next page  |
Cilantro. Eggplant. Garlic. Greens.
Laura Masterson hails from no long line of farmers. She comes instead from Long Beach, California, where she learned a bit about sunny SoCal gardening from her grandfather, whose yard hung heavy with guava, avocado, pomegranate, and lemon.
She spent her freshman year of college on the East Coast, at a school she found "a little stuffy." She'd heard about considerably-less-stuffy Reed from classmates, so she transferred in and became a biology major, with an eye toward being a veterinarian. She took almost no plant or soil biology courses, yet after her graduation in 1991, Masterson–who found herself "gardening compulsively" while working on her senior thesis–went to work at Portland Nursery. She learned a lot about landscaping, particularly fancy flower gardens. After three years, she was ready to try something new.
"Planting flowers is nice," Masterson says. "You could even call it art. But growing
food felt more in line with my values. By the time I bought my house in 1994 I had heard about
CSA, and I thought maybe I could do that on a small scale on my double lot. Plant a big garden
and talk a few of my friends–mostly from Reed–into buying shares. So we sat down
at my kitchen table and worked it out. It was a way to experiment with farming, to see if I
could figure out how to make a living at it."
That first year Masterson worked as a landscaper and gardened at her house, and every so often her dozen shareholders came by and shared in the harvest. It all worked out. The following year, she leased some land in Hillsboro and increased her shareholders from a dozen to 35, a jump that proved very stressful. After that, Masterson decided to grow her farm family more gradually, 10 or 15 new members per year at most.
Land on which to farm, especially in or very near Portland, was always a challenge. Each time she'd move to a new field there were start-up costs and transportation issues. By 2002, Masterson was still working part-time as a landscaper– and farming seven different pieces of land.
"It was a total logistical nightmare," she recalls all too clearly. "I made it my goal to be on just one or two larger pieces of land before I went completely crazy."
How, then, to reach that goal and stay true to her plan of growing food in the city for the
city? The answer, it developed, was to turn to the city itself.
Today, Masterson farms some 12 acres, most of which she contracts for from two city governments. Zenger Farm, off Foster Road in southeast Portland, is owned by the city and managed by a non-profit dedicated to building an agricultural education center. In exchange for maintenance and educational outreach that includes leading farm tours and hosting school field trips (to, in this rare case, an actual field), Masterson grows vegetables on a two-acre plot. And she farms 10 acres owned by the City of Lake Oswego at Luscher Farm, a large tract where the city hopes to combine a park with working CSA farmland.
Things are going so well that someday Masterson may actually be able to quit her day job to concentrate on her other day job. The farm pays for itself and the salaries of her employees, but it doesn't yet fully pay Masterson. Well, there's that profitability thing again.