MacCormack welcomes visitors to Sunbow Farm

Over 100 people,  from farmers to chefs and agronomists to home cooks, toured the organic bean and grain fields of Sunbow and Stalford Farms on July 22nd at the invitation of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean & Grain Project (SWVB&GP). Mother Nature held back the heat wave and adjusted her thermostat to perfect summer evening, tossing in just enough breeze to make the near-harvest-ready grains rattle melodically.

Two words sum up what was learned: weeds and balance.

Weeds thrived at record levels this year, outgrowing certain crops to the point that both farms plowed some plots under. Other plots are struggling; still others are doing beautifully.

Sunbow Farm is a fraction of the 9,300-acre Harry Stalford farms, but is a widely-respected “test plot” for all manner of grains, beans and seeds. In fact, it was Sunbow proprietor, Harry MacCormack who inspired the Stalford team – Willow Coberly, her mother Gian Mercurio, and her husband Harry Stalford – to start transitioning from conventional crops (mainly grass seed) to organic food crops such as grains and beans. As their organically-grown food acreage has increased, so has their bottom line and the interest of their neighbors and other farmers.

Harry MacCormack

Harry MacCormack, a co-founder of Oregon Tilth in the 1970s and Ten Rivers Food Web in 2004, is a keen observer and passionate experimenter when it comes to growing food for local markets. His hours in the field aren’t spent with earbuds, channeling music or shock jocks, they’re spent thinking and observing, planning and planting, then absorbing lessons. Among current experiments are perennializing grains (wheat varieties, moving from rye grass to rye grain, growing grains long neglected for more profitable crops, etc.), testing flax (brown and golden), inter-planting crops to conserve water, and discovering the best rotation cycles (influenced by old-timers, current weather patterns, and trials).

Willow Coberly and Gian Mercurio

Harry Stalford plants their gradually-expanding certified organic and transitioning acreage according to lessons learned by MacCormack and research by his wife and mother-in-law. Originally reluctant to move away from what was working (primarily grass seed, soft white wheat and clover), he has become convinced of shifting markets and consumer interest. Coberly and Mercurio have attended numerous international conferences, done exhaustive research on seeds and markets and have “walked the talk” as organic consumers for decades. They have persevered when skeptical neighbors and fellow farmers thought they were on a fool’s errand, growing lower-yield hard red wheat, for instance, instead of higher-yield soft white wheat. Heads turned when their crops fetched above-average market share.

Growing oats, red and white wheat, garbanzo, black and pinto beans this year, Mercurio said they are learning to use crop rotation and compost as their primary fertilizer. To that end they are also experimenting and learning the fine art of large-scale compost making. They, too, are fine-tuning four-year crop rotation cycles of legumes, grains, beans and fallow fields according to their own micro-climate. While some crops struggle, a volunteer crop of wheat overgrew a crop of planted clover. As Stalford said, “Mother Nature is trying to teach us something.”

Plots not harvested by hand are combined with this JD40.

Older farm equipment is better suited to small fields and d-i-y farmer/mechanics.

In response to a question about tilling the soil, Mercurio said it’s part of the balancing act. Tilling releases the carbon sequestered by planting crops in the first place. Some cover crops, meadowfoam for example, will bring anti-fungal and anti-viral components to root systems to help crops that were thought to be marginal in this area thrive. What you plant and when, weather patterns in a given year, how you prepare the soil, and how much water (if any) you give crops are but a few of the variables that determine if the balancing wire a farmer walks is taut or loose.

Capping the tours was a sumptuous spread of fresh and local foods including beans and grains whirled into chili,  tempeh, salads, casseroles and desserts. Gian Mercurio and Willow Coberly of Stalford Farms, Krishna Singh Khalsa of the SWVB&GP and the Lotus Project and Julie Tilt of Hummingbird Wholesale, both of Eugene, were the creative geniuses behind the feast, turning a wealth of healthful food grown by local farms into tantalizing sustenance.

Diners enjoyed the music of “When Picks Fly,” and making connections with others who share keen interest in reviving a local food system based on what, in an earlier era,  came from the fields visited that evening.