sell things There's a food hub kind of organization there in clad sub county that yeah that hooks up chefs with farms Yeah, and it was a meeting it was february 8th I kept the notes because there was a new executive chef at fort george brewery in estonia Which is fairly well known through the northwest and you can buy the beer here. Yeah fort george beer and He's new he's only been there for about a month and he stands up to all those farmers And he says hey, I'd like to buy some local chicken does anybody around here raise chickens No I guess not yeah, so I went up to him afterwards and Changed your lives. Yeah changed the trajectory of the farm. I mean we didn't we didn't know what we wanted to grow And then we've had a chef come to us and say well pay to raise chickens for me. That's perfect. I'll give you money Yeah We the question was not can we raise them the question is how do you process them in accordance with state or federal law? I guess you can sell them to a restaurant. Yeah, because I can sell them to you as an individual That's easy to do again. Yeah, it's not easy to sell them to a restaurant. Yeah So we looked at different options for what we might do Do we put them into a trailer and cart them two and a half hours to the closest license? Right, right, right or do we start our own do we build our own? Oh boy. Oh boy. All right. Wait. Wait. Wait. Don't tell me yet. Okay. Don't tell me yet first Sarah This is good timing. We just talked about it. We just like some alcohol Now you're ready for now. We're ready for drinks. What are we what are we drinking? So this is a cocktail called the red dawn for the amazing Patrick Swayze movie It's got a little bit of lime juice some hibiscus Got some coconut cream Tequila and A little bit of mescal Garnish with a little bit of a coconut smile. I was gonna do blackberry, but I thought you guys were probably sick of that Here's some blackberries It's totally changed my perception of blackberries Like I grew up with raspberries where I would see wild blackberries in the Kind of in certain areas of the mountains and things like that But you guys have turned them into like the demogorgon like he's just like this tentacle monster. Oh, they're terrified It comes out and I can tell by your faces. Yeah, we got goats and um, we had these just massive I don't even know what to call them hills of blackberries. And so what we'd do is we had I think a 12 foot 2x6 that we would stand up on end and drop down into the blackberries so that the goats could climb up them And get to somewhat in the center And so this 10 foot board, I mean you'd have to do it from both sides because it would barely reach into the middle So it's just like a huge mass Using the goats like just put them in They loved it. They love blackberries. They make little trails for them. They do really? Yeah. All right. Well then cheers Cheers cheers Oh, yeah Tangy Yeah, it makes you want to be on a beach It's kind of like a coconut margarita. Yeah, okay, so Uh You get to the point. By the way, we're going to talk about why y'all are crazy. I still we got to come back to that Yeah, absolutely, but we got to get to that You Instead of sending them to a facility. Yes, um to be slaughtered You decided to build it ourselves. You built it. We built a we built a a chicken And I believe that the the the licensing term from the state of Oregon. Yeah Is a rabbit and poultry slaughter license rabbit and poultry. Yes. Yep. No way And so we built a licensed state licensed facility. Yeah, which means we can't sell interstate So we can't sell to watch right but we can sell within Oregon. Yeah, and we can do up to 20 000 birds a year You make it sound like we knew what we were doing. Yeah, we spent a lot of time working on it We spent a lot of time our chickens can walk they roam around and do chicken things and freedom rangers. Yeah, freedom rangers What are the we we we we raise them on pasture. Yeah, so they're out in the field. So those are real freedom rangers Oh, yeah, it's not like the let's just pull the like the little They go as far as they want. Freedom rangers. Yes. Yes Occasionally we'll have to go rescue one out of the woods Yeah, or on it gets stuck on the other side. Yeah, get stuck on the other side of the fence falls into a hole Those are the chicken things Because you like they go off and do chicken things I'm like, oh, they fight and they eat bugs and they eat seeds and flap around dust baths Oh, yeah dust baths with big holes and dust baths. I don't know anything. Yeah So when I met scott, I had never even gardened in my life. Yeah, I city kid city kid My dad was in the navy we lived in navy bases or close to a mile over the country I do remember when we were dating him mentioning that he wanted to To have a farm someday. In fact, we had a book that he showed me about what he wanted to look like