Grape Lane Poultry Farm is the original pioneer name of farm before we inherited the last 10 acres of what was left of it.  We still call it a farm but it is actually a permiculture garden sustainable living of which I am the "subsistence peasant backyard farmer".  This "farm" was first used as a spiritual center by the Calapulia Indians before a Trapper named Frazier (due to family conflicts during the Revolutionary wars, spellings varied) came to the site about 1836, seven years before the first wagon trains came to Oregon.  We have found the circle site of the Calapulia and many of their tools.  So it was not surprising to learn that the farm house shown in the above picture was built in the style of the Calapulia.   Frazier built a two room, two story trapper's cabin with the apparent help of the local Natives.  As records show he then left to go back East for his wife Sara and his daughter and two sons. Somewhere along the way back he died, leaving Sara a 40 year old widow who, in the early 1840's inspired by the knowledge of the home her husband had left her in the Oregon Wilderness took her children and traveled to Oregon on the first wagon train. Arriving in 1843, Sara married Mr. McHaley and together help found the city of Aumsville, leaving her son William to homesteaded this farm.  Sara had 6 more children!!  The original structure built by her first husband still stands today in the interior of the home pictured above with the sheep. In 1915 our family traded Land Grants for the farm, and the farm has stayed with us ever since.  In 1926, Mrs. Davis, who was born in the house, was working on the farm cleaning eggs for our family.  As she was cleaning eggs she stated to our family that the portion of the home she was standing in was almost 100 years old.  The structure below was built in 1901 and is the only 2 story chicken house in Oregon!  The eggs from this family operation were shipped to Portland on the train from Marion, a short wagon's ride from the farm.  Back then, this was considered a high end capital farming operation!  Today we have a few chicken tractors used for primarily for the health of our soil.  We do not sell chickens and hate selling our cattle!  Yes, I am a vegetarian and I inherited the cattle with the farm. 

 

We are thrilled to be growing an unusual historically significant garlic competitive in size with Elephant garlic, at times tipping the scales at 3 pounds! The garlic traces its roots back to the 1700's in Europe and was hand carried here by an early pioneer. In 2000 we discovered 6 remaining garlic plants and began raising them for seed.  Now we grow an approximate acre per year and sell to dedicated accounts.

 

Our apple trees were planted by pioneers and are some of the best late apples I have ever eaten.

 

Our 100 year old pear trees were planted by the early settlers and are a bumper crop each year. We make a fabulous pear honey with them.

 

The farm was named Grape Lane Poultry Farm in the 1900's because of the hundreds of grape plants lining the road and the 1000's of chickens raised and sold each year. We have salvaged two remaining grape plants from the original stock and they are a rare and early pioneer wine making variety.  We hope to have a vineyard soon of this fabulous grape!

We are also working to preserve the antique two story chicken house built in 1901. The picture above shows it as it was being built and as it stands today. We have 100 years of farming photographs of the farm operations, including farm receipts, feed sack clothing, feed sack fabrics, and much more.

 

We make a dried candy from our plum trees.

 

We raise a small herd of Black Angus mix cattle.  Just for the record I am a vegetarian. And have been so for the last 20 years  When we inherited the farm the cows came with the package.  Because I do not support the cattle industry by today's standards and the abuse of land to raise them;  I did not sell the cattle but choose to let them live their lives out on the farm.  They were old I thought, and will soon be gone by natural causes. I did not know cattle can live to be 20 years old!  We practice rotational grazing.



We grow herbs for teas, tinctures, seeds, oil, and all medicinal purposes.

 

We practice composting with leaves, manure from our cattle and horse.  We manage and apply this according to Oregon Tilth Certification Standards.  Below the garlic bed is prepared using aged manure, bent over stalks from last years grain with added straw and weed control bio-paper.  Notice how nice the Blackberry bush looks!  Good berries, medicinal leaves, wonderful year round birds to watch!   And all for a price and labor far less than a lawn!  The Blackberry's taste so much better than a lawn looks in an Oregon winter!

 

We grow a variety of grains for hand harvest, cleaning, seed saving and sprouting for food products such as breads and crackers.

