Apr 7, 2007

Caneberries Rule for Oregon Couple

Like the huge 207-year-old Douglas fir lying at the entrance to their Boring, Ore., farm, caneberry growers Tony and Julie Schedeen have had their farming ups and downs.

But unlike the lifeless log felled by lightening several years ago, the Schedeens have survived to build quite a nice little niche for themselves in the fresh and processing market sectors.

One of the scariest periods for the couple occurred in the early 1980s, when the price for processed blackberries plummeted from 50 cents to 10 cents a pound. The plunge in income forced Tony to revert to his old profession, siding contractor, to pay the mounting farm bills.

The freakish August 2004 also ranks high in the Schedeen’s little book of horrors. For several days toward the end of the month the Oregon skies dumped rain on their Chester blackberries, something that rarely happens at that time of the year.

The result? Not only did pickers refuse to report for work, but acres of Chesters were overcome by botrytis mold, ruining at least one picking and costing the Schedeens a good chunk of fresh market revenue.

“We’re not doing any market picking in there,” Tony said in late August. “I have to go across the whole field and cannery pick it, clean it up, let it sit four days or so and then come back in and start up the market picking again.”

Located about 20 miles east of Portland in the foothills of the Cascade Range, the Schedeen’s picturesque berry farm, which was once occupied by dairy cows and recently featured on the Travel Channel, was originally purchased in 1951 by Tony’s father and uncle.

Tony and Julie took over in 1977 and started expanding the operation.

Because it’s tucked into the foothills of the Cascades, the farm doesn’t get the same weather found further south in the valley.

“We normally get more rain (in the spring),” Tony said. “And we’re a week and a half later (with harvests). The elevation makes a difference.”

For several years, the Schedeens sold most of their berry crops, which were machine harvested by a retrofitted lumber carrier, to a processor in nearby Troutdale.

Later, they decided to scrap the harvester, hand pick everything and put more of their efforts into fresh market. Today the couple still sells the majority of their fruit to a processor in Gresham, but more and more of it is ending up in a dozen or so fruit stands, mostly in Greater Portland.

The Schedeens also move a lot of fruit through their own stand in Boring. “I’ve always wanted to have a store,” Julie said. “It’s a great joy to me to lay out the displays and arrange the fruit.”

Turns out their value-added fresh market venture saved the day for Julie and Tony.

“If we weren’t doing fresh market now in a big way, we wouldn’t be farming,” Tony said.

When asked what distinguished the Schedeen fruit stand from others, Tony said “quality.” By that he meant, unlike some other stands that mix leftover berries from the day before with newer berries, the Schedeen’s sell their 1-day-old berries as just that, and drop the price by half.

The Schedeens grow more than 10 varieties of blackberries, including Oregon’s signature berry, the Marionberry, a half dozen varieties of raspberries, including blackcaps, Boysenberries (Julie’s favorite), Loganberries, evergreen strawberries and Tayberries, a rather rare cross between an Aurora blackberry and a raspberry.

“They make a wonderful jam,” Tony said.

The farm also produces four varieties of blueberries.

When Tony’s father and uncle bought the farm, they did something that local growers scoffed at: installed irrigation.

“This is the Willamette Valley. You don’t need irrigation,” the local growers said.

As it turned out, “It’s one of the most important parts of our farm today,” Tony said.

“This last three or four years has proven that out,” he said. “When you go two months without much rain, it can create an impact on a dry farmer.”

This year the Schedeens are augmenting their overhead irrigation with an aboveground drip system that will be installed in a new 10-acre berry block devoted to Tullameen raspberries and boysenberries. Tony estimated the cost at about $1,000 an acre to install the filters, mainlines and tubing.

Of the 180 acres of farmland the Schedeens own, 110 are planted to berries. The rest of the land is growing Oregon’s largest crop: timber.

Marionberries are their biggest crop by far, at around 40 acres, with 70 percent of the production sold to the processor at a premium because it’s hand picked.

Only 5 percent of the seven acres of the later maturing Chester crop, which yield seven to 10 tons per acre, ends up being processed.

As for prices, “The price of Marions in the process market was quite high this year at 73 cents a pound,” Julie said. “The beauty of the fresh market is that it remains fairly consistent at about $1.15.”

Including inputs and hand-picking costs, it’s about 55 cents a pound to grow blackberries. Picking alone is about 35 cents a pound, compared to 4 cent or 5 cents a pound for machine harvesting.

Marionberries on the Schedeen farm normally yield anywhere from 4.5 to 5.5 tons per acre, Tony said. “This year we only got 3-3/4 tons due to the droughty situation the last three years.”

Tony said irrigation hasn’t been able to make up the water shortfall in the Marionberry fields mainly because the Schedeens haven chosen to harvest that variety every other year.

“When we’ve got a drought situation and great water demand the pressure on us is to get the producing fruit (floracanes) watered, and takes away our ability to handle the canes (primocanes) growing for the next year,” Tony said.

As far as labor goes, the Schedeens rely on a small core of Mayans to help manage and harvest the crops. The remainder of the pickers are all drive outs.

“We can get 100 out here on a good day,” Julie said.

The Schedeens also devote a small part of their crop to preserves, which are done by Wilhelm Foods in Newberg, Ore.

“It’s becoming a bigger part of our business,” Tony said.

Because Julie wants the berry variety mentioned first on the label, the sugar content of the jams has been reduced.

The Schedeens have started raising vegetables, which Julie called an eight-acre overgrown garden, for their own vegetable stand and have a small plantation of Christmas trees.