Jamie rides his Kubota tractor over the rich Willamette River bottom lands west of Albany. Rows of chard, kale, frisee, escarole, red oak leaf lettuce, spinach, cilantro, peppers, potatoes and other crops stretch out to the firs running down the fence line. Eighteen years ago he bought 18 acres of some of the best farming land in America because the price was right.
Since then he’s added 12 rental acres, enough to keep his family and four other people busy year round and another 25 people employed during a six-month summer.
Fortunately for the workers, Spring Hill Farm is certified organic. “People tend to work for us for a long time,” Jamie says. “The land is a lot better than it was when we started. We built a new house a few years ago. I couldn’t see ever leaving this place.”
Jamie didn’t set out to be a farmer. No one had been a farmer in his family for generations. But “I was an outdoors kind of guy,” Jamie grins. He ended up taking forestry studies at Plattsburgh State College in upstate New York on the banks of Lake Champlain, not far from the Quebec border. A year off hitchhiking around the country brought him to Oregon.
Wise beyond his years, Jamie traded upstate New York for Corvallis, Oregon. He says he would have stayed in forestry had it not been for a school lab requirement that brought him to one of OSU’s experimental plant stations. As soon as he saw vegetables he walked out of the woods forever.
When the Kitzrows began farming in 1990, they sold their produce at farmers’ markets and restaurants, with occasional sales to Organically Grown Cooperative (OGC), the primary organic produce wholesaler in Oregon.
“At first it was sort of hard,” Jamie says. “We soon found that restaurants didn’t work well for us, and the more established growers had OGC pretty well locked up. Then some of the older growers quit or found different markets for their crops, and our business with OGC became steady.” Three years ago Jamie was invited to become a stockholder in OGC.
The Kitzrows aren’t vegetarian, but when asked what they eat, Jamie laughed, “Whatever’s in season. In winter we get a little tired of kale and potatoes.”
Spring Hill Farm does well at the Beaverton and Portland farmers’ markets, but it is wholesaling to New Seasons Market and OGC that provides them with stability as a local organic farm.
"If organic farming is kept up on this land, it should be useful and productive for generations to come.” His daughter, who will one day be the family’s next farming generation, is counting on it.
