By Jamie Edelman, Elliot Langenhuysen, and Jen Jackson
Eugene’s premier source of local food, The Lane County Farmers Market, started in 1979 within the Saturday Market and has been growing since. The market provides Lane County with a seemingly endless supply of produce and meat: strawberries, cherries, pears, peaches, potatoes, onions, lettuce, salmon, chicken, beef, and pork. The list goes on and on as the market provides a simple way to acquire fresh local produce that is good for you.
Many vendors come every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the hopes of making a generous sale for the day. All of these different farmers take pride in their business, their produce, and their customers. Most of the vendors at the Farmers’ Market are organic. This generally means they avoid using harmful chemicals products when growing their produce or raising their animals. As the benefits of healthy, home-grown foods have long been touted in Oregon, it is no surprise that these farmers’ products are in high demand.
Daniel O’Malley, Owner of Sweet Home Farms Meats, provides a selection of meats that he calls healthy, humane, and holistic. He got started in the farming business working at his dad’s farm during his summers. After graduating from the UO, he saw the opportunity to start his own farm and took it. He sells grass fed pasture-raised beef, lamb, and goat, as well as pasture-raised pork and chicken.
O’Malley explains that the daily duties are never quite the same while farming using holistic practices. “A typical day is a lot of different things. Monday is different than Tuesday, and Tuesday is different than Wednesday. What I did last month is probably not what I’m going to do this month. A year from now I’m probably still going to be doing something different,” Says O’Malley, “Part of a holistic program is not having necessarily a rigid set schedule where you’re really reacting to what is going on around you, to stay flexible, and do what you need to do where it needs to be done.” He has been selling at the farmers market for just a few years now and has high hopes for the future of his business.
Fanny Berg is the co-owner of Berg’s Berries, a certified organic berry farm her Father-in-law started in the 1980’s. It’s one of the oldest fruit farms in the valley. In order to build the business Berg says, “We needed to take care of the food and become organic, to make good prices, and to take care of the people and give the customers what they want. It is important that we are selling healthy, natural, and fresh produce.” She emphasized the importance of an organic diet.
Berg also discussed the popularity of the local market. “A lot of people buy organic food. You can see there are a lot of people here at the farmers market choosing to buy local organic food. Most of the time we sell all of the food that we bring here. It is pretty good business for us. We are reaching out to people that are concerned with their health.”
Rain Forest Mushrooms, another certified organic business, sells locally harvested mushrooms and has been around since about the 1970’s. Madison Harrington has been a vendor for Rain Forest Mushrooms for about 2 months. “I would say organic farming is better (than conventional farming) because it is more natural and you don’t have the GMO’s or preservatives and all of that type of stuff in your food. It’s just a lot healthier for you” says Harrington.
Lynn Schutte works at Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm. Don’t be mislead by the name, though, Schutte sells grass-finished beef, pasture-raised milk fed veal, pastured chickens, and eggs. She and her husband Bob own the farm which they started in 1986. They began as a Christmas tree farm before realizing they had fields that were too good for just Christmas Trees. They started to diversify and raise animals. “More and more people are knowing where their food comes from, they want to buy locally, and so I’m a conduit for that” explains Schutte.
Schutte knows from experience the importance of grass fed beef. They started out by feeding their cows brewers grain and found out from studies that they become healthier just by eating grass. Now they only feed their cows grass and finish them off with alfalfa in order to provide a little bit of protein. Schutte also stressed the importance of buying local: “I pride myself at meal time, pointing out where everything came from, from my family, sometimes I get the ole’ eyeball roll, but I tell ya’ I consider it a challenge. And I look at my own buying habits. I mean I simply do not buy fruits and vegetables if I notice on the label that it comes from another country, all though I do make exceptions for avocados. So it’s become quite important for me to buy local, and if not at a farmers market at least local.”
Reflection
This project showed us the many possibilities that exist in Eugene to eat healthier and help the community. Overall, we saw how beneficial it is to locally owned businesses that care about their products and their customers. We also liked seeing how well the animals and natural environment of local farms were being treated. We were glad to have chosen a subject with many possible subjects as we were turned down for interviews many times and still had plenty of avenues to pursue. As a group, we made sure to consider how visually interesting our subject would be, and thanks to that we were able to create an interesting video. We agree that if we were to do it all over again, we wouldn’t change much, but we would try to spend more time with our video subject and filming him work.