| The Kraft Family Farm |
 |
|
 |
| Three generations of small farm production |
|
|
|
Donald Kraft has the secret ingredient to his crop's success
|
By Madeline MacGregor, ODA Information Office
Lucille Kraft greets me at the entrance to the Kraft Family Century Farm and invites me inside their blue farm house, a venerable beauty built in the 1860s. As we make our way down the path past hollyhock and an enormous vegetable garden, I notice two men working on machinery to the left.
Lucille waves to them—her husband Donald and son Darin—and motions them to come along. Soon we are all seated around an antique kitchen table, comfortable on chairs softened by Lucille’s hand-quilted cushions—and settle in for some serious conversation.
Since Darin is now managing the farm’s daily operations, I ask what motivates him to continue in the family tradition since his father’s retirement. Darin’s face is tanned by his daily activities outside and glows with passionate introspection. “The family farms were a part of my destiny,” he says. “I thought about them a lot as a child, watching and helping my dad. My mother was actually the one that encouraged me, while my dad would always say to me, ‘Get off the farm!—Get off the farm!’”
The elder Kraft shakes his head at the memory. “I really don’t know what I was thinking,” he shrugs. Eighty-three year-old Donald recalls his employment at Union Mills Feed Store during the day, and then coming home in the evenings to his “other” job—the farm. “I did that for 23 years, and it was just too hard,” he states.
Donald and Lucille leased the farm from Don’s father and mother, Henry and Helena Kraft—who owned the original 80 acres on Township Road just outside of Canby. Henry Kraft had been a diversified farmer, participating in what Don calls the old fashioned kind of farming. “A little bit of this and a little bit of that, that’s the way you did it,” instructs the suspender-clad octogenarian.
Don proved that farming was his life’s work, as well. In 1944 after his father Henry’s death, Don shouldered the massive responsibilities of producing caneberries, grain, hay, cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep. He even added some Peking ducklings to the menagerie and enjoyed marketing them to the nearby Portland Chinese community. “It was a little bit of everything,” he says. He and Lucille purchased the farm when the family estate was settled after Helena’s death in 1974.
As portions of the farm were sold throughout the years in order to meet family obligations, it became paramount for the Krafts to preserve the last 14 acres for their children. Donald’s son, Darin, has given a lot of thought to the current state of farming small acreage and what it will take for those small farms to survive. “I believe farming will have to become more mechanized,” Darin speculates. “There are less and less people to work in the labor force—especially since immigration and illegal worker issues came to the front. I really can’t say what we’re all going to do about that.”
“I don’t know if we can actually get the numbers [of workers] that we need. It’s too difficult to inspire people to work in the fields, because there is a mindset about how hard the labor is.” Kraft feels that many parents program their children to have an aversion to manual labor by telling them if they don’t go to college, they’ll have to work in the fields. “This communicates to children that hard work is something to be avoided.”
Darin would like to create an educational program at the Kraft farm, to introduce children to what farm labor is like. “It isn’t such a bad thing,” Kraft chuckles. “I would like to show them a little leadership and give them a positive experience. A little bit of hard work isn’t going to hurt you.”
Both Darin and Don sense that it would be easy for farms to overproduce a particular crop in an attempt to cater to public desire. In that instance, earnings for producers of that crop would be driven downward considerably.
Darin hopes that the marketplace of the future doesn’t just hinge on “People who want cheap food and cable TV.” He smiles wryly. “Ag is like any other industry, you have to constantly look at the trends, and deal with all kinds of variables.”
Darin feels that one of the variables is that as the labor force shrinks, small farms have to rely more on crops that require fewer bodies to tend to them, such as u-pick berries, or filberts. But certain traditions and rituals are mourned by Kraft. “I really miss the camaraderie that I shared with my Mexican farm workers,” he says wistfully. Darin became fluent in Spanish so that he could understand and communicate with his workers, and for many years supported his family with a farm labor contracting business. “We would be out in the fields side by side, and I learned to think about things from their perspective. I really miss them.”
Darin admits that he sometimes feels gloomy one minute— and positive the next, about what is going to happen to small farms. His Christmas trees and caneberries are doing well enough, but how well will he keep up with a constantly evolving marketplace? “We have to always be thinking—and anticipating—about two to three years ahead of everybody else. As the economy changes across the US, these small farms may become more and more important.”
Donald Kraft and Lucille reveal their own passion for their farm and family. When Don is asked what his hopes for the future are, he quips, “I’m going to leave that to my wife.” Lucille laughs, ”My husband still has a lot to teach us, and he can still lead us. I think that we can keep this farm in the family yet.”
As we all move outside to pick raspberries from Don’s special garden, we marvel at the size of the fruit on the squash plants. “It’s a secret,” Don grins “What I put on things to get them to grow.”
Darin mulls over the future of the Kraft family farm while picking berries with us, and offers a final bit of wisdom, “You’ve got to be a little bit lucky, to be a farmer.” With the support and encouragement of his wife, Susie, and hopefully the carrying of the torch by their three children, that luck may hold true for the next generation of Kraft farmers.
|
|
| |
|
|