So yeah about what he wanted to look like or what he wanted his life to look like what he wanted the farm to Oh, okay. I thought he was showing you pictures of him. So like no other farmers Look at this. This is what it looks like fox fire. Yeah, that's yeah, it sounded so simple I actually did one of my um undergraduate uh business because I have a business degree in business and I had done one of my Classes to build a business plan for this farm that he wanted. Yeah, no idea what I was doing at the time So he we've been talking about this at the point We finally found the farm had been what 28 years since we've met about that. Yeah And so we've been talking about it and we've had the five acres in silver No, but that was really truly a hobby like we were both working and we did the stuff on the weekends. Yeah So I had no idea. I mean one of my Earth's memories of us actually out farming was planting the flowers and I'm out I've gardened You know since we got married I'm out putting the plants in and tucking them in and wanting to water them and he's looking at me shaking his head He says bonnie this is not gardening and like what do you mean? You plant the plant, right? Yeah, he's like, no Pick mickle stick at it mickle stick This wasn't what I bargained for I want to make it all pretty and I want you know And I've got pictures of like, you know when you see the gardening shows and they've got the nice round gardens Yeah, they're gorgeous and he's like looking at me like how are we gonna run a rototiller up and down a round guy We had a lot of adjusting to do between my vision of living on a farm And scott's vision of farming. They're very different things Why would you want to do this like I mean To go into that life and that type of stuff like you've got you've got a masters You're going around the country you're teaching you obviously got something fine. That's totally cool Yeah, you could fully like Like did you ever have a moment like where you're like No, we should probably go back to what we were doing. No, never never never daily All right, this isn't even an exaggeration. Yeah, never no To me it's so much of a privilege because it's something I've always wanted to do Yeah, to be able to have someone who works off-farm Help support my addiction to farming and enable me in this this pursuit and enabling can be a bad thing Addiction enabling All right, keep going. Yeah But it's something I've always wanted to do and and even as a kid when I would work on neighborhood farms It's like this is this is great. I mean, I'm able to work outside I'm able to use I'm able to use my brain because there's a lot of planning There's a lot of strategizing from marketing, but also just how to how to work with things to get them to grow well We're still working on that. I mean, we've only been doing this for for five seasons. I mean, there's still a lot more learning to go But it's to me. It's a privilege to be able to grow things for my neighbors And to make that good food accessible. So people come to us. We started a csa last year So community-sported agriculture. So a basket of food half bushel people pay in the springtime It's our seed money literally and then every week So you have to grow you have to grow variety then Well, how many how many things do we grow and how many varieties of plants? Oh gosh last time I checked I have an xl spreadsheet He's got a lot. He's got I have a lot of xl spreadsheets last time I checked. Yeah, there were 700 Well, this is like last spring. Okay, there were 791 varieties varieties of things that you're growing that doesn't mean that doesn't even count like we have 200 and About 200 different varieties of dahlias, which is a cup flower. Yeah, yeah, yeah The google maps prompted us to open a pumpkin patch last year Wait, how did it prompt you to open up a pumpkin patch? So the local paper Um, it was doing a some sort of a special on how around halloween about where you could buy pumpkins Two years ago. Well three years ago now. Yeah fall of 2017 And so we had a little stand at the end of the driveway with just some pumpkins and a self-serve You could just put money in and take a pump. Yeah. Yeah, like maybe 15 pumpkins. Oh, yeah Somehow from that article google maps picked up that we sold pumpkins Oh, and though they had a pumpkin patch that we had a pumpkin patch. So the next year 2018 now Families showing up with kids all excited at our farm to go to the pumpkin patch and we're here horrible We're here. We have some blackberries It's like, oh this is so sad It's like a two-hour drive and they just typed into google pumpkin patch pumpkin patch It's like, oh, let's go sunday afternoon. Yeah, first thing blackberry by the farm. Yeah, it was so sad So then we started talking with um, one of the local feed store owners and somebody that had a lot right off of highway 30 And