Boulder’s Farm, family-owned and operated, is committed to using sustainable human-scale agricultural and forestry practices to provide our customers with healthy, mouth-watering food and high-quality products from our fields, forest, orchard, and garden.
Sustainable
Our goal is to use as few off-farm inputs as possible. We use no pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers (USDA organic certification in progress).
Our farm is home to a half-mile of endangered steelhead habitat on Pedee Creek, including five tributary streams that run through our fields and forest. All together, about 25% of our acreage is riparian and wetland. We work with the Luckiamute Watershed Council and various state and federal agencies to protect and restore this vital habitat (Salmon-Safe certification in progress).
We are continuously working to to reduce our carbon footprint, including weaning ourselves off of petroleum-based fuel and products and seeking alternatives to burning agricultural and forestry waste.
Human-scale
We limit the scale our operations such that all of the work can be done by a few people aided by draft animals, occasionally supplemented by power equipment or by neighbor/volunteer work parties.
We design our daily, weekly, and seasonal schedules to spread difficult or monotonous tasks out so that we end the day satisfied and pleasantly tired rather than discouraged and exhausted.
The farm’s infrastructure—fields, orchards, fences, roads, outbuildings, etc.—is designed and built primarily for people on foot, for horses, and for horse-drawn vehicles.
We choose tools that we like to use—tools that fit us, that work well, that feel good in our hands—and we actively seek to understand the physical principles employed by that tool.