 

We keep bees.


 

We harvest rain from our buildings and we use solar power to operate it.  The two large tanks are up against the cedar and the solar panels are on the roof.  It looks like the cedar limbs are too near it but it is simply the angle of the picture.

 

 

We practice rotational grazing using cattle and our chicken tractors.

 

We promote Chicken Tractors.

 
We don't kill moles or gophers.  I use the great soil they dig up and process when I start my seeds!  As you can see it is spread over a portion of the sidewalk for me to sweep up and use!  Those little dudes give good gifts!  I mix the husks in from my seed saving process to help the soil retain water. 

We dry herbs and harvest seeds.  Shadrack is watching over the drying of Borage and Echinacea.  This room also serves as an outdoor laundry room.  As soon as I figure out my scanner, I will be downloading pictures of the farm featured in the Capital Press Newspaper and with Shawn from Mountain Rose Herbs standing with me in our Borage field in their 2010 catalog on page 16. 

 

PO Box 2682

Corvallis, Oregon

97339
elderoak1@yahoo.com

503-743-2318

 

Last summer I sold Mary Miller’s Mystery Garlic seed starts to farmer David Stutzman in Camp Verde, AZ because I believed the soil would produce exceptional garlic.  I was right.  The Arizona soil has produced an outstanding product with our Mary Miller Mystery Garlic seeds that has caught the attention of Chris Bianco, world famous chief and owner of Pizzeria Bianco, one of the Nations top 10 pizza restaurants!  Not only is the garlic BIG, HOT and incredible, the flower heads are shockingly HUGE, hot and spicy for soups, salads and chili!  Arizona has proven to be the perfect place to showcase the outstanding qualities of our Mary Millers Mystery Garlic!  Below is an article about Mary’s garlic.  You can cut and paste it.

Captial Press Newspaper:

http://www.capitalpress.com/content/js-garlic-w-art

And in Arizona:

http://campverdebugleonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubsectionID=991&ArticleID=27049
AND:
http://campverdebugleonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=31408

David and I are now scrambling to get more garlic in the ground to met the growing demands of the discriminating customers that are now seeking my garlic from as far away as Iran!  Yes. Iran.  How about that!   If my garlic can bring world peace, I'm sending it!!!

PLEASE NOTE!  WE WILL BE SELLING MARY'S GARLIC LATE SUMMER OF 2012!  PLEASE EMAIL ME AT elderoak1@yahoo.com WITH YOUR NAME AND CONTACT INFORMATION AND I WILL PUT YOU ON OUR LIST FOR GARLIC!  Below are some of our seed crop we are planting for 2012! 



How did it all start?  We know the garlic originated in Europe in the very late 1700’s to very early 1800’s.  We don’t know when it came to the farm.  It could have been as early as 1843 on the first wagon train to Oregon, or as late as 1860 when my husband's family arrived in Oregon or in 1915 when my husband’s family traded their farm for this one in a Land Grant swap; bringing the garlic with them from their 1890‘s Southern Oregon Land Grant farm.   It is unknown if the garlic were here or not at this time.   In 2000 we inherited the farm.  Although I had long become a vegetarian, I could still tell you all you needed to know about how to raise cattle from having grown up on my family’s 7000 acre cattle ranch here in Oregon.  But I could not tell you a thing about growing vegetables.  So, I had no clue that the 6 remaining plants nestled in Lillys pictured below were indeed, garlic.  In-fact, I called immature corn planted by birds near the bird feeders, an odd looking grass...scary!  I've come a long ways since then!  :))



How they survived not only my ignorance about them, but the transition of the farm is a miracle.  The contractor built our new home 12 feet from the remaining last garlic plants pictured above.  Our house is just a few feet to the right from the above sidewalk.  Mary's garlic grew there for almost 2 years all on their own in among the bird feeders pictured above, pretty to look at, but completely ignored.  Mary must have planted them there before her death just a few years earlier.  I built the garden around them. We could have easily sold the land and never farmed it, we could have built the house on them, or the cows could have trampled them.  What saved them was the fact I would not allow the contractor to remove the huge Black Berry bush they are shown growing next too.  Corporate American had not removed the sustainable life we had lived on the ranch from within me.  I saved the Black Berry bush so that it would give life to the birds and life to me.  The leaves are medicinal, the berries are too and the birds are a joy to watch.  I saved my berry bush long before the green sustainable movement was a word, and therefore the poor contractor thought I was nuts and confident the plant would eat my new home up standing just a few feet away.  However, it takes less time and money to care for the bush than a lawn, of which I have none! 

