The young farmers in 2006.
Oakhill Organics was started by Casey & Katie Kulla, a husband and wife farming team. After working for two years on a farm in northwest Washington, we began our own farm in 2006 — growing on just one rented acre of ground southwest of McMinnville, Oregon. Later that first year, we purchased 17.5 acres on Grand Island (a river island in the Willamette, just south of Dayton). Since 2007 we have farmed here on the amazing Willamette river bottom soils. And, since 2011, our farm has growing in new ways — in land base (now 100 acres under our management!) and in people (we now have many great employees who help us with our work and also two small children in our family).
The farm family at the end of 2012!
Vegetables are the centerpiece crops at our farm — we grow everything from arugula to zucchini. We sell all of our vegetables here within Yamhill County, through our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and to several restaurants.
For our first six years, we were certified by Oregon Tilth Certified Organic, but starting in 2012 we discontinued certification. We grow our vegetables using these methods: crop rotations, cover crops, fallow years, natural sources of fertility, mechanical cultivation, and thoughtful problem solving. We use no sprays of any kind of our farm. We run our equipment on biodiesel and use low-tech hand labor when it is appropriate. We seek to make intentional decisions with the wider ecosystem in mind, including committing acreage on our farm to riparian habitat and planting perennials.
Our goals for our farm also include growing and fostering community. Part of what drew us to farming was the CSA model, which we have found to be an incredibly powerful community builder. We love that our CSA members have a direct relationship with the people and place that grow their food. We have made friends through the CSA and watched others form and grow relationships too as a result of interactions at the farm or CSA pick-up.
We are also working on further diversifying our offerings. We have three young diverse fruit orchards that will come into production in future years. We have recently added many new enterprises, and beginning in 2013 we are providing a group of customers with a large percentage of their diet: fruit, berries, nuts, dairy, meat, grains, beans, and more. This is an exciting time on our farm! We have a lot going on and rather than try to keep our website always up-to-date, we recommend reading the most recent blog entries on our home page.
An aerial shot of our farm, prior to our taking over management for all of it. The vast fields of tan ground are now full of newly planted orchards, rows of vegetables, animals, and more!
