As summer comes to an all-too-early close, it’s time to bring in the last of the harvest and sow hardy vegetables in cold frames for the winter. It's also time for both experienced and new gardeners to start dreaming big for next year’s growing season.
Want to raise ducks, goats or chickens? What about beekeeping? Maybe you need a little composting advice, help with your garden planning or a support group of urban farmers.
Portland is full of great resources and seasoned veterans of farming within city limits. Add these urban farming gurus to your contacts list.
All-Around Supply and Support
Basic chicken- and goat-keeping classes, bees, worms, supplies, advice, and a place to meet fellow urban homesteaders. Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply in Sellwood is a new favorite, run by Naomi & Neil Montacre, along with Naomi’s mother Mary Montgomery.
Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply
2500 SE Tacoma Street
Portland, OR 97202
503.517.8551
www.naomisorganic.blogspot.com
Bees
For honeybee fascination, education and salvation, seek out Live Honeybees. Local activist Brian provides informative, interactive workshops for all ages on the history, legend and keeping of honeybees. He also offers tours of his garden and apiary, basic demonstrations, and one-on-one beekeeping coaching—everything you need to get set up with your own hives. Visit his web site for upcoming classes and events.
Brian Lacy
Live Honey Bees, Bee Pure Candles and Honey
503.975.2391
www.livehoneybees.com
Chickens
Did you know that Portland has the highest chicken population per capita in the country? Portland allows residents to keep three chickens, ducks, or pygmy goats without a permit. Ready to get started? The Urban Farm Store in Buckman holds frequent free Basic Chicken Keeping classes. Upcoming class: Thursday, September 16 at 6:30 pm.
The Urban Farm Store
2100 SE Belmont Street
Portland, OR 97214
503.234.7733
www.urbanfarmstore.com
If you’ve already got chickens, you’ve probably got questions. Consider Just Us Hens, an urban garden consulting and chicken-sitting business. Call for availability and pricing. Portland metro area.
Just Us Hens
Sharon Rowland, 503.887.2098
Rhona Piasecki, 503.470.0433
www.justushens.com
Collective Farming
At the heart of the Urban Farm Collective, a rapidly-growing network of urban farmers, is the weekly barter market, where members meet to exchange garden surplus, handmade crafts, and volunteer hours. You can become a contributing or active member by contributing land, growing food or sharing gardening and administrative labor.
The Urban Farm Collective
Barter Market: 2 p.m. every Sunday, between the ReBuilding Center and the Masonic Temple on Mississippi just North of Fremont Street
urbanfarmcollective@gmail.com
www.urbanfarmcollective.com
Composting, Consulting and Classes
Rachel Freifelder's Cully home is her classroom, from which she runs Handmade Gardens, a resource for garden consultation and education. A former professional landscaper, Freifelder now focuses on empowering aspiring gardeners to do it themselves. She also offers gardening workshops in Spanish, and works as the garden science educator at Rigler school.Upcoming workshops include Seed-Saving, September 12 from 3-5 p.m.
Handmade Gardens
4446 NE Going Street
Portland, OR 97218
503.849.9466
www.handmadegardenspdx.com
Ducks, Goats and More!
Basic goat keeping is just the beginning at Tierra Soul in Humboldt, an innovative resource center and farmhouse in North Portland. Krista and David Arias will help you get started with ducks, chickens, bees, goats and gardening. You can take a permaculture design course; attend a weekend course in traditional food preparation; plan a stay in the farm guest house or check out the (un)school house. This fall, look for Soup & Cinema Sundays: weekly community potlucks featuring sustainability-themed films. Arias will also teach a course in basic goat keeping at Portland Community College this fall.
Tierra Soul Urban Farmhouse
4614 N Michigan Avenue
Portland, OR 97217
503.750.1415
www.tierrasoulpdx.com
Visit www.pcc.edu for information on community courses like Basic Goat-Keeping.
Garden Planning
Get help designing or improving your garden with Independence Gardens, serving the Portland Metro area. Ken, Jana and Karen Wolfgang, and Isabel Lacourse offer year-round crop planning, with current services to fit the gardener’s needs: from collaborative planning to complete garden design. They also lead classes through the Urban Farm Store (see above.)
Independence Gardens
independencegardenspdx@gmail.com
www.Independencegardenspdx.com
great article, but have to say, thought it was a bit curious to see Your Backyard Farmer omited from the Urban Farmer Gurus. In 2006 Donna Smith and Robyn Streeter started Your Backyard Farmer, the first Urban farming venture of its type, in Portland and across the world. Since then we have helped other farmers begin urban farming ventures across the globe.
Thanks, Robyn. We love the work you do through Your Backyard Farmer—so much, in fact, that we devoted an entire article to it.
We hope you understand it wasn't our intent to omit Your Backyard Farmer from our list. Our goal here at Neighborhood Notes is inclusion, not omission, of the people, places and things that make Portland great. Thanks for everything you do!
Thanks for including us as a gardening guru! It's an honor to be listed in such illustrious company. Your Backyard Farmer certainly belongs on the list, as well: Robyn and Donna's pioneering business is a model for urban farming in Portland and beyond--and our services are complementary. Whereas YBF provides full-service farming, from installation to maintenance to harvest, we work with gardeners to get them jump-started and then help them learn as they grow their own food. We have our construction contractors license (CCB#186008) so we can build raised beds, terraces, chicken coops, and other garden structures; YBF generally grows in-ground with a focus on feeding the families whose land is in their care. YBF is an inspiration to us and to others, and we're glad to be these ladies' colleagues. Check out their article at http://www.neighborhoodnotes.com/news/2009/09/you_cant_get_more_local_than_thisyour_backyard_farmer_creates_a_csa_right_outside_your_door/.