we're like, well, we could grow the pumpkins and kind of help run the pumpkin patch But we don't have enough parking or anything and yeah feed store owners like well, I've got parking So this last year we did a pumpkin patch with a kind of a community Pumpkin patch every weekend in october Yep, so I raised in sundays and we had some preschools come on weekdays and we probably had 3 000 people I know that there are people that are watching That think about doing this and want to do this and it's something that's really important to them To do the same sort of thing like what would you recommend? What would you what would be your advice? I've got an answer. I've probably got a very different one. So oh good. We'll get both Yeah, so um find find a find a patron find a supporter. Yeah, um someone who who has that same desire And can provide support which may include financial support or find a farmer who's getting ready to retire And team with them. There's an expectation Amongst at least farmers my age. I think that it's not just a job. It's a lifestyle. It is, you know, you're it's a It's a chosen profession. It's it needs to be a passion. You're not gonna It I would have trouble supporting someone Who came in and wanted to take over the farm and running it like a business is fine But to me it's more than just a business It's a lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah, you know that makes sense. What what's your advice? I think that's true except for I was there's so many things that surprised me one it you're all in Like you can't just and even just for us to get up here. Yeah, I mean Thankfully Andrew's got an amazing girlfriend who's house sitting for us because we cannot get away from the farm Well, house sitting means feeding the cows feeding the dogs Not like just laying there and taking pictures like farm life on instagram You're out at night with a headlamp on going through the rain to get the dog a check on the cows I mean, it's just I think I I didn't realize that like I think I had some sort of a vision of it being You know, oh, that's will be nice the season will be over It's never done. Yeah, and then I grew up where you got a paycheck So you went to work and you got a paycheck Well for farming we have to pay all this money out and then hope and pray that we're going to get it back plus a little bit extra Yeah And that's a really different way of living for a lot of people anymore Like you really had to just trust that that was going to work out Okay, and so part of being diversified that's nice is even because every year we have something that just does not work Yeah, we don't we aren't really susceptible to that for the most part because you diversify what you're working on Things like that. All right. The question's about your beard. Fine. It's about your beard I know it's amazing. Don't get me like but I'm like I haven't seen a beard like that in a long time. Like that's just starting the right spots in the country Right. Well, that's where I'm wondering. Have you always had the beard? No, no, well, no, thank goodness So when we met when we met I was in the military. I could not have a beard False advertising. I'm telling you. So this is like Well, Bob Ross was in the military Very soon after that we moved to Alaska that's where kids were born in Alaska And so in Alaska it's cold for about 13 months out of the year. Oh, stop it. It could not be the excuse And well for a beard. Oh, no, it keeps your face warm So I had a beard I had a beard for years years and years And then when we moved back outside if you will to the lower 48 I would typically grow a beard in the winter and then I would shave it off in the summer I grew up in western New York state south of Buffalo way a little dairy town there and also gets cold Very cold. Yes. As I was growing up the community started there was started to be Amish families So we're moving into the community from Ohio. Yeah, and they are wonderful members of community. Yeah, and Some inspiration for this has come from them. Yeah, that makes sense And it's not turkey processing time or chicken processing time so he can get away so you can get away with the beer Well, I'm I'm empty. So I'm gonna do an empty cheers. Thank you so much for being on the show It's been a pleasure talking about this stuff. I I still think y'all are crazy But I think it's beautiful. I like I I I I love what you're doing. Thank you so much for being here Thank you. All right, Bonnie Scott and Andrew, thanks for being on the show that was a lot of fun. I learned What chickens do when chickens have a chicken life, which is really beautiful actually if you like What you saw and you want to hear more about things like chickens then subscribe ring the bell and If you also have a fuck up or you want to talk about it, then go to fups.com. We'd love to have you on the show