One day the garlic called to me.  I stopped my hectic life but for a moment to look at it.  And less sure than Eve, I took a nibble of the flower head and soon.....



6 plants became more.....




until I had a small field of garlic and noble purple flower heads danced in the breeze when I passed by.





Soon my horse Miss Kitty and I were preparing larger and larger fields for Mary's garlic to grow!


They became family to me.  Each one precious. 




I named them after my husband’s Aunt, who lived her whole life on this farm until her death on the farm at nearly 100.  Unlike today, she would never exchange her clean air and water for wealth as we deem wealth to be.  She was free from want. In fact, she had never known a real reason to be wealthy.  She never owned a new car, had only an outhouse and a hand dug well outside the back kitchen door for most of her life.  She raised chickens that rode the train to market in Portland.  The chickens road the train, but never Mary.  Outside of going to Church on Sunday, Mary rarely left the farm.  She was too at peace farming. She did not know the cities, she wore cloths she sewed from chicken feed-sacks, her food came from what she loved to grow on the farm that included this garlic.  Her 1800‘s home pictured above left was never framed, had no foundation and the walls consisted of 3“ thick, 14' vertical, unpainted single board old growth timber that were never insulated.  The roof had a gap all around the eves upstairs.  She loved the bats that lived upstairs in her room and the skunks that lived under the floor boards downstairs.  They still live there. Mary loved all God's creatures and all of Nature's beauty.  She cherished it. She collected volumes of animal pictures from magazines friends would give her.  Almost 100 years of her clippings are still here on the farm. It was the 1970‘s before she saw a TV.  She did not know calculators, cell phones, ipads, computers, Facebook, YouTube and yet, she was more fulfilled, happy and peaceful than anyone I have yet met today. She died on the farm with a peace we have long forgotten in our self-seeking and money oriented culture.

I never knew Mary, but yet I do know her as I work the farm with the ancient tools she left behind.  I carefully follow her footsteps, carefully save each precious plant she knew, I now know. Through each of her garlic I send to you her blessings.  That you find Mary’s peace, that you find her contentment, and that you find true wealth. That is the blessing  I send to you in each and every Mary Miller’s Mystery Garlic. I pray your life be a long and peaceful one as life was for Mary here on her farm in Oregon.

Take care of the land, and the land will take care of you.

Kindest regards,

Jayne Miller
Caretaker of Mary Miller’s Mystery Garlic


One Quarter Horse Power Workshop (GO TO SUSTAINABLE WORKSHOP PAGE TO REGISTER)

 

 

 

Working with FFA Students on the Savanna Riparian Conservation Program

 

 

 
Re-seeding time!  I wrote 2 grants, one for re-seeding the front field and the other for K-Line irrigation equipment.  We used tractor for the front fields and for the herb field we used plastic bottles to broadcast the seed. 

 
Plastic bottles used to hand broadcast seed have holes punched in the bottom.  The seed is poured in through the top and the cap replaced.  Next we hold the neck and swing the bottle in the air, dispersing the seed. 

After we hand broadcast the seed, Miss Kitty pulls a home-made drag around the field to cover the seed.  This is lite work so I am not using the heavy work collar, instead I am using a chest strap.



Miss Kitty and I checking out our new K-Line irrigation equipment!


A field of soon-to-be-winter Chamomile tea to be enjoyed in front of the wood stove!  Wonderful Savannah Oak and Walnut tree canape in the background!  The black "bucket" in the fore-ground is part of the K-Line.

I like to plant grain in a row with the borage.  It looks pretty and is a good use of space.  I use the grain to sprout and then cook pancakes, cookies and much more!


Blessings during the Winter seasons!